He is one of my personal great heroes. He has contributed more to our modern life today than most people recognize.
Born, July 10th in 1856 -- he celebrates his 156th Birthday today.
From Electronic Design News:
Nikola Tesla is born, July 10, 1856Radio - yes, Marconi did send three dots across the Atlantic Ocean in December 1901. Nikola Tesla stated after being told of Marconi's reported transmission that "Marconi [... was] using seventeen of my patents." Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled boat in 1898 - three years earlier. Instead of three dots -- the PBS Series on Tesla has the story:
Nikola Tesla, one of history�s most under appreciated and under acknowledged engineers, was born on July 10, 1856, in modern-day Croatia.
Credit for his work is often gray and debated, sometimes due to unscrupulous competitors and sometimes due to timing.
Indeed, Tesla is known to have worked on a radio before Marconi, an X-Ray machine before Roentgen, an induction motor around the same time Ferrari claimed his, and experimented to find �small charged particles� years before Thomson was credited with proving the existence of electrons.
In Madison Square Garden, at the Electrical Exhibition of 1898, Tesla staged a scientific tour de force, a demonstration completely beyond the generally accepted limits of technology. His invention, covered in patent No. 613,809 (1898), took the form of a radio-controlled boat, a heavy, low-lying, steel craft about four feet long. Inasmuch as radio hadn't been officially patented yet (Tesla's basic radio patent was filed in September 1897, but granted in March 1900), examiners from the US Patent Office were reluctant to recognize improbable claims made in the application "Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles." Confronted with a working model, however, examiners quickly issued approval.The Supreme Court posthumously awarded Tesla the patent for Radio in 1943. Tesla successfully demonstrated equipment very similar to Marconi (resonant spark-gap transmitter / tuned receiving circuit with a fluorescent Geisler tube as indicator instead of an audio output) in St. Louis, MO in 1893. Moving on here -- radiation. Tesla was working with radiation before Roentgen published his work. He stopped because he was getting burned with the equipment and didn't think of the medical value of being able to see one's own bones. Induction motor? Please. Tesla originated the three-phase system of power generation and distribution that we use today. Period. He didn't just come up with the motor, he invented the generators, he chose the 60Hz frequency that we use today (Europe and Asia used the Tesla system at 50Hz to bypass paying royalties -- the 60 Cycles per Second is the real sweet spot between equipment size and efficiency). He developed the transformers. He developed the phasing systems to allow two separate generating stations to synchronize on one power line. It's not just a motor. Small charged particles -- with his Colorado Springs radio work, he was building detectors of incredible sensitivity. With one series of experiments, he was bouncing radio signals off the moon. Along the way, he also invented fluorescent light, the bladeless Tesla Turbine (not very efficient but able to operate over a huge range of speeds and fluids). His last Patent in 1928 was for a vertical take-off and landing tiltrotor biplane. In 1931, he published a paper on ocean thermal energy conversion system. A list of his Patents can be found here: List of Nikola Tesla patents Like I said, a personal hero. When you measure magnetic fields, you measure them in Teslas. What do you measure in Edisons? Nothing. Measure in Marconis? Nothing.
In fact, Tesla had been walking around New York City since 1895 picking up radio signals generated in various high-frequency experiments; he had received them as far as thirty miles away, at West Point. With the invention or improvement of several more control elements, he was able in short time to put them to use.
