The Life and Work of Nikola Tesla
To view a video version of this blog scroll down to the bottom.
Beginnings
Born on 10th July 1856 in what is now Croatia, Nikola Tesla’s father was a Serbian orthodox priest and writer who wanted his son to follow him into the priesthood. His mother, who never learned to read was a greater influence however with her inventions of small household appliances that she created in her spare time while bringing up five children. Nikola’s heart was in science.
From an early age, he demonstrated an obsessiveness that made him misunderstood. He could memorise entire books and store logarithmic tables in his brain. He picked up languages easily, and he could work through days and nights on only a few hours’ sleep.
Education
At nineteen Tesla was a star student studying electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz in Austria. He was in ongoing debates with his professor over perceived design flaws in the direct-current (DC) motors that were being demonstrated in class. Tesla later wrote:
“In attacking the problem again, I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end, I had so much energy to spare. When I undertook the task, it was not with a resolve such as men often make. With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. I knew that I would perish if I failed. Now I felt that the battle was won. Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could not yet give it outward expression.”
For the next six years he thought about electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternate-current that would and should work. The thoughts obsessed him, and he was unable to focus on his schoolwork. Tesla’s father was warned that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him. Rather than finish his studies, Tesla became a gambling addict, lost all his tuition money, dropped out of school and suffered a nervous breakdown which was the first of many.
Budapest
In 1881 after recovering from the breakdown Tesla moved to Budapest where he worked briefly at the Central Telephone Exchange.
It was whilst walking through a Budapest park, with a friend reciting poetry, that one of his visions came to him. Right there Tesla drew a crude diagram in the dirt with a stick of a motor, using the principle of rotating magnetic fields created by two or more alternating currents. From his visions Tesla could make working models in his mind and didn’t need to make them physically. Even though AC electrification had been employed before there wouldn’t be a practical, working motor run on alternating current until he invented his induction motor several years later.
At twenty-eight, after several fruitless years trying to get recognition for his invention, he moved to the USA.
Move to the USA
Working with Thomas Edison
Arriving in the United States in 1884 with little more than the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction from Charles Batchelor to the famed inventor and business mogul Thomas Edison. Edison hired Nikola Tesla at his DC-based electrical works. The two men were soon working long hours together making improvements to Edison’s inventions.
But their differing personalities made them incompatible. Edison was a power figure who focused on marketing and financial success, Tesla was never interested in wealth and being commercial successful. Purely inspired by his work he was worldly naive.
Tesla Electric Light Company
His abilities didn’t go unnoticed however, and in 1885 Tesla received funding for the Tesla Electric Light Company to develop improved arc lighting. After his initial success Tesla was forced out of the venture, and afterwards survived by working as a manual labourer.
Tesla Electric Company
Things changed two years later, when he received funding for his new Tesla Electric Company. Tesla’s AC motor was worth investing in, and the Western Union Company put Tesla to work in a lab not far from Edison’s office, where he designed AC power systems that are still used around the world. Tesla said
“The motors I built there, were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision, and the operation was always as I expected.”
Tesla patented his AC motors and power systems, which were said to be the most valuable inventions since the telephone. George Westinghouse, recognising that Tesla’s designs might be just what he needed in his efforts to unseat Edison’s DC current. He licensed his patents for $60,000 in stocks, cash and royalties based on how much electricity Westinghouse could sell. He won the “War of the Currents,” but it cost greatly in litigation and competition for both Westinghouse and Edison’s General Electric Company.
Fearing ruin, Westinghouse asked Tesla for some respite from the royalties Westinghouse had agreed to. “Your decision determines the fate of the Westinghouse Company,” he said. Tesla, grateful to the man who had never tried to swindle him as others had, tore up the royalty contract and in so doing walked away from millions in royalties that he was already owed and billions that would have accrued in the future. He could have been one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Tesla Coil
Before the turn of the 20th century, Tesla had invented a powerful coil that can generate high voltages and frequencies, leading to new forms of light, such as neon and fluorescent, as well as X-rays. Tesla also discovered that these coils, named “Tesla Coils,” made it possible to send and receive radio signals. He quickly filed for American patents in 1897, beating the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi.
It is this work of Nikola Tesla, the Tesla coil, that inspired the Quantum Scalar Box, a devise capable of producing scalar waves in chosen frequencies. The coils that we use however were invented by David Slinger and are unique to Life Energy Solutions. The QSB takes healing into a new paradigm.
Wardenclyffe Tower
Tesla became obsessed with the wireless transmission of energy and around 1900 Nikola started the work to build a global, wireless communication system. This would be transmitted through a large electrical tower and be for sharing information and providing free electricity throughout the world.
A group of investors included J. P. Morgan, the financial giant got behind the project and in 1901 Tesla began work at Wardenclyffe, Long Island designing and building a lab with a power plant and a huge transmission tower.
Increasingly Tesla’s investors became nervous about his system as great advances were made by Guglielmo Marconi who was backed by Andrew Carnegie. At the same time Edison continued to make great advances with his own radio technologies.
In December 1901, Marconi successfully sent a signal from England to Newfoundland. Tesla claimed that the Italian was using 17 of his patents, but litigation eventually favoured Marconi and the commercial damage was done. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld Tesla’s claims, clarifying Tesla’s role in the invention of the radio, but not until after his death in 1943. By then Marconi had already been credited as the inventor of the radio and become rich.
Marconi’s success and lack of financial support left Tesla with no choice but to abandon the project. The Wardenclyffe staff was laid off in 1906, and by 1915 the site had fallen into foreclosure. Wardenclyffe Tower became a 186-foot-tall relic that was dismantled and sold for scrap to help pay the debts he had accrued. Tesla declared bankruptcy.
After suffering another nervous breakdown following the closure of his free energy project, Tesla eventually returned to work, primarily as a consultant.
Death Beam
1934 it was reported in the New York Times that Tesla was working on a “Death Beam” capable of knocking 10,000 enemy airplanes out of the sky. He wanted to fund a prototypical defensive weapon in the interest of world peace, but his requests to J.P. Morgan Jr. and the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain were unsuccessful. Despite the refusal of funding his work was watched closely by the FBI, whom it is believed made use of it and still use it to this day. The Soviet Union also took an interest in what Tesla was doing and paid him $25,000. Despite this interest the project never got off the ground.
Later years
By 1912, Tesla had begun to withdraw from, what he called, the doubting world. He took refuge in nature and became obsessed with pigeons. He was now showing signs of having obsessive-compulsive disorder, washing his hand repeatedly, counting his steps, fixated on the number three. His claim to having an abnormal sensitivity to sounds, as well as an acute sense of sight shows that his work had made him electrosensitive. Maybe the first person to be afflicted with this debilitating condition.
Poor, a reclusive bachelor, Nikola Tesla died in New York on 7th January 1943 at age 86.
Margie
