Nikola Tesla

Inventor of:

Tesla was also rumored to have developed various death rays, free energy devices, and other miracles. These might sound ridiculous, but given the awesome depth of his genius there's nothing we can't put past him. He demonstrated some feats before crowds of skeptics (lighting 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles, creating ball lightning on demand) which we still can't reproduce.

In the later years of his life, he went quite insane, however, and it's possible many of these rumors are erroneous. Then again, upon his death, penniless, in 1943, the US government impounded his effects and many of these remain classified.

depends on your definition of insanity, if you mean asocial, little regard for personal hygiene, disregard of matters fiscal, and a inordinate fascination with pigeons, he was no more insane than the majority of old guys hanging around the park. I think the reference here is to what might have been if he had been more attuned to corporate politics, like his nemesis ThomasEdison -- JonGroff

Supposedly he was obsessive compulsive to start with, IIRC.

Ever since the IndustrialRevolution, stellar super-geniuses working in high-energy physics (and therefor also in government weapons intrigues) have had three career options:

Tesla seems to have picked door number 3.

One of the major conspiracy theories regarding his grandiose experiments phase was that he exploded the Tunguska forests in 1908. The story goes like this: Trying to get in the headlines, Tesla sent Admiral Peary numerous telegrams telling him, "Watch for extra lights in the sky." Peary was going for the North Pole, and Tesla wanted to activate the northern lights and light up the way for him.

Then a huge explosion leveled trees in Tunguska, much the same way pyroclastic flow does. But the explosion left no effects on the ground - no crater or meteor fragments.

The Peary polar expedition left New York in July 6, 1908, a week after the Tunguska explosion on June 30th.

Our disinformation disseminator, TheDiscoveryChannel?, joins skeptic CarlSagan in blaming the blast on a ball of ice from Comet Encke.

My personal theory is that either the Tunguska event was an icy comet that exploded without human assistance, or else it was an ordinary meteor from Comet Encke that hit Tesla's field, adding kinetic energy to it. The second theory would explain why no debris from a very large meteor or comet were ever found, and why Tesla's radio tower in Wardenclyffe did not itself emit enough energy.

-- AnonymousCoward

Does this mean Tesla accidentally saved the Earth from a giant comet? ;-)

No. He saved us from an ordinary, football-sized meteor; a shooting star. And it only cost a few thousand acres of old-growth forests. The slob.

There are forums available to debate this subject in. A very detailed 'net narrative (which leaves the question open) appears here:

http://www.galisteo.com/tunguska/bbs/messages/110.html

Tesla was quite remarkable, but he didn't invent the electric motor (I believe he DID invent the AC motor). And although I have no specific knowledge of this, Marconi's original patents would have expired before 1943, so it is doubtful that whatever happened then established that Tesla invented radio. I'd be interested in more information about that.

Specifically, Tesla invented the polyphase induction motor, which is still the standard for AC powered appliances of all sorts (they have no brushes or sliding contacts, and so require almost no maintenance).

Tesla's relevant wireless patents 645,576 and 649,621 were issued in May 1900. In 1943 the US supreme court ruled that Marconi's radio transmitter patents were invalidated by these.

For much more on this and other Tesla details check out the excellent FAQ at http://pages.nyu.edu/~jas4/questions.htm

The polyphase induction motor was considered impossible at the time, Tesla conceived it in a flash of inspiration while feeding pigeons in the park -- JonGroff

It should be noted that Tesla's experiments started many fires in the course of his career, and many of his papers were lost, making it difficult to reconstruct all of his work, especially because he was intensely paranoid and apparently had very great powers of visualization, resulting in limited paper documentation in the first place. As a result, I have never seen a decent book about Tesla--does anyone have a good one to recommend?

There is an article on Tesla [1] in the EncyclopaediaBritannica (of course).

[1] http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,73683+1,00.html

His Autobiography

http://www.blackmask.com/books14c/lifetesla.htm

"My Inventions"

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/teslaauto01.html

CategoryScientist

The COMPLETE TESLA PATENT LIST can be found at http://www.mall-usa.com/BPCS/alpha_tesla.html

~ added by Onur YILDIRIM

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