Nikola Tesla short biography

Nikola Tesla, between being born in a modest Serbian family in the Austrian Empire, and even more modestly, a lonely death in a hotel room in New York, became one of the greatest inventors of the modern age, a genius and the founder of a new era.

However, Tesla's achievements began to be appreciated and recognized only in the years after his death, and all the achievements of his genius and the patents he left, humanity and science are still trying to figure out.

After redesigning a DC generator at Edison's company and devising numerous patents that brought the company significant profits, Tesla did not receive the expected compensation from Edison, and an additional rift between the two inventors was created by Edison, who made money from a DC generator while Tesla advocated the introduction. alternating current generators that would significantly reduce the cost of electricity delivery.

The quarrel between the two currents was further intensified in public when Edison presented Tesla's alternating current as dangerous and used it to kill animals in front of the media. In response, Tesla joined the AC circuit, causing the filament of the electric bulb to glow, and thus dispelled prejudices about the harmfulness of AC.

In the meantime, Tesla definitely left Edison's company and tried to establish its own Tesla electric lighting and production, where it would further develop the AC motor. However, the public was still not completely convinced of the safety of Tesla's new electricity, so the financiers withdrew, which forced Tesla to abandon his ideas and do physical work, at least for a while. In the meantime, new discoveries were developing in his mind, so he managed to construct the first brushless AC electric motor in 1887, and demonstrated it in front of the American Society of Electrical Engineers the following year. In addition, he developed the principles of Tesla's coil and began working with George Westinghouse in his company's laboratories. Along with the development of new ideas and patents, Tesla received American citizenship on July 30, 1891, which enabled him even greater success and the true development of the inventor's career.

Then he started working in his new laboratory in New York, where he first showed a fluorescent light bulb that shines without wires. This is how the idea of ​​wireless power transmission first appeared. At the age of 36, he applied for his first patent in the field of multiphase currents. The following research focuses on the principles of rotating magnetic fields. He became vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (later IEEE) from 1892 to 1894.

From 1893 to 1895, Tesla investigated high-frequency alternating currents. He was able to produce AC voltages of one million volts using a Tesla coil and studied the surface effect of high frequencies in conductive materials, synchronizing electrical circuits and resonators, a dilute gas lamp that glows without wires, wireless transmission of electricity and the first transmission of radio waves. . In St. Louis in 1893, in front of 6,000 spectators, he attractively presented many experiments, including a broadcast similar to radio communication. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the National Electric Lighting Association, he described and demonstrated his principles in detail. Tesla's demonstrations are attracting a lot of attention and are being closely monitored.

However, Tesla soon suffered another major blow in his career - on March 13, 1895, a large fire broke out in a laboratory on South Fifth Avenue where about 400 electric motors burned, as well as electric and mechanical oscillators, transformers, many original constructions and a manuscript almost completed books The Story of the 1001 Induction Motor. However, it was a time of extraordinary Tesla's creativity and tenacity. Already on March 15, he founded a new company called Nikola Tesla and continues to work.

In the late 1880s, the old war between the two currents, Tesla and Edison, escalated again, this time due to Edison's launch of a DC-based electricity distribution system despite the existence of a more efficient, Tesla's AC system. As a result of the electricity war, Edison and Westinghouse almost went bankrupt, so in 1897 Tesla tore up the contract and released Westinghouse from the obligation to pay for the use of patents. Tesla later devoted himself to research that was the basis for research in the field of cosmic radiation. In his diary, he described experiments concerning the ionosphere and terrestrial waves caused by transversal or longitudinal waves. Tesla also patented a model of a radio-controlled ship, planned to build a World Radio Station on Long Island, and the radio would later become the cause of conflict with the winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of radio.

In 1909, Marconi received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy, which made Tesla deeply indignant. In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi, seeking judicial protection of his rights to radio, but in 1916 he went bankrupt due to high costs. In those moments, his life slips dangerously to the brink of poverty.

He died poor and alone in a hotel room in New York, USA, on January 7, 1943.