Nikola Tesla
Serbian electrician-Communicator Nikola Tesla from his youth was a man of inspiration and risk — easily dropped out of school, was fond of gambling. But his abilities were noticed, and even gave a recommendation to the great Edison, who at that time was the famous American inventor in the field of energy. So Tesla moved to the US from Europe — not having a penny to live, just believing in his intelligence and breakthrough ideas.
The legendary "inspired prophet of electricity" in everyday matters was a very strange man. Often geniuses are people with quirks, but Tesla was serious enough — judging by the numerous evidence of his contemporaries and himself, he suffered from a number of mental disorders.
Tesla pursued a very vivid vision and hallucinations, in which he learned to "dissolve" and lived in them for a lifetime. He also had a pronounced obsessive-compulsive disorder: the inventor was afraid of pearls, was painfully clean (required regular replacement of 18 towels), half his life he lived in hotels where he chose only rooms multiple of three. In addition, Tesla never had a relationship with women, but loved pigeons — about one of the birds he wrote "I loved this bird, as a man loves a woman. As long as she was there for me, there was meaning in my life." Often on walks physicist "hung" and could stand for hours. Or suddenly without a reason to do a somersault.
There was the strangeness of Tesla and the practical benefits — he often did not even need to conduct real experiments in the laboratory to confirm or deny this or that idea, it was enough to have a thought experiment.
A reliable fact about Tesla's youth — a genius who conquered electricity, did not receive a fundamental higher education. That's why they say that Nikola Tesla was primarily an inventor, not a scientist. But the phenomenal mental abilities, photographic memory and imagination allowed the Serbian young man to invent new devices and technologies one after another. It is numerous patents that bought from him American Industrialists, Tesla allowed to make a fortune and live a secular life.
The main practical invention of Nikola Tesla is considered to be a two-phase alternator. At that time, a number of scientists developed this theory, but it was our hero who was able to patent the device and clearly declare it. In the 1880s, Thomas Edison and his supporters advocated the use of direct current, although it could not be used to transmit electricity further than 1.5 kilometers. At the same time, Tesla's system — an electric generator that gives alternating current, and an electric motor — made it possible to build large power plants that would supply the residents of the whole area. Thomas Edison could not accept the defeat in this "war of currents", as it threatened him with ruin. He organized a whole campaign to denigrate Tesla's name: bought domestic cats and dogs and publicly executed them with alternating current, proving that he is more dangerous for home use. He also came up with an electric chair for the execution of people — all the same alternating current. But all these efforts were in vain, and soon DC power plants in the United States ceased to build.
It is this part of Tesla's development that is most reliable — working with high-frequency currents, a rotating magnetic field, radio frequencies and devices for their reception and transmission. It was Tesla who first collected and showed the public the radio — controlled ship-this technology became widely used only 50 years later.
He was the first to propose a radar principle for submarine detection. Tesla also worked with the principles of gas glow — for example, at the world exhibition showed the first "neon" signs of fluorescent lamps. He has successfully created a variety of new antenna design, the most famous of which was the tower in his lab "Wardenclyff".
"Experts" biography of Nikola Tesla, who studied it on popular TV movies and programs (which show somewhere between the stories of flying saucers and the secret world government), will ask: "What about the "death Rays" Tesla? What about the resonator that could split the Earth? Why not mention getting energy from the ether? Where's the Tunguska meteorite and the Philadelphia experiment?"Alas. Most of the most interesting stories that tell about the famous inventor are the result of successful work of Nikola Tesla on his own image and competent PR.
Tesla, aside from his extraordinary abilities in the natural Sciences, was a brilliant lecturer and showman. His public lectures gathered crowds of spectators, and he did not disappoint them — juggled with glowing bulbs, let lightning through his body and remained unharmed, showed miracles with electromagnets. This, along with the newspaper hype, brought him popularity and, as a result, attracting investment to Finance projects that he considered really important.
Unfortunately or fortunately, the ideas just overwhelmed Tesla, and he could throw a promising topic just to do something new. Therefore, many of his developments have not been launched into industrial production — to introduce them into wide use, it was necessary to overcome the current energy lobby, and the genius was not possible and willing to get involved in such wars for each of their inventions.
But Tesla was loved by journalists — he was always ready to" warm up " their story about some fantastic idea that came to mind. Many of the "inventions" attributed to the genius Serbian are known only by his newspaper interviews. Was he exaggerating? Alter his stories for the sake of sensationalism? Or did his ideas extend so far, but simply were not implemented? We'll never know that. Tesla told the Newspapers that he was catching signals from Mars, that he invented a "box" that receives electricity from the ether, that he invented death Rays that "can destroy 10,000 aircraft from a distance of 400 km" that could "split the Earth, picking up the desired frequency of oscillation of the resonator" or transfer energy to another continent without wires. From the evidence of these inventions, there are only articles in tabloids.
The image of the" mad scientist", fantastic experiments which can destroy the world, was so strong and tenacious that Tesla began to attribute frankly unreal acts. So, many are still confident that the crater from the impact of the Tunguska meteorite is the result of Tesla's experiment on the transmission of energy over a distance. Even when refuted by facts (in 1908, Tesla had neither the means nor the serious lab level "Wardenclyffe"), these legends live for centuries. And, apparently, will live for a long time — because the death Rays are more interesting asynchronous generators.