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the 19th century was the time of great
inventors and great inventions along the
way thomas edison became one of the best
known and most admired inventors in
history nikola tesla is arguably less
well-known only recently has he
attracted renewed attention thanks in
part to the electric car company that
bears his name
in 1884 when tesla was 28 years old he
sailed for new york with only four cents
in his pocket his money and some of his
luggage were stolen on the way over
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like other immigrants tesla came to
america for work he had been hired as an
engineer at edison machine works in
manhattan tesla admired edison recalling
one of the great events in my life was
my first meeting with edison this
wonderful man who had received no
scientific training yet had accomplished
so much filled me with amazement edison
was also impressed with a young engineer
remarking to an assistant this is a damn
good man
it didn't take long however for things
to turn sour as the two men disagreed
over how electricity should be delivered
to the masses
in 1879 edison created the first
practical incandescent light bulb and
then built a system to carry electricity
so people could use his new invention he
opened up his first power plant in new
york in 1882 supported by his direct
current electrical system also known as
dc a network of underground cables would
carry electricity from a generator to
homes and businesses but his dc
generators kept failing so he hired the
young serbian engineer to improve them
tesla saw the weaknesses of direct
current which travels through a power
line in one direction at a constant
voltage but there's a critical flaw it
can only go up to a mile before losing
power
tesla felt he had come up with a better
solution alternating current ac
periodically changes direction and can
also vary its voltage the crucial
advantage is that it can travel hundreds
of miles without losing power
yet when tesla tried to convince edison
of the advantages of ac his boss wasn't
having any of it edison didn't want to
lose the royalties he earned from his dc
patents tesla claimed edison promised
him fifty thousand dollars if he can
improve on his dc generators and when he
did edison refused to pay up and is said
to have responded tesla you don't
understand our american humor so tesla
quit after just a few months on the job
writing in his diary goodbye to the
edison machine works tesla set out on
his own hoping to find investors
interested in his concept for an ac
motor which he had patented yet he
struggled alternating current was a
totally new technology not something
anyone had ever seen before he even
briefly had to resort to digging ditches
just to survive but there was one person
who took a chance on him entrepreneur
george westinghouse saw the potential of
ac he believed ac was the missing link
in long distance power transmission so
he purchased tesla's ac patents for
sixty thousand dollars and offered tesla
stock in royalties of two dollars fifty
cents for each horsepower of electricity
sold all of this is worth millions today
edison tried to do everything he could
to discredit tesla's ac system so that
dc would be the preferred choice to
power homes he found an ally in jp
morgan at the time the most powerful
banker in america this would lead to the
birth of general electric the battle
against tesla and westinghouse is now
known as the war of the currents and in
many ways it was a propaganda war
launched by edison to try to convince
the public that ac was dangerous he
zeroed in on the fact that alternating
current operated at much higher voltages
than direct current when the state of
new york commissioned an electricity
salesman named harold brown to build the
electric chair edison paid him behind
the scenes to use his rival's ac
generators secured through a second-hand
dealer brown also used ac to electrocute
dogs at edison's laboratory in new
jersey which edison recalled in articles
he published writing i have myself seen
a large healthy dog killed instantly by
the alternating current other animals
were not immune to his schemes edison's
company electrocuted a circus elephant
named topsy using ac and produced a film
about it his anti-ac crusade may or may
not have also come from a genuine
concern about safety he wrote a letter
warning the president of his electric
light company of the danger of ac
declaring just as certain as death
westinghouse will kill a customer within
six months after he puts in a system of
any size sure enough there were several
accidental deaths due to the high
voltages of ac in the late 1880s in new
york and several other cities in one
incident telegraph lineman john feeks
his body was left hanging in tangled
wires in front of a horrified crowd his
death led to laws to move ac lines
underground in new york city
tesla felt that the only way to show ac
was safe was to demonstrate it on
himself in a dramatic display at
columbia university he grasped a brass
ball in each hand and touched the
terminals of a high voltage high
frequency transformer now known as a
tesla coil 250 000 volts raced across
the surface of his body a newspaper
reported that he was surrounded by
tongues of electric flame and his
strategy apparently worked
in 1893 tesla and westinghouse scored a
big win when they beat out edison to
light up the chicago world fair using
alternating current the first
all-electric fair in history three years
later they lit up the city of buffalo
using ac motors powered by the waters of
niagara falls
this was tesla's childhood dream as a
kid he saw an image of the falls and
told his uncle that one day he'd go to
america and capture the energy of
niagara the first hydroelectric power
plant at niagara falls would mark the
beginning of the electrification of the
world when he gave a speech at the
opening ceremony tesla said it is a
monument worthy of our scientific age it
signifies the subjugation of natural
forces to the service of man the
discontinuance of barbarous methods the
relieving of millions from want and
suffering
today almost every home in the world is
powered by ac whereas dc powers smaller
items anything that uses batteries from
your electric toothbrush to the clock on
the wall
despite the success of ac tesla never
went on to the fame and fortune that
edison enjoyed because edison was not
only an inventor he was a businessman
honing his craft at the age of 13 when
he started selling candy newspapers and
vegetables on trains and turned an
amazing profit of 50 a week in his day
about 1600 today edison would likely
have made a different choice when
confronted with a challenging situation
that tesla faced next
the war of the currents took a financial
toll on westinghouse whose company
racked up millions of dollars in debt
when westinghouse begged tesla to lower
his royalty rate in order to save the
company tesla did more than that he tore
up his contract relinquishing his
royalties all together it's estimated
that tesla willingly walked away from 12
million dollars in royalties in his day
which today would be worth well over 300
million those royalties were so valuable
that they would have accrued over time
to turn tesla into the world's first
billionaire in return for this act of
incredible compassion westinghouse paid
him a lump sum of 216 000 for the right
to use his ac patents forever which is
roughly 5 million today tesla's decision
would hurt him dearly because he ended
up short of cash to fund his other grand
ideas he had discovered that his
powerful coil made it possible to send
and receive radio signals but in 1895 a
fire broke out at the building housing
his new york lab as he was about to
transmit a signal 50 miles to west point
and new york the blaze destroyed
everything his models designs notes and
tools the timing was terrible because
italian inventor guillermo marconi was
also developing radio in england sending
morse code based signals
tesla still managed to be marconi to the
punch by filing american patents for the
radio first in 1897 when marconi tried
to do the same a few years later the u.s
patent office turned him down because
his were too similar to tesla's repeated
applications were also rejected but
marconi did attract the attention of
none other than edison who invested in
him and became a consulting engineer at
marconi's company the italian's greatest
achievement came in 1901 when he
received the first radio signal sent
across the atlantic from a transmitter
in southwest england to saint john's
newfoundland in eastern canada this won
marconi international fame and he had to
use tesla's patents to achieve it but
tesla didn't mind when one of his
engineers said looks as if marconi got
the jump on you tesla replied marconi is
a good fellow let him continue he is
using 17 of my patents unfortunately no
patent is truly safe
in 1904 the patent office decided
inexplicably to rewrite history by
awarding marconi a patent for the
invention of the radio reversing its
earlier decisions
it gave no reason but it didn't hurt
that marconi had the financial backing
of edison and other influential people
in 1909 marconi won the nobel prize in
physics for the invention of the radio
tesla was furious and sued the marconi
company for infringement the radio
incident led tesla to lose business
opportunities for example tesla had a
grand vision for wireless electricity
his proposal initially caught the
attention of jp morgan who put up 150
000 to build a giant transmission tower
in 1901.
tesla believed the 187 foot 57 meter
tall warden cliff tower in long island
new york was the start of a system that
could deliver electricity without wires
around the globe and anyone with the
right equipment could tap into it he
imagined a scenario where it will be
possible for a businessman in new york
to dictate instructions and have them
instantly appear in type at his office
in london or elsewhere it was incredibly
prescient to envision telecommunications
infrastructure much like today's
internet more than a century ago but
tesla's vision would never bear fruit
electricity can indeed be transmitted
through the air but it's impractical
because of the amount of power needed to
make it happen so tesla appealed to
morgan for more money it was all for
naught morgan was throwing money in the
other direction toward marconi
warden cliff tower was never completed
and would eventually be demolished along
with tesla's vision
tesla was devastated and had a breakdown
lamenting it is not a dream it is a
simple feat of scientific electrical
engineering only expensive blind
faint-hearted doubting world
tesla began to withdraw from that world
he showed signs of obsessive compulsive
disorder which compelled him to do
things in threes including living in a
hotel room that was divisible by the
number three he spent the last decade of
his life living out of a hotel paid for
by the westinghouse corporation which
kept him on as a consultant he was broke
and befriended pigeons edison on the
other hand continued to reap immense
rewards businesses and partnerships
filled his life by the time he died in
1931 he patented a record 1093
inventions there was the light bulb of
course but also the motion picture
camera and the early record player the
phonograph today he is considered one of
the world's greatest inventors
it was only after tesla's death that he
got a modicum of justice for all that he
had lost
when tesla sued marconi the case dragged
on in court for years six months after
his passing in 1943 the u.s supreme
court ruled marconi's radio patents were
invalid and awarded the patents for the
radio to tesla but it had a selfish
reason for doing so marconi's company
had sued the us government for patent
infringement during world war one so to
avoid the lawsuit altogether the supreme
court deemed tesla the inventor of the
radio
today at the site where tesla's warden
cliff tower once stood is a science
museum dedicated to the man whose dreams
were not to be
the tesla science center was made
possible thanks to the financial support
of thousands of tesla fans including
tesla ceo elon musk
tesla's prediction of transmitting data
without wires came true in the early 90s
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