Nikola Tesla

Man Out of Time

Wireless Energy Transfer

Ship

Tesla’s transformers also produce electromagnetic waves, or signals. He used these signals to make the first remote control device – a remote control ship. Tesla’s work on remote control was first shown to the public in 1898. It is one of Tesla’s most important and protected patents and, together with its four-circuit resonance system, forms the basis of wireless communication.

Fountain

Another invention that Tesla developed out of necessity, trying to resolve his financial difficulties, was a fountain. In 1914 he protected the invention of fountain whose functioning was based on a great water mass circulation. He was trying to establish a business cooperation with Louis Tiffany, a famous jeweler and inventor of a special vitrage-making technique.

Long Island Laboratory

After the experiments in Colorado Springs, Tesla’s perspective was changed. The realization that information and energy can be made available at every point on the planet gave birth to exciting performances one after the other. All that was needed was to prove to the world the possibility of wireless energy transmission. He was able to gain interest in his project by one of the biggest financiers, John Pierpont Morgan, to whom he outlined that part of his plan relating to overseas wireless communications. He remained silent that his main goal was wireless power transmission.

In early 1901, a contract was made and Tesla received funding from Morgan to build his transatlantic messaging system. In Shoreham, Long Island, he purchased a 120-acre piece of land called Wardenclyffe and began construction of the laboratory and its giant oscillator. Tesla ordered strict secrecy, and apart from him no other person knew what exactly was being built and what the final purpose of the project was. Thanks to the patent “Electricity Transmission Device”, which he submitted in 1902 and was granted only in 1914, today some details of the technical realization of his idea are known. The essence of the construction of the new transmitter was its alignment with the electrical properties of the planet. He also came up with a new name for this device: Magnifying Transmitter.

At the end of 1901, Guglielmo Marconi was able to transmit a signal across the Atlantic. The event surprised the entire scientific world, including Tesla himself. Tesla knew that with his patent-pending devices Marconi could not perform such a feat, and he suspected him of using his apparatus. Primarily, the event, as well as economic circumstances, influenced the disruption of Morgan and Tesla’s communication and the continued funding of Tesla’s project. In addition to the funds he received from Morgan, Tesla also invested a large amount of its own money and, by shutting down the project, experienced a complete financial ruin. In the fall of 1906, Wardenclyffe was completely abandoned. In 1917, the 87-meter high Tesla tower on Long Island was demolished.

Induction Motors

One of the most important and well-known inventions of Nikola Tesla is the induction motor, which represents the beginning of the second industrial revolution and the cornerstone of the whole system of production, transmission and consumption of electricity used to this day. He built his first induction motor Tesla in 1883, and in 1888 Tesla was granted by the United States Patent Office all seven patents in the field of polyphase systems, covering basic models of induction motor in two-phase and three-phase construction, as well as two-phase and three-phase generators.

Colorado Springs Laboratory

The conditions that Nikola Tesla had in his lab on Houston Street no longer met his plans to build extremely high voltage oscillators, so he accepted an invitation from his friend and lawyer Leonard Curtis to go to Colorado Springs, where he was offered a free location for a new lab and electricity for powering his transformers.

He arrived in Colorado Springs on May 18, 1899. According to his instructions, a laboratory was built in two weeks – a simple wooden shed with two windows and a large door above which he inscribed a quote from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: You who enter here leave all hope.

Tesla spent nearly a year in Colorado, doing continuous research. He made some of the most significant discoveries, and certainly one of them is the stationary waves of planet Earth, “which showed that the entire planet we live on, despite its incomprehensible size, can be made to respond by flickering in the quietest whisper of the human voice.”In addition to the large amount of notes in the research diary, it was never exactly known what Tesla had discovered in Colorado. In patents he later applied for and in numerous articles and interviews, he presented the basic idea, explained the technical and technological realization, but also gave a lot of confusing details. He claimed that, based on the discovery of stationary waves, he determined those basic electrical properties of planet Earth that he needed to adjust his oscillator with an additional coil so that the two systems, the oscillator and the Earth, could enter into resonant oscillation. He also claimed to have been able to generate a powerful current that toured the Earth, and wirelessly transmitted energy sufficient to light 200 light bulbs.