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History 12
17 June 2015
Nikola Tesla: The Father Of Electricity
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in what is today the Republic of Croatia. Tesla grew up in a time where young men had two choices in their lifelong professions, join the army or be a priest. His dad being a priest, one would think a young Tesla would follow in his footsteps, but he didn’t. Luckily for Tesla his love and passion for electricity and inventing would lead him to Joanneum Polytechnic School in Graz, Austria.
This is where his professor Jacob Poeschi brought a generator to his physics class and author Stephanie Sammartino McPherson states in her book ar of The Currents that while
W
watching the dynamo perform, Tesla thought it was needlessly complicated (page 16). When
Tesla voiced his opinion, his teacher didn’t like that very much. Poeschi would spent the rest of the class explaining why Tesla’s idea would not work.
Tesla was humiliated by the criticism of his teacher, but he didn’t let it sway him.He believed in his heart that he could make a system for powering machines with alternating current. There is something about great thinkers and the way they use criticism and negative energy to fuel their own inventive power, and Tesla was no exception.
One afternoon while walking through the park in Budapest with a good friend. The setting sun brought on a spark of inspiration inside Tesla's mind. Dropping to the ground, he grabbed a nearby twig and started to draw a diagram in the dirt. This diagram Tesla drew in the dirt would be the blueprints he would use as the building blocks for his Alternating Current motor. Ruiz 2
Without money and resources, Tesla would be facing an uphill battle to get his system out for general use. Then in 1882, the U.S. based Edison Electric Light Co. offered him a job at its Paris branch. Tesla’s job performance was outstanding. Impressed, Teslas manager, Charles
Batchelor, encouraged him to go to America, where he might have the chance to meet Edison himself. This idea would be the driving force in getting Tesla to come to the states.
On June 6th 1884 Tesla arrives in New York at age 28 with only 4 cents in his pocket, and a letter of recommendation from Batchelor. The day after his ship docked, Tesla would go visit Edison at his lab. Despite their differences, Edison being pro direct current, the two men sensed a common bond. Edison being very pleased with Tesla’s knowledge and accomplishments, would hire the up and coming Serbian.During his time spent at laboratory,
Edison was very impressed with Tesla's work ethic. “I've had many hard working students, but you take the cake” (McPherson 21).
Tesla would plead with Edison to give alternating current a chance, but his plea fell on deaf ears. Edison would think A/C’s high voltage would pose too much of a risk of shock and death to anyone that would come in contact with the wires.Wires according to Teslas ideas would be hung up on post away from anyone's reach. Edison would have buried his power lines like the ones that were used to power Wall St, that he had a hand in constructing.
Things would come to a head in a dispute over $50,000 bonus check Tesla was promised for the improvement of twenty­four of Edison’s D/C generators. But upon completion,
Tesla received no payment for his work. Edison would laugh in his face and proclaim “When you become a full­fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke”. Tesla would resign from his post feeling hurt and cheated.
Tesla would then dig ditches for the next year to make ends meat. Then in 1887 with help from investors, he would open a laboratory and workshops on South Fifth Street in New

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York. This would be when Tesla perfected the system he envisioned in Hungary. He would create a Polyphase system of Alternating Current that would deliver full power to a motor continuously. He would also create transformers, that would boost the voltage produced by his generators. This would allow electricity to travel much greater distances over wires. During this period where Tesla would work like a madman, he would create 22 patents in five years.
This would peak the interest of Pittsburgh industrialist George Westinghouse, who was looking to invest in the next big energy craze. Westinghouse was reluctant to invest in D/C current, due to it being too expensive to for it to branch out longer distances. A problem Tesla didn’t have with his A/C system, and made better due to his invention on the transformer.
Westinghouse would then offer Tesla one million dollars and a royalty of $2.50 (a monster of a deal at the time) for every horsepower Tesla could create from his inventions.
Edison sensing the death of Direct Current would try and discredit the use of A/C by using propaganda, such as shocking animals to death and even the invention of the electric chair. The electric chair fiasco being a negative news for Edison and his plight to rid the world of alternating current. The chair needed three surges of power to “kill” the poor man in it and the second surge lighting his hair and skin on fire.
This “War of Currents” as it was referred to by the press would come to a screeching halt with the knockout blow from Tesla and Westinghouse. The opening of The Chicago's World Fair in 1893, would amaze over 100,000 spectators as Tesla would light up the sky with the illumination of thousands of lightbulbs all powered by Tesla's A/C systems generators. Having seen nothing but kerosene lamps or gas for the most wealthy, this would be like a vision of heaven for the masses. This momentous occasion almost didn’t take place due to Edison not allowing Tesla to use his lightbulbs. Westinghouse and Tesla would go around this by producing a light similar to Edison's design without infringing on Edison's patent. This two piece skipper

Ruiz 4 lamp was finished just in time for the Fair thus putting on Tesla's display of A/C dominance.

To overcome the propaganda produced by Edison and GE, Tesla came up with the Egg of Columbus to show just how A/C power worked. He would also put on displays of electrical might, by touching light bulbs and making them light up, showing how electricity can move through ones body without killing you.
Since Tesla was a child he had a dream of using the natural power of Niagara Falls to push Tesla created generators that would help light up the world. A contract was immediately awarded to Westinghouse for Tesla to produce three massive 5,000 horsepower alternators for the falls to power. The technical challenge was daunting, Tesla and the other engineers were in frequent arguments over the operating frequencies of the generators. Even when the system was put in place Tesla was the only one to think it would work. In 1896 the system went online, and the waters of the upper Niagara would power the three largest generators ever created, the current of the generators would produce over 22,000 volts with the help of Tesla made transformers. By the end of the Century the power lines would stretch out to help power New
York.
Tesla will then move on to his next invention, he had the idea of sending and receiving power with no power lines needed. From this idea, Tesla would create is famous Tesla Coil. The coil was an instrument that could step up voltages to high voltages at high frequencies. This would be basically the first radio. This would lead to Tesla’s life long obsession, wireless power transmission. This would also lead to the race for radio.
Tesla would discover that his coils can send and receive signals when they were tuned to the same frequency. By 1895 Tesla's was ready to send a signal 50 miles away to another coil, but tragedy struck. A fire in his laboratory would wipe out his lifes work. Adding insult to injury, a scientist from England named Marconi, would infringe on his patents and create a

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Feeling blue for sometime after the fire, and the loss of his life's work. Tesla would then debut in 1898 the invention of a remote controlled boat. Tesla would claim that this invention would end war, because there would be no need to have boots on the battlefield. But no government was interested in this new form of war, and Tesla didn’t want to be known for making a death machine.
This would lead Tesla to Colorado Springs, CO in the summer of 1899 and his top secret research into his lifelong love of lightning. Tesla planned on transmitting electrical power into the upper atmosphere, a very ambitious plan. He built a strange wooden structure right outside the city while he would study lightning until completion. He built the largest Tesla coil ever built at the time, to create lightning. Outside with building when operational would shoot lightning into the sky and the thunder could be heard 20 miles away.
For six months Tesla would continue this research in Colorado Springs til he decided to board a train back to New York City on January 1900. When Tesla made it back, he was eager to start up his next endeavor, and with the backing of financier JP Morgan, Tesla wanted to create a global communications network. Morgan agrees to invest $150,000 dollars to Tesla’s cause of his worldwide radio center. What Tesla didn’t tell Morgan was the real reason he wanted to make what he called Wardenclyffe Tower, wasn’t only for a global radio network but also for the worldwide wireless transmission of power. Morgan being the capitalist pig we was, did not think it was worth his money to help out humanity, and decided to cut funding of the tower. Wardenclyffe would be the turning point in Tesla’s career, he aimed so high and missed his mark.Marconi would win the Nobel Prize in 1909, this angered Tesla because he used a lot of Tesla's life work to complete his project. Tesla had insufficient funds to wage a legal battle

Ruiz 6 with Marconi, and would give up his fight. From then on Tesla would be found at the park feeding pigeons. In Tesla’s last years he was very antisocial, and the public didn’t really care for
Tesla's kooky inventions of death rays, and wireless power. Nikola Tesla died on January 7,
1943 alone and broke.
The U.S. Supreme Court would ultimately revoke some of Marconi’s patents in 1948, legally sealing Tesla as the father of radio(Whips, pars. 15). It is pretty sad that Tesla gets snubbed by many textbooks and most people associate electric lighting to the satanist Thomas
Edison. To me that just fuels Tesla's bad boy mystic. Tesla was a non­conformist, whos anti­capitalist ideals “the corporate machine” doesn’t want young people to emulate. Tesla was the exact opposite of the Rockefellers, and Morgans, he cared about people. He wanted free power, and wanted to end war. And that is exactly what the bankers that control the world want.
For all the reasons mentioned above, Tesla will always be the brightest mind the world will ever see. Ruiz 7
Works Cited
Whipps, Heather. “Nikola Tesla: Inventions and Quotes”. livescience. Web. May 25, 2014.

McPherson, Stephanie. “War of The Currents”. Book. Minneapolis, MN. Twenty­First Century
Books, July 15, 2012.