July 9–10, 1856: Visionary Tesla Born at Midnight
* By Scott Thill <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/author/morphizm/> <mailto:wi...@morphizm.com> Description: Email Author * July 9, 2010 | * 12:00 am | * Categories: 19th century <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/category/19th-century/> , Engineering <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/category/engineering/> , Physics <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/category/physics/> * 1856: Scientific genius and visionary inventor Nikola Tesla is born at the stroke of midnight in the unassuming village of Smiljan, in what’s now Croatia. He wastes little time in revolutionizing the world through foundational developments in electromagnetism, electrical current, wireless power and communications, weaponry, robotics, computer science, mass media and much more. “Tesla is like a character out of a science-fiction novel, the quintessential mad genius,” journalist Tom McNichol told Wired.com by e-mail. McNichol authored AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War <http://www.amazon.com/AC-DC-Savage-First-Standards/dp/0787982679> , a deadly serious but sometimes hilarious chronicle of Tesla and Edison’s battle for electrical supremacy <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0104> , “Whether he was more mad than genius depends on who you’re talking to.” That’s a massive crowd, as Tesla’s influence <http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm> on modern (and postmodern) life is practically immeasurable. Nikola Tesla <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla> geeked early on electricity at Austria’s Graz University of Technology and Prague’s Charles University, before landing an electrical engineering gig at Budapest’s national telephone company in 1881. Shortly after becoming its prize engineer and reportedly inventing either a telephone repeater or the first loudspeaker, Tesla job-hopped to the Continental Edison Company in Paris. From there, he eventually migrated to the United States to join his scientific contemporary, and lifelong nemesis, Thomas Edison <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/dayintech_0211> . By the time the synesthetic Tesla <http://www.todayinsci.com/T/Tesla_Nikola/TeslaNikola-Quotations.htm> got to New York, he and his alleged photographic memory had already privately built a successful prototype of the AC induction motor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_motor> , based on his groundbreaking concept of the principle for the rotating magnetic field <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_magnetic_field> . By the time he angrily left Edison’s craven employ after a salary dispute in 1886, Tesla had markedly upgraded the company’s inefficient direct-current motors and generators, and was quickly perfecting the polyphase system <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphase_system> for distributing alternating-current electrical power. But their adversarial battles would continue throughout the turn of the 20th century and beyond to Edison’s eventual deathbed, where he confessed that his greatest mistake was sticking with direct current and ignoring Tesla — and the overwhelming scientific evidence — on alternating current, which galvanized the 20th century. “Tesla was the electric Jesus,” Duncan Trussell explained in a hilarious episode (above) of Funny or Die’s brilliant Drunk History series tackling the inventors’ stormy relationship. It and McNichol’s book are among the most, pardon the pun, enlightening exegeses of the Edison-Tesla conflict. During Tesla’s standards war with Edison <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents> , the eccentric inventor was bankrolled by pioneering engineer and entrepreneur George Westinghouse <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/dayintech_0305> . With Tesla’s patents and designs, Westinghouse Electric <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporation> won the current war outright with hydroelectric power generated from Niagara Falls. The victory encoded well over a century of alternating-current supremacy. In the process, Tesla became an international celebrity, making friends with luminaries like Mark Twain and alternately transfixing and terrifying audiences <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/03/72763> with fearsome displays of electricity using his inventions like the Tesla coil <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil> . His subsequent innovations in wireless communications and power gave birth to the everything from the radio to the Wi-Fi network and our probably inevitable cordless future <http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/02/wireless.electricity/index.html> . Later conceptual and laboratory breakthroughs in teleforce <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleforce> and directed-energy resulted in charged particle-beam weaponry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_beam_weapon> and disturbing developments like Raytheon’s insane pain ray <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_ray> . He even envisioned a futuristic flying machine <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#Theoretical_inventions> propelled without the use of an engine, on-board fuel source or even wings. From telegeodynamics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegeodynamics> , using the planet itself as an energy conductor, to analyzing cosmic rays, Tesla’s brainy tentacles touched practically every corner, light and dark, of human culture. “The FBI thought enough of Telsa’s work that they compiled a lengthy dossier on him and his weapons work,” said McNichol. “The government was particularly interested in Tesla’s proposed directed-energy weapon or ‘death ray <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/07/fbi-we-dont-hav/> ‘ that would supposedly project massive bursts of electricity to an enemy thousands of miles away. The death ray, like many of Telsa’s more-fanciful notions, never saw the light of day, but that hasn’t kept many in the military from returning to his work.” Those stunning sci-fi possibilities have yet to fully come into being, though — like many sci-fi of past centuries — they might eventually in the centuries to come. But beyond his perhaps prescient theoretical inventions, it is Tesla’s epochal work in alternating current <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.10/tesla.html> that has changed civilization as we know it. “The modern industrial world, powered by alternating current, is very much a child of Telsa,” explained McNichol. “Telsa was truly a visionary in the sense that he saw things no one else did. The world has a way of both rewarding and punishing that kind of behavior.” Tesla’s earliest reward and punishment for his uncanny scientific and sci-fi sensibilities was the drawn-out battle with Edison. Later, it would be his forward-looking mind and anti-capitalist tendencies that ostracized him from traditional society. Personal quirks, such as an obsessive love of pigeons and a physical revulsion from jewelry, didn’t help matters. As a result, Tesla died in 1943, mostly alone and penniless in New York. His personal papers were quickly impounded and eventually declared top secret by the FBI. Since then, Tesla has become a pop-culture touchstone <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_in_popular_culture> for both scientific invention and conspiracy theory. His experiments on regeneration and teleportation showed up in Christopher Nolan’s 2006 mystery film The Prestige, with David Bowie inhabiting Tesla’s outsize shoes. His theories of telegeodynamics have continued to galvanize conspiracy theorists concerned that the Air Force Research Laboratory’s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program <http://www.alternet.org/story/130892/can_humans_cause_earthquakes_and_use_them_as_weapons_we%27ll_probably_find_out_soon_enough/?page=entire> , or HAARP, is being used to create earthquakes and remotely control minds. Tesla has been remixed or sampled by artists and deep thinkers H.G. Wells, Alan Moore, Thomas Pynchon and more. He’s fielded homages in some version or another from cool ;toons like Max Fleischer’s Superman and Adult Swim’s The Venture Brothers, as well as live-action sci-fi shows like Eureka, Sanctuary and Warehouse 13. In Funny or Die’s riotous historical revisionism, Tesla is played by John C. Reilly, while the irascible Edison is inhabited by Crispin Glover. From music to videogames to theater, the bow-down goes on. For good reason. “Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla’s work,” electrical engineer Bernard Behrend famously explained <http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/%7Ebogdan/tesla/otherson.htm> in the early 20th century, “the wheels of industry would cease to turn.” Source: Various Image: Nikola Tesla See Also: * Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla! <http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/happy-birthday-nikola-tesla/> * Nov. 11, 1856: Bessemer Becomes the Man of Steel <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/11/dayintech_1111> * July 9, 1955: Scientists Speak Up to End the Madness <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/07/dayintech_0709> * July 9, 1958: Surf's Up, as 1700-Foot Wave Scours Alaskan Bay <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/07/dayintech_0709/> * July 9, 1993: Yes, They're the Romanovs, DNA Tests Confirm <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/07/dayintech_0709> * July 10, 1962: 3-Point Seat Belt Patented <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/07/dayintech_0710> * July 10, 1997: Neanderthal DNA Suggests a Separate, Unequal Being <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/07/dayintech_0710> * July 10, 1999: Reddi-wip Inventor Sputters Out <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/07/dayintech_0710/> Read More <http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/07/0709nikola-tesla-born-midnight/#ixzz0tIG6RT9H> http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/07/0709nikola-tesla-born-midnight/#ixzz0tIG6RT9H
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