The great scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) left behind a rich legacy. Moreover, this epithet concerns not only the already developed devices, devices and technologies, but also the legacy in the form of many thousands of pages of documents, which partly disappeared, and partly, as it is assumed, were classified after the death of the inventor.
Tesla's style of research is clearly visible from the surviving diaries, documents and notes of Tesla's lectures. He paid very little attention to accurately recording the experimental procedure. The scientist was much more interested in his own feelings. He relied heavily on intuition and foresight. Apparently, this is why a serious scientist often surprised those around him with wild quirks: to settle in hotels where the room number is divisible by 3, hate earrings and peaches and constantly repeat about his virginity, which helps a lot in scientific work (yes, this is not an invention of Anatoly Wasserman) ... This combination of writing style and behavior earned Tesla a reputation for hiding something. And his manner of working only alone or with a minimum of assistants was surprising. It is no wonder that after his death, the scientist began to attribute the most incredible things like the Tunguska disaster.
All this conspiracy, in principle, can be explained. Stealth is the desire to protect yourself from theft of an invention. After all, the main thing is not the one who invented something, but the one who registered the patent for this invention. Brevity of Notes - Tesla excelled at even very complex multi-stage calculations in his head and did not need to write them down. The desire to work independently and away from people - but after all, his laboratory with very expensive equipment in the very center of New York, on Fifth Avenue, burned down. And quirks are not only among geniuses, but also among the simplest people.
And Tesla was really impractical, but a genius. Almost all modern electrical engineering is based on his inventions and discoveries. We use Tesla's works when we turn on the light, start the car, work at the computer or talk on the phone - these devices are based on Tesla's inventions. Considering that in the last 10 years of his life, the scientist worked a lot, but did not patent or introduce anything into production, one can understand the assumptions about his invention of a superweapon or a technology for moving in time.
1. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the family of a Serbian priest in a remote Croatian village. Already at school, he amazed everyone with his ingenuity and ability to quickly count in his mind.
2. To enable his son to continue his studies, the family moved to the town of Gospić. There was a well-equipped school, where the future inventor received his first knowledge of electricity - the school had a Leiden bank and even an electric machine. And the boy also showed great ability to learn foreign languages - after finishing school, Tesla knew German, Italian and English.
3. One day, the city administration gave the fire department a new pump. The ceremonial commissioning of the pump almost fell through due to some kind of malfunction. Nikola figured out what was the matter and fixed the pump, at the same time spraying half of those present with a powerful jet of water.
4. After leaving school, Tesla wanted to become an electrical engineer, and his father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Against the background of his experiences, Tesla fell ill, as it seemed to him, with cholera. It will not be possible to find out exactly whether it was cholera, but the disease had two serious consequences: his father allowed Nikola to study as an engineer, and Tesla himself acquired a painful craving for cleanliness. Until the end of his life, he washed his hands every half hour and meticulously examined the situation in hotels and restaurants.
5. Nikola continued his studies at the Higher Technical School in Graz (now Austria). He really liked his studies, in addition Tesla found that he needed only 2 - 4 hours to sleep. It was in Graz that he first came up with the idea to use alternating current in electric motors. The profile teacher Jacob Peschl respected Tesla, but told him that this idea would never be realized.
6. The scheme of an AC electric motor came to Tesla's head in Budapest (where he worked in a telephone company after graduation). He was walking with a friend at sunset, then exclaimed: "I will make you spin in the opposite direction!" and began to quickly draw something in the sand. The comrade thought that we were talking about the Sun, and was worried about the health of Nikola - he had recently been seriously ill - but it turned out that we were talking about the engine.
7. While working for Edison's Continental Company, Tesla made a number of improvements to DC motors and brought the construction of a power station to a railway station in Strasbourg, France, out of the crisis. For this, he was promised a prize of $ 25,000, which was a gigantic sum. The American managers of the company considered it unwise to pay that kind of money to some engineer. Tesla resigned without receiving a cent.
8. With the last money Tesla went to the USA. One of the employees of the Continental Company gave him a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison, who was then the world luminary in electrical engineering. Edison hired Tesla, but was cool with his ideas for multiphase alternating current. Then Tesla proposed to improve the existing DC motors. Edison jumped at the offer and promised to pay $ 50,000 if successful. Affected by the level of promising - if the European subordinates "threw" Tesla by 25,000, then their boss cheated twice as much, although Tesla made changes to the design of 24 engines. "American humor!" - explained Edison to him.
Thomas Edison was good at making jokes worth $ 50,000
9. For the third time, Tesla was deceived by a joint-stock company, created to introduce new arc lamps invented by him. Instead of payment, the inventor received a block of worthless shares and harassment in the press, which accused him of greed and mediocrity.
10. Tesla barely survived the winter of 1886/1887. He did not have a job - yet another crisis was raging in the United States. He clutched at any job and was desperately afraid of getting sick - this meant certain death. By chance, engineer Alfred Brown learned about his fate. Tesla's name was already known, and Brown was surprised that he could not find a job. Brown put the inventor in touch with lawyer Charles Peck. He was convinced not by Tesla's characteristics or his words, but by the simplest experience. Tesla asked a blacksmith to forge an iron egg and cover it with copper. Tesla made a wire mesh around the egg. When an alternating current was passed through the grid, the egg spun and gradually stood upright.
11. The first company of the inventor was called "Tesla Electric". According to the agreement, the inventor was to generate ideas, Brown was responsible for material and technical support, and Peck was responsible for financial.
12. Tesla received his first patents for multiphase AC motors on May 1, 1888. Almost immediately, patents started making money. George Westinghouse proposed a rather complex scheme: he paid separately for acquaintance with patents, then for their purchase, royalties for each horsepower of the engine produced and transferred 200 shares of his company to Tesla with a fixed dividend. The deal brought Tesla and his partners about $ 250,000, not a million in cash right away, as you can read.
One of the first Tesla engines
13. In the fall of 1890 another crisis occurred, this time a financial one. It shook the Westinghouse company, which was on the brink of collapse. Tesla helped out. He gave up his royalties, which by then had accumulated about $ 12 million, and thereby saved the company.
14. Tesla delivered his famous lecture, in which he demonstrated lamps without a filament and wires going to them, on May 20, 1891. He was so convincing in his predictions of receiving energy from virtually nowhere that he made everyone present believe in this possibility, except for a small group of enemies. Moreover, the scientist's performance looked more like a long concert number than a lecture.
15. Tesla also invented fluorescent lamps. However, he considered that their massive use is a matter of the distant future, and did not file a patent. Considering the fact that fluorescent lamps began to be widely used in the late 1930s, the inventor was mistaken in his forecast.
16. In 1892, Serbian scientists did not elect Tesla as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. They did it only on the second try two years later. And Tesla became an academician only in 1937. Moreover, every time he came to his homeland, he was greeted by crowds of thousands of ordinary people.
17. On March 13, 1895, a fire broke out in the building that housed Tesla's office and laboratories. Wooden floors quickly burned out. Although the firefighters arrived quickly, the fourth and third floors managed to collapse to the second, destroying all equipment. The damage exceeded $ 250,000. All documents were also lost. Tesla was invigorated. He said that he keeps everything in memory, but later admitted that even a million would not compensate him for the loss.
18. Tesla designed and assisted in the assembly of generators for the Niagara Hydroelectric Power Station, opened in 1895. At that time, this project was the largest in the entire world electric power industry.
19. The inventor has never been seen in connection with a woman, although with his appearance, intelligence, financial position and popularity, he was a desirable target of the hunt for many socialites. He was not a misogynist, actively communicated with women, and when recruiting secretaries, he bluntly announced that appearance was important to him - Tesla did not like fat women. He was not a pervert either, then this vice was known, but remained the lot of outcasts. Perhaps he really believed that sexual abstinence sharpens the brain.
20. Actively working on the improvement of X-ray machines, the scientist took pictures of his body and sometimes sat under the radiation for hours. When one day he got a burn on his hand, he immediately reduced the number and time of sessions. The most interesting thing is that huge doses of radiation did not cause serious damage to his health.
21. At the Electrical Exhibition in 1898, Tesla demonstrated a miniature radio-controlled submarine (he invented radio communication independently of Alexander Popov and Marconi). The boat carried out a number of commands, while Tesla did not use Morse code, but some other type of signals that remained unknown.
22. Tesla long and unsuccessfully sued Marconi, proving his priority in the invention of radio - he received patents for radio communications before Marconi. However, the nosy Italian was in a better financial position, and even managed to attract a number of American companies to his side. As a result of a powerful and prolonged attack, the US Patent Office canceled Tesla's patents. And only in 1943, after the death of the inventor, justice was restored.
Guillermo Maokoni
23. At the turn of 1899 and 1900, Tesla built a laboratory in Colorado, in which he tried to find a way to transmit energy wirelessly through the Earth. The installation he created using a thunderstorm squeezed out a voltage of 20 million volts. For miles around the horses were shocked through the horseshoes, and Tesla and his assistants, despite the thick pieces of rubber strapped to the soles, felt the impact of the most powerful fields. Tesla stated that he had discovered special “standing waves” in the Earth, but later this discovery could not be confirmed.
24. Tesla has repeatedly stated that he received signals from Mars in Colorado, but he has never been able to document such a reception.
25. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Tesla launched a grandiose project. He conceived to create a network of wireless underground electric lines, through which not only electricity would be transmitted, but also radio and telephone communications, images and texts were transmitted. If you remove the transfer of energy, you would get a wireless Internet. But Tesla simply did not have enough money. The only thing he could do was to stun the audience in the vicinity of his Wardencliffe laboratory with the spectacle of a powerful man-made thunderstorm.
26. Recently, there have appeared many not even hypotheses, but serious-looking investigations, the authors of which claim that the Tunguska catastrophe is the work of Tesla. Like, he conducted such research, and had the opportunity. Maybe he did, but really in the past tense - in 1908, when something exploded in the Tunguska basin, creditors had already taken away everything valuable from Wardencliff, and onlookers were climbing the tower 60 meters high.
27. After Wardencliff, Tesla began to look more and more like the notorious locksmith Polesov. He took up the creation of turbines - it did not work out, and the company to which he offered his turbines developed its own design option and became the world market leader. Tesla was engaged in the creation of devices for obtaining ozone. The topic was very popular in those years, but Tesla's method did not conquer the market. It seems that the inventor also created an underwater radar, but, apart from newspaper articles, there is no confirmation of this. Tesla received a patent for the creation of a vertical take-off aircraft - and again the idea was implemented later by other people. It seems that he assembled an electric car, but no one saw either the car or even the blueprints.
28. In 1915, American newspapers reported that Tesla and Edison would receive the Nobel Prize. Then it went further - Tesla seemed to be accepting the award in such a company. In fact - but it was revealed decades later - Tesla was not even nominated for the prize, and Edison received only one vote from a Nobel committee member. But Tesla was awarded the Edison Medal two years later, established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
29. In the 1920s, Tesla wrote extensively for newspapers and magazines. However, when he was offered to speak on one of the radio stations, he was flatly refused - he wanted to wait until his power transmission network covers the whole world.
30. In 1937, 81-year-old Tesla was hit by a car. After a few months, he seemed to have recovered, but the years took their toll. On January 8, 1943, the maid of the New Yorker Hotel, at her own peril and risk (Tesla categorically forbade entering him without permission), entered the room and found the great inventor dead. The life of Nikola Tesla, full of ups and downs, ended at 87.
