Nikola Tesla.pdf

(11781 KB) Pobierz
Nikola Tesla
1
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla
Tesla, aged 37, 1893, photo by Napoleon Sarony
Born
10 July 1856
Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia)
7 January 1943 (aged 86)
New York City, New York, USA
modern-day Croatia
Budapest, modern-day Hungary
France
Manhattan, USA
Citizenship
Austrian Empire (10 July 1856 – 1867)
Austria-Hungary (1867 – 31 October 1918)
United States (30 July 1891
–
7 January 1943)
Electrical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Edison Machine Works
Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing
Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co.
Higher Real Gymnasium
Graz University of Technology (dropped out)
Died
Residence
Fields
Institutions
Alma mater
Known for
Influences
Influenced
Notable awards
Signature
Ernst Mach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Mark Twain, Swami Vivekananda, Voltaire
Gano Dunn
Nikola Tesla
(Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856
–
7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American
[1][2]
inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the
design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
[3]
Nikola Tesla
Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to
work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and
companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed
by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop a power system using alternating
current. Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado
Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication,
[]
for his
X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished
Wardenclyffe Tower project.
[]
Tesla's achievements and his abilities as a showman demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions made him
world-famous.
[4]
Although he made a great deal of money from his patents, he spent a lot on numerous experiments.
He lived for most of his life in a series of New York hotels although the end of his patent income and eventual
bankruptcy led him to live in diminished circumstances.
[5]
Tesla still continued to invite the press to parties he held
on his birthday to announce new inventions he was working and make (sometimes unusual) statements.
[6][7]
Because
of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the years, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the
archetypal "mad scientist".
[8]
He died in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel on 7 January 1943.
Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a
comeback in popular culture.
[9]
His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories
and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor
of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term
"tesla" to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.
[10]
2
Early years (1856–1885)
Nikola Tesla was born on 10 July
(O.S. 28 June)
1856 to Serbian parents
in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia). His
father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian Orthodox priest.
[]
Tesla's mother,
Đuka Tesla (née Mandić), whose father was also a Serbian Orthodox
priest,
[11]
had a talent for making home craft tools, mechanical
appliances, and the ability to memorize Serbian epic poems. Duka had
never received a formal education. Nikola credited his eidetic memory
and creative abilities to his mother's genetics and influence.
[12][]
Tesla's
[13]
progenitors were from western Serbia, near Montenegro.
Tesla was the fourth of five children. He had an older brother named
church, where his father served. Both the house
Dane and three sisters, Milka, Angelina and Marica. Dane was killed in
and church were burnt down during the Yugoslav
a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five.
[14][]
Some accounts say
Wars.
[citation
needed]
The Croatian Government has
[]
that Tesla caused the accident by frightening the horse. In 1861, Tesla
rebuilt both.
attended the "Lower" or "Primary" School in Smiljan where he studied
German, arithmetic, and religion.
[]
In 1862, the Tesla family moved to Gospić, Austrian Empire, where Tesla's father
worked as a pastor. Nikola completed "Lower" or "Primary" School, followed by the "Lower Real Gymnasium" or
"Normal School".
[15]
In 1870, Tesla moved to Karlovac to attend school at Higher Real Gymnasium, where he was profoundly influenced
by a math teacher Martin Sekulić.
[][16]
Tesla was able to perform integral calculus in his head, which prompted his
teachers to believe that he was cheating.
[17]
He finished a four-year term in three years, graduating in 1873.
[18]
[]
Rebuilt, Tesla's rebuilt house (parish hall) in
Smiljan, where he was born, and the rebuilt
Nikola Tesla
3
In 1873, Tesla returned to his birthtown, Smiljan. Shortly after he arrived, Tesla
contracted cholera; he was bedridden for nine months and was near death
multiple times. Tesla's father, in a moment of despair, promised to send him to
the best engineering school if he recovered from the illness
[][]
(his father had
originally wanted him to enter the priesthood).
[19]
In 1874, Tesla evaded being drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in Smiljan
[]
by running away to Tomingaj, near Gračac. There, he explored the mountains in
hunter's garb. Tesla claimed that this contact with nature made him stronger, both
physically and mentally.
[]
He read many books while in Tomingaj, and later
claimed that Mark Twain's works had helped him to miraculously recover from
his earlier illness.
[]
Tesla's baptismal record, c. 28 June
1856.
In 1875, Tesla enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria, on a Military
Border scholarship. During his first year, Tesla never missed a lecture, earned the
highest grades possible, passed nine exams
[][]
(nearly twice as many required
[]
),
started a Serbian culture club,
[]
and even received a letter of commendation from
the dean of the technical faculty to his father, which stated, "Your son is a star of
first rank".
[]
Tesla claimed that he worked from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m., no Sundays or
holidays excepted.
[]
He was "mortified when [his] father made light of [those]
hard won honors". After his father's death in 1879,
[]
Tesla found a package of
letters from his professors to his father, warning that unless he were removed
from the school, Tesla would be killed through overwork.
[]
During his second
year, Tesla came into conflict with Professor Poeschl over the Gramme dynamo,
when Tesla suggested that commutators weren't necessary. At the end of his
second year, Tesla lost his scholarship and became addicted to gambling.
[][]
During his third year, Tesla gambled away his allowance and his tuition money,
later gambling back his initial losses and returning the balance to his family.
Tesla claimed that he "conquered [his] passion then and there," but later he was
known to play billiards in the US. When exam time came, Tesla was unprepared
and asked for an extension to study, but was denied. He never graduated from the
university and did not receive grades for the last semester.
[]
Tesla wearing the Serbian national
costume, c.1880.
In December 1878, Tesla left Graz and severed all relations with his family to
hide the fact that he dropped out of school.
[]
His friends thought that he had drowned in the Mur River.
[]
Tesla went
to Maribor (now in Slovenia), where he worked as a draftsman for 60 florins a month. He spent his spare time
playing cards with local men on the streets.
[]
In March 1879, Milutin Tesla went to Maribor to beg his son to return
home, but Nikola refused.
[20]
Nikola suffered a nervous breakdown at around the same time.
[]
Nikola Tesla
4
On 24 March 1879, Tesla was returned to Gospić under police guard for not
having a residence permit. On 17 April 1879, Milutin Tesla died at the age of 60
after contracting an unspecified illness
[]
(although some sources claim that he
died of a stroke
[21]
). During that year, Tesla taught a large class of students in
his old school, Higher Real Gymnasium, in Gospić.
[]
In January 1880, two of Tesla's uncles put together enough money to help him
leave Gospić for Prague where he was to study. Unfortunately, he arrived too late
to matriculate at Charles-Ferdinand University because he arrived too late to be
able to enroll; he never studied Greek, a required subject; and he was illiterate in
Czech, another required subject. Tesla did, however, attend lectures at the
university, although, as an auditor, he did not receive grades for the
courses.
[22][23][24]
Tesla aged 23, c.1879
In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest to work under Ferenc Puskas at a telegraph company, the Budapest Telephone
Exchange. Upon arrival, Tesla realized that the company, then under construction, was not functional, so he worked
as a draftsman in the Central Telegraph Office, instead. Within a few months, the Budapest Telephone Exchange
became functional and Tesla was allocated the chief electrician position.
[25]
During his employment, Tesla made
many improvements to the Central Station equipment and claimed to have perfected a telephone repeater or
amplifier, which was never patented nor publicly described.
[]
Working for Edison
In 1882, Tesla began working for the Continental Edison Company in France, designing and making improvements
to electrical equipment.
[26]
In June 1884, Tesla relocated to New York City.
[]
During his trip across the Atlantic, his ticket, money, and some of
his luggage were stolen, and he was nearly thrown overboard after a mutiny broke out on the ship.
[27]
He arrived
with only four cents in his pocket, a letter of recommendation, a few poems, and the remainder of his
belongings.
[citation
needed]
In the letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, a former employer, to Thomas Edison, it is claimed that
Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." (The exact contents
of the letter are disputed in McNichol's book.) 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.
[28]
In 1885, Tesla claimed that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in
both service and economy. According to Tesla, Edison remarked, "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you—if you
can do it"
[]
—this
has been noted as an odd statement from an Edison whose company was stingy with pay and who
did not have that sort of cash on hand.
[29]
After months of work, Tesla fulfilled the task and inquired about payment.
Edison, claiming that he was only joking, replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor."
[30][31]
Instead,
Edison offered a US$10 a week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately
resigned.
[]
Nikola Tesla
5
Middle years (1886–1899)
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing.
[32]
The company installed electrical
arc light based illumination systems designed by Tesla and also had designs for dynamo electric machine
commutators, the first patents issued to Tesla in the US.
[]
Tesla proposed that the company should go on to develop his ideas for
alternating current transmission systems and motors. The investors disagreed and
eventually fired him, leaving him penniless; Tesla was forced to work as a ditch
digger for US$2 per day. Tesla considered the winter of 1886/1887 as a time of
"terrible headaches and bitter tears". During this time, he questioned the value of
his education.
[][34]
In April 1887, Tesla started a company, the Tesla Electric Company, with the
backing of New York attorney Charles F. Peck and Alfred S. Brown, the director
of Western Union. They set up a laboratory for Tesla at 89 Liberty Street in
Manhattan so he could work on his alternating current motor and other devices
for power distribution, with an agreement that they share fifty-fifty with Tesla
any profits generated from patents.
[35]
It was here, in 1887, that Tesla
constructed a brushless alternating current induction motor, based on a rotating
magnetic field principle he claimed to have conceived of in 1882.
[]
He received a
US patent for the motor in May 1888.
[36]
At that time, many inventors were
trying to develop workable AC motors
[]
because AC's advantages in long
distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to
operate motors on AC. The rotating magnetic field induction motor seems to
Drawing from U.S. Patent 381,968
[33]
have been an independent invention by Tesla, but it was not a unique discovery
, illustrating principle of Tesla's
alternating current motor
at the time.
[37]
Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris published a paper on rotating
magnetic field based induction motor on 11 March 1888,
[38][][][39]
a working
model of which he may have been demonstrating at the University of Turin as early as 1885.
[40][41][42]
In 1888, a
month before Tesla demonstrated his AC induction motor, Westinghouse engineer Oliver B. Shallenberger invented
an induction meter that was based on the same rotating magnetic field principle,
[43][44]
and during Tesla's
demonstration English engineer Elihu Thomson stated he was working on an induction motor.
[45]
In 1888, the editor of
Electrical World
magazine, Thomas Commerford Martin (a friend and publicist), arranged for
Tesla to demonstrate his alternating current system, including his induction motor, at the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers (now IEEE).
[46]
Engineers working for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company
reported to George Westinghouse that Tesla had a viable AC motor and power system—something that
Westinghouse had been trying to secure. In July 1888, Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with George
Westinghouse for Tesla's polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a
royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor. Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year for the
large fee of $2,000 a month to be a consultant at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh
labs.
[]
During that year, Tesla worked in Pittsburgh, helping to create an alternating current system to power the city's
streetcars. He found the time there frustrating because of conflicts between him and the other Westinghouse
engineers over how to best implement AC power. Between them, they settled on a 60-cycle AC current system Tesla
proposed (to match the working frequency of Tesla's motor), although they soon found that, since Tesla's induction
motor could only run at a constant speed, it would not work for street cars. They ended up using a DC traction motor
[47]
instead.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin