159th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

He did not pursue fame, science interested him exclusively as a science, and not as a way of enrichment. Not surprisingly, having received about three hundred patents for various inventions during his lifetime and earning about fifteen million dollars from them, Tesla died in poverty. They say that the great Serbian scientist was ahead of his time not by years, but by whole centuries.

Poem by Leonid Kornilov "Tesla":

1. Teslin Internet

In 1900, after Tesla's experiments, a generator at the El Paso power plant burned down, and he was forced to move to New York. Banker John Pierpont Morgan (pictured left) suggested that the scientist build a World Center for Wireless Transmission, that is, a telegraph radio communication center, while Tesla was more interested in the idea of a worldwide wireless communication with the ability to voice communication, broadcast music, news, stock quotes and transfer images. Morgan gave him $ 150,000 and allocated a plot of land for construction. This is how the famous 57-meter tower with a steel shaft buried 36 meters into the ground appeared. A 55-ton metal dome with a diameter of 20 meters was installed at the top of the tower. When the installation was launched in 1905, in the words of journalists, "Tesla set the sky over the ocean on fire for thousands of miles." But soon Morgan stopped funding this project. He was more interested in the radio of Marconi and Popov, rather than the wireless transmission of electricity from one continent to another. The tower was completely destroyed in 1917; the drawings of this structure were never found in Tesla's archives.

2. Radio-controlled models

In 1898, in Madison Square Park, Nikola Tesla demonstrated a boat, controlled by a man using a special remote control. The assembled spectators groaned and gasped: Tesla jokingly invited them to talk to his invention, someone (also jokingly) asked: "What will be the cube root of 64?" The ship's beacon blinked four times. After testing the miracle ship, Tesla registered a patent number 613809 for a remote control device using radio signals.

3. Thomas Edison is a sworn friend

It was after meeting Edison (see photo on the left) that Tesla made the final decision to move to the United States. He set foot on American soil with four cents, blueprints for a flying machine, and a letter of recommendation. In New York, Tesla worked nineteen hours a day, but most of his inventions were never implemented. This is due to the intervention of the same Thomas Edison. The fact is that the inventions of the American (carbon microphone, electric light bulb, phonograph) operated on direct current, while Tesla saw the future of physics only in alternating current. Once, after another dispute, Edison promised Nicola 50 thousand dollars if he could re-equip the plant with machines operating on alternating current. Tesla solved the problem, but did not receive a cent: “When you become a real American, you will be able to appreciate this joke,” Edison told him.

4. Nikola Tesla hydroelectric power station

In 1887, the scientist founded the Tesla Electric Light Company. The inventor of the hydraulic locomotive brake, millionaire George Westinghouse (pictured), after hearing one of Nikola's talks at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, paid him $ 60,000 for patents on a system for the transmission and distribution of multiphase currents. This technology was later used by Westinghouse Electric to build the first hydroelectric power station in history in Niagara. Later, Professor Harold Brown, wanting to show the dangers of alternating current, illegally acquired a Westinghouse generator and used it to electrocute the murderer William Kemmler in Auburn Federal Prison. To make the event more spectacular, Brown secretly made some changes to the generator, significantly increasing the amperage. Kemmler died in terrible agony.

5. Lights of the World's Fair

In 1893 Westinghouse and Tesla defeated General Electric to win the lighting installation competition for the Chicago World's Fair. When President Cleveland turned on all those hundreds of thousands of lamps at the grand opening on May 1, "night turned to day." No company has previously been able to provide even a tenth of the lighting design that was established thanks to the project of the talented scientist.

6. Time machine

Investigating high-frequency discharge, Tesla, as he writes in letters to friends, “discovered a thought that would allow them to personally read poems to Homer and discuss their discoveries with Archimedes.” This, as well as some other facts from the biography of the scientist, gave rise to a rumor that Tesla was together with Einstein (whose work, by the way, was skeptical), participated in the famous experiment “Philadelphia” or “Rainbow.” It is proved that in 1943 the US Navy conducted an experiment to create a powerful electromagnetic field around the escort destroyer “Eldridge” DE -174. The purpose of this project was to protect the ships from German radar. However, after the start of the generators "Eldridge" suddenly disappeared, instantly moving to the base in Norfolk (350 km from the place of the experiment). Some time later, he also unexpectedly returned back. disappeared, the rest of the sailors went mad.

7. Hyperboloid of engineer Tesla

Shortly before his death, Nikola Tesla announced that he had invented the "death ray", which is capable of destroying up to ten thousand aircraft or an army of a million people at a distance of up to four hundred kilometers. According to the scientist, this super-weapon could help maintain the balance of power in the world and prevent all wars in the future. Proposals were sent to the governments of the USA, Canada, England, France, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. It is known that in 1937 the USSR gave the scientist a check for twenty-five thousand dollars for the drawings provided for the vacuum chamber for the "death rays" and subsequent developments. But further cooperation did not work out, and the Second World War nevertheless began. And in 1958, the US Agency for High-Tech Defense Research implemented a project to create a laser weapon "Swing". The experiment was based on the same developments by Nikola Tesla, despite the fact that after the death of the scientist, Dr. John Trump, who led the National Defense Committee, said that all the records remaining after him were "speculative and speculative, are purely philosophical and do not imply any principles or methods of their implementation.”The results of the Swing project are still classified.

8. Universal flying machine

One of the last patents obtained by the scientist was document number 6555114 on "apparatus for air transport." This hybrid of an airplane and a helicopter weighed four hundred kilograms and could take off from any platform. Tesla estimated the cost of the apparatus at a thousand dollars. But the scientist could no longer build a working prototype - at the age of 72, when the drawings of the car were first presented to him, he was already desperately poor.

9. Very personal

It is known that Nikola Tesla adored pigeons, and even made a feeding schedule for his white-winged pet (photo on the left), which he steadily followed.

He was terrified of germs, in hotels he changed up to eighteen towels a day.

After the scientist announced that he regularly communicates with alien civilizations, and their signals become clearer when Mars is visible, Tesla was considered not entirely sane, which partly contributed to the closure of the Wardencliff project.

Nikola Tesla's lectures attracted a huge number of people, often far from physics. The fact is that all his speeches were more like a colorful show than a scientific report.

While living in the USA, Nikola Tesla translated and published works of Serbian poets into English. He himself wrote poetry, and not bad. Going to New York, Tesla seriously thought to do poetry.

Nikola Tesla was the son of an Orthodox Serbian priest Milutin, but was born in the village of Smiliany in Croatia. Thanks to these two facts, both Serbs and Croats call the scientist their compatriot. At the funeral, according to his will, "Tamo far away" and "Ave Maria" were performed.

Nikola Tesla died in New York on January 1, 1943 at the age of 86. There is a version that his death was staged in connection with the "Philadelphia" project.