Nikola Tesla:His pursuit of the wireless transmission of energy using the Earths own electrical conductivity most inspires his champions
THE MYTH OF the solitary mad scientist toiling away in his laboratory on inventions that astound and confound, pushing humanity forward by sheer brain power alone, still captures the popular imagination – certainly more so than the large companies that overwhelmingly drive modern technological progress. Outside the realms of science-fiction, of course, there are few inventors who fit the stereotype.
One who most certainly does, however, is the great Nikola Tesla, the Serbian physicist and electrical engineer who earned the label “the man who invented the 20th century” after he dreamt up radio, X-rays, hydroelectrical generators and AC electricity, which distributes power efficiently over long distances, and many, many more technologies.
Tesla could be seen as the original mad scientist: a mixture of genius and magician whose inventions changed the course of society and who achieved great fame during his lifetime, but slid into obscurity after his death.
His list of achievements and long and varied biography make him the most fascinating figure from science in the late 19th century and early 20th century. His achievements range from lighting the world with the first AC electrical grids to harnessing the power of Niagara Falls with the world’s first hydroelectricity plant.
In creating lightning in his laboratory, with great arcs of electricity discharged by his high-powered Tesla Coil, he approached the position of a 20th-century Prometheus who, instead of being bound by Zeus, suffered penury and senility in old age – and was close to forgotten after his death.
It is fitting that one of his best friends was Mark Twain, Tesla’s life was a rich narrative that not even Twain could have invented.
Tesla was born to Serb parents in 1856 in what is now Croatia, and struggled through his studies in various European universities. While his academic progress was stilted, his mental capacity was startling.
He had a facility for visualising machines in his mind, down to the finest detail. This is how he described the process in his autobiography: “When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop.”
Such a mind would never want for opportunity, but the greatest lay in the United States, where he moved in 1884. Almost immediately, he took work with Thomas Edison, who in time would become his greatest rival.
The discord between them did not take long to materialise, with Tesla feeling Edison reneged on an agreement over payment for his expertise. Tesla resigned, though he would eventually gain his revenge when his alternating current polyphase transmission system, which he built for entrepreneur and inventor George Westinghouse, prevailed over Edisons less efficient direct current system.
This was the fabled War of the Currents, a battle between two titans of technology that can be seen as a 19th-century version of the operating system wars between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates a century later.
The turning point came at the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, when the Westinghouse company illuminated the fair. The City of Light they created with 100,000 incandescent lamps won Tesla widespread acclaim. Edisons desperate attempts to stymie his rival was doomed.
Teslas victory was confirmed later that year when Westinghouse won a contract for one of the most challenging engineering feats of the century: harnessing Niagara Falls to generate power for a grid to provide electricity to Buffalo and as far south as New York city.
But if Tesla unarguably won the War of the Currents, his next phase of experimentation was to be rather less profitable. He turned his attention to radio technology, using his patented Tesla Coils to transmit and receive radio waves.
Guglielmo Marconi, however, utilised many of Teslas patented ideas, and it wasnt until after Teslas death in 1943 that the US patents office ruled in his favour, effectively confirming that Tesla had invented radio. It is an indication of how far his reputation had suffered by then that Marconis claim to that crown has rarely been contested.
(Marconi won a Nobel Prize for his work in 1909 but Tesla was never recognised by the Norwegians, at one point allegedly refusing to share the honour with Edison.)
Tesla’s most ambitious project was never completed. In 1900, JP Morgan funded his plans for Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, a gigantic telecommunications device that would allow the transmission of electricity across the globe, a development of experiments he conducted in Colorado Springs in 1899. It is this phase of Tesla’s career, the pursuit of the wireless transmission of energy using the Earth’s own electrical conductivity, that most inspires his present-day champions.
His plans seem to be the preserve of science-fiction writers rather than electrical engineers, more suited to the world of magical illusion than scientific experimentation. His later quest to create a teleforce, a particle beam projector, which Tesla considered a weapon to end all wars, seems even more fantastical again.
It is no surprise, then, that he is a recurring figure in science-fiction literature, which is partially responsible for the revival of his name in recent years. Most notably, David Bowie played him in Christopher Nolan’s 2007 film The Prestige, in which Teslas scientific experiments become indistinguishable from magic.
Most appropriately of all, his name has been adopted by the California-based Tesla Motors electrical car company, meaning his name will once again be associated with groundbreaking electrical innovation.
