Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Tesla Nikola
Title : Discovering the future
Year : 2008

Link download : Tesla_Nikola_-_Discovering_the_future.zip

Already as a child the later physicist Nikola Tesla made extraordinary discoveries. As a young man, he started the development of the now so common system of alternating current, which has been applied in 1893 for the fist time on a grand scale for power production and illumination of the world exhibition in Chicago. Around the turn of the century, Nikola Tesla was celebrated as the “man who invented the 20th century” by newspapers of all nations. Nikola Tesla called himself a discoverer – rather than “inventor” – and his discoveries comprise more than 700 patents in the fields of cosmic rays, radar, diathermy, the high-frequency furnace, wave-guide for microwave transmission, space navigation code, cryogenic engineering, electrotherapeutics, energy transmission to satellites, principles of solid state transistor technology, the bladeless turbine and the reciprocating dynamo. Every modern time TV, radio, computer, remote control, cell phone, fluorescent light bulb or tube and the basic powering system required to operate all of them is due to the credentials of Mr. Nikola Tesla. How could this creative mind and productive character get into oblivion for more than half a century ? Nikola Tesla was born on midnight between July 9 and 10, 1856 in the small town of Smilijan (todays Croatia) as the son of an orthodox priest and what he himself later called “a truly great woman of rare skill, courage and fortitude, who had braved the storms of life and passed through many trying experiences”. After visiting the universitiy of Graz, where he studied physics and mathematics, and the university of Prague for philosophy, he worked as an electric engineer in Budapest, Paris and Germany. After emigrating to the United States of America, where he arrived with only a few cents in his pocket, he became an assistant to the renowned inventor Thomas Edison. Their first meeting was in 1884, initiated by Charles Batchelor, who was Tesla’s superior during his assignment with Continental Edison in Paris. Charles Batchelor had written to Edison: ”I know only two really great men in this world: You are one of them; and young Nikola Tesla is the other.” Edison employed Tesla as his assistant and Tesla initially admired Edison for his achievements on the base of trial and error, as Edison had only a basic school education. On the other hand, Tesla gained Edison’s reluctant respect by working eighteen hours per day during seven days a week and by solving very difficult technical problems. But Edison soon lost his diligent new assistant. Tesla had described how he could improve the overall efficiency of Edison’s generator and Edison promised to him: ”There are fifty thousand Dollars in it for you, if you can accomplish this.” But when Tesla finally succeeded after months of tedious labor and asked for his money, he was shocked to hear from Edison: ”Tesla, you don’t understand our American sense of humor.” As Edison wouldn’t pay, Tesla left. After jobbing for some while as construction worker with a crew of roadmen in New York in order to earn his living, his luck changed for the better. He got the chance to develop his system of alternating current, for which he had devised and patented a motor, a generator and a transformer. The industrialist George Westinghouse from Pittsburgh bought all patents related to this system from Nikola Tesla and signed a contract, promising him a cash advance, stocks plus three licensing fees of one Dollar each for every horsepower generated. Edison was fighting the development of alternating current. His bulbs were operated by direct current, in which the electrons are traveling in just one direction. While direct current can be transported over only a few kilometers through wires, Tesla’s high voltage alternating current that changes phase in a steady rhythm can be transported over hundreds of kilometers. On the receiving end transformers are reducing the voltage for the end user. But Edison didn’t want to acknowledge the advantages of alternating current. He had invested a lot of funds into the development of direct current and therefore considered alternating current as a threat to his business. As a means of combating Tesla’s method, he publicly electrocuted dogs and published daunting pamphlets in order to depict alternating current as a deadly threat. In spite of Edison’s attacks, Tesla and Westinghouse emerged as the victors and in 1893 Westinghouse installed an alternating current system for the illumination of the world exhibition in Chicago. Tesla was the headliner of the exhibition: He was onstage dressed up in white tailcoat and shoes with insulating cork soles, together with one of his Tesla coils – a device to generate very high currents. The electric sparks cracked and flashed and brought light bulbs in Tesla’s hands to gleam. The crowd was exalted about this spectacle and the success of the exhibition finally led to the development of a hydroelectric project at the Niagara Falls. Finally Tesla’s electric grid supplied huge amounts of electric energy to the whole continent. As the contract with Westinghouse granted Tesla a royalty per horsepower generated, he should have received a superb income for the rest of his life. However, George Westinghouse was getting into financial difficulties, as competitors were trying to put him out of the electricity business. Tesla remembered, that Westinghouse kept faith with him, when nobody else did and although Tesla was not averse to financial wealth, he valued the survival of Westinghouse’s company as more important. So he tore the contract, accepted a severance payment and forewent the expected millions of dollars, which were granted to him by the horsepower agreement. While Tesla tore a lucrative contract in order to help a friend, others have been into reaping maximum profits. Tycoons were getting ready to make their fortunes with electricity corporations. These men wanted to use the alternating current system to enwrap the planet with electric poles, transformers and wires. Electricity ventures should finally retain rivers und encourage people to lead a “better life with electricity”. Tesla himself wanted to build an energy supply system by transmitting electricity free of charge on a global scale. Although this system was not encompassing a free and inexhaustible source of energy, the means by which the electric current would be transferred to customers was intended to be free. But in contrast to the power struggle with Edison, this time Tesla could not defeat his adversaries. As if he were blind for the plans of the monopolists, he was focusing on developing a wireless energy broadcasting system. A part of his vision was to use the planet’s own resonance. Already in 1893, the same year when he delighted society with the illumination of the world exhibition, he held a speech about the earth’s resonance before the reputable Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The planetary resonance was constituting a part of his vision for a wireless transmission of electricity . His idea was to send electric impulses in an appropriate frequency through the earth in order to generate waves of energy, just like in a piano where a string is getting excited through resonance by the matching tune of a different instrument in the same room. Some later researchers that delved into Tesla’s work also believe, he had triggered the airspace between the upper atmosphere and the ground into resonating just like the air in the body of a violin, what also would emit waves of energy. This energy then was intended to be harnessed by a receiver. ...