Scientists: Nikola Tesla Traditional Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(micro)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Thanks to Photino for putting out this spawner series. I chose
Nikola Tesla, a scientist whose discoveries affect our lives
everyday, mostly in ways we take for granted.
It is especially evident in my life as an electrician. Some of my
clients say I'm a magician because I make things work, but I would
not know where to begin without the work done by this man.
Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor
and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He was one of the most
important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity and
is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field
of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern
alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the
polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, with
which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.
Born an ethnic Croat in the village of Smiljan, Croatian Military
Frontier, Austrian Empire (today's Croatia). He was a subject of
the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American
citizen.
After his demonstration of wireless communication through radio in
1894 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", in which
his Alternating Current was victorious over Edison's Direct
Current, he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical
engineers who worked in America.
Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and
many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance.
During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that
of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture,
but because of his eccentric personality and his seemingly
unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific
and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and
regarded as a mad scientist.
Tesla never put much focus on his finances. It is said he died
impoverished, at the age of 86.
Tesla contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of
robotics, remote control, radar, and computer science, and to the
expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical
physics.
In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as
being the inventor of the radio.
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the
Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric
equipment brought overseas from Edison's ideas. In the same year,
Tesla conceived the induction motor and began developing various
devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received
patents in 1888.
On 6 June 1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City with
little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, a
former employer. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison,
Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the
other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison
Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical
engineering and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's
most difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of
completely redesigning the Edison company's direct current
generators.
Tesla claims he was offered US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in 2007,
adjusted for inflation) if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor
and generators, making an improvement in both service and
economy.
Tesla said he worked night and day on the project and gave the
Edison Company several profitable new patents in the process. In
1885 when Tesla inquired about the payment for his work, Edison
replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," thus
breaking his word. Earning a mere US$18 per week, Tesla would have
had to work for 53 years to earn the amount he was promised. The
offer was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla then
immediately resigned when he was refused a raise to US$25 per
week.
Tesla, in need of work, eventually found himself digging ditches
for a short period of time for the Edison company. He saw the
manual labor as a terrible job, but Tesla used this time to focus
on his AC polyphase system.
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light &
Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla
on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually
relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York
as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise
capital for his next project.
In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current
induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he
developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with
George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing
Company's Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for
polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating
current electricity over long distances.
In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to
produce X rays. He also commented on the hazards of working with
his circuit and single node X-ray producing devices. Of his many
notes in the early investigation of this phenomenon, he attributed
the skin damage to various causes.
The Tesla generator was developed by Tesla in 1895, in conjunction
with his developments concerning the liquefaction of air. Tesla
knew, from Lord Kelvin's discoveries, that more heat is absorbed by
liquefied air when it is re-gasified and used to drive something,
than is required by theory, in other words, that the liquefaction
process is somewhat anomalous or 'over unity'.
Just prior to Tesla's completion of his work, and the filing of a
patent application, Tesla's laboratory was burned down, destroying
all his equipment, models and inventions. Immediately after the
fire, Linde, in Germany, filed 'his' patent application for the
exact same process, which recombined some of the heat energy
produced in compression of the air, to drive the process, just as
Tesla had done.
A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without
wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity of the earth
was proposed in which transmission in various natural media with
current that passes between the two points are used to power
devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using
this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form
a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the
transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual
lightning rods, the electrolaser electroshock weapon, and has been
proposed for disabling vehicles.
Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without
wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891.
The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is a term for an
application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the
movement of energy through space and matter; not just the
production of voltage across a conductor).
Wireless transmission of power and energy demonstration during his
high frequency and potential lecture of 1891.
On 30 July 1891, he became a naturalized citizen of the United
States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth
Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla
would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E.
Houston Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical
resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators he
generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings but, because
of the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing
complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant
frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger,
he was forced to apply a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment,
just as the astonished police arrived.
He also lit electric lamps wirelessly at both of the New York
locations, providing evidence for the potential of wireless power
transmission.
Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo used to generate AC which is used to
transport electricity across great distances.
At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, an international exposition was held which for the first
time devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was a historic
event as Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC
power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were
Tesla's fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs. An observer
noted:
Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with
tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as
terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the
current was turned on, the lamps or tubes, which had no wires
connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates,
or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room,
were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same
apparatus shown by Tesla in London about two years previous, "where
they produced so much wonder and astonishment.".
Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field
and induction motor by demonstrating how to make an egg made of
copper stand on end in his demonstration of the device he
constructed known as the "Egg of Columbus"
Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part
because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric
power distribution over the more efficient alternating current
advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse.
Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long
distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the
inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of
Currents", Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in
1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing
Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897,
Tesla researched radiation which led to setting up the basic
formulation of cosmic rays.
When Tesla was 41 years old, he filed the first basic radio patent
(U.S. Patent 645,576). A year later, he demonstrated a
radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the
military would want things such as radio-controlled torpedoes.
Tesla claimed to have developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form
of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control.
In 1898, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the public
during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. Tesla
called his boat a "teleautomaton". Radio remote control remained a
novelty until the 1960s.
In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug
for Internal combustion gasoline engines. He gained U.S. Patent
609,250, "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this mechanical
ignition system.
In 1899, Tesla decided to move and began research in Colorado
Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage,
high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival he told reporters that
he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting
signals from Pikes Peak to Paris. Tesla's diary contains
explanations of his experiments concerning the ionosphere and the
ground's telluric currents via transverse waves and longitudinal
waves.
At his lab, Tesla proved that the earth was a conductor, and he
produced artificial lightning (with discharges consisting of
millions of volts, and up to 135 feet long).
Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marconi for radio
in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned as potential
laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press dispatch,
leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies.
Some sources have claimed that because of their animosity toward
each other neither was given the award, despite their enormous
scientific contributions, and that each sought to minimize the
other one's achievements and right to win the award, that both
refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first,
and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it.
On Tesla's 75th birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its
cover. The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power
generation. Tesla received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus
for aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL
aircraft.
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and had
many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was
adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by
three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry,
notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and
hygiene, and was by all accounts mysophobic.
Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest mistake had
been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly
superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his
grasp.
Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for
its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general. He
sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better
understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a
means to ensure friendly international relations.
Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker
Hotel, on 7 January 1943. Despite having sold his AC electricity
patents, Tesla died with significant debts on the books. Later that
year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number 645576, in
effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.
At the time of his death, Tesla had been working on the Teleforce
weapon, or 'death ray,' that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the
US War Department. It appears that Teleforce was related to his
research into ball lightning and plasma, and was conceived as a
particle beam weapon.
Google honoured Tesla on his birthday on the 10th of July 2009 by
displaying a doodle in the Google search home page, that showed the
G as a tesla coil.
The heavy metal group Tesla, which made famous the rock-ballad
"Love Song", was named after Nikola Tesla.
In the years since his death, many of his innovations, theories and
claims have been used, at times unsuitably and controversially, to
support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific.
Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods
accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes
unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have
made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in
conspiracies about "hidden knowledge". Even in Tesla's time, some
believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to
Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
V fubhyq unir znqr vg zntargvp, ohg qvqa'g.