A tale of modern world starts with... NIKOLA TESLA (part 1)
One of my favorite songs is "Whole Lotta Rosie" by ACDC. There were some acoustic covers and versions made but they just do not sound the same without the electric bass and the electric guitar. November Rain by Guns N' Roses? Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin? All amazing masterpieces that I can not imagine being erased from history. Having a washing machine sure does make my life easier and so does typing this on my laptop and publishing it for the world to see. Who do I have to thank for that? A lot of people actually but one name stands out. That name is NIKOLA TESLA.
CC0 licence, Pixabay, author: mohamed_hassan , adapted by me
Sometimes, I get annoyed by the lack of knowledge people have about Tesla. There is a school in my town that was named after him, a technical school in fact, and the kids that go there have little or zero information about this great scientist. It is a shame really and it often saddens me that one of the great minds of our history does not receive the credit he deserves. Our modern world would not be possible without him. Everything you take for granted in your everyday life is his legacy.
So, this post will obviously talk about Tesla...
It is completely immposible to write one post with everything about one man, let alone a genious like Tesla. Here, in this little text, you will get the basic information which I hope will serve as an inspiration to read and watch several books written and movies made about him. This is part one of several posts that will follow on this subject. In this series, I will touch on both his life, innovations and their use. I will try to bring math, history, and physics come together to show you just how much Tesla has to do with our modern world. Are you ready for the first post about in this series about Tesla?
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10th in 1856. in Lika. Lika was then the Croatian part of the Austrian Empire and is now Croatia. His parents were Serbian which by most definitions make him a Serbian too. He only visited Beograd (now the capital of Serbia) once in his life and spent one part of his life in Croatia where he attended primary school and high school. (that with some Croatian ancestors makes him Croatian) He went to study to Graz, Austria but he dropped off and later enrolled in Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, but did not finish that either. In 1884, Tesla went to the USA with 4 cents and a couple of poems and became an American citizen. (which makes him American)
So, what was he in the end?
Croatians say he was Croatian, Serbia calls him a Serbian, and Americans tell us he was an American. Me? I couldn't care less if he was Bushman or Uzbekistanian. His work is far more important than the question of his nationality. He was never specific about this subject and always vague with lots of unconfirmed quotes about him saying this and that. His journal along with some other documents that would shine a light on this story exist but are not available to the public. Wikipedia sites written in Croatian, Serbian, and English have different information regarding this subject, each with their own sources and each interpreting those sources to their benefit while discrediting the others.
Where to find information?
Feel free to go throug wikipedia texts:
Nikola Tesla wikipedia in Croatian
Никола Тесла wikipedia in Serbian
Nikola Tesla wikipedia in English
When you read those (if you can read all those languages), I suggest you take a look at a really interesting and surprisingly objective text I found about his life and origin:
Zašto Beograd skriva tajni dnevnik Nikole Tesle? - this is translated to "Why is Beograd hiding the secret diary of Nikola Tesla" and is written by Dražen Stjepandić. Find a translator or take your chances with google translator but be sure to find a way to read this.
I will not go into every detail of his life here. You can read all about how many sisters he had, how he almost died when he was a kid, what was he like or how his parents wanted him to be a priest on the following links:
The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla from smithsonianmag.com by Richard Gunderman
Nikola Tesla from britannica.com by Inez Whitaker Hunt
Nikola Tesla: The Life and Times of the Genius Who Lit the World" from interestingengineering.com by Christopher McFadden
If you prefer tv over reading, you can get a list of all the movies about Tesla here:
Nikola Tesla in Film and TV but the article is from 2016 and they are missing the new show about Tesla that you can find on Netflix.
Nikola Tesla made over 300 inventions and patents all over the world with some of them still being hidden in various patent offices and not being released to the public. Many things that were credited to others who even received prizes and recognition for them were actually done by Tesla. Radio is one of those things but first things first. Let's start with alternating current.
Alternating current as his gratest legacy...
Edison's Direct Current power plants and distribution systems could send electricity flowing in one direct, straight line so the power lines that crisscrossed the Atlantic were short and weak. AC could change direction easily and deliver power at a much higher voltage which resulted in transporting electricity over much greater distances. Today, we typically use AC when we plug kitchen appliances, washing machines, televisions, fans, computers, and electric lamps into a wall socket. Other uses include audio and radio signals carried on electrical wires. We use DC, on the other hand, with battery cells in flashlights.
An AC voltage v is a function of time represented by the following equation:
Many countries around the world use a 230 V AC mains supply. It is often referred to as RMS voltage or the square Root of the Mean over one cycle of the Square of the instantaneous voltage
Tesla is the father of radio...
The first trans-Atlantic radio transmission was completed by Guglielmo Marconi by sending a piece of Morse code from England to Newfoundland (December 12, 1901) but it was by using Tesla's innovations. Tesla applied for two patents US 645576, and US 649621 in 1897 regarding his work that he successfully demonstrated in 1893, during a presentation to the The National Electric Light Association. One year after applying for patents he even presented a radio wave controlled boat at New Yorks' Madison Square Gardens. In 1904, The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision on Tesla's patents and awarded them to Marconi who was back then financially backed by Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie who were not big fans of Tesla. It was not until 1943. before the U.S Supreme Court ultimately revoked some of Marconi's patents and restored Tesla's place as the father of radio in a certain legal sense. Oh, and, just to put it out there, scientists today are fairly skeptical that Marconi really heard those three dots that were S and it may never have happened. You can read the story about it here: Faking the waves from theguardian.com where scientists propose that Marconi maybe heard what he wanted to hear.
Want to know what Tesla has with X-rays, electric motor and WIFI?
That and much more will be in the part 2.
See you soon...
Until next time,
KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!
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Such an interesting subject. There IS a lot to learn of Tesla. You might be surprised to learn that I have visited his legacy a time or two myself.
Part of the problem with his discoveries and their acceptance is the business climate at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th. The robber barons had mostly had their way with the American Railroad System. Carnegie, for all his good works at the beginning and end of his professional life was as ruthless and greedy as a man can be. Edison was a legitimate star of inventions and an American Icon and apparently liked the Rockstar lifestyle.
Not that Tesla was without backers. Westinghouse cashed in nicely on the (obviously right) choice of AC. Westinghouse himself (aot his company) was not above aggrandizing and taunting the competition. And he was a blood thirsty mega capitalist, too.
So throw possibly the most brilliant man of his time into this mix and it's going to leave a mark. Tesla's treatment by all the above was shameful and beyond greedy.
Sigh. Another one of those 'what if' moments in history. What if those men would have chosen the good of humanity over the race to be the richest?
I love this post, and SERIOUSLY look forward to the rest of the series. Thank you Petra, for a post that means something.
It was a difficult time for him to live in with his mind focused on progress and the mind of Edison towards money, it was a constant battle where he was a much bigger person in that conflict. He never lowered himself down to Edisons level while Edison went to great lengths to ridicule Tesla. I am glad you enjoyed the post. There is much more to come. Thank you for your lovely and valuable contribution to this subject by such a great comment. 💚
Edison never really did any big inventions himself, he hired a team of inventors and whenever someone came up with a goo idea then Edison slapped his name on that idea. Tesla as smarter then that. He did all his own inventions, and really knew how things worked.
But that is life, it's how it's been and how it will always be, Tesla was the brains behind a lot of great inventions but the vultures erased him out of history.
Like they say,
There's a lot to learn from his mistakes though.
@zen-art keep doing what you do, looking forward to the next one.
Yes there is. He was a scientist first, Edison was firstly a businessman and the science came in second place. Now we have people at institutes that help with funding and marketing and some scientist even go to classes that help them learn how to present and/or market their work. No money means no research.
Love Tesla so i hope i can kee up with your next posts. My niece is taking electrical engineering in college and have not heard of him...Edison is still the father as that is what according to the books. This might interest you @bifilarcoil?
A bit strange that Tesla has been in the waves lately on steemit😍😍
If Edison only had figured out 1% of Tesla's work the would could have been very different today. Edison never got it. The screw principle of the lightbulb was not a bad idea, but from there Edison 'screwed' everyone on the planet.
That was the plan, wasn't it? Burn all the books that say he is a genius🤣😂
Tesla did real science and with his imagination he managed to turn that science into real usable machines without any bullshit. Where the Elon musk types only use a hand full of those electric machines , slap it together and put it in a shell with a lot of bling on the outside. Elon merely does what Edison did, ...nothing special.
Did Elon used Tesla's, is this right? Not really his inventions per se. Edison was blinded to the genius before him.
Well, Elon uses / abuses the Tesla in many ways.
Practically all we do with electronics is in one way or another a direct result of Tesla's work.
All musk seems to do is hire some clever monkeys who slap together existing principles for a wage.
I don't see ANY revolutionary stuff as a result from Musk's part. He just puts money on the table and his minions slave away to build horribly inefficient e-cars. The energy companies are the ones who really like this as Musk's BS have a heavy toll on the energy grid and the demand for electricity that these cars have to is all a heavy load on the grid.
First the energy is converted to charge batteries and in that conversion is a big loss to get it to the level to charge the batteries. while charging the batteries also generate heat. (yet another loss) then on a cold day the batteries are less efficient (more loss) and on a hot day, the batteries can't dissipate the heat very well, so they must be cooled (more loss) the energy itself needs to be converted to the levels to be used by the motors, (more loss, more heat), the motors also get hot (more loss). And in the car the 'entertainment section' is also a very inefficient package. with a lot of bling that makes the people who invested a big sum in this BS feel 'special' so they show off on the road (wasting even more energy)
Nikola Tesla would have done the opposite.
Musk is just a bullshit artist snake oil salesman just like that greedy Edison figure.
Tesla's name should not even be on that car. And that's the biggest abuse.
Renault's Twizy, is also Tesla-tech slapped together, but it at least is not as big of a useless waste as the Elon-tronics farce. Add to that that Elon also has his power-wall / solar panel thing that is just as inefficient as the car. The people who bought that are mainly turning the sun rays into even more heat.
So all Musk is doing is making global warming finally the problem that it never was BEFORE Elon started his circus act.
And no i'm not at all against electronic cars. I actually like them. Less noise, less particles in the air.
Man, you should have posted all that BS that's have been happening from Musk. I didn't know all that stuff, am sure there's a lot who don't.
Otherwise, they will give him a Nobel😂🤣😄
hmmm I didn't realize that this comment turned essay in a snap.
:-D would I be bitten by @cheata if I re-post it as an article?
Lets find out...
Great post, will be great to have the free electricity but JPMorgan put a end on this dream!
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Yeah..if only another genius can find out his..that would be nice. Solar panels are great but most people can't afford it.
Much love to you and your niece, I am glad that you found this interesting and that you love Tesla 💚
I think that the world is slowly waking up about Tesla, maybe one day, he will get the recognition he deserves in helping humanity. I do believe that he didn't want it, even now.
the thing I like most about Tesla is the car 😘
Yeah, I wonder why... :D I like it to 💚
Rimac Rules :D
Hopefully, the company will pull itself out of trouble. Tesla definitely didn't deserve to have the name associated with something that could easily become one of the greatest business catastrophes of 21st Century.
There is still hope, there is no telling what a new management would be able to do if it goes that way.
That's not Tesla though that Elon-tronics. (Tesla-tech used in variou's horrible inefficient ways) these 'Tesla' cars are a good idea to move away from fossil fuels. But done in a Edison kind of approach. Slap together some Tesla tech and quickly sell it to the masses.
Tesla would have done the real work. And would have eliminated all the inefficient energy wasting conversions. But someone might see Tesla's light one day and build a E-car back to basics and do away with all the rest.
There is always room for progress and I think we are still at the beginnings of this. The good thing is that this kind of technology is moving forward and developing. Who knows who and in what way will improve it in a year or two, let alone ten years. Fingers crossed ;)
Yes, though for that technology to really move forward people should really study the actual work of Tesla. And i don't really see that. Apart from a handful of people who try really hard to get the message across. But I never see them mentioned when it matters most.
And as a teaser i'm not going to mention either. :-D
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This is a nice comforting post that I got lost in
I am glad that you enjoyed it 💚
This is great! I've read quite a bit about Tesla, but I'm so looking forward to reading more! I never realised that Marconi had taken over Tesla's patents. At school we learned a lot about Marconi "inventing" radio, but we never learned anything about Tesla.
One funny story I heard about Tesla is that when he gave a demonstration of his radio-controlled boat in New York, people were so astonished that they thought he must have trained a small monkey to drive the boat!
Yes, I love that story about a monkey. People could not believe that a boat could be controlled remotely so they accused him of training a monkey in secret until the monkey was smart enough :D
It shows when people literally can't believe their eyes, they have to make up even more ludicrous stories to "rationalise" what they see in front of them.
My Uncle was Alexis Guy Obolensky who recreated and expanded upon some of Tesla's work. it is through him that I found out about Tesla as I lived at his lab for some time when I was younger. Like you I am really appalled on how little recognition Tesla still gets outside of sci-fi shows ect ... but then they would have to look at their science idols they have bolstered for so long and admit that many of them stole
Tesla's work ...
P.S my uncle had two of Tesla's original generators in his lab they were awesome ...they are now going to the Tesla museum as my Uncle died earlier this year.
You are so lucky to have had such great uncle and an opportunity to witness some of Tesla original creations, wow!!!
Guy was a difficult man but a clear genius and I loved him despite his faults. He was the first person I could talk to about the things I saw and ideas were most people could not follow ..he made me feel less of a freak ... on the other hand I was often is test subject and I was lucky i did not move out of there with 34 arms and a tail ;) JK lol but not entirely
Looks like we must Take a closer look at Tesla's 'little' gadgets. :-)
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Always amazing and interesting blogposts Petra
Thank you honey, your support and feedback are always lovely to receive 💚
You are welcome, no matter the topic you never fail to entertain and be an example of good formatting and hq content.
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