Nikola Tesla: Inventor of dreams

How can the romantic and romantic sunset be related to alternating electric motors? In dreams, everything is possible, especially the dream of a genius inventor like Nikola Tesla. And here, what is important is that Tesla's dreams have given people the inventions that are classified as the most basic and important goods of industrial civilization.

When members of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce came to listen to the lecture of the famous electric inventor Nikola Tesla on May 13, 1899, they were stunned to see an artificial lake in the middle of the hall. Everyone talked about it, sure, Tesla would do something very interesting with a small boat floating on the lake. Suddenly, the boat suddenly moved around the lake and emitted flashes of light. On the shore, Tesla is operating a remote controller, using invisible radio waves to transmit commands to the boat. In front of the excited crowd, Tesla invited some people to shout out commands: " Turn left! Glow!". Using its wireless transmitter, Tesla continuously transmits signals to the canoe. More excitingly, Tesla also demonstrated to everyone a special battle screen, controlling dynamite blocks that rushed towards enemy ships. At that time, Tesla could not know that his " toy " model became the first prototype for guided missiles - an extremely dangerous weapon.

Dream about a type of engine

Famous electric inventor Nikola Tesla (1899-1943) - (Photo: Occultopedia) Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in a Scottish family on the border of the Austro-Hungarian empire, today Croatia. As a teenager, Tesla studied engineering at Joanneum Polytechnic School in Graz, Austria. There, the lectures on physics by Professor Jacob Poeschl attracted many young people. From Poeschl's lectures, Tesla began to think about one of his most important inventions, an AC (alternating current) motor.

One day, while observing his professor trying to overcome the phenomenon of electric sparks from the reversing brushes of a DC motor (DC), Tesla came up with the idea of ​​building a motor. without needing a commutator, he immediately proposed to the teacher. Annoyed by the student 's stubbornness, Poeschl explained a long range of impossibility in making such a kind of engine, he finally concluded: "Brother Tesla will probably make great things. Great, but surely you will never do that motive! ". However, the rebuke sparked in Tesla the flames of passionate determination of youthful aspirations. During the years in Graz and then Prague, he constantly pursued the research of making an engine that did not generate electric sparks.

In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest to work for brothers Tivadar and Ferenc Puskas. As an ambitious sponsor, Tivadar once convinced Thomas A. Edison to give him the rights to invent inventions to introduce them in continental Europe. The Puskas brothers are planning to build a telephone station in Budapest using Edison's improved phone design. Unfortunately, they were unable to find workers when Tesla suddenly became seriously ill. Thanks to the interest of his friend Anthony Szigeti, Tesla was able to recover.

It was during a walk with Szigeti, Tesla came up with an ecstatic idea of ​​his engine.When they were passionate about watching the sunset, Tesla suddenly imagined the use of the rotating magnetic field for the engine - that was a decisive idea . Tesla made the reverse engineering configuration, instead of changing the magnetic pole at the rotor, he changed the magnetic field inside the stator itself. This new configuration has naturally eliminated the generation of electric sparks. Tesla found that, if the magnetic field in the stator rotates, it will induce an electric field on the rotor and thus make the rotor spin. He also began to imagine that the rotating magnetic field could be made using AC instead of DC, but at that time he still didn't know how to make this idea a reality.

Canal diggers' invention.

Radio controlled boat

Tesla spent the next five years testing and shaping his engine. After helping the Puskas brothers build a telephone station in Budapest, Tesla moved with Tivadar to Paris, where they participated in setting up the city's lighting system. In 1884, Tesla went to New York to meet Edison but he did not have the opportunity to build a relationship with this brilliant inventor. In New York, Tesla was almost able to present to Edison the idea of ​​his engine.

He recalled: "At that time it was on Coney Island, I was preparing to explain to Edison that someone ran to pull him away. That afternoon I went home and had a fever, this time I decided I would not tell anyone about your engine ". A few months later, when Tesla had just finished designing an improved arc glow system, his manager swallowed up the reward as promised, the inventor left in indignation.

Then Tesla went to work for two businessmen Benjamin A. Vail and Robert Lane from Rahway, who advised him to apply for an invention of the arc lamp system so they could commercialize it. Tesla innocently handed over the patent to these two insidious people with a belief that they would produce devices to compete with Edison. However, Vail and Lane decided to spend money investing in electric light applications. So when Tesla's arc lamps were used at Rahway, the two businessmen formally fired him and reorganized the factory. Completely empty-handed after being abandoned, Tesla was forced to go digging a canal to make a living.

Despite suffering a hard year, Tesla also focused his talents in March 1866 to complete a patent application for motors from heat - it is a new, activity-based device. on heating and cooling of magnets . After presenting his invention to the manager of the canal digging, Tesla was introduced to Charles Peck, a rather smart lawyer. Attracted by the engine from heat, Peck decided to sponsor Tesla's research. As not a technical expert, Peck invited Alfred Brown, a Western Union supervisor to assist Tesla.

Peck and Brown hired a Tesla lab in Manhattan, where the inventor worked hard to develop the engine from his heat. Until he saw the inefficiency of this engine model, Peck let Tesla continue to improve the AC engines. Tesla began experimenting with a combination of alternating currents for motors. This approach proved quite unusual, because most experimentalists at that time only worked with an alternating current in their system.By September 1887, Tesla discovered that he could create a rotating magnetic field when two separate AC currents were introduced into coil pairs opposite each other on the stator . Today these two currents are called 90-degree phase difference, and the motor will operate with a two-phase current. Proud and excited about the achievements, Tesla has also produced a number of other inventions, also based on the principle of rotating magnetic fields. Particularly important, Tesla himself came up with the idea that multi-phase alternating current can transmit energy through significant distances.

When Tesla's AC engine proved clearly effective, his patrons began thinking about promoting it for profit. Peck and Brown planned to auction Tesla's inventions, not putting them into production. Finally, they arranged for Tesla to teach before the American Institute of Electrical Engineering was launched in 1888. Tesla's lectures published in magazines soon attracted the attention of George Westinghouse, a who has a reputation in making air brake systems and signal systems for railway tracks.

(Photo: Geocities) At that time, electric light manufacturers had considered switching from DC to AC, because AC could be transmitted over longer distances, reaching more customers. While Edison still focused on DC techniques, Westinghouse decided to wager with AC. Therefore, Peck and Brown were able to convince him to pay a generous amount for Tesla's inventions. In July 1888, Westinghouse paid in advance $ 75,000 and a $ 2.5 royalty per horsepower that each engine was produced. Tesla generously gave his two patrons five parts nine of the proceeds.

Westinghouse hopes Tesla's engines can be used to run streetcars, so Tesla went to Pittsburgh to improve his design to suit this application. However, the inventor and engineers of Westinghouse were confused by technical difficulties. Because Tesla's engine requires two alternating currents and four wires, it cannot be attached to an existing single-phase AC system, so additional wires must be installed. Although Tesla has also developed some two-wire motors, the so-called phase-division designs work best at 50Hz or lower frequencies, but at that time, Westinghouse's single-phase system used 133Hz line so that customers cannot see incandescent bulbs blinking.

Westinghouse engineers finally solved the problem by adjusting Tesla's engine and developing a new AC system using a 60Hz three-phase current. Westinghouse demonstrated this new technique spectacularly when building a hydroelectric station in Niagara Falls, which transmitted electricity over a distance of 25 miles to Buffalo factories. Today, Tesla's engines and multi-phase AC systems have become the basis for the North American power supply system.

Electric resonance

Long before Niagara station came into operation, Tesla felt impatient and left Westinghouse. Using his royalties, in 1889 Tesla set up a new laboratory in New York City. In order to attract public interest, he created his own image of an eccentric inventor. As well as curiosity for Edison's inventions in Menlo Park in the 1870s, in the 1890s, people also rushed to Tesla's lab to see his strange inventions.

While looking for ways to create arc light using AC systems, Tesla has found very basic new phenomena, involving high-frequency electric phenomena . He wondered, asking himself if it was possible to create motors with a 60Hz AC line, what could be built with an electric current of 10,000Hz? Previously, Tesla connected the magnetic coils, resistors and capacitors together to form his phase-division motors, but now he connected the coil to the capacitor according to a new configuration to create the High frequency line.

The inventor has pursued this research direction for the next 15 years. Tesla realized that an appropriately configured circuit can amplify electrical signals, improve their frequency and voltage. Since then, he has built " giant amplifiers " - now called Tesla coils, which can generate sparks longer than 40 meters. Tesla also realized a very important thing is that resonance phenomenon can be used to detect radio signals. A transmitter with a capacitor and certain inductors can generate signals at a certain frequency. Similarly, if the receiver also has capacitors and inductors as in the transmitter, it will also react most strongly to the frequency of the transmitter signal.

From the basic idea of ​​electric resonance, Tesla has simultaneously pursued innovations in the field of lighting, wireless signal transmission and wireless power distribution. Hoping to develop a high-performance light bulb to replace Edison's incandescent light bulb, Tesla not only created fluorescent bulbs but also discovered that a vacuum tube could be used to deliver Show radio waves. Although the genius inventor did not continue to pursue this discovery, JA Fleming and Lee De Forest followed him to create electronic lights for radio technology.

With complete circuits to capture and transmit radio waves, Tesla tested them with antennas suspended on floating balls on the lab roof and on his Manhattan rooftop. But unfortunately, as soon as the results were promising, Tesla's laboratory was burned down in March 1895, all systems of research equipment and recording results were lost. .

Global energy generation system

In the spring of 1899, Tesla closed his rebuilding lab in New York and set up a research center in the Pikes Peak mountains of Colorado. There, the inventor has focused on solving a problem that he believes will become the most important application of electromagnetic waves: the transmission of cordless energy to all over the world. At that time, the demand for electricity in the United States seemed to be unsatisfactory, although the lines were everywhere. Therefore, the inventor dreamed of a telecommunications network that could both transmit power and transmit information without wires .

That new Tesla dream has been based on electric resonance. Like previous radio researchers, he also recognized the relationship between transmitter and receiver as the only two elements of a closed system. First, the transmitter sends radio waves through the air to the receiver. Then, since both devices are placed on the ground, a feedback stream goes from the receiver to the ground to the transmitter. Unlike many people who only focus on transmitting radio waves through the atmosphere, Tesla decided to focus on the currents in the ground. He thought, why can't a transmitter send waves through the ground to the receiver and then respond through the atmosphere?

Tesla imagined that it was possible to build a base station to transfer electromagnetic energy into the earth's crust until the planet's electrical resonance frequency was reached. Then the whole Earth emits energy pulses, and they can be picked up by receivers around the world. Tesla set up several large transmitters in the city of Colorado Springs to test this theory and he is confident that they have succeeded in generating energy around the world. (Tesla even believes that his signals have reached Mars and he has received a feedback message from Mars people!).

Very satisfied with the belief that the energy can be transmitted through the earth to all over the planet, Tesla returned to New York in 1900. After that, Tesla wrote a 60-page article for Century magazine with the title "The problem of strengthening human energy resources" . And his efforts paid off in 1901, tycoon J. Pierpont Morgan invested $ 150,000 for Tesla's wireless energy transfer project. The inventor quickly took advantage of this money, sparing no expense to equip a new laboratory at Wardenclyffe, the northern shore of Long Island. Although Morgan refused to provide more money and Tesla also failed to obtain the desired technical results, the inventor still built a 57m high antenna tower at Wardenclyffe. Even the relationships with many sponsors in New York were unable to help Tesla secure the financial costs of completing his project, and he quickly fell into a mental collapse.

The last years of life and heritage leave

Tesla in his office in New York in 1916
(Photo: cache.eb.com)

Tesla had hoped to get money to continue the work at Wardenclyffe by transferring his creative efforts from electrical engineering to mechanical engineering. Realizing that the steam piston engines of power plants are being replaced by more efficient steam turbines, he has begun to study a turbine design model entirely without There are propellers. Like his other inventions, a propeller-free turbine is based on a big idea. Because the rotating magnetic field can rotate the rotor of an AC motor, Tesla thought it was possible to use the viscous force of steam to act on thin plates placed close to each other on a turbine blade. Tesla's turbine design worked at speeds exceeding 10,000 revolutions per minute but unfortunately that speed was too fast and exceeded the tolerance of all thin steel plates.

Although Tesla was unable to convince anyone to produce his turbine model, he also obtained the invention of an automatic speedometer based on the same principle as a tassel. -bin. During the next twenty years, Tesla lived on royalties for his speedometer invention. He also wrote newspapers for popular scientific journals, in which he often referred to the future of electricity and radio. However, more and more he felt sad and depressed. Eventually he became a recluse, wandering the hotel after hotel.

In 1931, to commemorate Tesla's 75th birthday, Time magazine published on the front page an inventor's story that signaled the stars with his " Tesla " machine - a machine. broadcast giant radio. Very interested in this celebration, Tesla decided to hold annual press conferences on his birthday. In these meetings, Tesla constantly warned about the dangers of the global war and said that disaster could be avoided by developing a super weapon capable of maintaining balance. of force. He claimed that it was a gun that emitted a beam that could focus a large amount of energy on airplanes, warships and armies. In 1937, when Tesla was walking around the city, he was hit by a taxi. This time the great inventor was never able to recover, he died on January 8, 1943.

Tesla has left a rich legacy of inventions. He was known as the father of AC engines and in 1956, the name " tesla " was given to an international unit that measured the magnetic field density. His mysterious and strange predictions made him a saint to groups of people following unorthodox spiritual beliefs. Enthralled by Tesla's claims about the discovery of the mysterious mysteries of the universe, these followers have argued that powerful figures like Edison and Morgan have plotted to prevent Tesla from completing the inventions. and his revolutionary career.

Although hype claims and rumors are lacking in foundations, Tesla is truly a man with great contributions to science and technology. His ability to focus on basic principles was his greatest strength, but it was also his greatest weakness. Tesla was so enamored with the beauty of the basic concepts, so passionate that he could not stop pursuing details to perfect his inventions.

Translation of Trung Dung (W. Bernard Carlson)