Nikola Tesla example essay topic

'Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle. Yes, so far reaching is his work that it has become the warp and woof of industry... His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science. From that work has sprung a revolution... ' -B.A. Behrend If you were to go to an encyclopedia and tried to find out who invented the radio, X- rays, and the tube amplifier, this is what you would find: radio was invented by Marconi, X- rays by Roentgen, and the tube amplifier by de Forest. While you " re there, look to see who invented the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer, the basics of radar, and the microwave oven. I don't know who the encyclopedias say invented those things, but I bet it won't give any mention of a many the name of Nikola Tesla.

In fact, I bet they won't give much mention of Tesla for any of the many things he invented. We can thank Thomas Edison for this. Nikola Tesla was born in Smil jian, Croatia at precisely midnight on July 9/10, 1856. Not a lot is known about his early childhood. His father was an orthodox priest, and his mother, though unschooled, was highly intelligent. Teslahad an extraordinary memory, and he spoke six languages.

He Spent four years studying math, physics, and mechanics at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz. Tesla first came to America in 1884, when he was 28. He worked for Thomas Edison. Edison, at the time, had just patented the light bulb, and needed a system to distribute the electricity.

One of Tesla's gifts was an understanding of electricity. Edison promised Tesla large amounts of money if he could work out the kinks in Edison's DC system of electricity. In the end, Tesla saved Edison over $100,000 (which would be millions today), but Edison refused to live up this end of the bargain. Tesla quit, and Edison spent the rest of his life trying to stifle Tesla's reputation.

Tesla devised a system for electricity, AC, which was better than Edison's DC system of electricity. AC (Tesla's system) is what is used in our homes today. AC offered many advantages over DC. AC could be transmitted over large distances through thin wires. DC electricity required a large power plant every square mile, and the transmission through very thick cables. System of transmission would be incomplete without devices to run on them.

Seeing that there were none, Tesla invented the predecessors to the motors used in every appliance in our houses. Inventing these motors was not simple, since scientists of the late 1800's were convinced that because no motor could be devised for an ACsystem, trying to develop a motor for it was waste of time. After all, AC current reverses direction 60 times a second, which would make the motor rock back and forth and never get anywhere. Tesla easily solved this problem and proved everyone wrong by developing a working motor for the ACsystem. In May 1885, word of the AC system was heard by George Westinghouse. Tesla signed contract with Westinghouse under which Tesla would receive $2.50 for each Kilowatt of AC electricity sold.

Tesla finally had the money to conduct all the experiments he wanted. The problem was Edison. He had too much invested in his DC system of electricity. So Edison tried his best to discredit Tesla. He constantly tried to show that AC electricity was far more dangerous than DC electricity. Tesla easily countered this.

Atthe 1893 World Exposition in Chicago, Tesla demonstrated how safe AC electricity was bypassing high frequency AC electricity through his body to power light bulbs. He then shot lightning bolts from his Tesla Coils into the crowd, without harm. Tesla had dramatically proven once an for all that AC electricity was safe to use. In addition, Tesla also used Fluorescent bulbs in his lab about forty years before they were 'invented' by industry. At worlds fairs and other exhibitions, he took glass tubes and molded them into the shapes of famous scientists names. These were the first Neon signs ever.

Tesla also designed the first hydroelectric plant, located in Niagra Falls. Heal so patented the worlds first speedometer. Everything seemed to be going great for Tesla then. But then, the royalties owed to Tesla started to exceed $1 million, and Westinghouse ran into financial trouble. Tesla realized that if his contract remained in effect, Westinghouse would be out of business and he had no desire to deal with creditors. Tesla took his contract and ripped it up!

Instead of becoming the worlds first billionaire, he was paid $216,000 for his patents. In 1898, he demonstrated the first remote controlled boat at Madison Square Garden. You can thank Tesla for the remote controls on your Television sets. Tesla's dream was to give free energy to the world. In 1900, backed by $150,000 from J.P. Morgan, Tesla began constructing his 'Wireless Broadcast System' tower on Long Island, New York. This tower was intended to link the worlds telephone and telegraph services, as well as transmit pictures, stock reports, and weather information around the world.

Most people thought he was insane for trying this -after all, transmission of voice, picture, and electricity were unheard of at this time. Unfortunately, Morgan cur the funding when he realized that it meant free energy for the world. An interesting side note: Though Marconi is credited with the invention of the radio, in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Marconi's patents were invalid due to Tesla's previous descriptions. One day, in his Manhattan lab, Tesla created an earthquake.

He managed to get a steam-driven oscillator to vibrate at the same frequency as the earth. Tesla claimed that, in theory, the same principle could be used to split the earth in two. In fact, he tried to prove that theory. In his Colorado Springs lab in 1899, he sent energy waves all the way through the earth (providing the theory for the earthquake seismic stations of today). When the waves came back, he added more electricity. The result?

A 130 foot lightning bolt-the largest man-made lightning bold ever! The thunder was heard 22 miles away, and the entire meadow surrounding the lab had a strange blue glow to it. This was only a warm-up for his real experiment, but he never got to do that experiment because he blew out the local power plant. At the beginning of World War I, the government tried to come up with a way to detect German U-boats. They put Edison in charge of the search. Tesla proposed using energy waves, a system known as radar.

Edison rejected the idea as ludicrous, and the world had to wait another 25 years until it was invented. Tesla's reward for his lifetime of creativity? The Edison Medal, the prized scientific award. Most prized to everyone, that is, except Tesla.

He took it as a slap in the face, after the verbal abuse given to him by Edison. During the last thirty years of his life, Teslahad many brilliant ideas, but lacked the capital to patent them. Over the course of his life, Tesla received over 800 different patents, and he probably would " ve had many more if he'd had the money. The man who invented the modern world died nearly penniless on January 7, 1943, at age 86. His funeral was attended by more than 2,000 people. Some of the ideas he toyed with in the last decades of his life included time travel, anti-gravity, ozone generators, and death rays.

He claimed to be able to destroy 10,000 planes, 250 miles away. He talked about experiments that suggested particles with fractional charges of an electron, something discovered in 1977: Quarks. What kind of impact did Nikola Tesla have on our lives? Look around you. Chances are Nikola Tesla is somehow responsible for many of the things you see that make modern life so modern. The radio you listen to, the fluorescent lights around you, the motors that run your appliances, and the electricity that runs those motors.

Here are some things you might want to think about: Where would we be in had Nikola Tesla never been Born, and how much further ahead would we be if he had had the money to finance the experiments he always wanted to? 'We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of the atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind... The greatest good will come from the technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such.

By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land... ' '-Nikola Tesla