Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Science Tesla God Among Men Tesla God Among Men Thomas Alva Edison was declared the most important man of the century according to Time magazine. He graced the world with his incandescent bulb, powered by a rapidly growing electrical movement of which he was a major leader. What most people do not understand is the fact that if the “Wizard” had his way, there would be a power plant every several miles, scattered about the land like sprinkles on a cupcake. At the time, direct current was the only choice, inhibiting as it was. Then, thanks to a man names Nikola Tesla, an alternating current motor was invented, allowing much more efficient electricity travel. This is just one example of the impact Telsa has had on the modern world. The forgotten father of science, Tesla, is responsible for numerous complex inventions that have changed and will continue to change the modern world. Tesla’s childhood was not what most would call ordinary. He was faced with several near death experiences ranging from getting maimed by feral boars, almost falling into a boiling vat of milk, diving off a two-story building’s roof, expecting the umbrella clinched in his fists to float him safely to the ground, and nearly being cremated alive. Family life makes a great impact on its members’ futures, good of bad. Unfortunately, when Tesla was five his older brother died in a mysterious accident (of which some accuse Tesla). Causing Tesla a lack of self-confidence, this incident made him feel as if all his actions were inadequate compared to his late bothers’. It was about this time that Tesla began developing a vast array of phobias and obsessions. for example, women’s earrings, especially glittery or multifaceted ones, intrigued him greatly. If he was to drop little squares of paper into a liquid it would cause a terrible taste in his mouth. Where ever he went he counted his steps, and could not fully enjoy a meal unless he calculated the volume of every last morsel in sight. One of the more serious social phobias was his inability to touch other people’s hair. These and other eccentricities can not be directly pinpointed as to when they started, but it was sometime near the death of his brother Daniel. Before Daniel’s death he had often seen bright flashes that interfered with his vision. Tesla was afflicted by the same disorder. Apparently they were victims of violent photographic memories. This caused him trouble during childhood, but would prove invaluable later in life. Tesla’s father was a reverend of a small clergy. To enhance the boys’ mental capacity memory games. Tesla and his father would often play memory games. From the time of Tesla’s birth if was decided he would follow his father’s footsteps and join the clergy. Tesla did not share his father’s ideas about his future and let it be known. His father insisted though, until one day when it looked as if Tesla might die of a serious illness he had had for months. The sickly boy suggested that the idea of going to engineering school might help him recover. His father quickly enrolled him in the next semesters course and Tesla recovered within a week. Tesla turned out to be every teachers nightmare, constantly correcting or instantly answering the instructor’s questions. He studied twenty hours a day, was excelling greatly in school, and was enjoying himself, when all of the sudden his funds ran out. Tesla turned to gambling to help pay for school. He first tried his luck at cards, but wound up becoming deadly accurate with a pool cue. Tesla also took up drinking and smoking for a period of time to deal with stress. It was at this time that Tesla began really concentrating on inventing an alternating current. He understood direct current and knew there must be a more efficient way to transport electricity. One day while he was walking through a park reciting Gothe’s Faust to himself, it suddenly struck him. He immediately found a twig and began scratching a picture on the sand; it was a diagram he would show investors six years later for the harnessing of Niagara Falls. Others had already developed alternating current motors, but they were terribly inefficient. Tesla did not just make some small advancement; he gave birth to an entire concept. By having two alternating currents out of phase with each other, a rotating magnetic field was produced. By creating a magnetic whirlwind the need for both commutator which reversed the direction of the current, and the brushes which provided passage for the current were no more. With the new alternating current, voltage could be stepped up or down according to the need. Now it was possible to transport electricity hundreds of miles due to the ability to carry high voltages. Instead of a installing a direct current power plant every few miles, an alternating current power plant could step up the voltage for long distance travel and then down step it for domestic use. Tesla built the ark of electricity, but getting it to float in the modern world would prove a real challenge. In an effort to help pay for college, Telsa began working for a telegraph office. He made numerous improvements to his station and was offered a job with Edison’s telephone subsidiary in Paris. Tesla had followed as best he could with the developments of electricity in the New World. He took the opportunity to get his foot in the door hoping he could sell the officers of the company on his new invention. Unfortunately, the officers said that Edison was not interested. Tesla continued working for the Edison Company troubleshooting. At the same time some Germans were extremely upset about the malfunction of their railroad station’s lighting plant of which the Edison Company was responsible for. The company responded by sending Tesla, promising a big bonus if he could fix the station’s dynamos and make reparations with the German clients. Tesla repaired the dynamos and made good friends with the train station’s manager. However, when Tesla returned to collect his bonus it never materialized. Angered at being swindled, he resigned. A good friend of Tesla’s at the Edison plant suggested he go to America, the land of opportunity. Tesla’s friend had known Edison and wrote the new inventor a letter of recommendation. Heading for America, Tesla found himself at the train station with no money in his britches but hopped aboard anyway and found enough change on the train to pay his fair. When he arrived at his ship he was able to talk his way aboard when no one showed up to claim his berth. Arriving in New York at immigration Tesla set to the streets to find Edison. Meanwhile, Edison was promising a nonexistent engineer to an over do ocean liner with some broken dynamos. As Edison hangs up the phone Tesla arrives and introduces himself and his alternating current motor. Uninterested in the motor, Edison hires Tesla to fix the ship’s dynamos. While working for Edison, Tesla found several possible improvements which could be made to his employer’s plants that would improve service and cut costs. Edison interested in the latter primarily, promised fifty thousand dollars to Tesla if he made the necessary changes. Hardly sleeping, Telsa succeeded, doing an even better job than he had expected. When Tesla came to collect Edison’s jaw dropped, and acting astonished told Tesla he did not understand their American humor. Edison did, however, offer Tesla a whopping ten dollar a week raise. Tesla put on his hat and walked out the door. Tesla was about to return home when he was approached by a group of investors who proposed to form a company under Tesla’s name. Tesla leapt at the opportunity, hoping to unveil the world’s eyes to his alternating current discovery, thus creating the Tesla Electric light company. Unfortunately, the investors were in the market for improved arc lighting, and that would have to come first. Tesla wound up making several improvements and receiving their patents as well. One particular invention used the loss of magnetism in iron at seven hundred and fifty degrees or above to transform heat into mechanical and electric energy. Despite this Tesla found himself being eased out of the very company with his name in it. The Depression hit America and Tesla, out of work, undiscovered, was considering suicide, when once again it was proposed to him by some backers he start another company. This time, however, the company’s purpose was to develop the alternating current. Within six months Tesla filed his first alternating current patent. Tesla was soon invited to a dinner where he met George Westinghouse. It just so happened that Tesla’s invention was the missing link Westinghouse had been searching for. Westinghouse bought Tesla’s AC patents for sixty thousand dollars and promised two dollars and fifty cents royalties on each horsepower sold. Tesla was hired at two thousand a month as a consultant for adapting his new system. Westinghouse had been working on a one hundred and thirty three cycle current which was wrong for Tesla’s motor. Eventually, Tesla was able to convince Westinghouse’s engineers to use sixty cycle current to which his motors hummed perfectly to. Sixty cycles has since been the standard for alternating current. When Edison found out about the dealings between Tesla and Westinghouse he was not pleased. Edison was bent on direct current and would do anything necessary to see that it succeeded. It was the beginning of the Electrician Crusades. Edison began to pay schoolboys twenty-five cents a head for cats and dogs he would then electrocute in his lab with alternating current. Afterwards, he would send leaflets around the neighborhoods to warn people to make the safe choice lest they be “Westinghoused”(Cheney 43). This was ironic due to the fact that before AC, when trolleys were being run on Edison’s direct current, Brooklynites were constantly getting shocked by the streetcars. Resultingly, an annoyed mass banded together under the slogan ”Trolley Dodgers,” and when they were given a baseball team, it was natural to call it the Brooklyn Dodgers(Cheney 33). Edison went onto accuse Westinghouse of spreading propaganda and covering the land with agents and salesmen. Westinghouse was actually innocent of the above crimes, but Edison by far, was not. The accuser even went so far as to write a maudlin letter to the president warning him of the dangers about to be impressed upon the country by AC. “The man has gone crazy,” Edison raved, campaigning against Westinghouse. And to cap the fiesta with an explosive piñata, Edison had an underling install the first electric chair in a prison, powered with alternating current of course. It was not a success. The first victim was only half fried, and they had to electrify him several times before he stopped squirming. Westinghouse did little to refute his opponent’s slanders and tricks. Nonetheless, alternating current was still popular. However, the 1893 World’s Fair proved to the world the reality of alternating current(O’Niel 102). This would be the first World’s Fair to have electric lighting and Westinghouse got the contract to supply its power using Tesla’s Polyphase system. Telsa was the center of attention at the fair and took the opportunity to inform as well as dazzle the public(O’Niel 103). Tesla performed several interesting feats, such as lighting a fluorescent tube held in his hand or suspended in the air and spinning a metal egg on its small end with the flip of a switch. But most important of all was Tesla’s personal exhibition of sending one million volts through his body. Tesla had discovered that if the frequency is high enough that one could send tremendous amounts of electricity through the body with no harm done. The test had proved Edison wrong and won the support of the public(O’Niel 103). Tesla had designed a flawless invention and won the public’s opinion; now it was time for the AC revolution. The first step to making an AC America was to harness the most beautiful and most potential power source in the United States, Niagara Falls. It was already decided that Niagara would be harnessed, but the question was how and by who. The Edison Electric Company had bought the rights to Tesla’s patents and was proposing a three phase system. The Westinghouse Electric Company was proposing a two phase setup. The Niagara Commission appointed Westinghouse to make the powerhouse and harness the electricity, and Edison to transport the power to Buffalo and distribute it. Telsa completed the hydraulic powerhouse and it was prepared to deliver fifteen thousand horsepower. Shortly afterward, Edison’s company finished the transmission and distribution system. The installation went so well, Westinghouse built seven more generating units, upping the horsepower output to fifty thousand. The first transmission to Buffalo was flawless. It worked perfectly. Alternating current soon delivered electricity to the Pittsburgh Reduction Company of America, later named Aluminum Company of America. One of the power plant’s biggest customers, the factory had been waiting for high voltages, only alternating current could supply. This metallurgical advancement allowed for the development of the aircraft production industry. Soon alternating current systems were being installed in New York City supplying railway cars, wealthy individuals, and even Edison substations with electricity. Shortly afterwards AC electricity was available to the masses, and DC was no more. Unfortunately, there were sore losers who claimed to have anticipated Tesla’s polyphase system and filed law suits against Tesla and the Westinghouse Company. These battles caused much public confusion and some business retardation, but in every case, Tesla was found as the true father of the AC motor and its components and developments. Still today, nearly one hundred years later, the Tesla motors at Niagara Falls still supply Buffalo and have even reached to supply New York City. The whole world runs on Tesla’s power and inventions, yet in the words of Professor Mike,”He went without fame and few know his name - Tesla.” Bibliography: Work Cited Anderson, Leland.”Tesla, Nikola.”Collier’s Encyclopedia. 1997. Cheney, Margaret. Tesla: Man Out of Time. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981. Extra Ordinary Science: 1995 Resource Guide. Colorado Springs, CO: International Tesla Society, 1994. International Tesla Society: 1997 Resource Guide. Colorado Springs, CO: International Tesla Society, 1996. O’Neil, John. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla. LA, CA: Angruff, 1973. Online Netscape. Internet. 4 Dec. 1998. Available Http:www.brotherhood of life.com/ProGenTOC.html. O’Neil, John. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla. Hollywood, CA: Angruff, 1978. Payne, Neal. International Tesla Society. Colorado Springs, CO: Interantional Tesla Society, 1998. Online. Netscape. Internet. 9 Dec. 1998. Available Http:www.tesla.org/. Trinkaus, George. Tesla: The Lost Inventions. n.p. Borderland Science Research Foundation, 1996. Online. Netscape. Internet. 4 Dec. 1998. Available Http:www.borderlands.com/catalog/tesla/lost.html. Wise, Tad. Tesla: A Novel. Atlanta, GA: Turner, 1994. Wohleber, Curt. “Nikola Tesla: The Forgotten Scientist.” Science Annual 1993. n.p. Watts, 1992. 264-269. Word Count: 2328
Copyright © 1998-2008 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved. DMCA Notifications and Requests