Tesla's Timeline Chronograph
Tesla's Early
Years
1856, 9-10 July, Nikola Tesla is born (at lightning stroke of
midnight)
1856-62, Tesla lives in Smiljan, Lika, western military district
(Krajina), Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1861, death of his older and only brother Dane, 12.
1862, family moves to closest town, Gospic.
1862-66, Tesla attends elementary or 'normal' school in
Gospic.
1866-70, Tesla attends Real Gymnasium in Gospic.
1870-73, lives at Rakovac 6 above his aunt & Col. "old
war-horse".
1873, Tesla graduates Gimnazija Karlovac, Rakovac, Croatia.
1874, recovers from Cholera, escapes life as priest, first
occurrence of his visions.
1875, father sends him into hills to hide from army.
1875, accepted at k.k. (kaiserlich konigliche) Technischen
Hochschule in Graz, Austria.
1875-78, attends "Joanneum" polytechnic (now Technische
Universitat Graz (TUG)), Rechbauerstrasse 12.
1875, Sept, takes a room at Attemsgasse 8.**
1876, boards at Neugasse 10 (now Hans-Sachs-Gasse 10).
1877, boards at Attemsgasse 11 and Jahngasse 5.
1878, boards at Heinrichstrasse 11 (unbek.).
1878, spring, drops out of hochschule before 3rd year
exams.
1878-79, lands first job, assistant engineer, Maribor,
Slovenia.
1878, Sept-Nov, rooms on Tegetthofstrasse (Partisans Road since
1945), Maribor.**
1879, 24 March, police escort the "vagrant" Tesla from
Maribor home to Gospic.**
1879, death of his father, Milutin.
1880, summer, audits classes at the Karl-Ferdinand University of
Prague.
1880-81, rooms at Ve smeckach 13, Prague.**
1880-81, plays pool, spotting foes 48 of 100 points, at Narodni
Kavarna (People's Cafe) on Vodickova St.**
1881, January, arrives in Budapest too early for job with Puskas
brothers.
1881, Budapest Austrian Telegraph Office, engineer
1881, Budapest Central Post Office, draftsman
1881, American Telephone Company, repairman
1881, Budapest power company, electrical engineer
1881, Budapest Central Telephone Exchange, designer
1881, Tesla's first mental breakdown
1881, AC epiphany on walk with Antal Szigety in Budapest's
Varosliget city park.
1882, April, Tivadar Puskas hires Tesla at Continental Edison
Co., Paris.
1882, Charles Batchelor oversees Tesla at Edison lightbulb
factory, Irvy-sur-Seine.
1882, May, Belgrade newspapers report Tesla's visit.
1883, works on DC generators for Electricit? de Strasbourg,
Alsace.
Note: ** Dan Mrkich,
"Nikola Tesla: The European Years, 1856-1884."
Tesla Comes To the United States
Of America
1884, spring, Tesla lands in New York City, NY, with 4 cents
in his pocket.
1884, Thomas Edison hires Tesla to fix designs of DC
dynamos.
1885, quits Edison's Etna Iron Works, 104 Goerck St.
1885, founds the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Co,
Rahway, NJ.
1886-87, winter, digs ditches for $2.00 per day.
1887, April, Peck and Brown fund the Tesla Electric Co.
1887, 30 April, Tesla files his first patent.
1887, 10 May, old friend Antal Szigeti lands in NY.
1887-88, Invents the AC induction motor, 89 Liberty St,
NY.
1888, 15 May, speech to American Institute of Electrical
Engineers (AIEE).
1888, 7 July, sells AC patents for $25,000 to Westinghouse;
receives 150 shares in Westinghouse, plus
$2.50/horsepower.
1888-89, trains Westinghouse engineers in Pittsburgh, PA.
1889, Nikola Tesla becomes US citizen.
1889, opens his own lab on Grand Street.
1890, Aug 6, Prof. H. Brown "Westinghouses" ax-murderer
Wm Kemmler at Auburn State Prison, NY.
1890, Nov, lights vacuum tube, wirelessly, with high-frequency
coil.
1891, invents the Tesla coil.
1891, first Westinghouse-Tesla engine installed at a Colorado
mine.
1891, 20 May, speaks to AIEE at Columbia U.
1892, London lecture to Royal Institution of Electrical
Engineers.
1892, Feb, mother Djouka (Mandic) dies.
1893, AC plant powers Chicago's Columbia
Exposition.
1893, 1 May, President Grover Cleveland pushes button to light
100,000 lamps in Chicago's "City of Light".
1893, 24 Feb, lectures to the Franklin Institute,
Philadelphia.
1893, 1 March, wireless remote-control boat in St. Louis.
1894, Tesla's AC powers Telluride and Cripple Creek,
CO.
1895, 13 March, suspicious fire burns lab, 35 S 5th Ave (now ~539
West Broadway).
1895, 20 May, lands in Pulitzer's World after girl, 16, leaps
from pie at JL Breese's studio, 5 W 16th St.
1895, July, only recorded earthquake in Manhatten, at lab, 46 E
Houston Street, NY City, NY. Tesla smashes his "Earthquake
Machine" - the mechanical oscillator to pieces.
1895 Century editor R.U. Johnson runs Tesla article by T.C.
Martin and "Pudd'nhead Wilson" by Mark Twain.
1896, 19 July, tours Niagara Power House with George
Westinghouse.
1896, 16 Nov, transmits electricity 26 miles from Niagara Falls
to Buffalo, NY, first 3-phase AC power plant.
1897, April 6, lectures NY Academy of Sciences, 2 E 63rd
St.
1898, first efficient-magnifier Tesla coil.
1898, high-tension conductor produces pressures of 100 million
volts.
1898, Madison Square Garden demos teleautomat boat with
'borrowed mind" remote control.
1899, Lights 200 bulbs wirelessly 26 miles from Pike's
Peak with the prototype Magnifying Transmitter.
1899-1900, discovers terrestrial stationary waves, Colorado
Springs.
1900, 100-foot discharge 'flashed a current around the
globe'.
1900, J.P. Morgan buys 51% of Tesla's tele patents for
$150,000.
1901, builds Magnifying Transmitter at Wardenclyffe (Shoreham,
Long Island). The beginning of Tesla's New
World of Tomorrow.
1901, 12 Dec, Marconi beams a...Morse-code "S''
across the Atlantic.
1903, 15 July, NY Sun reports on Wardenclyffe's
"blinding streaks of electricity."
1905, opens office at 165 Broadway (Now 1 Liberty Plaza).
1906, builds speedometers for Waltham Watch Co.
1907, 3 May, NY World reports Tesla's "magnifying
transmitter" hits 25 Million horsepower.
1908, "Hugo Award" Gernsback meets Tesla, writes robot
story "Ralph 124C 41+."
1909, G. Marconi, C. Maxwell & H. Hertz share Physics Nobel
for radio.
1911, Patents turbine and pump based on Bladeless Disk
design.
1912, creditors reposes equipment from Wardenclyffe.
1914, opens office in tallest skyscraper: Woolworth Building, 233
Broadway.
1915, 6 Oct, NYT falsely reports Edison and Tesla to share
Nobel.
1915, Waldorf-Astoria's manager George Boldt demands back
rent of $19,000.
1915, surrenders Wardenclyffe deed to George Boldt for back rent
monies due.
1915, Tesla declares bankruptcy.
1917, 16 May, wins AIEE's Edison medal, flees to feed
pigeons.
1917, 4 July, Navy uses explosives to demolish the tower at
Wardenclyffe.
1918, Chicago turbine project with W.W. Wilhelm.
1922, his beloved pigeon dies at Hotel St. Regis, 2 E 55th St
(5th Ave) #1607.
1924, 25 May, Hotel St. Regis sues Tesla for $3,299 in back
rent.
1924, Sheriff's deputy serves debt liens on office, 8 W 40th
St 20th floor.
1931, 20 July, "Tesla at 75" on cover of Time
magazine.
1931, 18 Oct, Edison dies at 84.
1934, Scientific American pictures Tesla with
"Colossus" a 2MV Van de Graaf generator Tesla Coil, now
at Boston's Museum of Science.
1934, 11 July, NYT A1: "Tesla, at 78, Bares New 'Death
Beam.'"
1935, Feb Tesla's pro-eugenics Liberty article edited by
friend G. S. Viereck, a Nazi.
1937, Nikola Tesla is hit by cab in Manhattan, but refuses
care.
1937, honorary doctorate from Tesla's former hochschule in
Graz.
1938, experiments under 59th Street Bridge near 2nd Ave,
NY.
1939, (Soviet) Amtorg Trading Corp pays Tesla $25,000.
1942, Governor Clinton Hotel, NY, "multi decade resistance
box."
1942, July 8, birthday meeting with exiled King Peter II
Karadjordjevic of Serbia.
1943, Jan, tries to send cash via messenger-boy Kerrigan to
"Mr. Samuel Clemens." (Mark Twain) insisting the Twain
was still alive.
1943, 5 Jan, admits last maid service, asks for no futher
disturbances.
1943, 7 Jan, dies at 86 in New Yorker Hotel,
#3327.
Posthumous
1943, 8 Jan, maid enters room and finds Tesla dead.
1943, 8 Jan, FBI seizes 80-trunk archive of Tesla's
papers.
1943, 8 Jan, Tesla's nephew Sava Kosanovic finds Tesla's
room emptied.
1943, body sent to Campbell's Funeral Parlors (Madison Ave
& 81St).
1943, cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery, Ardsley, NY.
1943, 12 Jan, memorial at Cathedral of St. John the Divine,
NYC.
1943, 13 Jan, service by Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava,
20 W 26th St.
1943, 21 June, U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself, favors Tesla
radio patents over Marconi.
1943, John J. O'Neill publishes "Prodigal
Genius."
1944, Bela Lugosi plays Romanian scientist/vampire "Armand
Tesla" in "Return of the Vampire."
1944-46, "Project Nick" Brig. Gen. L.C. Craigie at
USAFB Patterson attempts "Peace Ray."
1952, Tesla estate including shirts, suits, shoes & papers
are sent to Belgrade.
1955, Tesla Museum opens in Belgrade, 51 Proleterskih
brigada.
1956, 100th anniversary, memorial erected in Smiljan by Grgo
Antuna.
1958, Tesla's cremated remains sent to Belgrade.
1960, 'Tesla' declared unit of magnetic induction by
Intl. Cmsn. for Electrical Engineering, T = Wb/m2.
19??, NYC declares 40th St & 6th Ave "Nikola Tesla
Corner."
1976, Tesla statue dedicated on Goat Island, Niagara
Falls.
1976, Rev. Sun Myung Moon buys New Yorker Hotel for $5M as
Unification Church HQ.
1978, Margaret Cheney publishes "Man Out of
Time."
1980, Croat biopic movie "Secrets of Nikola Tesla"
(Tajna Nikole Tesle) features Orson Welles as J.P. Morgan.
1981, monument by F. Krsinic erected in Gospic town square.
1991-95, Croat troops occupy Smiljan house, Serbs bomb
Gospic.
1997, Tesla bust installed in Becton engineering hall at Yale, 15
Prospect St.
2000, 12 Dec, PBS airs "Tesla: Master of
Lightning."
2001, 10 July, fans commemorate Tesla's birth by rededicating
plaque on 34th Street wall of New Yorker Hotel.
2006, 150th Anniversary of Tesla's birth celebration
planned.
"Nikola Tesla
Corner" is located at 40th St & 6th Ave, SW corner
of Bryant Park, behind the NY Public Library, where he fed
pigeons.
Nikola Tesla's Laboratory Locations: all in downtown
Manhattan, New York City, NY
1887, 89 Liberty Street, (now 1 Liberty Plaza).
1889, 175 Grand St (now 179 Grand St, Wu Lim Back Rub)*
1890-1895, 35 S 5th Ave (now ~539 West Broadway, Washington
Square Village: 3rd/Bleeker),13 March, 1895 destroyed by
fire.
1895-1899, 46-48 E Houston St (now Soho Billiards), July 1895,
where the earthquake caused by his mechanical oscillator took
place.
1901-1912, Shoreham, Long Island. The location of Tesla's
Magnifying Transmitter, Wardenclyffe Station.
Later Periods, Queensbourough Bridge, 59th St near 2nd
Ave.*
Tesla's
Offices:
1905, 165 Broadway (now 1 Liberty
Plaza)
1914, 233 Broadway, #1136, Woolworth Building.
1914, 1 Madison Ave, #202-203,*Metropolitan Life Tower (23rd
St).
1915-1924, 8 West 40th St, #2006,* (5th Ave).
Later Periods, 350 Madison Ave*, old Conde Nast HQ (44/45th
St.)
Hotels in New York City, where Tesla lived:
1884-1889?
1889-92, Astor House Hotel, 140 Broadway (Barclay/Vecey
Sts).
1892, Hotel Gerlach (Radio Wave Bldg), 49 W 27th St (Broadway/6th
Ave).
1??? Metropolitan Hotel, 580 Broadway (op. Guggenheim
SoHo).
1897-1920, Waldorf-Astoria, 5th Ave & 33rd St (now the Empire
State Bldg).
1918-23, Hotel St. Regis, 2 E 55th St (5th Ave) #1607.
1923-25, Hotel Marguery, 270 Park Ave (48th St).
1925-30, Hotel Pennsylvania, 401 7 Ave (33rd St) #1522E,* muse
for the 1938 Glen Miller hit "Pennsylvania
6-5000."
1930-34, Governor Clinton Hotel, 535 W 31 St (now Southgate
Tower)(7th Ave), 20th fl.
1934-43, Hotel New Yorker, 481 8th Ave (34th) #3327.
Posthumous:
Campbell's Funeral Parlors, Madison Ave & 81St.
Ferncliff Cemetery, 281 Secor Rd, Ardsley, NY.
Manhattan Storage & Warehouse Co., 52 St & 7th Ave.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 112th St & Amsterdam
Ave.
Serb Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, 20 W 26th St.
Places where Tesla is honored, Greater New York
areas:
Statue of Liberty Museum has photo of Tesla.
Jersery City, New Jersey, Liberty Science Center, daily demos of
a Tesla Coil.
Wardenclyffe "Radio City" (Shoreham, Long Island),
NY.
Niagara Falls, Goat Island
features a large, purposely un-illuminated statue of
Tesla.
* Leland I. Anderson, "Nikola Tesla's Residences,
Laboratories, and Offices," (Denver: Boyle-Anderson
Pub, 1990), the best source for Tesla's addresses.
Early Years
Tesla was born "at the stroke of midnight" with
lightning striking during a summer storm. He was born in Croatia
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The midwife commented,
"He'll be a child of the storm," to which his
mother replied, "No, of light."
Tesla was baptized in the Old Slavonic Church rite. His Baptism
Certificate reports that he was born on June 28 (Julian
calendar), and christened by the Serbian priest, Toma
Oklobdzija.
His Serb father, Reverend Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the
Orthodox Metropolitanate of Karlovci which gathered to Serbs of
the "Greek-rite" as they were legally referred to in
Austria-Hungary at the time. His mother, Djuka Mandic, from a
prominent Serb family of the Banija, made craft tools. He was one
of five children, having one brother and three sisters. His
godfather, Jovan Drenovac, was a Captain in the Krajina army. His
family moved to Gospic in 1862.
Tesla studied in Karlovac, present day Croatia, then studied
electrical engineering at the Austria Politechnic in Graz,
Austria (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating
current. He also developed a telephone repeater (or
amplifier).
In 1881 he moved to Budapest to work for the telegraph company,
American Telephone Company. For a while he stayed in Maribor,
Slovenia. He was employed at his first job as an assistant
engineer. Tesla suffered a nervous breakdown during this
time.
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the
Continental Edison Company. He worked designing improvements to
electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived of the
induction motor and began developing various devices that use
rotating magnetic fields (for which he received patents in 1888).
Tesla visualized the rotating fields and thereby designed the
induction motor.
Tesla hastened from Paris to his mother's side as she lay
dying, arriving hours before her death in 1882. Her last words
were to him were, "You've arrived, Nidzo, my
pride." After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to
three weeks recuperating in Gospic and Tomingaj. All his life,
Tesla kept a home-spun embroidered travel bag from his
mother.
Middle years
In 1884, leaving the warfare of his birthplace behind, Tesla
moved to the United States of America to accept a job with the
Edison Company in New York City. He arrived in the US with 4
cents to his name, a book of poetry, and a letter of
recommendation (from Charles Batchelor, his manager in his
previous job).
Early
Employment
Telsa worked for Thomas Edison for a time. Edison offered him
$50,000 for improvements in Edison's DC dynamos. Tesla worked
nearly a year to redesign the inferior construction. Upon
returning to Edison and inquiring about the $50,000, Edison
replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American
humor." Tesla resigned.
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light &
Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with
Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually
relieved Tesla of his duties at the company. Tesla was unemployed
for a time.
Tesla worked on a New York street gang, as a laborer, from 1886
to 1887 to raise capital to eat and for his next project. In
1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternate-current
induction motor. He demonstrated the brushless two-phase
one-fifth horsepower induction motor to the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers in 1888. Also in 1888, he developed the
principles of his Tesla coil. In the same period, he began
working with Westinghouse, Westinghouse's Pittsburgh labs.
Westinghouse listened to Tesla 's ideas for polyphase
systems. These systems would allow alternating current [AC]
electricity to be transmitted over large distances.
X-rays and
friendships
In April 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be
called X-rays using his own devices as well as Crookes tubes. He
did this by experimenting with high voltages and vacuum tubes.
His technical publications indicate that he invented and
developed a special single-electrode X-ray tube. Tesla's
tubes differed from other X-ray tubes in that they had no target
electrode. He stated these facts in his 1897 X-ray lecture before
the New York Academy of Sciences. The modern term for this is the
bremsstrahlung process, in which a high-energy secondary X-ray
emission is produced when charged particles (such as electrons)
pass through matter.
Around 1889, Tesla became a USA citizen. When he was 36 years
old, the first patents concerning the polyphase power system were
granted. He continued researching rotating magnetic field
principles and polyphase power distribution.
In 1891, Tesla established his Houston Street laboratory in New
York. He lit vacuum tubes wirelessly in the lab, providing
evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission.
Around this time, Tesla developed a close and lasting friendship
with author and humorist Mark Twain. They spent quite a bit of
time together in Tesla's lab and other areas.
By 1892, Tesla became aware of certain characteristics later
identified by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen as effects of X-rays.
He performed several experiments (including taking photographs of
the bones of his hand). Tesla did not make his findings widely
known. Much of his research was lost in the 1895 Houston Street
lab fire. He did obtain pictures of the human body with X-rays
and subsequently sent the images to Röntgen. His later X-ray
experimentation by vacuum high field emissions led him to alert
the scientific community first to the biological hazards
associated with X-ray exposure.
Wireless and the
IEEE
Tesla served as the Vice-President of the IEEE from 1892 to 1894.
From 1893 to 1895, Tesla investigated high frequency alternating
currents. He generated one million volts of alternating currents
using a conical Tesla Coil. He developed the skin effect in
circuitry, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for
inducing sleep, cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted
electromagnetic energy without wires, effectively building the
first radio transmitter.
In St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made the first public demonstration
of radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia and the National Electric Light Association, he
described and demonstrated in detail the principles of radio
communication. The apparatus he used contained all the elements
that were incorporated into radio systems before the development
of the vacuum tube.
World's Fair
Exposition
At the 1893 World's Fair Exposition, in Chicago, Illinois,
celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus'
first voyage to America, an international exposition was held, in
which, for the first time, a building was devoted to electrical
exhibits. It was a historic event and the beginning of a
revolution as Tesla and Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC
power by providing AC energy to illuminate Chicago's Columbia
Exposition. The public at large observed firsthand the qualities
and abilities of AC power. All the exhibits were from commercial
enterprises. Edison, Brush, Western Electric, and Westinghouse
all had exhibits. General Electric Company (backed by Edison and
J.P. Morgan) proposed to power the electric fair with direct
current at the cost of one million dollars.
Westinghouse proposed, armed with Tesla's AC system, to
illuminate the exposition for half as much. Tesla's
high-frequency high-voltage lighting produced more efficient
light with less heat. A two-phase induction motor was driven by
current from the main generators to power the system. Edison
tried to prevent the use of his light bulbs with Tesla's
system. GE banned the use of Edison's lamps in
Westinghouse's exhibits. Still, Westinghouse's proposal
was chosen over the inferior DC system to power the fair.
Westinghouse displayed several polyphase systems. The exhibits
included a switchboard, polyphase generators, step-up and
step-down transformers, transmission line, commercial size
induction motors, commercial size synchronous motors, and rotary
direct current converters (one of which was operating a railway
motor). The working-scale system allowed the public a view of a
system of polyphase power which could transmit long distances.
Meters and other auxiliary devices were also present.
Tesla displayed the first neon light tubes at the exposition,
demonstrating his phosphorescent lighting powered without wires
by high-frequency fields. Tesla's lighting inventions exposed
to high-frequency currents would bring the gases to
incandescence. Tesla displayed the first practical phosphorescent
lamps (a precursor to fluorescent lamps). His innovations in this
type of light emission were not regularly patented.
Also in the exhibits were Tesla's demonstrations, most
notably the "Egg of Columbus". This device explains the
principles of the rotating magnetic field and his induction
motor. The Egg consisted of a polyphase field coil underneath a
plate with a copper egg positioned over the top. When the
sequence of the coils were energized, the magnetic field
arrangement inductively created a rotation on the egg and made it
stand up on end (appearing to resist gravity).
On August 25, Elisha Gray introduced Tesla for the delivery of a
lecture on mechanical and electrical oscillators. Tesla explained
his work for efficiently increasing the work at high frequency of
reciprocation. As Electrical Congress members listened, Tesla
delineated mechanisms which could produce oscillations of
constant periods irrespective of the pressure applied and
irrespective of frictional losses and loads. He explained the
working means of producing constant period electric currents (not
resorting to spark gaps or breaks) and how to produce these with
reliable mechanisms.
The Exposition's illumination with electricity using
Tesla's and Westinghouse's alternate current removed any
doubt of the utility of the polyphase alternating current.
War of currents
During this time, direct current was the standard, and Edison was
not disposed to lose all his patent royalties to a former
employee. Adversaries due to Edison's promotion of DC for
electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating
current advocated by Tesla, Edison (or, reportedly, one of his
employees) employed the tactics of misusing Tesla's patents
to construct the first electric chair for the state of New York
in order to promote the idea that alternating currents were
deadly.
In his work with the rotary magnetic fields, Tesla devised the
system for transmission of power over long distances. He
partnered with George Westinghouse to commercialize this system.
Westinghouse had previously bought the rights to Tesla's
polyphase patents and other patents for AC transformers. Experts
announced proposals to harness the Niagara Falls for generating
electricity. Against General Electric and Edison's proposal,
Tesla's AC system won the international Niagara Falls
Commission contract. The commission was lead by Lord Kelvin and
backed by entrepreneurs (such as J.P. Morgan, Lord Rothschild,
and John Jacob Astor). Work began in 1893 on the Niagara Falls
generation project and Tesla's technology was applied to
generate electromagnetic energy from the falls.
Some doubted that the system would generate enough electricity to
power industry in Buffalo. Tesla was sure it would work, saying
that Niagara Falls had the ability to power the entire eastern
U.S. On November 16, 1896, the first transmission of electrical
power between two cities was sent from Niagara Falls to
industries in Buffalo from the first commercial two-phase power
plants (known as hydroelectric generators) at the Edward Dean
Adams Station.
The hydroelectric generators were built by Westinghouse Electric
Corporation from Tesla's AC system patent designs.
Tesla's system designs alleviated the limitations of the
previous DC methods. The nameplates on the generators bear
Tesla's name. He also set the 60 hertz standard for North
America. It took five years to complete the whole facility.
With the financial backing of George Westinghouse, Tesla's AC
replaced DC, enormously extending the range and improving the
safety and efficiency of power distribution. Tesla's Niagara
Falls system marked the end of Edison's roadmap for
electrical tansmission. Eventually, Edison's GE company
converted to the AC system.
Designs and
Colorado
When Tesla was 41 years old, he filed the first basic radio
patent (No. US645576). A year later, he demonstrated a remote
controlled boat to the US military. Tesla believed that the
military would want things such as radio-guided torpedoes. These
devices had an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates.
Mark Twain wrote Tesla over the demonstrations, though the
military took little interest. Radio remote control remained a
novelty until the Space Age.
At the age of 42, Tesla devised an electric igniter for gasoline
engines. His designs are nearly identical to ideas which deal
with the same process which modern internal combustion engines
use.
Around 1899, Tesla began conducting research in Colorado Springs.
He experimented with high-voltage electricity and the possibility
of transmitting and distributing large amounts of electrical
energy over long distances without using wires. He also conceived
the science of telegeodynamics, now known as seismology, and
explained that a long sequence of small explosions could be used
to find ore underground and could create earthquakes large enough
to destroy the Earth. He did not experiment with this as he felt
there would not be "a desirable outcome".
Colorado
Springs
In 1899, Tesla decided to move his research to Colorado, where he
could have room for his high-voltage high-frequency experiments.
After searching the country for a new location, Tesla chose
Colorado Springs for his next series of experiments, primarily
because of the frequent electrical storms and the thinness of the
air (reducing its dielectric level), making it more conductive.
Also, the property was free and electric power was available from
the El Paso Power Company. Today electromagnetic intensity charts
from the geological survey also show that the ground around his
lab possesses a denser field than most of the surrounding area.
Tesla reached Colorado Springs on May 17, 1899. Upon his arrival
he told reporters that he was conducting experiments transmitting
signals from Pikes Peak to Paris.
Diary
Tesla kept a diary of his experiments in the Colorado Springs lab
where he spent nearly nine months. The diary consists of
handwritten notes and date between June 1, 1899 and January 7,
1900. There are explanations (as seen in the photographs taken
during this time) of his experimental work. It consists of 500
pages and nearly 200 drawings and is recorded chronologically as
the work occurred.
Laboratory
construction
Tesla, a local contractor, and several assistants commenced the
construction of the laboratory shortly after arriving in Colorado
Springs. Tesla established his lab on Knob Hill in Colorado
Springs, (east of the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind and
one mile east of downtown). The primary purpose of the laboratory
was to experiment with high frequency electricity and other
phenomena. The Colorado Springs lab's secondary purpose was
to research wireless transmission of electrical power.
Tesla's design for the lab consisted of a building fifty feet
by sixty feet with eighty-foot ceilings. A one-hundred-forty-two
foot conducting aerial with a thirty-inch copper-foil-covered
wooden ball was erected on the roof of the lab. The design also
implemented a roof that rolled back to prevent fire from sparks
and other dangerous effects from the experiments. The laboratory
possessed sensitive instruments and equipment.
Magnifying
transmitter
The Colorado Springs lab possessed the largest Tesla Coil ever
built, known as the "Magnifying Transmitter". This was
not identical to the classic Tesla Coil. According to accounts,
Tesla managed to transmit tens of thousands of watts of power
without wires using the magnifier. Tesla posted a large fence
around the coil with a sign, "Keep Out - Great Danger".
Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter, at fifty-two feet in
diameter, generated millions of volts of electricity and produced
lightning bolts one-hundred-thirty feet long (forty-one meters).
It was a three-coil magnifying system requiring alternative forms
of analysis than lumped-constant coupled resonant coils presently
described to most. The Magnifying Transmitter resonated at a
natural quarter wavelength frequency. Tesla also worked with the
magnifying transmitter in a continuous-wave mode and in a
damped-wave resonant mode.
The Magnifying Transmitter produced thunder which was heard as
far away as Cripple Creek. He became the first man to create
electrical effects on the scale of lightning. People near the lab
would observe sparks emitting from the ground to their feet and
through their shoes. Some people observed electrical sparks from
the fire hydrants (Tesla for a time grounded out to the plumbing
of the city). The area around the laboratory would glow with a
blue corona (similar to St. Elmo's Fire). One of Tesla's
experiments with the Magnifying Transmitter destroyed Colorado
Springs Electric Company's generator by backfeeding the
city's power generators, and blacked out the city. The city
had a backup generator and company officials denied Tesla further
access to their feed if he did not repair the city's primary
generator at his own expense. The generator was working again in
a few days.
Tuned circuits
Tesla constructed many smaller resonance transformers in his lab
and discovered the concept of tuned electrical circuits. Tesla
also developed a number of coherers for separating and perceiving
electromagnetic waves. In his Colorado experiments, he designed
rotating coherers. These were used to detect the unique types of
electromagnetic phenomenon observed by Tesla. Tesla's
rotating coherer had a mechanism of geared wheels that were
driven by a coiled spring-drive mechanism, which was used to
rotate small glass cylinders. These experiments were the final
stage of years of work related to synchronized electrical tuned
circuits.
These transceivers were constructed to demonstrate how signals
could be "tuned in". Tesla logged in the diary on July
3, 1899, that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same
high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer
would receive energy from the larger coil, acting as a
transmitter of wireless energy. This data was used to confirm
Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts.
These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the
predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic
resonance imaging devices.
Propagation and
resonance
On July 3, 1899, Tesla discovered terrestrial stationary waves
within the earth. He demonstrated that the Earth behaves as a
smooth polished conductor and possesses electrical vibrations. He
experimented with waves characterized by a lack of vibration at
points, between which areas of maximum vibration occur
periodically. These standing waves were produced by confining
waves within constructed conductive boundaries. Tesla
demonstrated that the Earth could respond at predescribed
frequencies of electrical vibrations. At this time, Tesla
realized that it was possible to transmit power around the globe.
He also produced the effects that are now referred to as
"free electron lasers."
Tesla conducted experiments contributing to the understanding of
electromagnetic propagation and the Earth's resonance. He lit
hundreds of lamps wirelessly at a distance of up to twenty-five
miles (forty kilometers). He transmitted signals several miles
and lit neon tubes conducting through the ground. He researched
ways to utilize the ionosphere to transmit energy wirelessly over
long distances. He transmitted extremely low frequencies through
the earth and portions of the ionosphere, called the
Kennelly-Heaviside Layer, in his experiments. Tesla made
mathematical calculations and computations based on his
experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of this
area was approximately eight hertz. In the 1950s, researchers
confirmed the resonant frequency was in this range.
Cosmic waves
Tesla in the Colorado Springs lab recorded cosmic waves emitting
from interstellar clouds and red giant stars. He observed
repeating signals conducted by his transmitter. He announced that
he received extraterrestrial radio signals. Tesla stated that he
received signals from planets in some of the scientific journals
of the time. He believed he was receiving signals from outer
space. The scientific community did not believe him, primarily
because research of cosmic signals did not exist (what is known
today as radio astronomy), and the community of science rejected
Tesla's data. Tesla spent the latter part of his life trying
to signal Mars.
Colorado
departure
Tesla left Colorado Springs on January 7, 1900. The lab was torn
down, broken up, and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado
experiments prepared Tesla for his next project, the
establishment of a wireless power transmission facility that
would be known as Wardenclyffe.
In 1900, Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In
1901, the construction began on land near Long Island Sound. The
architect Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main
building. Tesla's project was funded by influential
industrialists and other venture capitalists. In June 1902,
Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from
Houston Street. In 1903, the tower structure neared completion,
although it was not yet functional due to a design error. In
Electrical World and Engineer (March 5, 1904), Tesla reportedly
determined the mode of ball lightning formation and produced them
artificially.
In 1904, the United States Patent Office awarded the patent for
radio to Guglielmo Marconi, though his work is based on
Tesla's widely-discussed demonstration years prior. In May
1905, some of Tesla's patents expired, stopping the royalty
payments and causing severe reduction to the funding of the
Wardenclyffe Tower. Tesla advertised services of the Wardenclyffe
facility to find alternative funding to little success.
Around 1910, Tesla designed the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and
produced Tesla coils for sale to various businesses to generate
funding. He developed a two-hundred horsepower sixteen-thousand
revolutions-per-minute bladeless turbine. It was shown to an
audience on his fiftieth birthday.
Of the 700-plus patents accumulated by Tesla, the most
controversial today is his Wardenclyffe Tower. The tower was
meant to be the start of a national (and later global) system of
towers broadcasting power to users as radio waves. Instead of
supplying electricity through a current grid system, users would
simply "receive" power through antennas on their roofs.
At the time the power grid was quite limited in terms of who it
reached and the Tower represented a way of significantly reducing
the cost of "electrifying" the countryside.
Though never completed successfully in Tesla's lifetime due
to lack of funding, and finally dismantled for scrap during
wartime, its principles are currently being implemented by a U.S.
military project in Alaska, spanning several hundred acres.
However, Project HAARP, as it is called, targets a different
objective. While Tesla's tower was to be his supreme test of
the applicability of transmitted power, HAARP is being used to
study ionospheric effects on radio communication. Wardenclyffe
also provides a basis for a current search for practical
applications for focused wave and particle beams, such as the
laser and maser.
In the financial panic of 1907, Tesla set Westinghouse free from
payments on his patents over the induction motor for a nominal
sum of money. Diminished in strength by the "War of the
Currents," the Westinghouse Company survived due to
Tesla's act of generosity. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla's
finances unraveled. Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe
"Tesla's million-dollar folly."
Nobel rumors
Due to the fact that the Nobel Prize was awarded to Marconi for
radio in 1909, it was believed that Tesla and Edison were to
share the Nobel Prize of 1912 (or 1915; some accounts differ).
Tesla's rumored nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physics was
primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits using high
voltage high frequency resonant transformers. It was possible
that Tesla was told of the plans of the physics award committee
and let it be known that he would not share the award with
Edison.
Later years
Prior to the First World War, Tesla looked overseas for investors
to fund his research. When the war started, Tesla lost funding he
was receiving from his European patents. Wardenclyffe Tower was
also demolished towards the end of WWI. Tesla had predicted the
relevant issues of the post-World War I environment (a war which
theoretically ended) in a printed article (December 20, 1914).
Tesla believed that the League of Nations was not a remedy for
the times and issues. In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against
Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction
against the claims of Marconi. Around 1916, Tesla filed for
bankruptcy because he owed so much in back taxes. He was living
in poverty.
Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of
obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became
obsessed with the number three. He often felt compelled to walk
around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a
stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his plate at every
meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time
and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered
by some to be evidence of partial insanity and this probably hurt
what was left of his reputation. This obsessive-compulsive
behavior may have originated from the observations over repeated
polyphase systems in nature that Tesla researched.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria, renting in
an arrangement for deferred payments. In 1917, around the time
that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished, Tesla received the
highest and most significant honor the IEEE can award to any
person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problem,
the Edison Medal. The incongruities between what might have been
and the situation at hand probably did not pass without notice by
Tesla.
Radar
Nikola Tesla, in August 1917, first established principals
regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive RADAR
units in 1934. In the 1917 The Electrical Experimenter, Tesla
stated the principals of modern military radar in detail.
Tesla's study of high voltage, high frequency alternating
currents lead to this development. Tesla had formed the concept
of using radio waves to detect objects at a distance.
Tesla stated,
"For instance, by their [standing electromagnetic waves] use
we may produce at will, from a sending station, an electrical
effect in any particular region of the globe; [with which] we may
determine the relative position or course of a moving object,
such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or
its speed."
Tesla proposed to use electromagnetic waves to determine the
relative position, speed, and course of a moving object and other
modern concepts of radar. Tesla had proposed it may help find
submarines (which it isn't well-suited for), though it was
first applied successfully to find aircraft (after their later
proliferation) and surface ships during World War II. Emil
Girardeau, working with the first French radar systems, stated he
was building radar systems "conceived according to the
principles stated by Tesla".
By the twenties, Tesla reportedly negotiates with Great
Britain's Prime Minister Chamberlin government over a ray
system. Tesla also had stated efforts had been made to steal the
"death ray" (though they had failed). The Chamberlin
government was removed though before any final negotiations
occurred. The incoming Baldwin government found no use of
Tesla's suggestions and ended negotiations.
1930s
On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put
Tesla on the cover.
The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power
generation.
In 1935, many of Marconi's patents relating to the radio were
declared invalid by the United States Court of Claims. The Court
of Claims decided that the prior work of Tesla (specifically
US645576 and US649621) had anticipated Marconi's later works.
Tesla got his last patent in 1928 on January 3, an apparatus for
aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL
aircraft.
Dynamic theory of
gravity
When he was eighty-one, Tesla challenged Albert Einstein's
theory of relativity, announcing he was working on a dynamic
theory of gravity and argued that a field of force was a better
concept and did away with the curvature of space. Unfortunately
the theory was never published, but Tesla may have been
developing a theory about gravity waves. This theory provides a
basis for plasma cosmology.
Nikola Tesla Memorial at Niagara
Falls
Tesla was the first to successfully convert mechanical energy of
flowing water to electrical energy.
Tesla died alone in the hotel New Yorker of heart failure, some
time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January
8, 1943. Despite selling his AC electricity patents, Tesla was
essentially destitute and died with significant debts. At the
time of his death, Tesla had been working on some form of
teleforce weapon, or Death Ray, the secrets of which he had
offered to the United States War Department on the morning of
January 5.
Immediately after his death became known, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation instructed the Office of Alien Property to take
possession of Tesla's papers and property, despite his US
citizenship. All of Tesla's personal effects were seized on
the advice of presidential advisors. J. Edgar Hoover declared the
case "most secret," because of the nature of
Tesla's inventions and patents. Tesla's Serbian-Orthodox
family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with American
authorities to gain these items after Tesla's death due to
the potential significance of some of Tesla's research.
Eventually, Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanovich, got possession
some of his personal effects (which are now housed in the Nikola
Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia).
Tesla's funeral took place on January 12, 1943 at the
Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York
City.
Tesla always disputed the claim that Marconi invented radio. An
ongoing lawsuit regarding this was finally resolved in his favor
after his death. This decision was based on the fact that there
was prior work existing before the establishment of Marconi's
patent. At the time, the United States Army was involved in a
patent infringement lawsuit with Marconi regarding radio, leading
some to posit that the government granted Tesla the patent on
order to nullify any claims Marconi would have to
compensation.
In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara
Falls.
Perhaps because of Tesla's personal eccentricity and the
dramatic nature of his demonstrations, conspiracy theories about
applications of his work persist. The common Hollywood stereotype
of the "mad scientist" mirrors Tesla's real-life
persona, or at least a caricature of it-which may be no accident
considering that many of the earliest such movies (including the
first movie version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) were
produced by Tesla's old rival, Thomas Edison.
There are at least two films describing Tesla's life. In the
first, arranged for TV, Tesla was portrayed by Serb actor Rade
Serbedzija. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslavian film
named Tajna Nikole Tesle (The Secret of Nikola Tesla).
View on war
Tesla was opposed to wars in general. Tesla did devise protective
measures that would prevent wars. Tesla found exceptions in some
wars and some justifiable situations. Tesla envisioned that more
terrible weapons were going to be developed in the future. These
weapons' destructive actions and ranges would have virtually
no limit.
Tesla's solution was to developed expedients for preventing
any conflict. Tesla developed plans for known as
"teleforce" [or, commonly, a "death ray"]
(primarily a defensive weapon, but with characteristics of a
weapon of offense). The "teleforce" weapon was a type
of defensive particle-beam weapon. This would allow protection
against invasion. The device would provide complete protection
against enemies approaching by sea or air.
Tesla could not find financing for demonstration of the
"death ray" discoveries. It could be used as an
offensive weapon. Tesla also advocated developing airplanes and
wireless energy transmission