Tesla's works. Nikola Tesla - the most mysterious scientist in the world

Nikola Tesla- a brilliant inventor, physicist and engineer of Serbian origin. He owns over 100 patents in the field of electricity and wave physics. His most famous inventions are in the field of electrical and radio mechanics.

Brief biography of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born July 10, 1856 in the village of Smilyan in present-day Croatia. His father - Milutin Tesla, Serbian Orthodox priest of the Srem diocese. His mother - Georgina Tesla (Mandic), daughter of a priest.

Childhood and studies

Tesla Jr. had three sisters and one (older) brother who died after falling from a horse when Nikola was 5 years old. Nikola graduated from the first grade of school in his native village, and the remaining 3 - in the city gospic where his parents moved after his father's promotion.

In 1870 Nikola completed a three-year study at the lower gymnasium of Gospić and immediately entered the higher school in the city Karlovac. In 1873 he graduated from college and received a matriculation certificate.

In 1875 after a 9-month illness (cholera, dropsy), Nikola Tesla enters a technical school in Graz. There he began to study electrical engineering.

First work

In 1879 Nikola got a job as a teacher at the gymnasium in Gospic, where he himself studied. Work in Gospic did not suit him. The family had little money, and only thanks to financial assistance from their two uncles, Petara and Pavla Mandic, young Tesla was able to leave in January 1880 to Prague, where he entered the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Prague. He studied for only one semester and was forced to look for a job.

Tesla's first inventions

From 1880 to 1882, Tesla worked as an electrical engineer for the government telegraph company in Budapest, which at that time was engaged in laying telephone lines and building a central telephone exchange.

In February 1882, Tesla figured out how to use a phenomenon in an electric motor, which later became known as rotating magnetic field .

Working for Edison

At the end of 1882, Nikola got a job in Continental Edison Company in Paris. One of the largest works of the company was the construction of a power plant for the railway station in Strasbourg.

In early 1883, the company sent Nikola to Strasbourg to deal with a number of work problems. AT free time Tesla worked on making asynchronous motor models, and later demonstrated his work at the Strasbourg City Hall.

Edison's work

Summer 1884 Tesla went to America, to New York. He got a job at a company Edison Machine Works) as a repair engineer for electric motors and DC generators. But he quit after Edison did not pay him the promised 50 thousand dollars for "innovation".

Project work

After only a year with Edison, Tesla rose to prominence in business circles. Upon learning of his dismissal, a group of electrical engineers suggested that Nicola start his own company related to electrical lighting issues.

Tesla's projects for the use of alternating current did not inspire them, and then they changed the original proposal, limiting themselves only to the proposal to develop a project arc lamp for street lighting.

A year later, the project was ready. Instead of money, the entrepreneurs offered the inventor a part of the shares of the company created to operate the new lamp. This option did not suit the inventor, but the company, in response, tried to get rid of him, trying to slander and defame him.

Own company

spring 1887 Nikola Tesla with the support of an engineer Brown and his friends creates his own company for the arrangement of street lighting with new lamps. The company was called Tesla Arc Light Company.

For the office of his company in New York, Nikola Tesla rented a house on Fifth Avenue not far from the building occupied by the Edison company.

An intense competitive struggle unleashed between the two companies, known in the United States as the “War of the Currents”.

Research activities

In July 1888, the famous American industrialist George Westinghouse bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, paying an average of $25,000 each.

In 1888-1895 Tesla was engaged in research on high frequency magnetic fields in his laboratory. These years were the most fruitful: he received many patents for inventions.

On March 13, 1895, a fire broke out in the laboratory on Fifth Avenue. The building burned to the ground, destroying the latest achievements of the inventor.

New laboratory and new achievements

Thanks to Edward Adams Tesla received $100,000 from Niagara Falls to help build a new laboratory. Already in the fall, research resumed at a new address: 46 Houston Street.

At the end of 1896, Tesla achieved the transmission of a radio signal over a distance of about 48 km.

Research in Colorado Springs

In 1899 Nikola Tesla moved to the small town of Colorado Springs, where he began to explore the nature of lightning and thunderstorms. These studies led the inventor to the idea of ​​the possibility of transmitting electricity without wires over long distances.

Tesla directed his next experiment to explore the possibility of independently creating a standing electromagnetic wave.

Based on the experiment, Tesla concluded that a specially designed device allowed him to generate standing waves that propagated spherically from the transmitter, and then converged with increasing intensity. in the diametrically opposite point of the globe, somewhere near the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean.

Return to New York

In 1899 Nicola returned from Colorado to New York. After 1900, Tesla received many other patents for inventions. in various fields of technology:

• electric meter,
• frequency counter,
• a number of improvements in radio equipment,
• innovations in steam turbines.

Tesla was awarded the Edison Medal on May 18, 1917.
although he himself resolutely refused to receive it.

hard work

In 1917, Tesla proposed the principle of operation of the device for radar detection of submarines.

In 1917-1926, Nikola Tesla worked in various American cities. In 1934, Tesla published an article in Scientific American that caused a wide resonance in scientific circles.

Accident

Once Tesla had an accident - he was hit by a car. After this incident, the already elderly Nikola Tesla was forever chained to the bed.

Moreover, he fell ill with pneumonia and got a chronic form of this disease. On the night of January 7-8, 1943 Nikola Tesla died in his hotel room at the New Yorker Hotel.

On January 12, his body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was installed at the Farncliff Cemetery in New York. In 1957, it was moved to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

If you heard the name Nikola Tesla, then you might have thought that this was some kind of outstanding person, while being completely unaware of his merits. Therefore, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with short biography this outstanding inventor.

Nikola Tesla is not unreasonably considered one of the the greatest people, which owns a large number of inventions that have changed our world.

He was born in the village of Smilany on July 10, 1856 in the family of a Serbian priest Milutin Tesla. When Nikola Tesla was six years old, his family moved to the town of Gospic, located six kilometers from Smilyan. At the new place, Nikola completed elementary school and a three-year gymnasium. At the age of 14, he entered the Higher Real School, located in the city of Karlovac.

They say that at the age of ten, the future scientist, while stroking a fluffy cat, noticed that sparks jumped between his fingers and the cat's fur. Asking his father about the nature of these sparks, the boy heard the answer that sparks are most likely "relatives" of lightning. The father's answer forever sunk into the boy's soul, clearly showing him that electricity (which Nikola knew nothing about then) can be both "tame" like a pet, and "wild" like lightning.

While studying in Karlovac, Tesla did a lot of mathematics and physics. He was especially impressed by the physical experiments of Professor Martin Sekulich. This professor was demonstrating his invention in action, a tin-foil-covered light bulb that rotated rapidly when connected to a static machine.

In 1875, Nikola Tesla entered the Higher Technical School in Graz, where he gradually began to reveal his ability to invent. It was during his studies that Tesla set himself the goal of creating an electric motor powered by alternating current. And already in his second year, he was able to offer his own version of the improvement of the then miracle of technology - the dynamo machine Gramme, powered by direct current. The fact is that the collector of the machine consisted of several wire brushes that transmit current from the generator to the motor in one direction, which caused a strong spark. Therefore, Tesla proposed to abandon the collector and apply alternating current. However, his idea was subjected to sharp criticism, which only provoked Tesla, and he spent the next years of study thinking about the problem of an alternator.

Surprisingly, Tesla failed to prepare for his final exams. He was refused a reprieve, and Nikola did not graduate from college. In Graz, Tesla's genius never got used to routine studies, being distracted by fantastic inventions and gambling.

In 1880, Nikola was able to enter the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague. But even in a new place, he studied for only one semester, although, apparently, he did not greatly regret it.

At the beginning of 1881, Tesla ended up in Hungary, where in Budapest he received a position as a draftsman and designer of the engineering department of the Central Telegraph.

With the opening of the American telephone exchange in Budapest, Tesla gets the opportunity to study many of the progressive inventions of that time. He checks and repairs telephone lines, and carefully examines the multi-channel telegraph and the induction carbon disk speaker, inventions of Thomas Edison. Experimenting with the shape of the speaker, Tesla created a cone-shaped loudspeaker that repeats and amplifies signals. This device became the prototype of the future loudspeaker. But Tesla directed all his main forces to the creation of an electric motor powered by alternating current. Despite the fact that the solution in the head of the scientist had already matured, it was not possible to practically implement it.

In his inventive work, Tesla laid out one hundred percent and brought himself to nervous exhaustion: “I heard the ticking of the clock in three rooms from me. The landing of the fly on the table resounded in my ears with a dull thud.

And here mysticism comes to the fore. Tesla, to whom doctors had already predicted death, unexpectedly recovered, and then found a solution to the problem that tormented him.

During that period, Tesla's thought worked with such intensity that in less than two months the scientist created "practically all types of motors and all modifications of the system" associated with Tesla. These were both single-phase and multi-phase motors. The revolutionary nature of his inventions lay in the fact that now electricity could be supplied for hundreds of kilometers by connecting household appliances and factory machines to it, and not using it only to light buildings.

In April 1882, Tesla traveled to Paris, where he met Charles Bechlor, the manager of the Continental Company. This company hired him.

A year later, Tesla was sent to Strasbourg, where he was supposed to monitor the construction of the power plant and deal with the identification of defects made during construction. In Strasbourg, Nikola managed to design an AC motor. The device was shown to the measure of the city, but he never found sponsors for the young scientist.

A year later, Tesla returned to Paris and tried to get the bonus of 25 thousand dollars due to him, but since no one was going to pay him, he quit and in the spring of 1884 went to America.

The meeting with Thomas Edison made an indelible impression on Tesla, the American seemed to him a real "sorcerer" from electricity. By repairing the dynamos on the first electrically lit steamboat, Tesla earned the respect and trust of Edison. However, Nikola did not have a chance to interest Edison in alternating current - he firmly believed in direct current.

After leaving Edison at the beginning of 1885, Tesla stopped bowing before any authorities in the scientific world and realized that he was able to try on the “electric crown” on himself.

In March, Tesla met with Edison's former agent, now a major patent specialist, Lemuel Serrell. Together they apply for the first patent, number 335786, which describes an improved model of an arc lamp that produces uniform light.

With financial backing from New Jersey entrepreneurs Vail and Lane, Tesla starts his own company. Entrepreneurs suggested that the scientist create a project for an arc lamp for street lighting. Tesla created the project, but Vail and Lane simply "threw" the scientist, leaving him not only without a company, but also without a livelihood (instead of money, the Serb was offered part of the company's shares). This led to the fact that the inventor, in order not to die of hunger, went to work as an ordinary digger for two dollars a day.

Yet in April 1887, Tesla founded the Tesla Arc Light Company. Now he could plunge headlong into his favorite calculations. Thanks to the genius of Tesla, his company rapidly gained momentum and became a "deadly" competitor to the company of Thomas Edison. In the "war of currents", as the American media wittily called the rivalry between Tesla and Edison, a clear advantage was on the side of Tesla.

After a May 16, 1888 report on an alternator in an auditorium of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Tesla was noticed by the millionaire inventor George Westinghouse (the creator of the hydraulic steam locomotive brake), who immediately offered Tesla a million dollars and royalties for future patents.

In 1892, while giving a lecture on the high-frequency electromagnetic field to scientists at the Royal Academy of Great Britain, Tesla lit electric bulbs in his hands. The electric motor was not connected to them by wires. Some lamps did not even have a spiral - a high-frequency current passed through the body of the inventor. The admiration of scientists knew no bounds, and after the lecture, physicist John Rayleigh solemnly seated Tesla in Faraday's chair, saying: “This is the chair of the great Faraday. After his death, no one sat in it.

In the same year, Nikola Tesla designed the world's first wave radio transmitter, thus seven years ahead of Marconi. Using radio control, Tesla created "teleautomatic devices" - self-propelled mechanisms that were controlled from a distance.

In 1895, the Niagara hydroelectric power station (the largest in the world) was put into operation, which worked with the help of Tesla generators.

However, not everyone shared Tesla's creative and commercial successes. In March 1895, Tesla's laboratory burned to the ground in a fire. The fire consumed not only the previous, but also its latest developments, including a new method of transmitting messages over long distances without wires, a mechanical oscillator, and many others. It was rumored that the fire could have been caused by arson committed by ill-wishers, thus alluding to Thomas Edison.

However, having a phenomenal memory, Tesla managed to restore all his inventions. Already at the end of 1896, Tesla transmitted a signal without wires over a distance of 48 kilometers!

In May 1899, Tesla was in the resort town of Colorado Springs, located on a plateau 2000 meters above sea level. Tesla was so impressed by the presence of severe thunderstorms in this resort that he decided to create a laboratory to study them. To do this, Tesla developed a transformer in which one end of the primary winding was grounded, and the other end was connected to a metal ball with a rod that could be pulled up. A sensitive self-tuning device was connected to the secondary winding, which, in turn, was connected to a recording device.

This design allowed him to study the changing potential of the Earth, including the effect of standing electromagnetic waves from lightning discharges in the atmosphere.

Tesla then embarks on an even grander experiment. Having connected a 60-meter mast with a copper ball at the end (one meter in diameter) to the secondary winding of the transformer, the scientist began to pass an alternating current of several thousand volts through the primary winding. As a result, a current with a voltage of several million volts and a frequency of up to 150,000 hertz appeared in the secondary winding. The copper ball began to emit discharges similar to lightning, up to 4.5 meters long. Thunderous peals were heard at a distance of up to 24 kilometers.

As a result of these experiments, Tesla proved the possibility of creating a standing electromagnetic wave.

In the fall of 1899, Tesla returned to New York. A grandiose plan has matured in the scientist's head - to build a station for wireless transmission of information and energy to any point on the Earth. To accomplish this task, Tesla bought a piece of land on Long Island, where in 1902 the construction of a wooden frame tower 47 meters high with a copper ball at the top was completed, the tower was called Wardenclyffe.

However, the idea of ​​uncontrolled transfer of energy across the planet scared many industrialists - they feared that Tesla's invention would deprive them of their sources of profit. Therefore, Tesla could not find further funding for this project.

However, this did not stop him, Tesla still began to conduct the planned experiments. The most famous was the one during which, on the night of July 15-16, 1903, the New York sky was lit up with a light similar to the northern lights.

It is the Wardenclyffe tower that some researchers consider the “culprit” of the explosion over Tunguska in 1908.

Moving away from the squabbles around the Wardenclyffe tower, Tesla turns his talent to new inventions. These included a frequency meter, an electric meter, advanced steam turbines, and electrotherapy devices. In one of the letters, the scientist mentioned that he was working on a project "car, locomotive and lathe." Tesla sought to cover as many areas of human life as possible.

In 1909-1910, Tesla's financial affairs were going very well, thanks to orders for his inventions. However, he secretly hoped that he could use the money he received to restore the project of the world transfer station - the Wardenclyffe tower.

However, soon the scientist again quickly plunged into the abyss of debt. After so many years of hard work, Nikola Tesla was completely bankrupt.

Hoping for genes, Tesla intended to live for more than 100 years. Most likely, he could have made it to the milestone, despite his strange diet ( warm milk, bread, some vegetables), hard work at night. However, getting hit by a car and breaking his ribs, he greatly undermined his health.

After the scientist's death on the night of January 7-8, 1943, all his papers were taken by FBI agents. Having carefully studied the legacy of Tesla, the FBI stated that the great scientist did not leave anything that could be of practical use.

10 most important inventions and discoveries of Nikola Tesla

1. High-frequency electrical engineering (high-frequency transformer, RF electromechanical generator (including inductor type)).

2. Multiphase electric current. Tesla himself considered two-phase current to be the most economical, therefore, two-phase electric current was used in the electrical installations of the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station. However, three-phase current has gained distribution.

3. Radio communication and mast antenna for radio communication. In 1891, Tesla, during a public lecture, described and showed the principles of radio communication, and in 1893 he created a mast antenna for wireless radio communication.

4. Tesla coils. To this day, they are used to obtain artificial lightning.

5. The use of electrical devices for medical purposes. Tesla discovered that high voltage high-frequency currents (up to 2 million volts) can have a beneficial effect on the skin, in particular, kill germs and cleanse pores.

6. The phenomenon of a rotating magnetic field. Described by Tesla in 1888, earlier than and independently of the Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris.

7. Asynchronous electric motor. Patented in 1888.

8. The first (or one of the first) to observe and describe cathode, x-rays and ultraviolet radiation.

9. Fluorescent lamp (designed first).

10. Radio-controlled boat. Demonstrated in 1898.

If you have read to the end of the article, take a look interesting video about this great man.

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"AT outer space there is a certain core from which we draw knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists. "The great mysteries of our existence have yet to be unraveled, even death may not be the end." "The action of even the smallest creature leads to changes in the entire universe." (Nikola Tesla)

1. Youth

The consistent development of mankind is vitally dependent on the ability to invent. This is the most important manifestation of his creative mind, the highest goal of which is complete dominance over the material world, the use of the forces of nature for human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor, the results of which often remain misunderstood and unappreciated. Nevertheless, his efforts are more than compensated by the joy and satisfaction from the manifestations of his abilities and from the consciousness of belonging to the only privileged class, without which the human race would have died out long ago in a fierce struggle with the ruthless elements. As for me, I experienced these exquisite pleasures so often that many years of my life flashed by like a small short film about unceasing delight. I am considered one of the most diligent workers, and perhaps this is true if thinking is tantamount to work, because I devoted almost all my waking hours to it. But if work is interpreted as specific actions at a set time in accordance with strict rules, then I can be considered the biggest bum.

Each forced effort requires a sacrifice - vital energy. I have never paid such a price. On the contrary, my thoughts led me to success. In attempting to enumerate coherently and accurately my occupations in this account of my life, I shall be compelled, though reluctantly, to dwell on those impressions of my youth and on those circumstances and events which contributed to the determination of my career. Our first infatuations are the purely instinctive urges of a vivid and unbridled imagination. As we grow older, the mind begins to come into its own and we become more and more internally ordered and able to plan something sensible. But those early impulses, while not very productive, are critical and can be harbingers of fate and shaping our future. Of course, now I feel with particular acuteness that if I understood these impulses and indulged them instead of suppressing them, then I would greatly increase the value of what I left to the world.

But it was only when I really grew up that I realized that I was an inventor. There were several reasons for this. First, I had an extraordinarily gifted brother, one of those rare people with unique mental faculties, attempts to explain which in biological studies were unsuccessful. His untimely death left my earthly parents inconsolable (later I will explain what I mean by "earthly parents"). We had a horse that one of our close friends gave us. It was an amazing animal of Arab blood, with almost human intelligence. The whole family loved and cared for her, never forgetting the amazing occasion when this horse saved my dear father's life. One winter night, he was called on an urgent matter, and while he was riding in the mountains, teeming with wolves, the horse was frightened and carried away, abruptly throwing his father to the ground. She returned home bloody and exhausted, but as soon as the alarm was raised, she immediately rushed back to the place where it happened, and when the search party was still far from him, her father met her on horseback. He came to his senses and sat on the horse, not even realizing that he had lain for several hours in the snow. This horse was responsible for the mutilation of my brother, from which he died. I was a witness to this terrible scene, and although many years have passed since then, it rises before my eyes with the same tragic force. When I think of my brother's accomplishments, all my efforts pale in comparison. Whatever I did that was commendable, it only made my parents feel even more heavy loss, so I did not believe in my strength at all.

But I was by no means considered a stupid boy, to judge by one incident, which I remember very well. One day several members of our city government were crossing the street where I was playing with other boys, and the oldest of these respectable gentlemen, a rich gentleman, stopped to give us a silver coin. Approaching me, he suddenly commanded: "Look into my eyes." I met his eyes, already holding out my hand for the coveted coin, when suddenly, to my horror, he said: “No, you won’t get anything from me, you’re too smart.” AT family circle funny stories were told about me. I had two old aunts with wrinkled faces. One of them had two teeth sticking out like an elephant's tusks, and they literally stuck into my cheek every time she kissed me. Nothing frightened me so much as the need to be in the company of these loving, unattractive relatives. Once, when I was in my mother's arms, they asked me which of them was more beautiful. After carefully examining their faces, I replied with a thoughtful expression: “This one is not as ugly as that one.”

Milutin Tesla,
inventor's father

And further. Ever since I was born, I have been constantly oppressed by the thought that I would have to become a priest. I dreamed of being an engineer, but my father stood his ground. He was the son of an officer who served in the army of the great Napoleon, and just like his brother, a professor of mathematics at a prestigious university, received a military education, but later, rather unusually, took the clergy and reached a high position in this field. He was a very erudite man, a true naturalist, poet and writer, and his sermons made such an impression on the parishioners that they compared him with famous preachers. He had such a phenomenal memory that he easily cited unmistakably quotations from works in several languages. He often said jokingly that if some of the classics were lost, he could restore them from memory. Everyone admired the style of his writing. He expressed his thoughts in short sentences, saturated with wit and irony. His playful utterances always had a characteristic originality. To illustrate, I can give several examples. We had a worker on the farm, a scythe named Manet. Once, when he was chopping wood, my father, who was standing nearby, fearfully warned with every swing of the ax: "For God's sake, Manet, cut not what you see, but what needs to be cut."

One day, my father went for a walk with a friend, and he carelessly dropped the hem of an expensive fur coat on the carriage wheel. The father remarked: "Pick up the hem, otherwise you will wipe my tire." He had a strange habit of talking to himself, and often he entered into a heated discussion in different voices. An uninitiated listener could have sworn that there were several people in the room.

Although my inclination to inventiveness is due to the influence of my mother, my father certainly helped my development. He came up with special and very diverse exercises for me. For example, guessing each other's thoughts, finding mistakes in some expressions, repeating long sentences from memory, or doing mental calculations. These daily lessons were aimed at improving memory, developing logical thinking, understanding cause and effect, and especially contributed to the development of critical thinking - they were all certainly very useful.

Georgina (Juka) Mandic,
Nikola's mother

My mother came from one of the oldest families countries. The family was famous for a number of inventors. Both her father and grandfather were the authors of countless improvements to various machines for the household, for agricultural work, and not only. Mother was a truly extraordinary woman, very capable, courageous, strong in spirit, bravely overcoming the difficulties of life and going through many difficult trials. When she was sixteen years old, a terrible epidemic broke out in the country. In the absence of her father, who was called to give communion to the dying, she helped a neighboring family, several members of which died from a serious illness. She washed the bodies, dressed the dead, decorated them with flowers in accordance with the custom of the country, and when her father returned, everything was ready for a Christian funeral.

My mother was an inventor by vocation and, I am sure, would have achieved great success if she had lived in our time with its diverse possibilities. She invented and improved various types of knitting tools and devices, creating beautiful patterns from threads that she spun herself. She even sowed and grew plants herself, from which she then received fiber. She worked tirelessly from sunrise until late at night, and most of our clothes and furniture are also made by her hands. She was already over sixty, but she still had such dexterous fingers that, as they say, you won’t have time to blink before she ties three knots.

My late awakening had another, more important reason. In adolescence, I suffered from an unusual illness - some images appeared to me, often accompanied by a flash of light, which distorted the appearance of real objects and interfered with my thoughts and actions. These were scenes from life and objects that I actually saw, not fictional ones. When I was addressed, I clearly saw the object in question, and so clearly, that sometimes I doubted whether it was material or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety. None of the psychologists or physiologists I consulted could satisfactorily explain these unusual phenomena to me. They seem to be unique, although it is possible that I was genetically predisposed to this ailment, since I know that my brother also suffered from it.

I put forward my theory: visions were a reflex reflection on the retina of signals from the brain when it was strongly excited. This, of course, was not a hallucination that originates in a sick and tormented mind, for in all other respects I was perfectly normal and balanced. To understand my experience, imagine that I had to attend a funeral or similar nerve-wracking event. After that, in the silence of the night, against my will, a vivid picture of this scene will certainly appear before my eyes, penetrating my brain, and will not disappear, despite all my attempts to exorcise it. If my assumptions are correct, then it is probably possible to project any conceived image onto the screen and make it visible. Such an achievement would bring about a dramatic change in human relations. I have no doubt that this miracle is possible and will come to him in the future. I may add that I have carefully considered the possibility of solving this problem.

I tried to transmit a picture that was in my mind to a person in another room. In order to free myself from the painful images, I tried to concentrate my attention on something else that I had seen before; in this way I felt a temporary relief, but to achieve this I had to constantly conjure up new images. Very soon I found that all the images I had were exhausted; my “movie”, if I may say so, quickly scrolled, because I had been to few places and saw only what was in the house and in the nearest district. When I conducted such "sessions" for the second or third time, in order to drive these visions out of sight, my method lost its power each time. Then, following an instinctive impulse, I began to mentally go beyond the limits of my familiar little world and accumulate new impressions. They were very vague at first and kind of vanished when I tried to focus my attention on them. But gradually they began to emerge more and more clearly and in the end took the form of real things.

Soon I discovered that I feel most pleasant when I get a whole string of new experiences, and then I began to travel - in my imagination, of course. Every night, and sometimes in the daytime, when I was alone with myself, I went on my travels - I saw new places, cities and countries, lived there, made acquaintances, made friends, and although this may seem incredible, but the fact is that that they were as dear to me as friends in real life, no less bright in their manifestations. I did this constantly until the age of seventeen, until the time when I seriously tuned in to invention. Then I was delighted to find that I could imagine anything I wanted with incredible ease. I didn't need models, drawings or experiments. I could picture it all just as realistically in my mind. Thus, I unconsciously approached, as it seemed to me, close to the possibility of developing a new method of materializing inventive concepts and ideas, which strongly opposes the experimental one and, in my opinion, is much faster and more effective.

When an inventor constructs a device in order to implement a crude idea, he inevitably faces a lot of unsolved small problems in detail and in the work of his offspring. In the course of their solution, he loses his original focus on the main idea. You can get the result, but always at the cost of losing quality. My method is different. I'm in no hurry to start practical work. When I have an idea, I begin to implement it in my imagination - I change the design, introduce improvements and mentally put the device into action. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I mentally run my turbine or test it in the workshop. I even notice when its balance is disturbed. Whatever mechanism is discussed, there is no difference - the result will be the same. This way I can quickly develop and refine my idea without touching anything.

When the stage of completion of the project is reached - all possible corrections and improvements have been made and there are no weak points left - I turn this final product of my mental work into a materialized form. And always my device worked as it was supposed to according to my plan, and the pilot test went exactly as I planned. There hasn't been a single exception in twenty years. Why should it be otherwise?

Engineering work in the field of electricity and mechanics is distinguished by the accuracy of the results. It is unlikely that there will be an object, the device and operation of which are not amenable to preliminary study and mathematical description based on the available theoretical and practical data. Putting into practice an immature idea, as it usually happens, I consider a waste of energy, money and time.

My youthful chagrins were, however, rewarded in other ways. Continuous mental exertion contributed to the development of acute observation and allowed me to discover something very important in myself. I noticed that the appearance of mental images was always preceded by my waking observation of some events under special and, as a rule, very unusual conditions, and in each case I was forced to restore the original real impression. After a while I was able to do this effortlessly, almost automatically, and achieved extraordinary ease in establishing the connection between cause and effect. And soon I realized, to my surprise, that every thought that arose in me was prompted by an impression from without. Not only this important stage in understanding myself, but all my other steps in this direction were suggested to me in a similar way.

As time went on, it became quite obvious to me that I was just an automaton, endowed with the ability to make certain movements in response to signals from the senses and able to think and act accordingly. In practice, this led to the development of still very imperfect ways to control automatic devices at a distance. However, hidden opportunities for their improvement will be revealed over time. I have been developing self-driving automata for a number of years, and I believe that it is possible to create mechanisms that act as if they can think within limits and that will revolutionize many commercial and industrial sectors.

Memorial center in the village of Smilyan,
birthplace of Nikola Tesla

I was about twelve years old when I learned to force the images out of my mind, but I could not control the appearance of flashes of light, which I have already talked about. They were perhaps the strangest, most inexplicable phenomenon in my life. This usually happened when I was in dangerous or very unpleasant situations, or in a state of extreme euphoria. Sometimes I saw that all the air around me was filled with dancing flames. The brightness of these living pictures did not diminish with time and, as I remember, reached a maximum when I was about twenty-five years old.

In 1883, when I was in Paris, a well-known French manufacturer invited me to hunt, and I accepted his invitation. After a long period of constant work at the plant, the fresh air had a wonderful and invigorating effect on me. In the evening, upon returning home, I felt that my brain was literally on fire. It felt as if a little sun had entered into it, and I applied cold compresses to my exhausted head all night. Gradually, the outbreaks became less frequent and not as intense, but it took more than three weeks for them to stop. Naturally, when a second invitation followed, I categorically refused.

These light phenomena still make themselves felt from time to time, for example, when I suddenly have a new idea that opens up great possibilities, but I almost do not react to them, because their intensity is relatively low. When I close my eyes, invariably at the beginning there is an even dark blue background, like the sky on a clear but starless night. After a few seconds, this background comes to life, covered with sparkling green flakes that advance on me in countless rows. Then on the right appears a beautiful pattern of perpendicular systems, consisting of parallel, closely spaced lines, of a wide variety of colors, dominated by yellow, green and gold. Immediately after this, the lines become brighter, and the entire space is filled with a sparkling flicker of luminous points. This picture slowly shifts to the left, crossing the field of view, and after about ten seconds it disappears, leaving behind a rather unpleasant, unanimated gray background, until the next phase begins.

Every time before falling asleep, I see images of people or objects flashing before me. Their appearance means that I am on the verge of falling asleep. If they are not there and they refuse to appear, then there will be a sleepless night. To show how important the imagination was in my youth, I will give the following unusual case.

Like most children, I loved to jump, and I had a strong desire to jump so that I could stay in the air longer. Sometimes it blew from the mountains strong wind, richly saturated with oxygen, and then my body became light as a feather, and I jumped up and soared in space for a long time. I was delighted by this feeling, but how painful was my disappointment later, when I stopped deceiving myself.

At that time I acquired many contradictory oddities in tastes and habits; in the appearance of some of them, the influence of external impressions can be traced, while others are generally inexplicable. I had a keen distaste for women's earrings, and I liked other pieces of jewelry, say, bracelets, to one degree or another, depending on how beautifully they were made. At the sight of pearls, I was on the verge of a fit. But I was completely fascinated by the sparkle of crystals or objects with sharp edges and smooth surfaces. I would never touch another person's hair, except at gunpoint. I was feverish at the sight of a peach, and if a piece of camphor was lying around somewhere in the house, I felt incredible discomfort.

Even now I care about some of these disturbing influences. Whenever I drop small paper squares into a bowl of liquid, I always get a weird awful taste in my mouth. I counted how many steps I took while walking, and calculated in cubic units the volume of a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee or a piece of food, otherwise I would not feel the pleasure of eating. The sum of any actions or work operations that I had to perform in some repetitive sequence had to be divided by three, and if this did not work, I would start over, even if it took several hours.

Until the age of eight, I was distinguished by a weak and indecisive character. I lacked the strength and courage to make firm decisions. Feelings rolled over me in waves and threw me from one extreme to another. My desires had an all-consuming power, and they multiplied like the heads of a fairy serpent. I was oppressed by thoughts of worldly suffering and death torments and religious fear. I was enslaved by superstitions and lived in constant fear of the appearance of evil spirits, ghosts, cannibal giants and other terrible monsters from the world of darkness. And suddenly, suddenly, there was a tremendous change that transformed my entire existence.

Most of all I loved books. Father had a big library, and at every opportunity I tried to satisfy my passion for reading. Not only did he not allow me to do this, but he fell into a rage when he caught me doing this. He began to hide the candles when he discovered that I was secretly reading. He didn't want my eyesight to deteriorate. But I managed to get candle fat, after which I made a wick, a pewter mold and cast the candles myself. Every night I plugged the keyhole and the cracks and read, often until dawn, when everyone was still asleep and my mother was going about her heavy daily duties. One day I came across a Serbian translation of a novel called "Aoafi" ("Son of Aba") by the famous Hungarian writer Josik. This book awakened in me the dormant inclinations of the will, and I began to cultivate the ability to self-control. At first my resolve melted away like snow in April, but after a while I conquered my weakness and experienced a never-before-experienced pleasure in learning to see things through.

Over time, these vigorous mental exercises became second nature to me. At first I had to suppress my desires, but gradually they began to coincide with what my will dictated. After several years of training, I achieved such completeness of self-control that I playfully curbed passions that ended in disaster for many of the most powerful people. There was a period when I, like a maniac, indulged in gambling, which greatly worried my parents. Sitting down at the cards was for me the highest pleasure.

Nikola Tesla
in the national
Serbian costume, 1880

My father led an exemplary life and could not put up with the senseless waste of time and money, which I did not deny myself. I was determined, but my arguments left much to be desired. I used to say to my father, “I don’t have to give up anything at any moment, but why give up something that brings heavenly pleasure?” More than once he gave vent to anger and brought down his contempt on me, but the reaction of the mother was different. She understood the nature of man and knew that the path to salvation lies only through his own efforts. I remember how once, when I lost all my money and begged for more to win back, she came up with a bundle of securities and said: “Go and have fun, the sooner you lose everything we have, the better. I know you will end this." She was right. On that day and in that game, I overcame my passion, and so easily that I even regretted that it was not a hundred times stronger. I not only restrained her, but ripped her out of my heart so that not even a trace of desire would remain. Since then, any game of chance has been as interesting to me as picking my teeth.

There was a period when I became so addicted to smoking that it threatened to undermine my health. But then my will intervened, and I not only stopped, but also suppressed the slightest craving for smoking. Many years ago, my heart began to fool around, but as soon as I found out that the innocent cup of coffee in the morning was to blame, I immediately abandoned it, although, to be honest, it was not an easy task. In this way, I controlled and tamed other habits and passions, which not only saved my life, but also gave me great satisfaction. However, for someone this, perhaps, would be a deprivation and a sacrifice.

After completing my studies at a higher technical school and university, I had a complete nervous breakdown, and during my illness absolutely amazing and inexplicable things happened to me ...

2. Experience of the unusual

I will briefly dwell on the experiences that happened to me unusual phenomena, because they are likely to be of interest to students of psychology and physiology, and also because this period of my suffering was of particular importance for the development of my thinking abilities and my subsequent work. But first it is necessary to tell about the previous circumstances and conditions in which, perhaps, a partial explanation of these phenomena lies.

Since childhood, I have been forced to focus my attention on myself. Although this caused me a lot of suffering, but, as I understand now, it was at the same time a blessing, because. taught me to appreciate the essential role of self-observation for the preservation of life, as well as as a means to an end. The stress of work and the unceasing stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness through all the gates of knowledge make modern existence dangerous in many ways. Most people are so immersed in what is happening directly around them and in the world in general, that they are completely oblivious to what is happening inside them. main reason million premature deaths is precisely this. Even among those who care about themselves, a common mistake is to avoid imaginary threats and ignore real ones. And what is true for one person applies more or less to all people in general.

Moderation was not very characteristic of me, but I am fully rewarded by the positive experience that I now have. I will give a couple of examples - in the hope of attracting some readers to my principles and beliefs. Not long ago I was returning to my hotel. The evening turned out to be very cold, it was slippery, and there was no taxi. Behind me was a man who, apparently, like me, sought to find shelter. Suddenly my legs were in the air. At that moment, a flash of light appeared in my head. The nervous system worked, and the muscles reacted instantly. I turned 180 degrees and landed on my hands. I continued to walk as if none of this had happened, when a stranger caught up with me and, looking critically, asked: “How old are you?” I answered: “Soon 59, what?” He said, "You know, I've seen cats do it, but never people."

About a month ago I wanted to order glasses and went to an optometrist who did a routine eye exam. He looked at me in surprise as I easily read the smallest print at a fairly large distance. But he was completely smitten when he found out that I was already over sixty. My friends often comment that my suits always fit me perfectly, but what they don't know is that my clothes are made to measure, which were taken at least 15 years ago and have never been changed. During all this time, my weight deviated from the usual one pound in one direction or another. Here is a funny story related to it.

Inventor Thomas Edison
with an early version of the phonograph

One winter evening in 1885, Mr. Edison, Edward H. Johnson, president of the Edison Lighting Company, Mr. Bachelor, plant manager, and I entered a small building opposite 65 Fifth Avenue where the company's offices were located. . Someone suggested guessing the weight of those present, and they made me stand on the scales. Edison felt me ​​all over and said, "Tesla weighs 152 pounds to the nearest ounce" - and it was absolutely true. Without clothes, I weighed 142 pounds and now keep the same weight. I whispered to Mr. Johnson, "How did Edison determine my weight with such accuracy?" Lowering his voice, he replied, “Don't tell anyone, keep this between us. For a long time he worked at the Chicago slaughterhouse, where he had to weigh thousands of pig carcasses daily. That's the way, my friend."

My friend, the Honorable Chauncey M. Dapew, told of an Englishman with whom he shared one of his peculiar anecdotes, and the latter listened in perplexity. But a year later he laughed out loud. I must admit that it took me even longer to appreciate Johnson's joke. Thus, my good health is simply the result of a prudent, measured lifestyle, and, perhaps most surprisingly, in my youth, illnesses brought me to physical exhaustion three times so completely that the doctors abandoned me. Moreover, due to ignorance and frivolity, I got into all sorts of difficulties, troubles and dangerous situations, from which I extricated myself as if by magic. I drowned and was buried, I was lost and frozen. I was within a hair's breadth of being killed by rabid dogs, wild boars, and other wild animals. I had serious illnesses, I was haunted by accidents, and the fact that I survived and remained healthy is simply a miracle.

But when I look back on all these events, I am convinced that my salvation was not just an accident, but was truly preordained. higher power. The essence of an inventor's effort is to make life easier or save a life. Whether he uses various forces, improves mechanisms or creates new conveniences for our existence - he makes it safer. Each inventor is also better than the average person in protecting himself in a dangerous situation, because he is more observant and resourceful. If I didn't have other evidence that I have some of these qualities, I would find them in the next few examples from life. The reader will be able to judge for himself.

Once, when I was 14 years old, I wanted to scare my friends with whom we were swimming together. I decided to dive under something long and floating like a raft and calmly emerge from the other side. I learned to swim and dive as naturally as a duck, and I was quite sure that my feat would be successful. And so I dived into the water and, when no one saw me, swam in the opposite direction. Thinking that I had already reached the end of the structure, I began to rise to the surface, but, to my horror, I hit a beam. Of course, I dived again and hurried forward with fast strokes with force, but I felt that I was out of breath. I tried to emerge a second time and again hit my head on the beam. Despair gripped me. I gathered my last strength and made a third crazy attempt, but the result was the same. I could no longer hold my breath, it was unbearable torture, my thoughts became incoherent, and I felt like I was drowning.

At that moment, when the situation seemed completely hopeless, that same familiar flash of light suddenly happened, and the wooden structure that was above my head was clearly indicated in my mind. Being almost unconscious, I felt or guessed that there must have been some space between the surface of the water and the beams. In a semi-conscious state, I swam there, pressed my lips directly to the planks and managed to inhale some air, unfortunately, along with a stream of water, from which I almost choked. After repeating this procedure several times, as in a dream, until my wildly pounding heart calmed down, I finally mastered myself. After that, I dived many times unsuccessfully, completely losing my sense of direction, but, in the end, successfully got out of this captivity, when my friends had already lost all hope and were looking for my body in the water. That bathing season was spoiled for me by my recklessness, but the lesson was soon forgotten, and two years later I found myself in an even more predicament.

Near the city where I studied at that time, there was a large mill with a dam across the river. As a rule, the water was two or three inches above the dam, and it was not very dangerous to swim up there, which I often did. One day, I went to the river alone to enjoy such entertainment as always. When I was already close to the masonry, I noticed with horror that the water had risen and the current was carrying me faster and faster. I tried to swim away, but it was too late. Fortunately, I was not thrown over the dam - I escaped by managing to grab it with both hands. My chest constricted, and I could hardly keep my head on the surface. There was not a soul around, and my cries for help were drowned out by the roar of the waterfall. With slow inevitability, my strength left me, and I could no longer resist the pressure of the water. And just as I was almost ready to crash into the rocks below, in a bright flash of light, I was presented with the familiar formula of the principle of hydraulics, according to which the pressure of a moving fluid is proportional to the area that opposes it, and I automatically turned on my left side. As if by magic, the pressure decreased, and it became relatively easy for me to withstand the force of the current. But the danger still existed. I knew that soon I would be carried down, because. I had no one to look for help, even if I had attracted someone's attention, it was already too late. Now I can use both hands equally, but then I was left-handed, and my right hand completely weakened. Because of this, I could not risk turning to the other side to rest, and there was nothing left for me but, pushing off with my hands from the dam, slowly moving along it. I had to change direction and move in the opposite direction from the mill I was facing, as it was deeper there and the current was stronger. It was a long and painful ordeal, and I was on the verge of death at the end, where the dam went down near the shore. I managed with the last of my strength to overcome this barrier, and I fell, losing consciousness, when I found myself on the shore, where they found me. I tore off almost all the skin on my left side and lay in a fever for several weeks until the temperature subsided and I recovered. These are just two of many examples, but they are enough to show that if it were not for my instinct as an inventor, there would be no one to tell you these stories.

People who were interested in me often asked how and when I started inventing. I can answer this question only on the basis of my present recollection, in the light of which the first memorable attempt was rather pretentious, since it included the invention of apparatus and method. As for the device, I had predecessors, but the method turned out to be original. And it turned out like this.

One of my childhood playmates got a real rod and hook and fishing tackle; this excited the whole village, and the next day everyone rushed to catch frogs. Except for me staying at home because I was in a quarrel with this boy. I had never seen a real hook before and imagined that it was something extraordinary, with special properties, and was in despair that I was not in the company of all the guys. And in me there was a certain need to act. I somehow obtained a piece of soft steel wire, sharpened the end by flattening it with two stones, bent it into shape, and tied it to a strong rope. Then he cut the rod, took the bait and went down to the stream, where there were a lot of frogs. But I could not catch a single one and had already lost all hope, but then I decided to try to bring an empty hook to a frog sitting on a stump and shake it in front of its nose. At first she froze, then her reddened eyes bulged, she began to swell and, becoming twice as large, angrily pounced on the hook. I hooked her up immediately. And I repeated the same thing many times, and my method turned out to be trouble-free. When my comrades, who had not caught anything in spite of their excellent equipment, approached me, they simply turned green with envy. For a long time I kept my secret and enjoyed the monopoly, but in the end I relented before Christmas. Every boy could now do the same, and the next summer was a disaster for the frogs.

In my next attempt, it seems to me, I acted on the first instinctive impulse, which later became my predominant idea - to harness the energy of nature for the needs of man. My first use was May beetles, or June beetles, as they are called in America, where they are so numerous that they have become a real disaster for the country. Sometimes tree branches even broke under their weight. The bushes looked black because of them. I tied four beetles to a crosspiece mounted on a thin spindle, and it rotated, transmitting movement to a large disk. Thus, significant "energy" was extracted. These workers worked beautifully - as soon as they were launched, they circled hour after hour, and the hotter it was, the harder they worked. And so it went until a strange boy appeared.

He was the son of a retired Austrian army officer. This boy ate live cockchafers and enjoyed them as if they were first-class oysters. The scene was so disgusting that it completed my beginnings in this promising field and made such an impression on me that since then I have not been able to touch not only the cockchafer, but even any insect.

After that, as I remember, I began to disassemble and assemble my grandfather's watch. The first operation was always successful, but the second often ended in failure. It ended with my grandfather forbidding me to touch his watch, and in such an indelicate way that it took me thirty years to take it apart again.

A short time later, I began to manufacture a pneumatic, so to speak, gun, which consisted of a hollow tube, a piston and two hemp plugs. To make a shot, the end of the piston had to be pressed against the stomach, and the tube was quickly pulled back with both hands. The air between the two plugs was compressed and rose to high temperature, and one of the plugs flew out with a loud pop. Success depended on luck in finding a tube - with a tapering end and a suitable hole - among the usual straight lines that could be found in our garden. The gun turned out to be very good, and I used it successfully, but at the same time broken windows appeared in the house, and my activity was stopped in a far from painless way.

If my memory does not fail me, after that I began to carve sabers from suitable pieces of furniture, which I could get without difficulty. At that time, I was fascinated by Serbian folk poetry and admired the exploits of the heroes. I could fight for hours with my enemies in the form of cornstalks, which led not only to the destruction of part of the crops, but also to several beatings received from my mother. Moreover, this punishment was by no means formal, but quite sensitive.

Tesla's house and real school
(right) in Gospic

All this and more happened before I was six and in first grade. elementary school in the village of Smilany, where our family lived. Then we moved to the nearest town Gospic. This change of residence was just a disaster for me. I could not bear to have to part with our pigeons, chickens and sheep, and with our magnificent flock of geese, which often soared up to the clouds in the morning in the morning, and returned from their feeding places at sunset in such a perfect order of battle, in rows that would put to shame a squadron of the best modern aviators.

In our new home, I was a prisoner watching strangers through curtained windows. I was so shy that I would rather be face to face with a roaring lion than with one of the promenading dandies. But the worst torture was on Sunday, when I had to dress up and go to church. There I had an accident, the very memory of which, even many years later, makes my blood run cold. This was my second adventure in the church. Shortly before this, I found myself on an inaccessible mountain, locked up for the night in an old chapel that was visited once a year. It was a terrible case, but the second adventure was even worse.

A rich lady lived in the city, a good woman, but with pretensions, and she came to church dressed up, in a toilet with a long train and with servants. Once, on Sunday, when I just rang the bell tower and rushed down the stairs, I accidentally jumped on the train of this grand lady, who at that moment was leaving the church. The plume came off with a sound that sounded to me like a rifle salvo from untrained recruits. My father was beside himself with anger. He lightly slapped me on the cheek and it was the only corporal punishment he ever gave me, but I can still almost feel it. My confusion and confusion as a result is indescribable. I was actually ostracized, and this continued until something happened that returned me to the good attitude of society.

A young enterprising merchant organized a fire department. We bought a new fire engine, provided the team with uniforms and trained them for service and parades. The car was beautifully painted in red and black. On one of the summer days, an official test was coming, and the car was transported to the river. The entire population came to admire the magnificent spectacle. When all the speeches and ceremonies were over, the command was given to pump the pump, but not a drop of water came out of the hose. Teachers and experts tried to understand what was the matter, but in vain. The failure was complete, and then I appeared.

I had no idea how the mechanism worked, and knew almost nothing about pressure, but instinctively I felt for the water intake in the water and found that it was empty. When I climbed into the water and straightened the hose, the water gushed out with such force that a lot of holiday clothes were damaged. Archimedes, running naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting "Eureka!" at the top of his lungs, didn't impress me more than I did. I was carried on their shoulders and I was the hero of the day.

After we settled in the city, I began attending a four-year course at the so-called high school to prepare for college or real school. And during this period, my boyish inventions and exploits, as well as troubles, continued. Along with other achievements, I have achieved the unique title of crow-catching champion in the district. My fishing method was surprisingly simple. I walked into the forest, hid in the bushes and imitated the calls of birds. Usually several bird voices answered me, and soon the crow was already fluttering in the bushes next to me. After that, all I had to do was throw a piece of cardboard to divert her attention, jump and grab her before she could get out of the bush. That way I could catch as many crows as I wanted.

But one day something happened that made me respect them. I caught a couple of great birds and was returning home with a friend. As we emerged from the forest, thousands of crows swooped down with a fearful cawing. After a few minutes of chasing us, they surrounded us. It was fun for me until I got hit in the back of the head, which knocked me off my feet. Then they began viciously attacking me. I was forced to release the birds and gladly joined a friend who hid in a cave.

There were several mechanical models in the class that interested me, and water turbines caught my attention. I have designed many of these turbines and have enjoyed running them. An example of how extraordinary my life has been is the following. My uncle did not consider this kind of pastime right, and many times showed his displeasure to me.

Monument to Nikola Tesla, park
Queen Victoria, Niagara
Falls, Ontario, Canada

I was fascinated by the description of Niagara Falls that I read in the book, and I pictured in my mind a big wheel spinning due to the force of the falling water. I told my uncle that I would go to America and carry out this project. Thirty years later, I saw my idea realized at Niagara and was amazed at the incomprehensible mystery of human thought.

I made many different devices and inventions, but crossbows were the best for me. When fired, my arrows disappeared from sight and pierced at close range. pine board one inch thick. I have drawn the crossbow bow so often that the skin on my stomach has become rough like that of a crocodile, and I often think that perhaps thanks to this exercise I can even now digest even stones. I can't keep silent about my slinging games, thanks to which I put on very impressive shows on the hippodrome. And now I will tell about one of my performances with this ancient piece of military equipment, which should cause special approval from the gullible reader.

I practiced with the sling while walking with my uncle along the river bank. The sun was setting, a school of trout were playing, and from time to time one of them jumped out of the water, its sparkling body clearly looming against the rock. Of course, any boy in my place, under such fortunate circumstances, could hit a fish with a stone, but I took on the more difficult task and told my uncle in great detail what I was going to do. Namely: to throw a spinning stone so as to nail the fish to the rock, cutting it in half. And, barely having time to finish, I did it. My uncle looked at me almost in horror and exclaimed: "Keep me away from Satan!" And he didn't speak to me for several days. Other victories, also considerable, fade before this one, but I believe that I can rest easy on my laurels for another thousand years.

3. Rotating magnetic field

When I was ten years old, I entered a real school, at that time a new and fairly well-equipped educational institution. His physical classrooms had a rich selection of models of classical scientific instruments in electricity and mechanics. The demonstrations and experiments given from time to time by the teachers were a delight to me, and they certainly gave a powerful impetus to awakening in me a craving for invention.

I also had a passion for math and was often praised by my instructor for quick solutions. I succeeded thanks to the acquired ability to visually represent numbers and calculate not just in my mind, which many people can do, but as if in real life - on paper. When solving problems, up to a certain level of their complexity, it was absolutely indifferent to me whether to write signs on the board or imagine them mentally.

But drawing lessons, which took many hours of study, caused me unbearable irritation, which was quite surprising, because most of the members of our family were distinguished by artistic abilities. It is possible that my disgust was due to the tendency to mentally represent images that was becoming a habit. And if there weren’t a few extraordinarily stupid boys in the class who were not capable of anything at all, my grades would be the worst.

Drawing threatened to ruin my entire career, as it was a compulsory subject in the then educational system, and each time I moved to the next class, my father had to make an effort. In my second year of study at the school, I was captivated by the idea of ​​​​implementing continuous movement using constant air pressure for this. The case of the pump, which I have already told, stuck in my boyish imagination and struck me with the limitless possibilities of vacuum. I was obsessed with the desire to use this inexhaustible energy, but for a long time I did not know where to start.

In the end, however, my efforts crystallized into an invention that allowed me to achieve what no mortal had yet been able to achieve. Imagine a cylinder that rotates freely on two bearings and is partially lowered into a rectangular tub that fits snugly against it. Its open side is taken up by a bulkhead, so that the segment of the cylinder inside the part reserved for it divides it by means of hermetically sliding joints into two compartments completely isolated from each other. If one of these compartments were sealed and evacuated, and the other left open, this would result in the continuous rotation of the cylinder. At least that's what I thought.

A wooden model was constructed and assembled with the utmost care, and after I connected a pump to one of the compartments and bled the air out of it, I did see a certain tendency to rotate. A violent joy seized me. Mechanical flight is what I wanted to do, although I still have a daunting memory of how painful it was to fall when I jumped with an umbrella from the roof of a building. Every day I was transported through the air for long distances, but I could not understand how I managed to do it. Now there was something concrete - a machine consisting of nothing more than a rotating shaft, flapping wings and vacuum with its inexhaustible energy.

From that time on, I took daily air rides in an aircraft so comfortable and luxurious that even King Solomon would not refuse it. Years passed before I realized that atmospheric pressure was acting at right angles to every point on the surface of the cylinder, and that the slight rotational motion I observed was due to a leak. Although the understanding came gradually, it gave me a painful shock.

I hardly completed the course of study at a real school, after which the dangerous disease, rather even a dozen diseases, and my condition became so hopeless that the doctors abandoned me. During this period, I was no longer restricted in reading, and I borrowed books from the Public Library, whose collections were in a state of disrepair, and I was entrusted with their classification and preparation of catalogs.

One day I was given several volumes of modern literature, unlike anything I had read before, and so exciting that I forgot my hopeless situation. These were early works Mark Twain, and perhaps it is to them that I owe my miraculous healing that came soon. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we became friends, I told him about my experience and was shocked to see the great master of laughter burst into tears...

I continued my studies at the higher real school in Karlstadt in Croatia, where one of my aunts lived. She was a refined lady, the wife of a colonel, an elderly veteran, a participant in many battles. I will never forget those three years that I lived in their house. In no fortress during the war did not observe more stringent discipline. I was fed like a canary. The food was of the highest quality, cooked very tasty, but the portions were a thousand percent smaller.

The slices of ham sliced ​​by my aunt looked like tissue paper. When the Colonel put something more substantial on my plate, she usually quickly put it away, exclaiming: “Careful, Nika is so thin!” And I had a brutal appetite, and I experienced tantalum flour. But on the other hand, I lived in an atmosphere of sophistication and fine artistic taste, completely uncharacteristic of that time and those conditions.

The country there was low-lying and swampy, and I was constantly ill with malaria, in spite of the incredible amount of quinine I ingested. From time to time the river overflowed, and hordes of rats burst into the houses, devouring everything, even bunches of hot red pepper. This scourge for the townspeople was a welcome entertainment for me. I destroyed them in a variety of ways, which brought me the unenviable fame of a rat-catcher in our society. Finally school is over, and with it my miserable existence. I got my Abitur and found myself at a crossroads.

During all these years, my parents never questioned their decision to make me a priest, but I was horrified at the mere thought of it. I developed a keen interest in electricity, which grew under the influence of a physics teacher. He was an intelligent and skillful man, and he often demonstrated to us the basic laws of physics with the help of instruments he had invented. Among them, I remember a device in the form of a freely rotating flask covered with foil; fast rotation began when connected to a DC generator.

I can not find the right words to express the depth of feelings that I experienced when he showed us these mysterious, extraordinary phenomena. Each impression caused a thousand echoes in my mind. I wanted to know more about this amazing power.

I dreamed of doing experiments and research myself and submitted to the inevitable with pain in my heart.

Just as I was getting ready for the long drive home, word came that my father wanted to send me out hunting. It looked rather strange of him, since he had always been an active opponent of such a sport. But a few days later, I learned that cholera was rampant in our area, and, taking the first opportunity, I returned to Gospik, against the wishes of my parents.

It is unbelievable how ignorant people were about the causes of this calamity that befell the country every fifteen to twenty years. They thought the deadly germs were airborne and filled it with pungent odors and smoke. And at the same time they drank contaminated water and died in large numbers. I caught this terrible disease on the very first day of my arrival, and although I survived during the crisis, I was bedridden for another nine months, almost unable to move. My strength was completely exhausted, and for the second time I felt myself on the verge of death.

During one of the terrible attacks, which, it seemed, should have been the last, the father rushed into the room. I can still see his deathly pale face before my eyes when he tried to cheer me up, but his voice betrayed his anxiety. "Maybe," I said, "I can get better if you let me study engineering." - "You will enter the best technical institute in the world," he said solemnly, and I understood that it would be so. The stone had been lifted from my soul, but the relief would have been too late had it not been for the miraculous healing bestowed on me by the bitter brew of special beans.

To everyone's great amazement, I came back to life like Lazarus. My father insisted that I dedicate a year to recuperating my health. exercise outdoors, and I reluctantly agreed. For most of this year, with hunting equipment and a bunch of books, I wandered in the mountains, and this unity with nature strengthened both my body and soul. I thought and planned, and I had a lot of ideas, usually almost unrealistic. They appeared to me visibly and distinctly enough, but the knowledge of the laws was very lacking.

The idea of ​​one of my inventions was to transport letters and parcels by sea in an underwater tube, placed in special strong spherical containers that can withstand hydraulic pressure. A pumping unit for pumping water through a pipe was designed and accurately calculated, and all other parts of the project were carefully worked out. The only detail - insignificant, as it seemed to me - I lost sight of. I assumed that the speed of the water could be any, and even, more arrogantly, took pleasure in increasing it and received as a result amazing performance, backed up by accurate calculations. However, after thinking more deeply about the resistance of pipes to the flow of liquid, I came to the conclusion that this invention was not worth making public.

In another of my projects, the idea of ​​building a ring around the Earth along the line of the equator was put forward. This ring would rotate with the Earth, but, of course, it would have its own rotational degree of freedom, and therefore it could be slowed down by reactive forces and thus it would be possible to achieve a speed of about a thousand miles per hour, which is impossible on the railroad. The reader will smile. I admit that this plan is difficult to implement, but it is not at all as bad as the project of a famous New York professor who proposed pumping air from the tropics to temperate latitudes, ignoring the fact that God had already created a gigantic mechanism for this purpose.

Another idea, much more significant and attractive, was aimed at obtaining energy from the rotation of terrestrial objects. I "made a discovery" that due to the daily rotation of the Earth, objects on its surface are also shifted alternately either along or against the forward motion. As a result, there is a large difference in the amount kinetic energy, which could be used in the simplest way imaginable to transfer motive power to any inhabited region of the world. I can't find words to describe my disappointment when I later realized that I was in the predicament of Archimedes, who was looking in vain for a foothold in space.

Technical University of Graz

By the end of the holidays, I was sent to the Technische Hochschule Graz in Styria, one of the best educational institutions in my father's opinion with a good reputation. It was this moment that I eagerly awaited and began my teaching with good patronage and with the firm intention of succeeding. My level of preparation was above average, thanks to my father's lessons and opportunities. I learned several languages, looked through the books of some libraries, gleaning more or less useful information. In addition, now I could choose subjects at will, and drawing by hand no longer annoyed me.

I decided to surprise my parents, and throughout the first year I regularly started work at three in the morning and worked until eleven in the evening, not giving myself a break on Sundays or holidays. Since most of my fellow students did not burden themselves with diligence, I managed to break all the records, as one would expect. I passed nine exams during the year and earned the highest marks from the teachers. Armed with their flattering testimonies, I allowed myself brief vacations, looking forward to my triumphant return home, but was terribly offended when my father burned all these hard-earned awards. This nearly undermined my ambitions; but later, after his death, I was pained to find a bunch of letters from my teachers, where they urgently warned my father that if he did not take me away from the institute, it could end in my death from overexertion.

Since that time I devoted myself mainly to the study of physics, mechanics and mathematics and spent all my free time in libraries. I had a real obsession with finishing whatever I undertook, and this often gave me difficulties. So, one day I started reading Voltaire, and then, to my horror, I discovered that there were about a hundred large, small print volumes that this monster wrote while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee a day. I had to finish reading all these volumes to the end, but when I pushed the last book away from me, I was overwhelmed with joy, and I said: “Never again!”

My progress in the first year was duly appreciated by the teachers and gave me the friendship of several of them. In particular, Professor Rogner, who taught the foundations of mathematics, Professor Peshl, who headed the Department of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, and Dr. Alle, who taught a course on integral calculus and specialized in differential equations.

This scientist was the most brilliant lecturer I have ever heard. He showed special interest in me and in the further development of my progress, and more than once he stayed for an hour or two in the lecture hall and let me solve problems, which gave me great pleasure. It was to him that I revealed my idea - the design of an aircraft, not an illusory fiction, but an invention firmly based on scientific principles, which became feasible with the help of my turbine and which will soon be able to present to the world.

Both other professors - both Rogner and Peshl - were unusual people. The former had such an idiosyncratic manner of speaking that each time he spoke there was a kind of rampant wildness, which was replaced by a long, embarrassing pause. Professor Peschl was methodical in German and very thorough. His huge arms and legs resembled the paws of a bear, but each demonstration experiment passed with the accuracy of a chronometer and without a single misfire.

I was in my second year when we received from Paris a Gramme dynamo with a lamellar horseshoe-shaped stator and a coil rotor with a collector. The dynamo was assembled, and we were shown how the action of the current can manifest itself in different ways. When Professor Peschl was doing demonstration experiments using the machine as a motor, trouble arose with the brushes, they sparked violently, and I said that perhaps the motor would work without these devices. But he declared that this could not be done, and did me the honor of giving a lecture on this subject, noting in conclusion that Mr. Tesla could do great things, but he would certainly never do this. For this would be tantamount to turning a constantly acting force, such as, for example, gravity, into a rotational motion. “This is a perpetual motion project, an unrealizable idea,” he concluded his speech. But intuition is something that goes beyond knowledge. We certainly have some finer matter at our disposal, which allows us to comprehend truths when logical reasoning or any other volitional efforts of the brain are in vain.

For a while the professor's authority shook my confidence, but then I came to the conclusion that I was right, and took up the task with all the ardor and boundless self-confidence of my youth. I first recreated in my imagination a direct current machine, put it into action and traced the change in the current in the armature. Then, in the same way, I imagined an alternating current generator and in the same way investigated the ongoing processes. Then he mentally imagined systems consisting of motors and generators, and put them into action in different modes. The pictures that arose before my mind's eye were completely real and tangible to me. The rest of the time in Graz was spent in strenuous but fruitless efforts of this kind, and I almost came to the conclusion that this problem could not be solved.

Nikola Tesla, 23 years old

In 1880 I left for Prague in Bohemia in fulfillment of my father's wishes to complete my education at the university there. It was in this city that I managed to take a clear step forward: I excluded the collector from the design of the engine and began to investigate the processes occurring with this new approach, but still to no avail. The following year, there was a sudden change in my outlook on life.

I realized that my parents were sacrificing too much for me, and I decided to relieve them of this burden. Just at this time, a wave of American phones reached the European continent, and it was decided to implement the corresponding project in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. It seemed that I was given an ideal opportunity to carry out my plan, especially since a friend of our family was at the head of the enterprise. It was here that I suffered a complete breakdown nervous system which I already mentioned. What I have experienced during this illness is beyond anything that can be trusted. My vision and hearing have always been extraordinary. I could clearly recognize objects at such a distance when others could not see a trace of them. As a child, I saved our neighbors' houses from fire several times, having heard a slight crackle that did not disturb their sleep, and called for help. In 1899, when I was in my forties, I was doing my experiments in Colorado and could hear thunder clearly at a distance of 550 miles. That is, my hearing was many times sharper than usual, although at that time I was, so to speak, deaf as a boulder, compared with the sharpness of my hearing during a period of nervous tension.

In Budapest, I could hear the ticking of a clock three rooms away from me. When a fly landed on the table in my room, it resounded in my ear with a strong dull sound, as if a heavy body were falling. The carriage, passing at a distance of several miles, caused tremors that permeated my whole body. From the whistle of a locomotive twenty or thirty miles away, the chair or bench where I was sitting began to vibrate so violently that the pain was unbearable. The ground under my feet was constantly shaking. I had to put the bed on rubber pillows to get some real rest.

Growling-like noises near or far were often perceived as spoken words that might frighten me if I did not know how to break them down into their component parts.

When the sun's rays periodically appeared in my path, it was as if I was hit on the head with such force that I felt stunned. I had to muster all my willpower to pass under a bridge or other structure, as I experienced a terrible pressure on the skull. In the dark, I'm like bat, could detect an object at a distance of twelve feet by a special sensation - as if my forehead were covered with goosebumps. My pulse rate fluctuated from a few to two hundred and sixty beats, and all the tissues of the body were seized with convulsions and trembling, and this was probably the most difficult thing to endure. famous doctor, who daily gave me large doses of potassium bromide, called my disease unique and incurable.

Subsequently, I always regretted that I was not at that time under the supervision of physiologists and psychologists. I desperately clung to life, but lost hope of recovery. Could anyone then believe that such a hopeless bodily wreck would someday turn into a man of amazing strength and stamina, able to work for thirty-eight years almost without a single break even for one day and still remain strong and vigorous both in body and soul ? That is exactly what happened to me.

A powerful desire to live and continue working, as well as the help of a devoted friend, an athlete, worked a miracle. My health returned, and with it my intellectual power in the fight against that very task, and I almost regretted that the struggle was over quickly: I had so much unspent energy left. When I got to the bottom of this problem, it was no longer a matter of simply solving it, as is usually the case with everyone. For me it was a sacred vow, a matter of life and death. I knew that failure would lead to my death. Now I felt the battle was won. The solution was hiding in the hidden corners of the brain, but I still could not get it out.

On one of the days that is forever engraved in my memory, I enjoyed a walk with a friend in the city park and read poetry. In those years, I knew whole books by heart, word for word. One of them was Goethe's Faust. The sunset reminded me of the wonderful lines:

The day has passed, the sun from above
Moves away to other countries.
Why am I not given wings
Ride tirelessly with him!
In the vicinity of the sky above me,
With the day ahead and the night behind,
I would soar over the water surface.
It is a pity that there are no wings behind the back.

As I uttered these inspired words, a thought flashed through my mind like a flash of lightning, and in a moment the truth was revealed. With a stick I drew in the sand those diagrams which I presented six years later in my speech at the American Electrical Institute, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were amazingly clear and understandable - to such an extent that I perceived them as being made of metal and stone, and I told him: “This is my engine. Look how I turned everything upside down. I hesitate to describe my feelings. I suppose that even Pygmalion, who saw his statue come to life, was not excited with such force. I would give a thousand secrets of nature, which I could solve by a lucky chance, for this one, which I snatched from her, no matter what, even the threat to my own life.

4. Tesla coil and transformer

For a while, I plunged headlong into intense, but fascinating work: imagining mechanisms and mentally developing new models. It was such a happy state of mind that I hardly ever experienced it with such fullness in my life. Ideas flowed in a continuous stream, and the difficulty was only in being able to maintain its pressure. Parts of the mechanisms that I imagined were completely real and tangible in every detail, up to the smallest scratches and signs of wear. In my imagination I enjoyed the sight of the motors running continuously, because it was in this state that they gave a captivating spectacle to my mind's eye.

When an innate inclination in its development turns into a passionate need, a person goes to his goal with leaps and bounds. In less than two months, I have developed virtually every type of engine and system modifications that are now identified with my name and that are used by many other names around the world. Perhaps this was predetermined by fate, so that the need and the need to earn a living forced me to suspend for a while this all-consuming mental activity.

I arrived in Budapest when the prematurely spread rumors about the establishment of a telephone company reached me, and, ironically, I had to take a job as a draftsman for the Central Telegraph Service of the Hungarian government with a salary I prefer not to disclose. Fortunately, the chief inspector soon became interested in me, and after that I was involved in calculations, design and budgeting in connection with the installation of new equipment. The same duties were entrusted to me even after the Central Telephone Exchange started working.

The knowledge and practical experience gained in this job turned out to be the highest degree useful. I have been given enough opportunities to show my inventive abilities. I improved the performance of several Central Station machines, as well as a telephone repeater or amplifier. These improvements are not patented or described anywhere, but they would do me credit today. In recognition of my qualifications, the head of the enterprise, Mr. Puskas, having completed his business in Budapest, offered me a job in Paris, to which I readily accepted.

I will never be able to forget the deep impression that this magical city made on me. For several days after my arrival, I wandered tirelessly through the streets, completely at a loss from everything I saw. Irresistible temptations came across at every step, and I spent the money I earned, alas, on the same day I received it. When Mr. Puskas asked me how I got settled in my new place, I replied: “The last twenty-nine days of the month were the most difficult!” And this was the real truth.

The rather active way of life that I chose would now be called "Rooseveltian style." Every morning, regardless of the weather, I walked from the Boulevard Saint-Marcel, where I lived, to the baths on the Seine, jumped into the water, swam twenty-seven laps, and then reached Ivry, where our company's factory was located, in an hour on foot. Arriving at work at half past seven, ate a lumberjack's breakfast and then looked forward to a lunch break, while cracking all sorts of hard nuts for the plant manager, Mr. Charles Bachelor, Edison's close friend and assistant.

Here I made friends with several Americans who were completely fascinated by my skillful ... game of billiards. It was to these people that I told about my invention, and one of them, Mr. D. Cunningham, head of the mechanical department, suggested creating joint-stock company. The proposal seemed to me amusing in the highest degree. I had no idea what that meant, except I heard it was the American way of starting a business. None of this, however, came of it, and over the next few months I had to travel around France and Germany, fixing breakdowns in power plants.

Returning to Paris, I presented to one of the managers of the company, Mr. Rowe, proposals for improving the operation of their dynamos and received permission to implement them. My success was so complete that it delighted the directors, and they generously gave me the privilege of improving automatic regulators, which were much needed. Shortly thereafter, there was a problem with the lighting equipment installed at the new railway station in Strasbourg, Alsace. Due to faulty wiring during the opening ceremony, literally in the presence of the old emperor Wilhelm I, a short circuit occurred and a large piece of the wall burned out. The German government refused to accept such equipment, and the French company faced the threat of serious losses. Considering my knowledge of the German language and the experience I had gained, the authorities entrusted me with the difficult task of settling the matter, and with this mission I went to Strasbourg at the beginning of 1883.

Some incidents in this city have left an indelible mark on my memory. Coincidentally, there were several people living there at the time who would go on to become famous. Years later, I used to say, “Bacteria of greatness were in that old town. Others got infected, but I escaped. Practical work, correspondence and negotiations with officials absorbed all my time, but as soon as the opportunity presented itself, I continued to design a simple engine in a workshop opposite the railway station, using materials that I had specially taken from Paris for this purpose. However, it was not until the following summer that I was able to complete the experiment, when I finally felt the satisfaction of observing the rotation produced by an alternating current with mixed phases and without sliding contacts or a collector, as it seemed to me a year earlier. It was an extraordinary pleasure, not comparable, however, with the insane joy that followed the first discovery.

Among my new friends was the former mayor of the city, Mr. Sozen, whom I had already managed to partially acquaint with this and other inventions of mine, and whose support I tried to enlist. Sincerely disposed toward me, he showed my projects to several wealthy people, but, to my disappointment, did not find a response from them. Mr. Sozen wanted to help me in every possible way, and the approaching date of July 1, 1917, just reminds me what kind of "help" received from this charming man - not financial, but by no means less valuable. In 1870, when the Germans occupied the country, the former mayor buried a fair amount of St. Estephe vintage 1801. And he came to the conclusion that he did not know anyone more worthy than me, with whom he could drink this precious drink. I can say that among the episodes I mentioned, this is one of the unforgettable ones.

My friend insisted that I return to Paris as soon as possible in order to try to find support there. I, too, longed to do so, but the work and negotiations were delayed by all sorts of trifling obstacles, delaying my return, so that at times the situation seemed hopeless. To give an idea of ​​German scrupulousness and "efficiency", I can mention a rather amusing incident.

It was necessary to install a 16-candle incandescent lamp in the corridor, and, having chosen a suitable place, I told the electrician to stretch the wire. After working for some time, he decided that he should consult an engineer, which he did. The latter raised some objections, but in the end agreed to install the lamp two inches from my intended spot, whereupon work resumed. Then the engineer became alarmed and informed me that an agreement with Inspector Averdek was needed. This important person was invited, came, studied, thought and decided: the lamp should be moved back two inches - to the very place that I marked! However, a little time passed, and Averdek himself hesitated and informed me that he had notified Chief Inspector Hieronymus about this matter and that I should wait for his decision. Several days elapsed before the Chief Inspector was able to relieve himself of his pressing duties, but he finally arrived, there was a two-hour discussion, after which he decided to move the lamp another two inches further.

My hopes that this was the last act were shattered when the chief inspector returned and said to me: "The government adviser Funke is such a fastidious person that I would not dare to order the installation of this lamp without his full approval." Thus, the visit of this great man had to be negotiated. Early in the morning we began cleaning and polishing, and when Funke and his entourage arrived, he was received according to the rules of protocol. After two hours of deliberation, he suddenly exclaimed: "I have to go" - and, raising his pointing finger to the ceiling, ordered me to install a lamp there. It was exactly the place I had originally chosen! So day after day passed, not much different from each other, but I was determined to succeed at any cost, and in the end my efforts were rewarded.

By the spring of 1884, after the settlement of all differences, the installation was officially accepted, and, full of joyful expectations, I returned to Paris. One of the managers promised me a generous reward if I succeeded, as well as decent payment for the improvements I made in their dynamos, and I hoped to receive a significant amount. There were three governors, for convenience I will call them A, B and C. When I went to A, he told me that B had a decisive vote. This gentleman believed that only C could make a decision, and the latter was quite sure that the powers only A is endowed with action. After several visits in this vicious circle, it became clear to me that the promised reward was a castle in the air.

Nikola Tesla (Serb. Nikola Tesla; English Nikola Tesla). Born July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Austrian Empire (now in Croatia) - died January 7, 1943 in New York (USA). Inventor in the field of electrical and radio engineering, engineer, physicist.

Born and raised in Austria-Hungary, in later years he worked mainly in France and the USA. In 1891 he received US citizenship. By nationality - Serb.

He is widely known for his contributions to the development of AC devices, polyphase systems and the electric motor, which led to the so-called second stage of the industrial revolution.

He is also known as a supporter of the existence of the ether: his numerous experiments and experiments are known, which aimed to show the presence of the ether as a special form of matter that can be used in technology.

The unit of measurement of magnetic flux density (magnetic induction) is named after N. Tesla. Among the many awards of the scientist are the medals of E. Cresson, J. Scott,.

Contemporary biographers consider Tesla "the man who invented the 20th century" and the "patron saint" of modern electricity. After demonstrating the radio and winning the "War of the Currents," Tesla gained widespread recognition as an outstanding electrical engineer and inventor. Tesla's early work paved the way for modern electrical engineering, and his early discoveries were innovative. In the US, Tesla's fame rivaled any inventor or scientist in history and popular culture.

Tesla's family lived in the village of Smilyan, 6 km from the town of Gospic, the main town of the historical province of Lika, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Father - Milutin Tesla (1819-1879), priest of the Serbian diocese of Srem Orthodox Church, Serbian Mother - Georgina (Dzhuka) Tesla (1822-1892), nee Mandic, was the daughter of a priest. On June 28 (July 10), 1856, the fourth child, Nikola, appeared in the family. In total, the family had five children: three daughters - Milka, Angelina and Maritsa and two sons - Nikola and his older brother Dane. When Nicola was five years old, his brother died after falling from his horse.

Nikola finished the first grade of elementary school in Smilany. In 1862, shortly after Dane's death, the father of the family was promoted to the rank, and Tesla's family moved to Gospic, where he completed the remaining three years of elementary school, and then the three-year lower real gymnasium, which he graduated in 1870. In the autumn of the same year, Nikola entered the Higher Real School in the city of Karlovac. He lived in the house of his aunt, his father's cousin, Stanka Baranovich.

In July 1873, N. Tesla received a matriculation certificate. Despite his father's orders, Nikola returned to his family in Gospic, where there was a cholera epidemic, and immediately became infected (although it is not entirely clear whether it was actually cholera). Here is what Tesla himself had to say about it: “From childhood, the path of a priest was destined for me. This prospect, like a black cloud, hung over me. Having received a matriculation certificate, I found myself at a crossroads. Should I disobey my father, ignore my mother's loving wishes, or submit to fate? This thought oppressed me, and I looked into the future with fear. I deeply respected my parents, so I decided to study spiritual sciences. It was then that a terrible epidemic of cholera broke out, which wiped out a tenth of the population. Against my father's unquestioned orders, I rushed home, and the disease crippled me. Later, cholera led to dropsy, lung problems, and other illnesses. Nine months in bed, almost without movement, seemed to have exhausted all my vitality and the doctors abandoned me. It was a harrowing experience, not so much because of the physical suffering, but because of my great desire to live. During one of the attacks, when everyone thought that I was dying, my father quickly entered the room to support me with these words: "You will get better." How now I see his deathly-pale face when he tried to encourage me in a tone that contradicted his assurances. “Maybe,” I replied, “I can get better if you let me study engineering.” “You will enter the best educational institution in Europe,” he replied solemnly, and I knew that he would do it. A heavy weight was lifted from my soul. But the consolation might have come too late if I had not been miraculously cured by an old woman with a bean tea. There was no power of suggestion or mysterious influence in it. The remedy for the disease was in the full sense of healing, heroic, if not desperate, but it had an effect..

The recovered N. Tesla was soon to be called up for a three-year service in the Austro-Hungarian army. Relatives considered him not healthy enough and hid him in the mountains. He returned back only at the beginning of the summer of 1875.

In the same year, Nikola entered the Higher Technical School in Graz (now Graz Technical University), where he began to study electrical engineering. Watching the work of the Gramma machine at lectures on electrical engineering, Tesla came to the idea of ​​the imperfection of DC machines, but Professor Jacob Peshl sharply criticized his ideas, before the whole course he gave a lecture on the impracticability of using alternating current in electric motors. In his third year, Tesla got carried away gambling, losing large sums of money in cards. In his memoirs, Tesla wrote that he was motivated "not only by the desire to have fun, but also by failure to achieve the intended goal." He always distributed winnings to the losers, for which he soon became known as an eccentric. In the end, he lost so much that his mother had to borrow from her friend. Since then, he has never played again.

Tesla got a job as a teacher in a real gymnasium in Gospic, the one in which he studied. Work in Gospic did not suit him. The family had little money, and only thanks to financial assistance from his two uncles, Petar and Pavel Mandic, young Tesla was able to leave for Prague in January 1880, where he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague.

He studied for only one semester and was forced to look for a job.

Until 1882, Tesla worked as an electrical engineer for the government telegraph company in Budapest, which at that time was engaged in laying telephone lines and building a central telephone exchange. In February 1882, Tesla figured out how to use the phenomenon, later called the rotating magnetic field, in an electric motor.

Work in the telegraph company did not allow Tesla to realize his plans for the creation of an alternating current motor. In late 1882, he took a job with the Continental Edison Company in Paris. One of the largest works of the company was the construction of a power plant for the railway station in Strasbourg. At the beginning of 1883, the company sent Nicola to Strasbourg to solve a series of work problems that arose during the installation of lighting equipment for a new railway station. In his spare time, Tesla worked on the manufacture of a model of an asynchronous electric motor, and in 1883 he demonstrated the operation of the engine at the Strasbourg City Hall.

By the spring of 1884, work at the Strasbourg railway station was completed, and Tesla returned to Paris, expecting a bonus of $25,000 from the company. Having tried to get the bonuses due to him, he realized that he would not see this money and, offended, quit.

One of the first biographers of the inventor B. N. Rzhonsnitsky claims: “His first thought was to go to St. Petersburg, since in Russia in those years many discoveries and inventions important for the development of electrical engineering were made. The names of Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov, Dmitry Alexandrovich Lachinov, Vladimir Nikolaevich Chikolev and others were well known to electricians of all countries, their articles were published in the most widespread electrical engineering magazines in the world and, undoubtedly, Tesla was also known.. But at the last moment, one of the administrators of the Continental Company, Charles Batchelor, persuaded Nicola to go to the United States instead of Russia. Bechlor wrote a letter of introduction to his friend Thomas Edison: “It would be an unforgivable mistake to give such a talent the opportunity to go to Russia. You will still be grateful to me, Mr. Edison, for the fact that I did not spare a few hours to convince this young man give up the idea of ​​going to St. Petersburg. I know two great people - one of them is you, the other is this young man..

Tesla's biographies of other authors say nothing about Tesla's desire to go to Russia, and the text of the note is given from only one (last) sentence. For the first time, Tesla's first major biographer, John O'Neill, mentions the note. There is no documented text of the note. A contemporary author, Ph.D. Mark Seifer, believes that the note as such may not have existed.

On July 6, 1884, Tesla arrived in New York. He took a job with Thomas Edison (Edison Machine Works) as an engineer repairing electric motors and DC generators.

Edison rather coldly perceived Tesla's new ideas and more and more openly expressed disapproval of the direction of the inventor's personal research. In the spring of 1885, Edison promised Tesla $50,000 (at the time roughly equivalent to $1 million today) if he could constructively improve Edison's DC electric machines. Nikola quickly set to work and soon introduced 24 variations of the Edison machine, a new commutator and regulator that greatly improved performance. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about remuneration, Edison refused Tesla, noting that the emigrant still did not understand American humor well. Insulted, Tesla immediately resigned.

After only a year with Edison, Tesla rose to prominence in business circles. Upon learning of his dismissal, a group of electrical engineers suggested that Nicola start his own company related to electrical lighting issues. Tesla's projects for the use of alternating current did not inspire them, and then they changed the original proposal, limiting themselves to the proposal to develop a project for an arc lamp for street lighting. A year later, the project was ready. Instead of money, the entrepreneurs offered the inventor a part of the shares of the company created to operate the new lamp. This option did not suit the inventor, but the company, in response, tried to get rid of him, trying to slander and defame Tesla.

From the autumn of 1886 until the spring, the young inventor was forced to survive in auxiliary work. He was engaged in digging ditches, "sleeping where he could, and ate what he found." During this period, he befriended a similarly positioned engineer, Brown, who was able to persuade several of his acquaintances to give Tesla a little financial support. In April 1887, the Tesla Arc Light Company, created with this money, began to equip street lighting with new arc lamps. Soon the prospects of the company were proved by large orders from many US cities. For the inventor himself, the company was only a means to achieve a cherished goal.

For the office of his company in New York, Tesla rented a house on Fifth Avenue (eng. Fifth Avenue) not far from the building occupied by the Edison company. Between the two companies unleashed a sharp competitive struggle, known in America as the "War of the Currents" (War of Currents).

In July 1888, the famous American industrialist George Westinghouse bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, paying an average of $25,000 each. Westinghouse also invited the inventor to a consultant position at the Pittsburgh factories, where industrial designs of AC machines were developed. The work did not bring satisfaction to the inventor, hindering the emergence of new ideas. Despite Westinghouse's persuasion, Tesla returned to his laboratory in New York a year later.

Shortly after returning from Pittsburgh, Nikola Tesla traveled to Europe, where he visited the World Exhibition of 1889, held in Paris; visited his mother and sister Maritza.

In 1888-1895, Tesla was engaged in research on high-frequency magnetic fields in his laboratory. These years were the most fruitful: he received many patents for inventions. The leadership of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (American Institute of Electrical Engineers) invited Tesla to give a lecture on his work. On May 20, 1892, he spoke to an audience that included eminent electrical engineers of the time, and was a great success.

On March 13, 1895, a fire broke out in the laboratory on Fifth Avenue. The building burned to the ground, destroying the inventor's latest achievements: a mechanical oscillator, a test bench for new lamps for electric lighting, a mock-up of a device for wireless transmission of messages over long distances, and an installation for studying the nature of electricity. Tesla himself stated that he could restore all his discoveries from memory.

Financial assistance to the inventor was provided by the Niagara Falls Company. Thanks to Edward Adams, Tesla had $100,000 to build a new laboratory. Already in the fall, research resumed at a new address: Houston Street, 46. At the end of 1896, Tesla achieved a radio signal transmission over a distance of 30 miles (48 km).

In May 1899, at the invitation of the local electrical company, Tesla moved to the resort town of Colorado Springs (Eng. Colorado Springs) in Colorado. The town was located on a vast plateau at an altitude of 2000 m. Strong thunderstorms were not uncommon in these places.

Tesla set up a small laboratory in Colorado Springs. The sponsor this time was the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, who provided $30,000 for the research. To study thunderstorms, Tesla designed a special device, which is a transformer, one end of the primary winding of which was grounded, and the other was connected to a metal ball on a rod that extends upwards. A sensitive self-tuning device connected to a recording device was connected to the secondary winding. This device allowed Nikola Tesla to study changes in the potential of the Earth, including the effect of standing electromagnetic waves caused by lightning discharges in earth's atmosphere(After more than five decades, this effect was studied in detail and later became known as the "Schumann Resonance"). Observations led the inventor to the idea of ​​the possibility of transmitting electricity without wires over long distances.

Tesla directed his next experiment to explore the possibility of independently creating a standing electromagnetic wave. In addition to many induction coils and other equipment, he designed an "amplifying transmitter." On the huge base of the transformer were wound turns of the primary winding. The secondary winding was connected to a 60-meter mast and ended with a meter-diameter copper ball. When an alternating voltage of several thousand volts was passed through the primary coil, a current with a voltage of several million volts and a frequency of up to 150 thousand hertz arose in the secondary coil.

During the experiment, lightning-like discharges emanating from a metal ball were recorded. The length of some discharges reached almost 4.5 meters, and the thunder was heard at a distance of up to 24 km. The first run of the experiment was interrupted by a burned-out generator at a power plant in Colorado Springs, which was the source of current for the primary winding of the "amplifying transmitter." Tesla was forced to stop the experiments and independently repair the failed generator. A week later, the experiment was continued.

Based on the experiment, Tesla concluded that the device allowed him to generate standing waves that propagated spherically from the transmitter, and then converged with increasing intensity at a diametrically opposite point on the globe, somewhere near the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean.

Nikola Tesla recorded his notes and observations from experiments in the laboratory in Colorado Springs in a diary, which was later published under the title Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900.

In the fall of 1899, Tesla returned to New York.

60 km north of New York on Long Island, Nikola Tesla purchased a plot of land bordering the possessions of Charles Warden. The area of ​​0.8 km² was located at a considerable distance from the settlements. Here Tesla planned to build a laboratory and a science town. By his order, architect V. Grow developed a project for a radio station - a 47-meter wooden frame tower with a copper hemisphere at the top. The construction of such a structure from wood gave rise to many difficulties: due to the massive hemisphere, the center of gravity of the building shifted upwards, depriving the structure of stability. It was difficult to find a construction company that undertook the project. The tower was completed in 1902. Tesla settled in a small cottage nearby.

The production of the necessary equipment was delayed, since the industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, who financed it, terminated the contract after he learned that instead of practical goals for the development of electric lighting, Tesla plans to research wireless transmission of electricity. Upon learning of Morgan's termination of funding for the inventor's projects, other industrialists also did not want to deal with him. Tesla was forced to stop construction, close the laboratory and dismiss the staff. Paying off creditors, Tesla was forced to sell the land. The tower was abandoned and stood until 1917, when the federal authorities suspected that German spies were using it for their own purposes. Tesla's unfinished project was blown up. Apparently, Tesla was trying to implement a project to produce "atmospheric electricity", but due to lack of funding and time, this project was left unfinished. A 47-meter tower and a conductive sphere on a relatively dielectric base would give a good effect. Unfortunately, he did not have time to implement a converter for use in industry and households. However, this Tesla theory is successfully confirmed by later registered patents.

After 1900, Tesla received many other patents for inventions in various fields of technology (electric meter, frequency meter, a number of improvements in radio equipment, steam turbines, etc.)

In the summer of 1914, Serbia was at the center of events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. While staying in America, Tesla took part in raising funds for the Serbian army. Then he begins to think about creating a superweapon: "The time will come when some scientific genius will come up with a machine capable of destroying one or more armies in one action".

In 1915, the newspapers wrote that Tesla was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Thomas Edison was announced at the same time. The inventors were asked to share the prize between two. According to some sources, the mutual dislike of the inventors led to the fact that both refused it, thus rejecting any possibility of sharing the prize. In fact, Edison was not offered the prize in 1915, although he was nominated for it, and Tesla was first nominated in 1937.

On May 18, 1917, Tesla was awarded the Edison medal, although he himself resolutely refused to receive it.

In 1917, Tesla proposed the principle of operation of a device for radio detection of submarines.

In 1917-1926, Nikola Tesla worked in various American cities. From the summer of 1917 to November 1918 he worked for the Pyle National in Chicago; in 1919-1922 was in Milwaukee with Ellis Chalmers; recent months The 1922 years were held at the Waltham Watch Company in Boston, and in 1925-1926 in Philadelphia, Tesla developed a gasoline turbine for the Budd Company.

In 1934, Tesla published an article in Scientific American, which caused a wide resonance in scientific circles, in which he examined in detail the limits of the possibility of obtaining ultrahigh voltages by charging spherical containers with static electricity from rubbing belts and expressed doubt that the discharges of this electrostatic generator could help in the study of the structure of the atomic nucleus.

At an advanced age, Tesla was hit by a car, he received a broken rib. The disease caused acute inflammation of the lungs, which turned into a chronic form. Tesla was bedridden.

War has begun in Europe. Tesla was deeply worried about his homeland, which was under occupation, repeatedly making fervent appeals in defense of peace to all Slavs (in 1943, after his death, the first guard division of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia was named after Nikola Tesla for the courage and heroism shown ).

On January 1, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President of the United States, expressed her desire to visit the sick Tesla. The Yugoslav ambassador to the United States, Sava Kosanovich (who was Tesla's nephew), visited him on January 5 and arranged a meeting. He was the last person to communicate with Tesla.

Tesla died on the night of January 7-8, 1943. Tesla always demanded that he not be interfered with, there was even a special sign hanging on the door of his hotel room in New York. The body was discovered by the maid and director of the New Yorker Hotel only 2 days after death. On January 12, the body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was installed at the Farncliff Cemetery in New York. Later it was moved to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

Tesla's eccentric nature has been the cause of many rumors. Conspiracy theorists believe that the CIA classified most of his developments and is still hiding them from the world scientific community. Tesla's experiments were attributed to the connection with the problem of the Tunguska meteorite, the "Philadelphia experiment" - the teleportation of a large US warship with its entire crew for several tens of kilometers, etc.

In his autobiography, Tesla describes a number of "unusual likes, prejudices, and habits" acquired during his youth:

Tesla played billiards almost professionally.
Tesla rested for about 4 hours a day. Of these, two hours were spent thinking and only two hours sleeping.
He had a fierce dislike for women's earrings, especially those with pearls.
The smell of camphor made him very uncomfortable.
If, in the process of research, he dropped a small square of paper into a liquid, this caused him a particularly terrible taste in his mouth.
Tesla counted steps while walking, the volume of bowls of soup, cups of coffee and pieces of food. If he failed to do this, then the food did not give him pleasure, so he preferred to eat alone.

According to Rzhonsnitsky, “Tesla, by the nature of his character, could not and did not know how to work in a team”.

Tesla never married. According to him, innocence greatly contributed to his scientific abilities.

inventions and scientific work Nikola Tesla:

Alternating current. Since 1889, Nikola Tesla began to research high-frequency currents and high voltages. He invented the first samples of electromechanical RF generators (including the inductor type) and a high-frequency transformer (Tesla's transformer, 1891), thereby creating the prerequisites for the development of a new branch of electrical engineering - RF technology.

In the course of research on high-frequency currents, Tesla paid attention to safety issues. Experimenting on his body, he studied the effect of alternating currents of various frequencies and strengths on the human body. Many of the rules first developed by Tesla have become part of the modern basics of safety when working with high-frequency currents. He discovered that at a current frequency of more than 700 Hz, an electric current flows over the surface of the body without harming the tissues of the body. Electrical devices developed by Tesla for medical research are widely used in the world.

Experiments with high-frequency high-voltage currents led the inventor to discover a method for cleaning contaminated surfaces. A similar effect of currents on the skin has shown that in this way it is possible to remove small rashes, cleanse pores and kill germs. This method is used in modern electrotherapy.

Field theory. On October 12, 1887, Tesla gave a strict scientific description of the essence of the phenomenon of a rotating magnetic field. On May 1, 1888, Tesla received his main patents for the invention of polyphase electrical machines (including an asynchronous electric motor) and a system for transmitting electricity through polyphase alternating current. With the use of a two-phase system, which he considered the most economical, a number of industrial electrical installations were launched in the USA, including the Niagara hydroelectric power station (1895), the largest in those years.

Radio. Tesla was one of the first to patent a method for reliably obtaining currents that could be used in radio communications. U.S. Patent U.S. Patent 447,920, issued March 10, 1891, described a "Method of Operating Arc-Lamps" in which an alternator produced high-frequency (by the standards of the time) current oscillations of the order of 10,000 Hz. A patented innovation was a method of suppressing the sound produced by an arc lamp under the influence of alternating or pulsating current, for which Tesla came up with the use of frequencies that are beyond the range of human hearing. By modern classification the alternator operated at very low radio frequencies.

In 1891, at a public lecture, Tesla described and demonstrated the principles of radio communication. In 1893, he came to grips with wireless communications and invented the mast antenna.

Resonance. In one of the scientific journals, Tesla talked about experiments with a mechanical oscillator, by tuning it to the resonant frequency of any object, it can be destroyed. In the article, Tesla said that he connected the device to one of the beams of the house, after a while the house began to shake, a small earthquake began. It was impossible to turn off the device, so Tesla took a hammer and smashed the invention. Tesla told the arriving firefighters and policemen that it was a natural earthquake, he told his assistants to keep quiet about this incident.

Tesla coils are still sometimes used precisely to produce long sparks resembling lightning.

The ex-director of the N. Tesla Museum in Belgrade (Serbia), a member of the European Academy of Sciences - Velimir Abramovich - published his letter of appeal in the Delphis magazine No. 68 (4/2011) entitled "N. Tesla's legacy - it's time to study" , in which he indicated that “since 1952, about 60 thousand scientific documents of the world famous Serbian scientist have been stored, which have not yet been studied” and proposed the creation of a Russian-Serbian society (institute) for the study of the scientific heritage of Nikola Tesla.

Myths and legends about Nikola Tesla:

Tesla Papers. According to legend, after Tesla's death, the FBI's Alien Property Custodian dispatched employees who seized all the papers they found in the room. The FBI suspected that a few years before Tesla's death, some papers were stolen by German intelligence and could be used to create German flying saucers. Wanting to prevent this incident from happening again, the FBI classified all the papers they found.

In the book of the writer Tim Schwartz, it is mentioned that in other hotels where Tesla rented rooms, his personal belongings also remained. Some of them are lost, more than 12 boxes with things were sold to pay Tesla's bills. Tim Schwartz also claims that in 1976, four nondescript boxes of papers were put up for auction by a certain Michael P. Bornes, a bookseller from Manhattan. Dale Alfrey bought them for $25 without knowing what they were. According to the author of the book, these were later revealed to be Nikola Tesla's laboratory journals and papers, which described hostile alien beings capable of controlling the human brain.

Many readers questioned Tim Schwartz's claims, seeing the book as an attempt at sensationalism.

Philadelphia experiment. It is hardly possible to talk about Tesla's direct participation in this hypothetical event due to the discrepancy between the dates of Tesla's life and the time of the alleged experiment, since Tesla himself died before it began - on January 7, 1943, while it is assumed that the experiment was carried out only on October 28 1943.

Tesla electric car. In 1931, Nikola Tesla demonstrated a working prototype of an electric car, moving without any traditional current sources. There is no material evidence of the existence of an electric car.

Beam weapon. The American agency DARPA in 1958 allegedly tried to create Tesla's legendary "death rays" during the Seesaw project, which was carried out at the Livermore National Laboratory. In 1982, the project was interrupted due to a series of failures and over budget.

Tunguska meteorite. At the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century, a hypothesis appeared about the connection of Nikola Tesla with the Tunguska meteorite. According to this hypothesis, on the day of the observation of the Tunguska phenomenon (June 30, 1908), Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment on energy transfer "through the air."

A few months before the explosion, Tesla claimed that he could light the way to the North Pole for the expedition of the famous traveler Robert Peary. In addition, records have been preserved in the journal of the US Library of Congress that he requested maps of "the least populated parts of Siberia." His experiments on the creation of standing waves, when, as stated, a powerful electrical impulse concentrated tens of thousands of kilometers in the Indian Ocean, fit well into this "hypothesis". If Tesla succeeded in pumping the pulse with the energy of the so-called "ether" (a hypothetical medium, which, according to the scientific ideas of past centuries, was credited with the role of a carrier of electromagnetic interactions) and the effect of resonance to "pump" the wave, then, according to this assumption, a discharge with a power comparable to nuclear explosion.

In this great overview article, we will talk about what Nikola Tesla, an outstanding inventor and scientist, invented. We will try to describe all the most important of his inventions, as well as talk about those that you might not know about.

Nikola Tesla is, perhaps, one of the world's on a par with or, whose contribution to world science is extremely difficult to overestimate. Tesla was born and raised in Serbia, where he received his education. Already from his student years, he showed independence of thought and a craving for invention. Later he moved to France and then to the USA, where he lives most of his life, inventing. The number of his patents includes more than 150 inventions and various improvements. Some even believe that it was Nikola Tesla who invented the 20th century, as he was not just a practitioner, but also a theorist.

Tesla's interests lay mainly in the field of radio engineering and electrical engineering, as well as in the field of studying the properties of electromagnetism and the transmission of electricity over long distances. His main inventions are related to alternating current and electrical machines that use it. Also in our article we will talk about Tesla's inventions in the field of wireless lighting and wireless power transmission.

Tesla's life as a whole was difficult and at times extremely unsuccessful. Not all of his inventions were commercially successful, he often became bankrupt or a victim of fraud (Edison threw him for a large amount) or circumstances (for example, a famous fire in his laboratory destroyed many prototypes).

Of course, Tesla's theoretical contribution is huge, but in this article we will be primarily interested in the practical implementation of his ideas and ideas, so let's look at the list of inventions of Nikola Tesla. For ease of navigation through the article, we provide a small content:

Alternating current

DC - direct current, AC - alternating current

Before learning how to use alternating current, it must first be obtained. In general, physicists have known about alternating current for a long time (since the discovery of electromagnetic induction) and Tesla did not discover it as such, but then everyone believed that alternating current was simply “garbage” that was unlikely to somehow be used. Tesla was of a different opinion and immediately saw the full potential of alternating current.

Direct current flows continuously in one direction; alternating current changes its direction 50 or 60 times per second and it can change the voltage to high levels, while minimizing power loss over long distances. Later, the AC voltage can be lowered for use in factories or residential buildings. Tesla realized that the future belongs to alternating current.

Tesla described his motors and electrical systems in the article " New system AC Motors and Transformers, which he presented at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1888. It was then that George Westinghouse became interested in Tesla's developments, and one day he visited his laboratory and was amazed at what he saw. Nikola Tesla built a model of a multi-phase system from step-down and step-up AC transformers, as well as an AC motor. Thus began the partnership between Wetsinghaus and Tesla. Later, Nikola Tesla received 40 patents for his inventions in the United States, and Westinghouse bought them all to provide himself with wealth, and America with alternating current.

Below we will just talk about these machines and how the multi-phase power supply system was introduced in the USA.

Alternator

An alternator is an electrical machine that is an integral part of Tesla's polyphase power supply system, which will be discussed below. A generator creates an alternating current using mechanical work (for example, generators installed on dams using water falling on their blades).

We will not explain how the generator works. Watch the video below if you want to understand more.

The Tesla alternator (another name for an alternator) was superior to all others for the simple reason that it was really effective in practice. Tesla invented his generator while still in his 2nd year and already then turned to his teachers with the idea of ​​​​using alternating current, but everyone dismissed his ideas as crazy. Some professors even simply laughed at his inventions.

In 1882, Tesla works in Paris and creates the first working prototype of his generator.

Arriving in the United States in 1884, Tesla went to the then already well-known inventor and merchant in the field of electricity, Thomas Edison, and got a job with him. Along the way, Tesla offered Edison his ideas for using alternating current, but Edison thought he was crazy if he thought that alternating current could somehow be used. It even got to the point that Tesla, not understanding Edison's sarcasm, thought that he would receive a large amount from Edison if he made several dozen certain inventions to order. Tesla made them, and Edison said he was joking, and Tesla recommended learning to understand American humor.

In 1891, Tesla received a US patent for the world's first alternator.

500 hp Tesla multiphase generator (about 370 kW) at the Westinghouse Exhibition

AC motor

An AC motor or asynchronous machine is another stage in the development of ideas for the use of alternating current. We have already discussed the alternator, which means we get electricity, but what to do with it next? We don't have machines that run on AC! Tesla invented them.

Tesla's 1888 electric motor patent

In the 1880s, many inventors tried to invent working versions of AC motors, but they did not succeed. Galileo Ferraris is engaged in theoretical research on the creation of AC motors and comes to the erroneous conclusion that they simply cannot be efficient and commercially successful. This added motivation to the inventors of the whole world, it sounded like a challenge to create an efficient AC motor. Tesla responded to this challenge and demonstrated in 1887 his first version of the AC engine, and in 1887 he improved his model by releasing a second car.

One of Tesla's original electric motors from 1888.

The main reason why rational use AC motors seemed impossible, was that they were single-phase. Tesla, on the other hand, substantiated theoretically and proved practically that it is possible not to be limited to one phase, but to make two or more phases.

The picture below shows a schematic diagram of a two- and three-phase AC motors:

Tesla later invents and patents many modified AC motors and motors. All these patents, as mentioned above, Tesla sells to Westinghouse.

Two-phase AC electric motor from the Westinghouse collection.

4-phase AC electric motor from the Westinghouse collection.

Polyphase AC electric motor from the Westinghouse collection.

Multi-phase power supply system

Tesla noticed that Edison's DC power plants were inefficient, and Edison had already built everything with them. Atlantic coast USA. To overcome the shortcomings of direct current, it was necessary, according to Tesla's idea, to use alternating current. Such a system is called polyphase because motors and generators have several phases (see explanations above).

Edison lamps were weak and inefficient when used with direct current. This whole system had one major drawback in that it could not transport electricity over 3 km due to the inability to change the voltage to the high level required for transmission over long distances. Therefore, DC power plants were installed at intervals of 3 km.

Scheme of operation of multiphase power supply systems

Alternating current, as mentioned above, could reach high voltages and therefore it could be transmitted over long distances (leave the house and look at the nearest high-voltage power lines, this is it).

When Edison learned that he had such a powerful competitor, he realized that he could lose his DC empire. This is how the war between Westinghouse, along with Tesla against Edison, began, which will be called the war of currents. Edison began strenuously trying to discredit Tesla's invention by showing that alternating current was more life-threatening than direct current.

It is also worth noting that when Tesla came to the US, he first offered his developments to Edison, but he called it all nonsense and madness.

Edison shocked animals in public with alternating current to infuriate them and prove that this kind of current was dangerous. One day, Edison learned about the idea of ​​one doctor, about using alternating current to kill people. The implementation was not long in coming. This is how the electric chair was invented, which was first applied to William Kemmler, guilty of the murder of his mistress.

Edison could not come up with a name for his new invention for a long time, but he liked the word “westinghouse” the most, though none of them, as we now see, took root.

Tesla also did not sit idle and responded to all attempts to discredit Edison. On the contrary, he sought to show that alternating current is not dangerous and showed this with the help of the skin effect.

Australian electrical exhibitionist Peter Terren shocks himself for 15 seconds with 200,000 volts with a Tesla coil, demonstrating the skin effect.

As we know, Tesla and Westinghouse eventually won out, which is why alternating current became ubiquitous. It took a whole economic and legal war to provide America and the whole world with a more progressive invention.

Tesla coil or transformer

Tesla invented his coil around 1891. At the time, he was repeating the experiments of Gernich Hertz, who had discovered electromagnetic radiation three years earlier. Tesla decided to run his device along with the high speed alternator he was developing as part of an improvement to the arc lighting system, but he found that the high frequency current overheated the steel core and melted the insulation between the primary and secondary windings in the Ruhmkorff coil that was used by default in Hertz experiments. To eliminate this problem, Tesla decides to change the design so that an air gap is formed between the primary and secondary windings, instead of insulating material. Tesla made it so that the core could be moved to different positions in the coil. Tesla also installed a capacitor, which is commonly used in such installations, between the generator and its primary winding coil to avoid coil burnout. By experimenting with coil and capacitor tunings, Tesla found that he could take advantage of the resulting resonance between the two to achieve higher frequencies.

In the Tesla transformer coil, the capacitor, after breaking through a short spark, was connected to a coil of several turns (primary coil), thus forming a resonant circuit with an oscillation frequency, as a rule, 20-100 kHz, determined by the capacitance of the capacitor and the inductance of the coil.

The capacitor was charged to the voltage needed to break through the air gap, on the input linear cycle, which reaches about 10 kilovolts when using a linear transformer that is connected through the air gap. The line transformer was designed to have a higher than normal leakage inductance (a parameter reflecting the imperfection of the transformer) in order to withstand a short circuit occurring while the gap remained ionized or for a few milliseconds until the high frequency current disappeared.

The spark gap was set to break down at a voltage slightly below the peak output voltage of the transformer to maximize the voltage across the capacitor. A sudden current passing through the spark gap causes the primary resonant circuit to resonate at its resonant frequency. The annular primary magnetically couples energy to the secondary for several RF cycles until all of the energy that was originally in the primary is transferred to the secondary. Ideally, the gap then stops conducting current (quenching), trapping all the energy in the oscillating secondary circuit. Usually the gap starts to grow again, and the energy of the secondary transmissions returns to the primary circuit for a few more RF cycles. The cycle of energy can be repeated several times until the spark gap finally weakens. As soon as the gap stops conducting current, the transformer will start charging the capacitor. Depending on the breakdown voltage of the spark gap, it can fire many times throughout the entire AC cycle.

Application can be divided into practical and purely decorative. The practical application of the current of the Tesla coil was found in radio control, radio and wireless power transmission to power various devices (for example, light bulbs). Tesla's generator also found an unexpected application in medicine. Arsene D'Arsonval used the currents created by the generator for physiotherapeutic effects on the surface of the skin and mucous membranes of various human organs. The current passed through the surface layers of the skin and had a tonic and healing effect. Tesla coils are also used to operate gas discharge lamps and detect leaks inside vacuum systems.

But Tesla coils have become much more widespread in the field of special effects and decorations, because the discharges created by the Tesla transformer look extremely impressive and beautiful.

An example of the operation of the Tesla coil can be seen in the video:

It is also interesting to observe the musical properties of these coils, which are achieved by changing the frequency:

Interestingly, at one time in the 20th century, they tried to sell Tesla coils as effective method protect your car from theft:

Also, similar coils are used in various centers to entertain visitors and try to captivate young people with the beauty of physical effects, as well as in attractions:

Wireless lighting

In 1891, Tesla improved the wave transmitter invented by Hertz, which was needed for radio frequency power supply, by converting it into a lighting system consisting of gas discharge lamps.

In the same year, he demonstrated his invention at Columbia College.

When we say that the lighting is wireless, we do not mean radio waves, we are talking about electrostatic induction.

Tesla is holding two long Geissler tubes that look like neon lamps.

In 1893, the World's Fair takes place in Chicago, where Tesla demonstrates his invention. The lamps were not only wireless, but also fluorescent.

In 1894, a new achievement. He manages to light a phosphor incandescent lamp in his laboratory using the resonant method of mutual induction.

True, such a lamp could not find wide commercial application, but the resonant method of inductive coupling is now used everywhere in electronics.

Tesla Tower

Tesla did not stop at a wireless lighting system and went further. He decided that it was possible in principle not to use high-voltage wires for current transmission and to transmit all electricity through air. To do this, he wanted to build a huge experimental facility in New York, known as the Tesla Tower or Wardenclyffe Tower. Later, while conducting his experiments and observations on lightning, Tesla came to the erroneous conclusion that he could use the entire Earth to conduct current.

One of the pages of the Tesla Tower patent

He received money for the construction from the well-known financier J.P. Morgan at the time, to whom he informed that the tower would be used for transatlantic wireless telephony and broadcasting, which Morgan planned to make money on. In fact, it was the first such tower of its kind.

Construction of the tower began in 1901 and continued until 1903. A second receiver tower was planned to be built near Niagara Falls. When the first tower in Wardenclyffe was almost completed, Morgan realized that the wireless transmission of electricity could lead to the collapse of the entire market in which he had investments (he owned the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Plant), he stopped financing Tesla's project. In May 1905, Tesla also lost his income from patents at the expiration of the term, so he went bankrupt and could not complete the construction of the second tower.

How is the Tesla Tower

The tower at Wardenclyffe was a huge Tesla coil about 60 meters high, on top of which there was a large copper sphere. The tower generated lightning up to 40 meters long, and the thunder from the released electricity generated thunder that could be heard 24 kilometers from the tower. The weight of the tower reached 55 tons, and the diameter was 21 meters.

Wardenclyffe Tower from the inside

In 1905, a test launch was made, which produced a shocking effect. The newspapers wrote that Tesla was able to light the sky over the ocean for thousands of miles. Around the tower itself, the horses received electric shocks and even the wings of butterflies were electrified to such an extent that around them one could see the "Fires of St. Elmo" (corona discharge).

Unfortunately, the tower was demolished in 1917.

Invention of radio and radio control

Tesla demonstrates his radio-controlled boat

The 20th century is extremely rich in various inventions and technical innovations. Many were invented in parallel in various variations, while someone patented their inventions, and someone could not or did not want to do this for some reason. Therefore, it is quite difficult to establish who first invented the radio. So, for example, in the USA it is believed that the radio was invented by David Hughes, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, who made the corresponding technical contribution to this invention; in Germany it is believed that the radio was invented by Heinrich Hertz, and in France - Edouard Branly; In Belarus, Yakov Narkevich-Iodka is listed as the inventor of the radio; In Brazil, it is believed that Landel de Mouro was the inventor of the radio; in England, Oliver Joseph Loggia; in the USSR, it was generally accepted to consider Alexander Stepanovich Popov the inventor of the radio, and so on for many more countries. Gugliermo Marconi should not be considered the inventor of radio as a technology or a complete system, but as the creator of the first commercially successful implementation of a radio system.

All their patents and inventions appeared between 1880-1895 and they were all researching radio waves. Simply put, they were all the inventors of radio to one degree or another, contributing to the development of the theory of information transmission.

But what did Tesla do? And he did a lot too. He described the principles by which it was possible to transmit a radio signal over long distances, conducted a number of his own experiments on signal transmission, and also created the first radio-controlled boat, which he demonstrated at an electrical exhibition in 1898. True, he did not believe that communication was possible with the help of radio waves.

Nikola Tesla's radio-controlled boat

One of the pages of the patent for Nikola Tesla's radio-controlled boat

In the video you can see the boat, which was assembled in 2015 in the likeness of the one that Tesla had:

The boat was controlled by radio control. Tesla demonstrated this boat in 1898 at the Electrical Exhibition in Madison Square Garden. There she made a splash. Imagine people of that time who did not understand how Tesla controls the boat, ordering it to sail to one place or another. In addition to the word “magic”, it was difficult to find something here for the layman of that time.

Although the newspapers of that time immediately began to call Tesla's invention a "radio-controlled torpedo" (apparently due to the fact that at that time Thomas Edison was trying to invent a similar torpedo and sell it to the military), Tesla himself did not aim for war. In 1900, Centure magazine interviewed the inventor, where he said that the purpose of his invention was an attempt to create "artificial intelligence", since modern automatons simply borrow the human mind and respond only to his orders. Tesla believed that one day people would be able to create a machine with their own mind. Well, after more than 100 years, we can still say that we have not created such a machine.

Later, during the Second World War, the Nazis would guess to use radio controls to create remotely controlled tanks.

Tesla's Bladeless Turbine

Tesla turbine from the museum

Tesla patented this turbine in 1913. The invention of a turbine without blades was essentially forced, since there were no suitable technologies for manufacturing a turbine with blades, and the aerodynamic theory had not yet been created, so Tesla decided to use the effect of the boundary layer, and not the pressure of matter on the blades, as is now widespread in traditional turbines.

You can often find statements that the efficiency of his turbine can theoretically reach 95%, but in practice at Westinghouse factories such a turbine showed an efficiency of around 20%. Although later, various modifications of the turbine by other inventors brought the efficiency up to 40% or more.

Very good working principles of the Tesla turbine on English language explained in this video:

As of 2016, Tesla's turbine has yet to see widespread commercial use since its invention. So far, it has managed to find a narrow application in pumps. This is primarily due to the fact that the disks inside the turbine are strongly deformed during operation and this affects the overall efficiency of the turbine. Although technological searches are now ongoing to solve all the problems that arise. More recently, the issue of disc warping has been partly addressed with the use of new materials such as carbon fiber.

Tesla valve

This valve was invented by Tesla in 1920 and for some reason many have not even heard of this interesting invention. The bottom line is that this one-way valve has no moving parts. The blockage in the valve is created due to the fact that the main flow branches and its branches are sent back, which gradually slows down the main flow.

When a gas or liquid flows in a straight line, it deviates slightly and flows as if in a zigzag pattern, but with little resistance. You can see it in the video below, where balls are added to the stream for clarity:

However, when the flow flows in the opposite direction, it branches in such a way that the branch flow is directed against the main flow, which causes resistance. And so it is repeated on each branch, because of which the flow stops. You can see this principle in the video below:

Of course, you need to understand that this valve is not designed to be a bottle stopper or anything like that, as it does not work well at low flow pressure. However, you should start using high pressure, as the pressure ratio between the main and branch streams are equalized.

Tesla invented the valve when he was developing the stepless turbine. But it turned out that the valve became an independent invention, as Tesla realized that the turbine interacts better with laminar flow, and the valve works better with impulse.

TO BE CONTINUED …