The Life of Nikola Tesla

Gabriellebirchak/ December 8, 2020/ Late Modern History, Modern History, Uncategorized

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Maybe you’ve heard about him. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe all you know is that there’s a car com­pa­ny named after him. But whether or not you know who Niko­la Tes­la is, you are guar­an­teed to know his inven­tions. We can thank Tes­la for every­thing from radio, remote con­trol, and flu­o­res­cent lights, to x‑rays and alter­nat­ing current—the sys­tem that elec­tri­fied the world, and which we still use today. Tes­la: The Life and Times Pod­cast is a long form, deep dive into the real life, work, and per­son­al­i­ty of this for­got­ten genius, as well as the times that made him. Join host Stephen Kotowych each month for a look at the real life and times of Niko­la Tes­la. Sub­scribe to Tes­la: The Life and Times wher­ev­er you get your pod­casts, or find episodes at teslapodcast.com

Tes­la was an extra­or­di­nary inven­tor inspired by altru­ism. Tes­la once said, “All peo­ple every­where should have free ener­gy sources. Elec­tric pow­er is every­where present in unlim­it­ed quan­ti­ties and can dri­ve the world’s machin­ery with­out the need for coal, oil, or gas.”

Tesla wanted to light up the world. And he did.

Tes­la was born on July 10, 1856, in an area that is now called Croa­t­ia. His father was an East­ern Ortho­dox priest, and his moth­er was an inven­tor as well. She made home tools and appli­ances for the home. He received a tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion and was known to per­form inte­gral cal­cu­lus in his head. In 1873, he con­tract­ed cholera and was ill for nine months. He was so sick and was near death so often that his father promised him that he would send him to the very best engi­neer­ing school that he could afford when he was back to good health.

How­ev­er, short­ly after his recov­ery, the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment start­ed draft­ing young men into the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an army. Tes­la, want­i­ng noth­ing to do with this, escaped and ran away to a small vil­lage in Croa­t­ia called Tomingaj.

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While in Tomin­gaj, he explored the moun­tains. He also read many of Mark Twain’s writ­ings, which at this point would have includ­ed the book The Gild­ed Age: A Tale of Today, and the short sto­ries The Cel­e­brat­ed Jump­ing Frog of Calav­eras Coun­ty, Can­ni­bal­ism in the Cars, My Late Sen­a­to­r­i­al Sec­re­tary­ship, and A Ghost Sto­ry. Tes­la said that Mark Twain’s writ­ings helped him to recov­er from his illnesses. 

In 1875, he enrolled at Aus­tri­an Poly­tech­nic, where he received excep­tion­al­ly high grades as well as a let­ter of praise from the dean of the tech­ni­cal fac­ul­ty. In his first year, he was cap­ti­vat­ed by physics and math­e­mat­ics. How­ev­er, even more so, he was fas­ci­nat­ed with elec­tric­i­ty and the new devel­op­ments of elec­tric motors. These elec­tric motors had two sets of elec­tro­mag­nets. One set, called the sta­tor, is the sta­tion­ary met­al cas­ing and the oth­er set, called the rotor, rotates on a shaft. Inside the sta­tor are two large mag­nets, which form a north and a south pole. At the end of the sta­tor is a rotat­ing switch, called the com­mu­ta­tor. In the par­tic­u­lar motor that Tes­la first observed, the mag­net­ic field of the sta­tor remained con­stant. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the com­mu­ta­tor adjust­ed the rotor’s mag­net­ic field so that the sta­tor and the rotor had iden­ti­cal mag­net­ic poles. Because the polar­i­ty was the same, the sta­tor and the rotor repelled each oth­er, which caused the motor to turn.

In one physics class, while watch­ing a DC motor spark, he sug­gest­ed to his pro­fes­sor that he should remove the com­mu­ta­tor. His pro­fes­sor dis­missed his comment. 

Nevertheless, Tesla pondered on this concept for years and was determined to come up with a way to make a spark-free motor.

By the sec­ond year at Aus­tri­an Poly­tech­nic, Tes­la became addict­ed to gam­bling. His third year got worse. Tes­la became addict­ed to gam­bling and wagered away all of his tuition mon­ey. Addi­tion­al­ly, he was unpre­pared for his final exams, and the uni­ver­si­ty denied him an exten­sion to study. As a result, he did not receive his grades and nev­er graduated.

Regard­less of this out­come, Tes­la remained intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged and con­tin­ued to con­tem­plate the DC motor. Then, in 1882, while he was liv­ing in Budapest, Tes­la had an idea. He real­ized that instead of chang­ing the mag­net­ic poles to repel each oth­er in the sta­tor and the rotor, he could cre­ate a mag­net­ic field that rotat­ed in the motor. How­ev­er, to cre­ate a rotat­ing mag­net­ic field, he would have to use an alter­nat­ing cur­rent instead of a direct cur­rent. Hence began Tesla’s aspi­ra­tion to cre­ate a motor that used an alter­nat­ing cur­rent (AC) instead of a direct cur­rent (DC).

In 1882, Tes­la moved to Paris and found work at the Con­ti­nen­tal Edi­son Com­pa­ny. By 1884, the man­ag­er of Con­ti­nen­tal Edi­son Com­pa­ny, Charles Batch­e­lor, had to trav­el to the Unit­ed States to man­age Edi­son Machine Works. He decid­ed to bring Tes­la along. With­in six months, Tes­la had made quite an impres­sion on Thomas Edi­son. As a result, Edi­son offered Tes­la a $50,000 bonus to mod­i­fy and improve his DC gen­er­a­tion plants. How­ev­er, once Tes­la fin­ished improv­ing them, Edi­son reneged his bonus, stat­ing that Tes­la did not under­stand Amer­i­can humor. Thus, after only six months at the Machine Works, Tes­la quit.

Tes­la con­tin­ued to work on his var­i­ous inven­tions, includ­ing an arc light­ing sys­tem. How­ev­er, he nev­er was able to obtain an invest­ment for his arc light­ing sys­tem. So, he took work as a ditch dig­ger. While work­ing as a ditch dig­ger, he filed a patent for a Ther­mo­mag­net­ic motor.

Two Wall Street investors, Charles Peck and Alfred Brown, were very intrigued by Tesla’s patent. They invest­ed mon­ey into a lab­o­ra­to­ry for Tes­la where he could work on this ther­mo­mag­net­ic motor. How­ev­er, Tesla’s efforts proved unsuc­cess­ful. Regard­less, Peck and Brown had faith in him and encour­aged him to go back to the draw­ing table and work on his AC motor, which he did.

At the time, anoth­er elec­tric com­pa­ny by the name of West­ing­house had an AC motor. How­ev­er, they were using only one alter­nat­ing cur­rent in their sys­tem. In 1887, Tes­la real­ized that by using two sep­a­rate alter­nat­ing cur­rents sent through coils on oppo­site sides of the sta­tor, he could cre­ate that rotat­ing mag­net­ic field with a two-phase current.

Tes­la was suc­cess­ful! After a year of con­tem­plat­ing this rotat­ing mag­net­ic field, Tes­la accom­plished his goal. Soon after, he filed patents for his mul­ti­phase AC Motors, stat­ing that these motors could trans­mit pow­er over long distances. 

In 1888, Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s patents for $200,000.

The part­ner­ship with West­ing­house and Tes­la would prove to be suc­cess­ful. In 1893, at the World Columbian Expo­si­tion in Chica­go, West­ing­house arranged to use 24 500-horse­pow­er gen­er­a­tors to send pow­er to tens of thou­sands of lights to light up the night sky. The exhib­it at the World Columbian Expo­si­tion gar­nered pos­i­tive atten­tion for Tes­la. It is a good thing that Tes­la and West­ing­house did not stay at H.H. Holmes’s Hotel, also known as the Mur­der Cas­tle. If you are look­ing for a twist­ed and mor­bid sto­ry, look up H.H. Holmes Hotel of Hor­rors. Many peo­ple who attend­ed the World Columbian Expo­si­tion stayed at this hotel and nev­er made it home. But, I digress…

Back to the part­ner­ship between West­ing­house and Tesla:

Around the same time, there were talks about installing a hydro­elec­tric pow­er plant at Nia­gara Falls. Tes­la was net­work­ing with the pow­er plant’s financiers, try­ing to con­vince them to go with AC pow­er. While net­work­ing with these financiers, Tes­la kept West­ing­house informed of every con­ver­sa­tion. Once the financiers agreed to go with AC pow­er, Tes­la noti­fied West­ing­house. West­ing­house then bid on the con­tract for blue­print­ing and equip­ping the pow­er sta­tion and was sub­con­tract­ed to build 5,000 25 Hz AC gen­er­a­tors. Thanks to Tes­la, West­ing­house beat Edison’s bid for a DC pow­er plant. Plans to build the Edward Dean Adams Pow­er Sta­tion were under­way. The pow­er plant was pos­si­ble through Tesla’s efforts. But, it was a team effort. Thomas Ever­shed designed the sta­tion so that it would not dis­rupt the nature and beau­ty of Goat Island. Ben­jamin Lamme, the chief engi­neer at West­ing­house, cre­at­ed the induc­tion motor using Tesla’s blue­print. Oliv­er Shal­len­berg­er designed the trans­former. I.P. Mor­ris Com­pa­ny built the turbines.

Though there were small­er DC hydropow­er sta­tions at Nia­gra Falls, they did not com­pare to the Adams Pow­er Sta­tion. On Novem­ber 15, 1896, the Adams Pow­er Sta­tion was in oper­a­tion. It was the largest AC pow­er sta­tion at that time, send­ing 11,000 volts through a 25-mile tun­nel to Buf­fa­lo, New York. Tesla’s desire to pro­vide ener­gy sources to the mass­es was a success.

Even though we still do not have free ener­gy sources in our homes, we are able to enjoy a life of elec­tric­i­ty, lights, and com­put­ers. We owe this to Tes­la. His numer­ous inven­tions helped to cre­ate a world that ben­e­fit­ed human­i­ty. Tes­la was a vision­ary who altered the course of our futures. His tenac­i­ty, hard work, and ded­i­ca­tion were excep­tion­al, and our lives are bet­ter because of him.