Nikola Tesla - Truth and Myths about the Great Serbian Inventor

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

Tesla's whole life was somehow connected with electricity. For example, he saw what was inaccessible to others: flashes of light, unknown worlds, and sometimes for many hours he was immersed in the contemplation of fantastic visions, and in these strange visions there were also technical insights.

It is also striking that, apparently, Tesla also possessed a prophetic gift. There are known cases for which there was no intelligible explanation. This is how he predicted the catastrophe of the Titanic, the end date of the First World War and the length of the pause between the two great wars. Once the inventor had a terrible dream - the death of Angelina's older sister. After some time, sad news came from Croatia - my sister really died, and on the very day when Tesla woke up in a cold sweat. Another time, saying goodbye to his friends, the "lord of lightning", out of foreboding, did not allow his friends to get on an approaching train. Later it turned out that the scientist's intuition kept them alive: the next morning, all New York newspapers wrote about the terrible disaster that befell the night express. The train derailed at full speed, overturned and caught fire, many passengers were killed. Finally, Tesla predicted the invention of many technologies that in his time could not have been created in principle - a radiotelephone, a jet aircraft and a vertical takeoff aircraft. Tesla's name is associated with a number of unexplained stories, such as the fall of the Tunguska meteorite or the aftermath of the Philadelphia experiment. His role in these events is still a mystery. Who was he - Nikola Tesla - a talented scientist, inventor, engineer, or just a magician from science, skillfully fooling the public with his tricks?

In this issue, we will tell you about the main myths associated with the name of this mysterious man.

Tesla was a scientist

In fact, Nikola Tesla can hardly be called a scientist in the traditional sense of the word.

Tesla did not even have a completed higher education - in the third year of the Graz Technical University, he became addicted to gambling and was expelled. Interestingly, Tesla knew 8 languages: English, Czech, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Serbian and Latin. He translated and wrote poetry in these languages.

But with all this, he was poorly versed in mathematics, for example, according to eyewitnesses, he had problems with differential and integral calculus. He himself admitted that he does not like dry mathematical calculations, preferring to trust his own intuition. In physics textbooks there is not a single formula or law discovered by Tesla.

Inventions he didn't make

For example, Tesla did not invent alternating current. This was done by the French inventor Hippolyte Pixie, even before Tesla was born. Moreover, Tesla did not invent the induction coil either. The very phenomenon of induction was discovered by Michael Faraday, and the first induction coils were created independently by Nicholas Callan in Ireland and Heinrich Rumhorf in Germany. All this was in 1836, i.e. even before Tesla was born. We often hear about Tesla's invention of the transformer, but this is not entirely true. The first transformer was created by the Hungarian company Ganz in 1870, when Tesla was just starting his studies at the university. Tesla is often credited with the invention of wireless transmission of information and radio, and Tesla actually patented a device for wireless transmission in 1897. However, in 1895, the Russian scientist Alexander Popov demonstrated a working radio receiver.

However, in many countries, the “father of radio” is considered the Italian radio engineer Guglielmo Marconi, who used Tesla's patents while working on the radio transmitter, Tesla himself said about this: “Marconi is a businessman, not a scientist. Let him try. He uses 17 of my patents."

For his development, Marconi received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909. A little later, Tesla sued the Italian scientist for patent infringements, but the First World War postponed the trial. But in the spring of 1943, the dispute between the two inventors was remembered, and the US Supreme Court reviewed the case, declared 4 patents on Marconi's radio invalid and ruled that Tesla had the rights to them.

By the way, in his entire life Tesla received more than three hundred patents for inventions: 278 were issued to a scientist in 26 countries, researchers know about them, little is known about the rest, especially since Tesla did not patent part of his inventions at all.

Also Tesla did not invent radar and X-ray. The invention of both radar and X-ray became possible thanks to the work of the German physicist Heinrich Hertz. The first working radar was demonstrated by the German inventor Christian Hilfsmeier in 1900, and the X-ray was invented by the German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895.