Biography of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 at 12 o’clock in the rainy night in the village of Smil Jan, Croatia. At that time, their village was part of the Austrian Empire. His mother called him the child of light because he was born on a night when there was thunder.
His father was a priest and his mother was the daughter of a priest and had a very good memory. Tesla went to his mother’s grandfather because he was also an inventor and very intelligent.

Childhood and youth

He experienced his first trauma when he was 5 years old. He and his brother were riding when his brother fell off the horse and died several days later. He blamed himself for his brother’s death because he thought he had scared his brother’s horse.

As a child, he had an extraordinary visual memory and could remember all the events in complete detail. Also, he was highly intelligent and creative, and before he made an umbrella to fly, although this was not successful.

During his school days, his physics teacher found him interested in electricity. During his high school years, he mentally solved complex integral calculations so that he completed four years of high school in three years and then returned to his family.

University

His father insisted that he become a priest and somehow do their family job. Although Nicola had big thoughts in his head. At the age of 17, he was ready to go to the school of religious sciences. He got seriously ill. After several visits to the doctor, they found out that he had cholera, and the doctors told his parents that he would probably not live for a few more days!
He, who could hardly speak, got a promise from his father that if he regains his health, he should allow him to go to the engineering school. His father accepted this condition.
Tesla regained his health and went to engineering school as promised by his father. He was very interested in Mark Twain’s books and later met him and talked with him.
According to himself, Mark Twain’s books helped him a lot in getting his health.
Due to his illness, he joined the army before going to university, but he could not survive in the army and ran away from there. He went to university at the age of 21. He joined the University of Graz in Austria in 1887. During that time, he spent his time on his research, just like when he was in high school, when he loved electricity; he also spent his university research on the same subject. He was so involved in research that the university informed his family that if he continues this process, he would face serious problems because he spends studying and researching from 3 am to 11 pm, but he fell in love with electricity and started his work.
In the university, he proposed a plan to replace alternating current instead of direct current, and his professor rejected this plan.
In the third year of the university, he left the studies and the university and turned to gambling, lost all his savings, and earns his living by doing day jobs.
After some time, he returned to his own country due to lack of residence and three weeks later he lost his father due to illness. After that, Nikola gave up gambling and started studying because he could not afford to continue his education. After some time, he returned to the university with the support of his uncles and continued his research.
At the same time, Edison invented the incandescent light bulb and introduced it to the market in 1879. Contrary to popular belief, Edison was not the inventor of electricity, and he invented the incandescent light bulb, which we have been using for years. Edison is a role model for Tesla. And his ultimate goal was to go to America and meet with Edison.
After university, he went to Budapest in 1870 and employed in the central telegraph office.
He had a strong thinking power, he imagined the things he was going to invent very well, and he had a strange hearing power that sometimes bothered him so that you could hear the ticking of the clock from three rooms away. One day he was walking with his friend when suddenly a plan came to his mind and he drew it with a stick on the ground. Can make it

Trip to America and Edison Company

During Tesla’s trip to America, he brought with him a letter of introduction from one of Tesla’s European partners named Charles Bachelor, who was the director of Tesla in the company he worked for. In addition, the other is this young man.
With this letter, he went to Edison and explained to him the design of AC motors, but he was against this design. Edison said that we register one small invention every month and one small invention every 6 months and in this way, we attract capital.
After this, Tesla started working and the news of his expertise reached Edison. In one of the meetings that Tesla had with Edison, he asked him to let him work on his direct current generators and improve it. Edison, who didn’t think he could do it, agreed and told him if you can do it, I will give you $50,000.
Tesla began to design generators with enthusiasm, he did this work for a whole year, then he succeeded and this was a very big event for the Edison Company and the managers were very happy about this event. After this incident, Tesla went to Edison to get his reward, but Edison did not fulfill his promise and told him that his words were a joke and the only thing he did was to give him a very small salary increase, which made Tesla very upset and left the company. He resigned and started working. He spends his days as a laborer and his nights working on the AC motor control project.
Big investors who heard this news during their conversations with Tesla offered him cooperation and Tesla managed to prepare a small laboratory for himself. It came to his mind and along with that, he made and registered other inventions. One of these inventions made a beautiful and durable arc lamp, which welcomed, but investors took its patent.
The prototype of Tesla’s great invention was unveiled in May 1888 and introduced the alternating current motor that is present in the devices we use today.
Until 1892, Tesla registered 22 more inventions in his name. He was given letters of credit such as generators, converters, and communication lines, which were the biggest inventions registered until then after the invention of the telephone. He became a famous person. And all the people and investors were going to him to cooperate with him.

Westinghouse Company

One of the people who knew the value of Tesla’s inventions was a person named George Westinghouse. He was one of the investors who was an inventor himself and wanted to make Tesla’s inventions, which were only ideas, into reality. He offered to buy the privileges of Tesla’s inventions, which related to alternating current, with Tesla at a value of one million dollars. In addition, to pay Tesla Company two and a half dollars for each horsepower of energy produced from Tesla’s inventions. TESLA could become the richest person in the world just by receiving these two and a half dollars, so she accepted this offer.
After this, he lit up the Westinghouse neighborhood store in Buffalo with alternating current and his own light bulbs, and amazed everyone. Edison now took Tesla seriously as a competitor, and ordinary people saw that there were other ways to There is also electricity generation.
Tesla made great progress in his work now, and this was the beginning of Edison’s troubles because Tesla could easily replace alternating current with direct current. This was the beginning of a Great War between Edison and his partner John Pierre Morgan and Tesla and Westinghouse. The war that known as the war of currents.

War of currents

The difference between direct current DC and alternating current AC

The electric current that Edison used was direct electric current and he believed that no other type of current used for commercialization.
The main problem with direct current was that it was not possible to change the voltage, for example, if high voltage is used, it is possible to cause the burning of electrical appliances and the bursting of lamps, and if the voltage is low, for example, the required voltage of the lamp can produced for the use of devices. We will get into trouble.
The second problem of using direct voltage is that in order to transfer the current to distant places, a copper wire with a large diameter used; as a result, we will have a voltage drop. In this case,
there is an alternating current, which usually has a high voltage, in contrast to the direct current. In this current, the voltage can be increased and decreased and different currents can sent to different devices and lamps. At the same time, it does not have the problem of transferring to distant places.
In comparison, we know that the transmission of alternating current for commercial electricity is definitely a suitable option, but there were two main problems for its transmission at that time: the
first problem was that a device that could control the alternating current that Tesla wanted to use had not yet been invented. And he had designed the idea in the park.
The second problem was the high voltage in the alternating current, which was far more dangerous. At that time, people were afraid of it due to lack of familiarity with electricity. Also, several fires had occurred due to this high voltage, and the public’s mind was ruined.

From the late 1870s in America, Edison had set up his first power plant and people could use it.
In 1882, Tesla went to one of Edison’s subsidiaries and started working there. His work was the installation and commissioning of urban lighting systems by incandescent lamps.
He had gained a lot of experience in his work field in Paris, as a result, he made responsible for the design and manufacture of generators and dynamos, and his position raised to the extent that he sent Tesla to France to solve the engineering problems of other Edison companies. And they sent to Germany.
In Budapest, Paris and Germany, he made remarkable progress. Besides these works, he tried to produce the alternating current motor. But he had failed and hoped that Edison could help him. He was very excited to immigrate to America for young Tesla in 28, while he brought nothing with him and only his dreams and ideas. He had taken a slave with him.
In the late 1880s, Edison started negative publicity against alternating current. He wanted to discredit Tesla, and he did everything moral and immoral.
The difference between Edison’s invention and Tesla’s invention was as if Edison had invented the switch and Tesla had invented the car!
Due to the pressure drop, direct current needed masts every two kilometers, but alternating current did not need masts close to each other due to the increase and decrease of voltage, and this happened through wiring, also in alternating current. The need for wiring with thick copper wires was underground, but thinner wires used in alternating current and used on top of masts, and the system proposed by Tesla was 75% more economical.
Edison fueled the misconception that people had and said that if alternating current used in homes, it will kill everyone after 6 months, and people said that they would not let these evil energies into the home, considering the misconceptions.
Edison’s fans held demonstrations and transferred the issue to the government, and most of the journalists who were in favor of Edison and came behind him.
Edison’s team put on a terrible show by connecting electric current to animals in public view, trying to destroy the public’s mentality towards alternating current. They killed innocent dogs, cats, as well as horses and elephants. They put a cage and connected the electric current to it, which killed the animals, and they told people that if the alternating current comes to your house, this disaster would happen to you. They named this work Westinghouse, for example, when a horse He killed by electrocution, they said he became Westinghouse.

Westinghouse and Tesla paid no attention to this, and when Edison tried to destroy Westinghouse, they were working on alternating current.
Edison’s other action was that he used alternating current to execute prisoners sentenced to death.
William Kemmler was the first person to be executed by electric current in the electric chair. This work had many opponents, one of the opponents was the Westinghouse company, which tried to prevent this from happening, and even a court was formed for this, where Edison testified that high voltage can cause the death of a person, but no one knew what to do for a painless death. A voltage must be used. Finally, it was decided to use an electric chair.
On the day of the sentence, the prisoner sat on a chair and became motionless after connecting the 1000 volt electricity. Contrary to what people thought, he was still alive, and they connected him to a 2000 volt electric current. Finally, it took 8 minutes for his body parts to be burned and destroyed, and this was considered a form of torture.
In 1893, an exhibition was being held in Chicago. This exhibition was the first world festival that was supposed to be lit with electricity, and the authorities invested in holding it.
The first supplier candidate was the Edison company. He had offered one million and seven hundred thousand dollars to hold this exhibition. Westinghouse and Tesla had made great progress and the amount offered was much lower than Edison’s. But in the end, Westinghouse won the bid with $500,000. Instead, Edison announced that selling his lamps to the exhibition is prohibited. Tesla and Westinghouse invented new lamps, and finally Edison suffered the final defeat.
This exhibition was so popular that the President of the United States personally attended this exhibition to witness the lighting of the exhibition by the Westinghouse Company. After the exhibition was lit by the president, the platforms were shining with light. Finally, Nikola Tesla won the war of currents.

The force of Niagara Falls

After a meeting between Nikola Tesla and Lord Clevin, who at that time was the head of an organization whose purpose was to harness the power of Niagara Falls and believed that the power of alternating current should not be used, his opinion changed completely and together they came to the conclusion that the enormous power of the falls use to produce electricity. Tesla’s task was to produce generators that were being built for the first time in the world.
In 1896, this system was put into operation. The water pressure would turn the turbines and it would be taken to remote areas using lines. After 4 years, the wires were stretched 600 kilometers and were taken to New York City, and then from there electricity was taken to the whole of America and then to the whole world.
Now, after 30 years, Tesla had achieved his dream, the dream he had as a teenager had now come true. The 20th century had begun with a lot of changes.
After that, Tesla established his company under the name of Nikola Tesla Company and started to implement his ideas in his personal laboratory. After the Westinghouse company ran into financial problems and the financial and economic conditions of the American markets brought it to the brink of destruction.
After the great popularity of Tesla, everyone wanted to meet him because he was now a rich, single young man with a mind full of new ideas. Meanwhile, he met Mark Twain, which we will talk about later.
To create a better electric current, Tesla had invented a device called an oscillator, which he called the earthquake machine because it made a lot of noise. Tesla used this device to treat diseases. According to himself, he cured many of his diseases by using electricity. Tesla had treated Mark Twain’s intestinal diseases and digestive problems with this device.

Tesla’s ethics and appearance

Tesla was very popular at that time because of its special cover. He wears very clean and ironed clothes with white gloves and a hat.
He was not interested in marriage, his love was his inventions, and he was of the opinion that important inventions were not made by married people. He slept very little, the maximum time he rested and slept was 3 hours, he walked 12 kilometers every day and cared about sports.
He cared about his health and nutrition and ate dairy products and vegetables for a long time. He was a vegetarian for half of his life.
Tesla had certain behaviors in terms of personality, and he cared obsessively about his clothing and cleanliness, he did not like touching objects and people, and he hated women’s jewelry, especially earrings, and also touching hair. He hated women, that’s why he didn’t have a partner until the end of his life.

What is known today as wireless radio, and Tesla’s creative mind was stuck with this, finally succeeded in making the Tesla coil, which we use in many devices today. The Tesla coil is a tool for generating high current electricity with low voltage. And also alternating electricity.
The example of this device, which is the Tesla coil, was made by the scientific team of Zem Group:

Click on the picture below to see how the Tesla Coil works on the YouTube channel:

This coil was used in lighting, electrotherapy and even x-ray production before the German physicist Roentgen recorded the discovery of this ray in his own name. Tesla was able to take the first images from his hand while working with high frequencies. give After this he gave warnings about the dangers of using X-rays. He also sent the result of his work to Roentgen, but he never published it, and finally the invention was registered under Roentgen’s name.
Another invention was to turn on a vacuum lamp without connecting it with a wire to the coil. This was the first proof that it is possible to transmit electricity without wires and through the air, and it was the beginning of an adventurous story that he was involved in until the end of his life. He was of the opinion that this invention can give comfort and convenience to all the people of the world. Although before Tesla, Herrick Hertz, a German scientist, had succeeded in making a radio transmitter and receiver, he had proved that it is possible to flow from a source and a destination without The wire transferred.
After many experiments, Tesla realized that if the coils were set to vibrate at the same frequency, they could send and receive radio waves. He could send a force equal to one million volts with his conical coil. He was ready to do this when a fire in his laboratory prevented him. At the same time as Tesla, Markeni was testing radio communications and it was possible that he would succeed in patenting it earlier than Tesla, so he set up a new laboratory as soon as possible and finally registered the invention of radio in his own name.
After that, Tesla made a small mechanical boat and controlled it wirelessly with a device. This was so strange to people that they thought someone was driving it inside the boat.
The idea of ​​making it was that this device can end military wars. Tesla’s other idea was the Telofarth beam, which was discussed after his death because he believed that this beam could be strong enough to destroy an army from a distance, but unfortunately, it has not been exploited until now.

Colorado Lab

Colorado Laboratory In a laboratory that was built on a high place outside the city, he had built a device that was a transmitter of magnetic waves, and its purpose was to control the energy of lightning and the energies in the atmosphere, as well as to dominate the forces of nature. There was an antenna with a height of 48 meters next to the laboratory, and at the top of it was a copper wire that established the connection between the coil and the device.
In that laboratory, two other things were done, one of which was that Tesla went 6 kilometers away from the test site, inserted a light bulb into the ground, and after pulling the lever, wireless communication was established through the ground and the light bulb was lit. The second was the creation of artificial lightning. After connecting the current, a lot of sparks started to fly from the coil and an ear-splitting sound like the sound of an explosion was produced.
Outside the lab, the same thing happened to that antenna and copper ball. The sparks rose up to a height of 30 meters from the copper sphere, and no animal could be seen within a radius of 30 kilometers, and all of them had fled, people were afraid and said that he was the devil and was fighting with God.
After these events, he wanted to build a device and some masts to generate high pressure electricity and send it to the whole planet for free and wirelessly.
He presented an article entitled solar electricity production by masts and also climate control by electrical energy. According to his inventions and knowledge, Tesla was able to make predictions. These predictions were about mobile phones, the Internet, and the formation of the global village.
In 1900, he went to Long Island with the capital he got from Morgan and started building Warden Cliff Tower.
This tower was made of wood with a height of 57 meters and was sunk 57 meters underground. However, this project did not progress and he explained his idea to Morgen, but he ended this work because it was not profitable for him. And no one invested to continue the work. The United States Patent Office named this invention after Marconi because he had the support of Morgan and Edison. Although forty years later they reconsidered their work and registered it in the name of Tesla, but it was useless because Tesla was no longer alive.
This work delayed the emergence of the age of communication for a century. The mast was destroyed and Tesla was able to settle part of its debts by selling its waste.
Although at the age of 50, he invented a turbo engine with a power of 200 horsepower and the first air friction meter, but the failure in the previous project had weakened his spirit and he fell into depression, he turned away from all the people in the world and had no contact with anyone.

In 1909, Markeni won the Nobel Prize, and Tesla’s displeasure turned into anger. After this incident, he filed a lawsuit against Markeni’s company, but could not prove it.
In 1917, he received an honorary medal named Edison! This medal was presented to him by the American Institute of Electronic Engineers at the age of 63 to honor Tesla. But Tesla did not go to that party.
In 1924, Albert Einstein attracted the attention of the world with his theory of relativity, and Tesla wrongly questioned this theory. In 1931, Edison passed away and he was honored by the world on his 75th birthday, and his photo was on the cover of Time magazine. It was printed.
During the Nazi war, he proposed the theory of Teleforth again and wanted to end this war by inventing it.
At the age of 83, he had an accident with a taxi, and at that time Westinghouse paid for his housing and living expenses and received a pension from Yugoslavia.

The death of Tesla

Nikola Tesla died at the age of 87 in the New Yorker Hotel. The cause of his death was a heart artery blockage.
5 months after Tesla’s death, the radio patent granted to Marcini was canceled by the Patent Society and granted to Tesla.
After Tesla’s death, the FBI confiscated his property and kept all his research and inventions. After 9 years, his nephew managed to transfer his property to his hometown, Yugoslavia.