The great inventor was also a great mystifier. So, the main source of the most fantastic rumors about himself, exciting the public for almost a century and a half, because on July 10, Tesla turns 160 years old. "Around the World" figured out if it's true that ...
Nikola Tesla, 1890
Tesla's experiments caused the "fall of the Tunguska meteorite"
Not.
One of the most popular myths: in 1908, it was not a mysterious object from outer space that exploded over the Siberian taiga, but a bunch of energy sent by Tesla to a distance of thousands of kilometers from his Wardenclyffe tower on Long Island in New York. The inventor actually built the tower for experiments on the transmission of electrical signals over great distances, but these experiments, as you know, were not crowned with success.
Tesla became interested in electricity thanks to the cat
Maybe. In 1939, in a letter to a 12-year-old girl, Paula Fotić, the inventor told a story about how, as a child, he ran his hand along the back of a pet and saw a miracle: sparks sparkled on the cat's fur. The father explained to the boy that this is the same electricity as lightning. According to Nikola Tesla, he was then three years old, but the scientist carried the memory of this case, as well as his interest in electricity, through his whole life. However, 80 years passed from the event to the story about it, and the inventor liked to mythologize his biography.
Thomas Alva Edison
Edison “threw” Tesla for 50 thousand dollars
Maybe. Tesla's friend John O'Neill wrote from his words that the inventor who worked in the firm of Thomas Edison offered to improve the design of generators, and the employer agreed, promising 50 thousand dollars for this. But when Tesla completed the task and demanded payment, Edison just laughed and replied: "You don't understand American humor." After that, the offended engineer quit. The author of Tesla's biography, Yevgeny Matonin, writes that seriously tight-fisted Edison simply could not promise employees such amounts.
Tesla invented the radio transmitter
Yes. Italian Guglielmo Marconi, Russian scientist Alexander Popov and Nikola Tesla independently developed equipment for wireless communication using radio waves. In 1943, six months after Tesla's death, a United States court officially declared him, an American citizen, the first inventor of the radio (whereas in Russia back in 1909, the commission of the Russian Physico-Chemical Society recognized Popov's priority). It was Tesla who invented the mast antenna and a number of other important details that improved the quality of radio communications.
Tesla has created a superweapon "death rays"
Not. Between the two world wars in different countries there were rumors about the invention of the rays of death, capable of destroying people and equipment at a distance. Tesla, too, was fascinated by the idea and told reporters and potential sponsors that he knew how to create something similar. “Whether you send troops to attack where these rays operate, whether you send 10 thousand aircraft or a millionth army, the aircraft will be immediately shot down and the army destroyed,” she was quoted in 1934 New York Herald Tribune interview given to scientists on their 78th birthday. At the same time, Tesla believed that weapons of such power would end wars, making them meaningless. There is no information about successful tests of such Tesla's invention.
Tesla doted on pigeons
Yes. Living in New York, the inventor specially bought seeds every day and went to feed the birds. And if for some reason he could not, he hired a messenger for this. The birds flocked to Tesla's whistle and landed on his head and shoulders without fear. Several times the scientist had to move out of hotels, due to the fact that he tried to keep pigeons.
Tesla believed he made contact with the Martians
Yes.
“The ability to attract the attention of the Martians was the ultimate goal of [my] principle of the propagation of electrical waves,” the famed electrical engineer told reporters in 1896 in a sensational wave when astronomer Percival Lowell suggested that the channels seen by his colleague on the surface of the Red Planet were man-made structures. Three years later, recording electrical impulses in his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Tesla caught the ordered signals and decided that they could not be anything other than messages from Mars.
Tesla was obsessed with the number three
Yes. “All the repetitive actions that I did had to be divided by three,” the scientist wrote. He counted the number of steps while walking and, wandering around hotels all his life, he always settled in rooms with a number multiple of three. Adherence to repetitive actions and personal signs in combination with phobias are symptoms of neurosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Tesla prepared an experiment on destroyer teleportation
Not. Conspiracy theorists are sure that Tesla's works were useful to the US military in 1943 in the so-called Philadelphia experiment, also known as the Rainbow project. Allegedly, the destroyer "Eldridge", which was in the port of Philadelphia, was subjected to electromagnetic influence, because of which the ship disappeared, materialized three hundred kilometers away in Norfolk, Virginia, and immediately returned to its place, with half the crew gone crazy. This legend was launched in 1956 by the mentally ill Carl Allen, who claimed to have observed the experiment from a nearby ship. It is established that the Eldridge did not enter the port of Philadelphia at all in 1943.
Pierce-Arrow is a prestigious car brand in the 1930s and one of the oldest
Tesla has created an electric car with an inexhaustible source of energy
Not. The first electric vehicles appeared in the 19th century, but because of the difficulty of recharging, they were replaced by cars with an internal combustion engine. A story is circulating in the media that Peter Savo, who identified himself as Tesla's nephew, told that his brilliant relative solved this problem. According to Savo, in 1931, his uncle tested with him for eight days an electric car, personally converted from a Pierce-Arrow car, and called the mysterious "ether around us" the source of the car's energy. But not a single expert saw this miracle of technology, and the inventor did not have a nephew named Peter Savo. However, an electric car company is named after Tesla. Tesla Motors- in memory of his merits in the improvement of the electric motor.
Tesla was a vegetarian
Yes. In his youth, the inventor was very fond of steak, but over time he refused meat, but drank a lot of milk. Tesla considered tea, coffee, cocoa, tobacco and chewing gum unhealthy, but, as O'Neill testified, he enjoyed "drinking whiskey, considering it to be a source of very useful energy and an invaluable means of prolonging life." The scientist even claimed that this drink would allow him to live one hundred and fifty years.
Tesla faked his own death to participate in secret US military developments
Not. Tired and sick, the 86-year-old genius of Serbian origin died on the night of January 7-8, 1943 in his room at the New Yorker Hotel due to coronary artery thrombosis. Tesla was buried in a church in front of two thousand witnesses and buried at Ferncliffe Cemetery near New York. Later, the nephew of the deceased, the Yugoslav politician Sava Kosanovich, ensured that the body was exhumed and cremated. Apparently, with a long-range view: a few years later, in 1957, Tesla's ashes in a golden urn were transferred to the museum of the inventor in Belgrade, where it is still kept today.
Photo: Alamy, SPL / Legion-media (x3), Getty Images, Napoleon Sarony / Library of Congress, iStock (x3), NASA / JPL-Caltech, U.S. Navy
Nikola Tesla - "lord of lightning"
Nikola Tesla - inventor in the field of electrical and radio engineering, engineer, physicist. He is widely known for his contributions to the development of AC devices, polyphase systems and the electric motor, which led to the so-called second stage of the industrial revolution. He is also known as a supporter of the existence of the ether: his numerous experiments and experiments are known, which aimed to show the presence of the ether as a special form of matter that can be used in technology. The unit of measurement of magnetic flux density (magnetic induction) is named after Tesla. Tesla was regarded by contemporary biographers as "the man who invented the 20th century" and the "patron saint" of modern electricity.
Tesla was born and raised in Austria-Hungary, his family lived in the village of Smilyan, 6 km from the town of Gospic, the main town of the historical province of Lika. Father - Milutin Tesla - a priest of the Srem diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, mother - Georgina Mandic, was the daughter of a priest.
Nikola finished the first grade of elementary school in Smilany. In 1862, his father was promoted to the rank, and the Tesla family moved to Gospic, where he completed the remaining three years of elementary school, and then the three-year lower real gymnasium, which he completed in 1870. In the autumn of the same year, Nikola entered the Higher Real School in the city of Karlovac. He lived in the house of his aunt, his father's cousin, Stanka Baranovich.
In July 1873, Tesla received his Abitur. Despite his father's orders, Nikola returned to his family in Gospic, where there was a cholera epidemic, and immediately became infected (although it is not entirely clear whether it was actually cholera). Here is what Tesla himself said about this: “From childhood, the path of a priest was destined for me. This prospect, like a black cloud, hung over me. After receiving my Abitur, I decided to study the spiritual sciences. It was then that a terrible epidemic of cholera broke out, which wiped out a tenth of the population. The illness took a toll on me. Later, cholera led to dropsy, lung problems, and other illnesses. Nine months in bed, almost without movement, seemed to have exhausted all my vitality, and the doctors abandoned me. It was a harrowing experience, not so much because of the physical suffering, but because of my great desire to live. During one of the attacks, when everyone thought that I was dying, my father rushed into the room to support me with these words: "You will get better." How now I see his deathly-pale face when he tried to encourage me in a tone that contradicted his assurances. “Perhaps,” I replied, “I will be able to recover if you let me become an engineer instead of a priest and let me go to study engineering.” "You will do better educational institution in Europe,” he replied solemnly, and I knew he would do it. A heavy weight was lifted from my soul. But the consolation might have come too late if I had not been miraculously cured by an old woman with a bean tea. There was no power of suggestion or mysterious influence in it. The remedy for the disease was in the fullest sense curative, heroic, if not desperate, but it had an effect.
The recovered Nikola entered the Graz Technical College (now the Graz Technical University), where he began to study electrical engineering. Watching the work of the Gramma machine at lectures on electrical engineering, Tesla came to the conclusion about the imperfection of direct current machines, but Professor Jacob Peschl sharply criticized his ideas, before the whole course he gave a lecture on the impracticability of using alternating current in electric motors.
After graduating from college, Tesla got a job as a teacher in a real gymnasium in Gospic - the one in which he studied. Work in Gospic did not suit him. The family had little money, and only thanks to financial assistance from his two uncles, Petar and Pavel Mandic, young Tesla was able to leave for Prague in January 1880, where he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague. In order to somehow survive, Tesla also tripled for a part-time job - until 1882 he worked as an electrical engineer in the government telegraph company in Budapest. But work in the telegraph company did not give Tesla the opportunity to realize his plans for the creation of an alternating current electric motor. As soon as the opportunity arose, he got a job at the Edison Continental Company in Paris, but there he was deceived by not paying the promised salary, as a result of which he, insulted, quit.
One of the first biographers of the inventor, Boris Rzhonsnitsky, claims: “At that time, Tesla had in his luggage amazing inventions important for the development of electrical engineering. He expected to sell them at the place of service, but after cheating with money, he decided to sell them to someone else. His first thought was to go to St. Petersburg, since many important discoveries were made in Russia in those years, and the names of Pavel Yablochkov, Dmitry Lachinov, Vladimir Chikolev and others were well known to electricians of all countries. But at the last moment, one of his friends persuaded Nikola to go to the USA instead of Russia.
Tesla arrived in New York in 1884 and took a job as an engineer repairing electric motors and DC generators. One day, he offered his boss a bet: he would be paid $50,000 (at that time, an amount roughly equivalent to $1 million today) if he could constructively improve Edison's DC electric machines. The bet was made, Nicola went to work and soon introduced 24 variations of the Edison machine, a new commutator and regulator that greatly improved performance. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about remuneration, Edison refused Tesla, noting that the emigrant still did not understand American humor well.
For several years, the inventor was forced to survive in ancillary work. He was engaged in digging ditches, "sleeping where he could, and eating what he could find." During this period, he befriended a similarly positioned engineer, Brown, who was able to persuade several of his acquaintances to give Tesla a little financial support. In April 1887, the Tesla Arc company, created with this money, began to equip street lighting with new arc lamps. Soon the prospects of the company were proved by large orders from many cities in the United States, and its bank accounts were replenished with the first million.
For the company's office in New York, Tesla rented a house on Fifth Avenue not far from the building occupied by the Edison company. An intense competitive struggle unleashed between the two companies, known in America as the "War of the Currents".
In July 1888, the famous American industrialist George Westinghouse bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, paying an average of $25,000 each. He also invited the inventor to a consultant position in the Pittsburgh factories, where industrial designs of AC machines were developed. The work did not bring satisfaction to the inventor, hindering the emergence of new ideas. Despite Westinghouse's persuasion, Tesla returned to his laboratory in New York a year later.
Tesla spent the following years researching magnetic fields and high frequencies in his laboratory. These years were the most fruitful: he received many patents - their number exceeded one hundred thousand (all kinds of electrical devices, frequency meters, devices for equipping submarines, various radio equipment, a number of improvements in steam turbines, etc.). He spent all the money he earned on his experiments, which made him famous for centuries. In his speeches, Tesla said that he received the ideas of inventions from the unified information field of the Earth, to which he learned to “connect”.
In the childhood of 1914, Serbia was at the center of the events that led to the outbreak of the First World War. While staying in America, Tesla first thought about creating a superweapon: "I am obliged to make a machine capable of destroying one or more armies in one action."
At the heart of the machine was supposed to be, as the scientist believed, an electric current. Tesla began research on high frequency currents and high voltages. The experiments led to the discovery of a way to clean contaminated surfaces. A similar effect of currents on the skin has shown that in this way it is possible to remove small rashes, cleanse pores and kill microbes. This method is used in modern electrotherapy.
Such a weapon, as is commonly believed, Tesla did not succeed in inventing. However, this is the official version. Many researchers believe that the Tunguska meteorite that fell in Siberia more than a hundred years ago is nothing more than a test of Tesla's new unique weapon. In support of this hypothesis, it is reported that many who have been in the scientist's laboratory saw a map of Siberia on his wall, including the area in which the explosion occurred. In addition, in one of the articles - published a few months before the incident at Tunguska, Tesla himself wrote: "... Even now, my wireless power plants can turn any area of \u200b\u200bthe globe into an area unsuitable for habitation ...".
There is more evidence. So, a few months before the explosion, Tesla publicly announced his intention to light the road to north pole expeditions of the famous traveler Robert Peary. It is noteworthy that on the night of June 30, many observers in Canada and Northern Europe noted clouds of an unusual silvery color in the sky, which seemed to pulsate. This coincides with the accounts of eyewitnesses who previously observed Tesla's experiments in his laboratory. In addition, in those days, in dozens of settlements in Western Europe and Russia, there was an intense glow of the sky, nightly luminous clouds and an unusually colorful twilight. According to spectral observations carried out in Germany and England, the glow was not related to the aurora.
Somewhat later, in 1914, the inventor proposed a project according to which the entire globe, together with the atmosphere, was to become a giant lamp. To do this, you just need to skip upper layers atmosphere high-frequency current, and they will start to glow. But Tesla did not explain how to do this, although he repeatedly claimed that he did not see any difficulties in this.
This was his main invention - "The Worldwide Wireless System for the Transmission of Information and Energy". The transmitting station could send electrical energy to any point on the Earth, taking into account the reflection from the ionosphere - the upper layers of the atmosphere and from the Earth itself. Everyone could use it - ships, planes, factories through a special receiving installation. The same system could, according to the scientist, broadcast accurate time signals, music, drawings, facsimile texts to the whole world.
All these facts undoubtedly strengthen the positions of the supporters of the hypothesis that on June 30, 1908, no meteorite or comet fell in the region of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, and the explosion was the result of Tesla's experiments with energy transfer over long distances.
Another mysterious invention of Tesla, about which his followers argued for a long time, is the "Earthquake Machine", which, working on electromagnetic waves, as expected, could cause natural disasters anywhere on the planet. According to legend, it was this machine that caused the earthquake in New York in 1908, which destroyed Nikola's laboratory. Tesla himself destroyed this machine, because he saw the real danger that it poses to humanity.
In general, Tesla did not patent many of his discoveries and did not even leave drawings. Most of his diaries and manuscripts have not survived, and only fragmentary information has survived about many inventions to this day. For example, according to some reports, Tesla invented a super-frequency radio receiver that helps to receive signals from other planets.
He managed to establish a connection with living entities on some distant planet (he himself assumed that it could be Mars, but was not sure about this).
In 1931, Nicola showed the public a mysterious car. The gasoline engine was removed from the luxury limousine and an electric motor was installed. Then Tesla, in front of the public, placed a nondescript box under the hood, from which two rods protruded, and connected it to the engine. Saying: "Now we have energy," Tesla got behind the wheel and drove off. The car was tested for a week. She developed speeds up to 150 km / h and, it seems, did not need recharging at all. Everyone asked Tesla: "Where does the energy come from?". He replied: "From the ether." After a successful test, the car and all its drawings were destroyed - articles appeared in the newspapers of that time, where two versions of this act were put forward: either the scientist went crazy, or he was threatened by large automobile businessmen who understood that the electric car would completely destroy their business.
Tesla also announced to the world that he had invented "death rays" that could destroy any incoming aircraft at a distance of up to 400 kilometers at the touch of a button on the remote control.
He invented a camera that was able to photograph the biofield (aura) of a person.
The death of a scientist is also connected with mysticism. At an advanced age, Tesla was hit by a car, he received a broken rib. The disease caused acute pneumonia, which turned into a chronic form. Tesla was bedridden, and soon died - from heart failure. However, many newspapers of the time wrote that the scientist's death could have been set up by those to whom he crossed the road with his inventions, or by those who could be offended by Tesla's refusal to cooperate.
The body of the scientist was not discovered immediately, only 2 days after his death, a maid looked into the room from which he did not leave. On January 12, the body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was installed at the Farncliff Cemetery in New York. Later it was moved to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
The famous Serbian inventor was born on July 10, 1856 in Croatia. During the period of his life and contribution to science, he was elevated to the level of Leonardo Da Vinci. Tesla not only invented methods for transmitting and “subduing” electricity. His developments became the basis for most modern technologies TV, Internet, phone calls, etc.
Despite the fact that the parents wanted to send their son to the clergy, the will of chance gives the scientist the opportunity to go into engineering.
In July 1884, Nicola arrived in the United States and got a job in the company of Thomas Edison, already known at that time. The scientist worked as an equipment adjuster, but he brought very fresh innovative ideas to the company that Edison did not like. So in the spring, Thomas offered Nicola a bet if he could build a new electric car. Tesla offered several dozen options and demands the promised amount, to which Edison laughs off hinting that the emigrant still does not understand the jokes of the Americans. After that, the inventor quit the company.
The inventor gains immense popularity during his experiments with the transmission of electricity over a distance. The scientist claims that our entire planet is made up of electric current, therefore, no wires are required for its generation and transmission. A number of experiments prove his theory, moreover, he even manages to tune in for short distances, but his ambitions turned out to be much stronger than his financial capabilities. Financing is stopped and the scientist does not bring his invention to the end. However, some sources say otherwise. It's about that Tesla himself destroyed his transmitter and destroyed all written data on his experiments. He explains this by the fact that this device can become a weapon of mass destruction, and this is not included in the plans of the inventor.
The great scientist was born in Croatia, but subsequently worked in the Czech Republic, France, the USA, carried out projects for Soviet Union and Germany. Throughout his life he invented a large number of mechanisms, most of which were ahead of their time. It is worth noting that it is difficult for scientists to create new designs due to the rapid development of technology. Tesla's inventions are used in three different centuries, which is simply unimaginable in the modern sense.
In the fall of 1938, the scientist was hit by a taxi car. Numerous fractures bedridden Tesla for several months. Health problems worsened due to the outbreak of the war, which also took place in his homeland. Nikola Tesla died in early January 1943 in a hotel room.
Lord of Lightning Nikola Tesla
Denis Bordakov
Foreword
He spoke several languages (except Serbian and Croatian, spoke German, French, Italian, English), received a classical education, had a broad outlook, knew and loved poetry and literature (the heroes of the books, according to him, aroused in him the desire to become " being of a higher order"), in his workshop, among many other celebrities, there were Mark Twain, Kipling and G. Wells - Tesla was so close to the first that for years after his death he spoke of him as if he were alive (this Twain called Tesla "Lord of Lightning "). Tesla communicated and corresponded with artists, composers (Dvorak, Paderevsky) and artists. Everyone who personally knew Tesla, scientists, engineers, industrialists immediately fell under the inexplicable influence of this thin, sharp-faced, dark-haired man.
The great inventor of the 19th (and also the 20th) century, whose discoveries formed the basis of all modern electric power industry: alternators, induction motor, asynchronous machine, three-phase and multi-phase transformers, single-wire line, wireless power transmission and, Tesla radio - here he is ahead and Popova, and Marconi, remote control and automation (a yacht on New York Lake), high-voltage resonant transformers, X-ray detection (before Roentgen), fluorescent lamps, Kirlian effect (long before Kirlian itself), discovery of the biological influence of EM fields (in particular, on the work of the brain), created an original theory of the ether
He seemed to think about everything in the world. "I no longer work for the present, I work for the future," Tesla told reporters gathered in New York more than seven decades ago. "The future belongs to me!" However, Tesla ended his life in a room at the New Yorker Hotel. Alone and in complete poverty. In the thirties, Tesla expectedly refused to accept the Nobel Prize awarded to him jointly with Edison. The world was not ready for his discoveries? Is that what it's all about?
Tesla was not ahead of time. He showed up just when it was supposed to - on time and not by chance. However, he, too, fell victim to the financial system and the social system of the world contemporary to him (and us). This mighty octopus (whose tentacles stretch far, one of them is John Pierpont Morgan), grinds in his millstones everything more or less valuable and burps everything that in his eyes is not capable of bringing instant profit, determining the value of any undertaking only economic from him profit, spitting for the benefit of mankind, the interests of progress, trampling the intellect, morality and ethics, unleashing two of the most difficult wars of our century, ruined the Master.
Tesla's life path was a struggle without a chance of success. But the defeat of Tesla and those like him is only a temporary defeat. The strong hands of others who have come after him will pick up and carry the banner of knowledge and progress that fell so early from his hands.
early years
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 at 0000 hours, in the village of Smiljany (Croatia), in Lika, the Austro-Hungarian province, to father Milytin Tesla, a Serbian Orthodox priest, and to mother Georgina, nicknamed Duke, born in the Mandic family. Nikola Tesla was the fourth child, and it seemed that he was destined for the usual fate of a rural teenager, especially since his father dreamed of a spiritual career for his son and forbade him to enter the Polytechnic Institute in Graz. However, something happened that can be called "God's providence"
Nikolai fell seriously ill. When the crisis came and it was clear that he might not survive, the father agreed with his son's wishes and Tesla recovered.
In the first grade of elementary school, Tesla studied in Smilany, and then continued his studies and graduated from the primary real school in the town of Gospic, where the whole family moved in 1804. The years of study in Gospic were the beginning of the inventive activity of Nikola Tesla. Nikola built several models of water turbines, installed them on the river, and began to carefully study their operation. Then he began to get acquainted with serious technical literature. In one of the books, Tesla came across a description of Niagara Falls. The boy, who had already seen Plitvica, imagined the majestic view of Niagara and in his dreams began to design a turbine to use its energy and. At this time, Tesla first had the idea to go to America and build a station on Niagara Falls.
In 1875, Nikola Tesla went to Graz, where he entered the Higher Technical School. From the autumn of 1876, carried away by the study of electricity, he was especially willing to work in the laboratory of Professor Jacob Peshl. At lectures on electrical engineering, Tesla conceived the idea of the imperfection of DC machines. Professor Peshl, with whom Tesla shared the idea of an induction alternator, found it crazy. But the professor's conclusion only spurred the inventor on. In 1878, Tesla graduated from the Higher Technical School in Graz and the following year began working as an assistant engineer in the city of Maribor.
Tesla enters the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague and studies philosophy, mathematics and physics for a year. The difficult financial situation of the family forced Nikola Tesla in 1881 to interrupt his studies at the University of Prague and look for work. On the advice of Teodor Puskas - one of the friends of his uncle Osip Tesla - he entered the Hungarian Government Telegraph Company in Budapest as an electrical engineer. Tesla enthusiastically took up this work. He made a number of inventions, in particular, he created an original voice amplifier for the telephone. But he still spent all his free time thinking about the electric motor.
One day in February 1882, Tesla, walking with his school friend Szigeti in the city park of Budapest, quickly drew with a cane in the sand a diagram of an alternating current electric motor based on the use of what was later called a rotating magnetic field.
An unusually fruitful period has come in the work of Nikola Tesla. Within a few months, he developed numerous designs of AC motors based on the application of the principle of a rotating magnetic field. Tesla barely had time to put on paper all the options that arose in his head. However, work in the telephone department of the Budapest Government Telegraph did not make it possible to practically implement Tesla's invention, and on the advice of Puskas and with his letter of recommendation, he went to Paris to enter the Edison Continental Company.
At the end of 1882, Tesla began working for the company as an electrical engineer for the installation of electrical installations being built in various cities of Central Europe. Here life taught him a cruel lesson. Tesla, offended by the cynical refusal of the company's management to pay the 25 thousand bonus due and promised to him, refused to work for the company and decided to try to realize his plans in some other country.
Discovery of America
His first thought was to go to St. Petersburg, since in Russia in those years many discoveries and inventions important for the development of electrical engineering were made. One of the administrators of the Continental Company, Charles Bechlor, a former assistant and personal friend of Edison, after many hours of conversation, persuaded Nikola Tesla to go to America and offer Edison his services to improve machines. And Bechlor immediately wrote a short note: "It would be an unforgivable mistake to give such a talent the opportunity to go to Russia. You will still be grateful to me, Mr. Petersburg I know two great people - one of them is you, the other is this young man.
And so, with only four cents in his pocket (the chance helped him earn a few dollars in the city on the first day), unknown to anyone in this country, relying only on his extraordinary ability to work and full of the most optimistic hopes, Nikola Tesla entered the land nicknamed " land of golden promises." Soon, very soon, he learned what these "promises" meant. The next morning, Tesla went to the offices of the New York branch of the Edison Electric Lighting Society. Here, in an old house on Fifth Avenue, there was a laboratory, workshops and Personal Area Thomas Alva Edison.
The illustrious inventor read Bechlor's letter and listened attentively to Tesla, but remained completely indifferent to his ideas of using multi-phase alternating currents. Even earlier, from the messages of the Continental Company, he knew something about his visitor and valued in the young engineer only his truly exceptional capacity for work.
Relations with the inventor of Tesla did not work out. One day, Edison suggested to Nikola Tesla that he develop constructive improvements in DC electric machines invented by Edison himself. In the case of a successful solution of the task, he promised a bonus of 50 thousand dollars. Tesla got down to business and soon designed twenty-four different versions of the Edison machine, creating a new switch and regulator for it, which greatly improved the performance of these most common electric generators and electric motors in the United States at that time. Edison fully approved of all Tesla's proposals, but about the promised $50,000 he said that, apparently, an immigrant recently living in the United States still does not understand American humor well, and that the promise of this award was nothing more than a joke. Despite the complete financial insecurity, the proud and scrupulous immigrant immediately refused further work for Edison. This happened in the spring of 1885, just a year after his arrival in the United States.
A year later, Tesla developed the design of an arc lamp suitable for lighting streets and squares. However, instead of paying the dealers with whom Tesla dealt, they gave him a part of the shares of the company created to exploit his invention and tried to get rid of him. Tesla's protests were followed by an unbridled campaign of slander, and they tried to discredit him as an engineer and inventor.
From the autumn of 1886 to the spring of 1887, he tried a variety of professions: he worked as a day laborer, a loader, dug ditches. A year lived in extraordinary hardships, when he, by his own admission, "sleep where he can, eat what he finds," had a depressing effect on him. “I lived this year with tears and heartache,” Nikola Tesla later wrote. He had already finally decided to go back to Europe. But...
New Hope
In April 1887, Tesla met the engineer Brown, who was close to some of the leaders of the Western Telegraph Company, but at that time forced, like Nikola, to live odd jobs. After several months of working together, Brown, carried away by the bold ideas of the inventor, persuaded his acquaintances to provide Tesla with a small financial assistance to create an electric lighting society. Brown himself contributed all his available capital - fifty dollars. Tesla creates his own company "Tesla Arc Light Company".
Tesla got lucky this time. The company he created soon began to carry out on a large scale the lighting of streets and squares of US cities with Tesla arc lamps. Her work has taken on a huge scale. Tesla soon organized the Tesla Electric Company, a much more powerful society that had the necessary funds to ensure the setting up of experiments in the field of alternating currents.
Tesla promotion
Working with Westinghouse
In July 1888, a man with a large, expressive face, unusually mobile for his obese figure, appeared in the laboratory of Nikola Tesla on Fifth Avenue. It was George Westinghouse, one of the most original figures among the capitalists of the United States. Westinghouse purchased more than 40 Tesla patents, averaging $25,000 per patent, and pledged to pay one dollar for every horsepower of two-phase AC generators and motors installed by his firm. In the evening of the same day, Tesla donated half of the amount received to engineer Brown, who had once assisted him in the creation of the Tesla Arc Light Company.
Soon, in the United States alone, the total capacity of AC electrical equipment based on Tesla's patents exceeded 12 million horsepower (Tesla would waive the fee to save the Westinghouse firm from ruin).
During these years, Tesla's childhood dream came true - the launch of the Niagara station was the last triumph of two-phase current. The undoubted advantages of three-phase current supplanted the less perfect two-phase current not only in Europe, but also in the USA. It is important to note here that Tesla, in his patent of the two-phase generator, also considered the theoretical possibility of using multi-phase currents.
In 1889, Tesla in his laboratory began to study a huge range of questions related to a completely new field of science, in which he was most interested in the practical use of high frequency currents (obtained using his resonant transformer) and high voltage.
Step by step, Tesla investigated the effect of alternating electric current on a person at different frequencies and voltages. He experimented on himself. As one of the private tasks, Tesla was interested in the possibility of using the discovery by Maxwell and Hertz of the electromagnetic nature of light. He had an idea: if light is electromagnetic oscillations with a certain wavelength, is it possible to artificially obtain it not by heating the filament of an electric incandescent lamp (which makes it possible to use only 5 percent of the energy and turning into a luminous flux), but by creating such oscillations that would cause the appearance of light waves? This problem became the subject of research in Tesla's laboratory at the beginning of 1890.
Tesla puts forward an ingenious position on the possibility of transmitting electricity without wires and, as proof, makes both ordinary incandescent lamps and lamps specially created by him without filaments inside glow, introducing them into an alternating high-frequency electromagnetic field. Tesla also passed high-frequency currents through his body and with the touch of his hand made hollow lamps without electrodes glow. Hundreds of astonished spectators witnessed not only the glow of the lamps, but also the starting and stopping of electric motors at a considerable distance. Then Tesla demonstrated the possibility of heating various objects, both conductors and insulators, under the influence of high-frequency currents.
Using only one wire connected to one pole of a high frequency current source, Tesla lit ordinary incandescent lamps, special lamps with a single current input, turned on and drove electric motors. The same experiments proved the possibility of supplying electricity consumers through a single-wire network.
The June 1900 issue of Century magazine published an article by Tesla titled "The Problem of Increasing Energy and Mankind, with Special Recommendations for the Use of Energy and the Sun." How many truly prophetic thoughts Tesla expressed in it! On the role of human muscular strength in the development of civilization and ways to increase it; about the role of other energy resources and about three ways to extract energy and the Sun; about the role of iron in the development of human society and about the metal of the future - aluminum; about ways to increase coal production and about gas engines; on the use of the internal heat of the Earth; about the possibility of creating "self-acting" automata and machines with a "brain"; about the principle of selectivity and the possibility of controlling automata at any distance; on the transmission of electricity and without wires to any point on the globe and on the possibility of interplanetary radio communications
Perhaps the most important among the discoveries made by Tesla in the process of studying the phenomena of the glow of vacuum tubes was the establishment that in the studied lamps with refractory electrodes introduced into the field of high-frequency currents, there are three types of radiation: visible light, absolutely black radiation (that , which is now called ultraviolet rays) and "very special rays" that gave strange prints on metal screens (plates) placed in metal boxes attached to the lamps. - The shadow-like image caused by these amazing, "very special rays", which have an extraordinary property of penetrating objects that are opaque to ordinary light and ultraviolet rays, allows you to "see" objects that are in opaque boxes. Undoubtedly, special attention should be paid to them, to these rays. But not enough data has been accumulated for any more definite conclusions - the study of these rays will be the subject of my special studies in the near future, the scientist said.
Tesla further showed how a gaseous medium (for example, air) turns from an insulator into a conductor as it becomes rarefied, and the lower the pressure of the gas, the more easily it passes electricity. Paradoxically sounded at that time the statement that under certain conditions gas pipelines could serve as excellent mains for the transmission of electricity and, moreover, a rarefied gas would serve as a conductor. It would be possible to use the highly rarefied upper layers of the atmosphere for the transmission of electrical energy over very long distances without significant losses. Tesla later developed the design of such a transmitting device and received a patent for it not only in the United States, but also in Russia.
On the morning of March 13, 1895, tragedy struck. It was not yet time for employees to arrive at the laboratory on Fifth Avenue, and Tesla, who, as usual, ended his working day at dawn, had just returned to his hotel when the terrible news spread through the city: the huge house that housed the inventor’s laboratory was engulfed in flames. In vain were the efforts of the firefighters, who tried to fight the fire, but were soon forced to retreat and let it devour floor after floor. Every minute the flame destroyed the equipment accumulated over the years, rare instruments, manuscripts and books. In a few hours, the fire destroyed the results of many years of hard work. When Tesla appeared on Fifth Avenue, he saw only the charred shell of the building and the wreckage of crippled instruments. The fire not only destroyed all the results of many years of work, but also ruined the scientist, who did not insure his property. Tesla, without a shadow of a doubt, told newspaper reporters about his intention to restore the burnt manuscripts, since all of them are stored in his memory, as in the most reliable safe. - In my laboratory, the following most recent achievements in the field of electrical phenomena were destroyed. This is, firstly, a mechanical oscillator; secondly, a new method of electric lighting; thirdly, a new method of wireless transmission of messages over long distances; and, fourthly, a method for studying the very nature of electricity. Each of these works, as well as many others, of course, can be restored, and I will do my best to restore everything in the new laboratory, Tesla said in an interview.
Experiences in Colorado Springs
From Tesla's hypothesis about the change in the insulating properties of gases as they are rarefied, it follows that the globe is a giant capacitor: the upper layers of rarefied air serve as one charged plate of it, the lower layers at normal pressure represent an insulator, and the Earth itself is the second charged plate. This thought, as we shall see, prompted the development of a grandiose project of using electric charge Earth.
Tesla, with all his energy, took up the development of ideas for the transmission of signals, messages, electricity and over long distances without wires through the earth using the phenomenon of resonance. To do this, it was necessary first of all to establish whether the globe has an electric charge and what are the conditions under which it would be possible to cause its resonance.
Laboratory in Colorado Springs
with transformer outlet on the roof
In April 1899, Tesla found a letter in the morning mail stamped by a small town lost in the gorges of the Rocky Mountains. Written by one of Tesla's many admirers, Lenard Curtis, an electrical engineer who worked at the power plant of the Colorado Springs Resort. He offered Tesla to move to Colorado, where he promised to provide a land plot for the laboratory and electricity from the station where he worked. But the most seductive thing in the letter was the description of frequent thunderstorms with powerful lightning.
Fortunately, the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Tesla had lived for many years, considered him his personal friend and, having learned about the suspension of experiments due to lack of funds, handed him 30 thousand dollars. With bright hopes for the success of the planned experiment, Tesla arrived in Colorado in May 1899 with a small staff of his employees. The place recommended by Curtis - "Colorado Springs" - was located on a vast plateau at an altitude of 2 thousand meters.
Without waiting for the installation of the laboratory, Tesla began observations of thunderstorms, indeed exceptionally frequent and strong in this wilderness. Many of them, Tesla wrote about the lightning he saw, resembled fiery trees with a trunk pointing up or down. I was not able to establish the method of their formation and create them artificially." Tesla's delights had no end: he learned a lot of unknown things about lightning. Soon, according to him, he "knew more about lightning than God himself knows about them."
One of the most important problems that Tesla sought to solve at the Colorado Laboratory was to obtain a clear answer to the question: is the Earth an electrically charged body or not? If the answer to this question were negative, Tesla's plan would have been unfulfilled.
However, Tesla's observation of the phenomenon of standing waves in the Earth clearly indicated both the presence of an electric charge on the Earth and the possibility of artificially inducing standing waves in it. The clarification of this fact allowed Tesla to carry out an experiment that had a very importance for the possible implementation of his future plans. Is it possible to artificially create standing waves in the Earth by means of a powerful discharge, induce resonant oscillations in it and then use them for various purposes?
But what could this discovery give for practical purposes? Is it possible to capture the antinodes of these standing waves anywhere in the world? Where is the equipment with the help of which it would be possible to realize at least the power expended on the creation of a standing wave?
Wondercliff Project
At the end of 1899, banker John Pierpont Morgan, having learned about Tesla's new financial difficulties and his complete loneliness, offered the inventor $150,000.
Tesla purchased a 200-acre piece of land on Long Island, far north of downtown New York, in Shafrock County. The choice of location was very successful - 60 kilometers from New York, near the Shoreham railway station, the vast possessions of C. Warden were empty and around the acquired site, called Wardenclyffe, not a single building was found for many miles. It was exactly what was needed to create a new laboratory. 20 acres were cleared for the laboratory building, on the rest of the site it was supposed to create a town with a population of at least 2 thousand people invited to build complex structures. Then, as the work was completed, the town was to be populated by thousands of employees of the laboratory and the most powerful radio station in the world. Tesla intended to build a second station for transmitting electricity to all points of the globe and for power needs and lighting at Niagara Falls.
But about five years passed (instead of the planned one year), and the construction was still not completed due to the lack of the required funds.
The trial run of an unprecedented structure nevertheless took place and produced a stunning effect. It would have been a triumph, but ... Back in 1900, Marconi carried out the transmission of a transatlantic signal across the ocean to Canada, and his communication system turned out to be very promising. Although Tesla built the first wave radio transmitter in 1893, years ahead of Marconi, he confessed to Morgan (in one of his letters to Morgan he writes: "What I conceived is not just the transmission of signals over long distances without the use of wire, but rather the transformation of everything globe into a sentient being, which is exactly what a globe is, capable of feeling with all its parts, and through which a thought rushes like through a brain..."), that he is interested not in a communication system, but in a wireless transmission of energy to any point on the planet. But Morgan needed a connection, and he stopped funding. Financial panic, a collapse in the market, put an end to Tesla's hopes of financing Morgan or other wealthy industrialists. This left Tesla with no money even to buy coal to run an electrical generator for his transmitter. Tesla has been repeatedly sued for unpaid expenses. George Westinghouse, who bought Tesla's patents for alternating current motors and generators in the 1880s, rejects the inventive proposal for power transmission and. Workers gradually stop visiting the laboratory when there are no funds to pay them. Tesla's strange statements that he regularly communicates with alien civilizations partly contributed to the cooling of the bankers.
Tesla stated: "My project was postponed under the influence of natural laws. The world was not yet ready to accept it. He was too ahead of the time in which he appeared. But the same laws, in the end, will outweigh, and the project will be repeated with triumphant success" .
Tesla World System Tower
Other projects
Tesla made many bold statements in his lifetime. But he was not the kind of person to make empty statements. He repeatedly checked the results of his observations before reporting them to the public. So he stated: "People living near Wardencliff, frightened by my experiments conducted by me two years ago, said that during these two years they were awake more than they slept, and could get acquainted with truly incredible things. Somehow, but not now, I will announce something that is not even in fairy tales." In 1933, he said: "It was my custom to carry out the splitting of the atom without releasing any energy from it and."
In 1931, the already elderly, but still restless Tesla demonstrated a new phenomenon to the public. They removed the gasoline engine from an ordinary car and installed an electric motor. Tesla then attached a small box under the hood with two rods protruding from it. Pushing them out, Tesla said: "So, now we have energy." Then he sat down in the driver's seat, pressed the pedal, and the car went! He rode it for a week, speeding up to 150 km/h. There were no batteries or accumulators on the car.
"Where does the energy I come from?" asked Tesla's puzzled fellow scientists. He calmly replied: "From the ether that surrounds us." Rumors about the madness of electrical engineering began to spread again. Tesla was pissed off. He removed the magic box from the car and returned to the laboratory, burying the secret of his electric car forever.
Shortly before his death, Tesla announced that he had invented something similar to the then widely discussed "death rays". Here is a quote: "It becomes easy to blow up gunpowder and weapons stores by means of high frequency currents induced in each particle of metal located at a distance of five to six miles or more", "My invention requires large areas, but when used, it makes it possible to destroy everything, people or equipment, within a radius of 200 miles."
Schematic of the (ionospheric?) Tesla weapon
Conclusion
Tesla died on January 7, 1943. Death was the result of a chronic neglected disease. He lay in his room, in a calm pose and was fully dressed, as if he had prepared in advance to face death.
The value of the personality and the scale of the genius of N. Tesla is difficult to underestimate. In this article, we are more interested in another thought. It is impossible to allow the work of lone geniuses, working day and night for the good of their homeland and the world, to be hushed up, persecuted, ridiculed and eventually buried in the vaults of financial tycoons and governments devoted to them, ultimately an infinitely small group of people who are simply unprofitable part with their monopoly on energy production and profits from the trade in heat carriers, for whom it is important to concentrate the maximum possible power in their hands, even if this meant that ordinary people of the world, who are the absolute majority, vegetated in hunger and cold, in conditions of suppression of personal freedom, with the use of fraudulent "market levers": the power of money, corrupt mass media and stock market speculation.
Feigin O. O.
Nikola Tesla - Lord of Lightning. Scientific investigation of amazing facts.
I no longer work for the present, I work for the future...
The great mysteries of our existence have yet to be unraveled, even death may not be the end.
Nikola Tesla
Foreword
“In the thick of the forests of Croatia, the small village of Smiljany was lost. And although the city of Gospić is only twelve kilometers away, the inhabitants of this village reach the center of the province only by foot mountain paths. A hundred years ago, when Croatia was part of the Habsburg Empire, which seized the lands of the Croats and Slovenes and enslaved the freedom-loving Slavic peoples, Smilians consisted of only a few houses, a school where teaching was conducted not in their native Croatian language, but in German, a church and the Orthodox Church, next to which was a small house of the priest. In this house, which was preserved until 1942, the fourth child was born in the family of the priest Milutin Tesla exactly at midnight from July 9 to 10, 1856, who received the name Nikola.(Fig. 1).
Rice. 1. Nikola Tesla Memorial in Smolyan, Croatia
“Shortly before his death, the great inventor Nikola Tesla declared that, “based on a completely new physical principle,” he was able to “ignite the sky” and “melt an airplane or car at a distance of 400 km.” In addition, Tesla is credited with the invention of laser weapons (“death rays”) and the “electric gun”, the discovery of a resonant effect capable of causing artificial earthquakes, and even a grandiose explosion in the Siberian taiga, now known as the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.
After the death of the scientist in 1943, his military inventions were forgotten - or rather, they tried to forget about them. ... This is the main military secret of the United States. These weapons are more powerful and more destructive than nuclear weapons. It can not only shoot down enemy missiles, but also cause man-made disasters anywhere in the world, completely paralyze radio communications and electronic equipment, and even affect the psyche of people. The use of this secret weapon, disguised as a scientific program, threatens a catastrophe on a planetary scale!» (Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. Planetary cataclysm
“The nature of these places is majestic and beautiful. On the tops of the mountains, wild rocks are heaped on top of each other. It is difficult to find between them small patches of land suitable for cultivation for sowing. No wonder there is a folk tale in Croatia that God, evenly distributing stones on the ground, flew over it with a large bag. Above Lika, the bag broke through, and the rest of the stones spilled out, forming Velebits.
...Not far behind the mountain range - the coast of the azure Adriatic, or, as it is called here, the Jadran Sea; just a few hours away - amazing in its beauty Plitvice lakes, surrounded by mighty oak, beech and maple forests. Fast rivers cascade down from the high mountains into the valley of the Lika plateau in cascades of waterfalls.(Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. Eastern Croatia - the valley of the Lika plateau
Interest in the creative heritage of the mysterious Slavic inventor arose across the ocean in the late 50s of the last century. It was then that a lot of publications appeared, bizarrely linking the Philadelphia experiment, the Tunguska miracle and even the incident in Roswell with the name of Nikola Tesla. Each author, who has explored the dark spots in the biography of an outstanding electrical innovator, has stuck to his own special version. Most often, these were and are mutually exclusive reconstructions of events of the now distant past. Among them there are quite in-depth studies, and superficial assessments, and outright falsifications. It is quite difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to figure out where the truth is here, and where journalistic conjectures and fantasies are.
True, there is another way, which we will try to go. This is historical analysis scientific essence many rather unusual deeds of Nikola Tesla, which gave rise to a lot of legends and rumors. This is especially true of the history of construction and experimental operation of the cyclopean ethereal electrical resonator, known as the Tesla tower, created for the project "Worldwide Wireless Information and Energy Transmission System" (Fig. 4). Another mystery is connected with the secret life of this brilliant scientist.
The moment one constructs an imaginary device is related to the problem of moving from a crude idea to practice. Therefore, any discovery thus made lacks detail and is usually defective. My method is different. I'm in no hurry with empirical verification. When an idea appears, I immediately begin to refine it in my imagination: I change the design, improve and “turn on” the device so that it sits in my head. I don't care if I test my invention in the lab or in my mind. I even have time to notice if something interferes with proper operation. In a similar way, I give concrete form to this final product of my brain. All my inventions worked that way. Not a single exception has happened in twenty years. There is hardly a scientific discovery that can be predicted purely mathematically, without visualization. The introduction of unfinished, crude ideas into practice is always a waste of energy and time.
Nikola Tesla
Rice. 4. Page of the magazine "New York American", 1911 (!) Dedicated to the most fantastic project of the scientist - "The Worldwide Wireless System for Transmitting Information and Energy"
As an American citizen, he was engaged in closed research for the United States and at the same time offered his secret developments England, Germany, Russia... What motivated Tesla? The unscrupulousness of a scientist who does not care where his ideas are realized? Thirst for profit? A mania for destruction?
The colossal amount of original ideas that Tesla generated with inexplicable ease shocked his contemporaries. The scientist’s shocking confession is also known: “I am not the author of these ideas!” Absolutely inexplicable was the source of Tesla's knowledge about unknown, unexplored phenomena. Genius intuition and insight explain absolutely nothing. Where did he get his ideas from? This is the third riddle.
Chapter one
lightning lord
Our world is immersed in a huge ocean of energy, we are flying in endless space at an inconceivable speed.
Everything around rotates, moves - everything is energy. Before us is a daunting task - to find ways to extract this energy. Then, extracting it from this inexhaustible source, humanity will move forward with gigantic strides.
Nikola Tesla
It's midday, business lunch time, and downtown New York is filled with thousands of white-collar workers rushing for a hearty meal in cafes, bars, and inexpensive fast food restaurants. Along the avenue, clogged with a stream of honking cars, grimacing in annoyance from the bluish clouds of exhaust gases, a tall, thin, black-haired man in a dark-striped expensive troika is walking at a fast pace, almost skipping (Fig. 5).
His fixed gaze of feverishly shining black eyes is directed somewhere into the distance over a sea of swaying top hats and hats. A thin face with a beautiful black mustache is distinguished by a deep inner spirituality, strikingly different from the stupid "American" smiles of most passers-by. Unexpectedly, the strange thinker stops and, slapping his forehead, makes a beautiful somersault with acceleration, not noticing the astonished looks of those around him.
Walk "Doctor Electricity", as the newspapers called Nikola Tesla, ended with the birth of some new idea. If Tesla's somersault had been seen by his neighbors in a luxurious mansion on East Houston Avenue, they would hardly have been surprised at the eccentric behavior of the famous inventor. After all, there were rumors about a strange Slav that he was “a relative of Count Dracula” (how can “educated” Americans distinguish a Serb from a Romanian?), And he himself looks like a vampire, because he avoids sunlight ... And the newspapers also wrote that he created terrible "death rays" and weapons that shoot lightning (Fig. 6).
How many people have called me a dreamer, how our deluded short-sighted world has mocked my ideas. Time will judge us.
Nikola Tesla
Rice. 8. Magician of electricity
In fact, Tesla, of course, had nothing to do with otherworldly forces, although he was very fond of letting in a “mystical” fog in numerous interviews. And although such a disease is still unknown to medicine, he claimed that under the influence of powerful electromagnetic fields, his nerves acquired a special sensitivity to "radiant energy." Bright light caused nervous migraines in the inventor, but he saw perfectly at dusk and even distinguished some “energy contours of objects” in complete darkness.
