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Just saw the movie, "The Prestige".

it was AMAZING! highly recommend it.

but it reminded me - in all my years in inventing circles - that i never really learned anything substantive about Tesla, who also happened to be one of the characters in the movie and reminded me that i need to learn more.

anyone have any insight? was Tesla for real?


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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

Are you talking about Nikola Tesla ??
He`s  Europe`s Edison
He is known for AC current ... that we all are using right now ....


Sure, learned about this guy in High School physics

Without Tesla we wouldn`t have the technological society of today. He invented the generator for A/C (alternating current), and was at the center of the most basic decision about how to electrify America. Edison proposed wiring the country for D/C (direct current), but couldn`t send high power across the distances that A/C could accomplish.

Nikla Tesla began his US career working for Edison, then quit over a difference of process. Tesla had a mind such that when he had an idea, he literally saw that idea in such detail, he didn`t need to make more than a single prototype. And it worked, right there.

Edison invented the "research group" concept. He hired many inventors and scientists and engineers, then basically put them next to a pile of "stuff." They played with things in trial-and-error ways until someone came up with something almost by accident, and it worked. Then Edison patented it and sold it. Prior, Edison did the same with his attempts to find a filament for the incandescent bulb. He too tried anything, eventually ending up with carbon. Tesla thought that was a ridiculous way to run an inventing business.

Up until around 1930, the US Census had a labor category for "Inventor." Around `39-`40, Edison`s research center idea had so taken over that most "inventors" couldn`t afford to work alone, and joined corporations. And so the professional "inventor" fell away. Today`s entrepreneurs are the re-defined inventors that have always been there, and it won`t be long before we once again see a category something like "microbusiness owner."

Tesla contracted with Col. Westinghouse, who backed his idea for an alternating current generator, then helped finance the first major power plant at Niagra Falls. Tesla wanted to donate the knowledge, but Westinghouse demanded Tesla take a royalty of about $1 (late 1800s dollars) per megawatt. If Tesla hadn`t relinquished those royalties, he`d have died with a net worth in the hundreds of millions (today, billions), rather than dying nearly penniless.

Westinghouse came up against J.P. Morgan and Edison (General Electric) and was about to go bankrupt. Tesla came to his rescue, handing him over those royalties. At the time, Tesla was busy inventing wireless radio, television, and a way to beam power directly across the atmosphere. Westinghouse remained in business.

Eventually, Tesla spent all his time working on beamed power, capitalized with VC from JP Morgan, and didn`t pay much attention when an intern of his, Marconi, took his ideas and developed what we now know as radio. It wasn`t until about 10-20 years ago (I think), that Tesla was finally given recognition as the inventor, and the patents to Marconi overturned.

Beyond his work with A/C, sparkplugs, radio, television, remote control, and a rudimentary beamed-power weapon, Tesla was fascinated with lightning and electricity in general. He held that the Earth, rotating within the center of a magnetic field, was essentially a huge electrical generator. To that end, he demonstrated to Morgan, a way to draw power from the air, using a small antennae.

My own opinion is that when Morgan realized people could power anything for free, he nixed the idea, calling in a large investment loan, and mostly bankrupting Tesla.

Legend has it that the catastrophic Siberian explosion in 1908 was a beamed-power experiment Tesla conducted from his lab in Colorado, in conjunction with the US Military. (A more fitting hypothesis is that it was a direct hit  by a meteor.) But a true story is that Tesla also worked with resonation and vibrational harmonics.

He had a small pendulum type device, like a small box, and attached it to a girder in his lab in NYC. He set it working, then forgot about it. Not long afterwards, people felt the initial symptoms of an earthquake, with windows shaking, the ground vibrating, and cracks appearing in the neighborhood. Tracking it down, the authorities found the device in Tesla`s lab and told him to quit doing that...he could poke someone`s eye out! :-)

Tesla is the unheralded genius of the American technological revolution that took place between 1875-1930. It`s only a shame so few people have heard of him, although he`s well-known outside the traditional circles of typical high-school educational systems.

craig,

thanks so much for this! exactly what i was looking for!

is this something you knew or researched and wrote here? if so, what`s your source? respectfully, i just want to make sure, before repeating this to others in the various venues where jeff and i speak, that i have a good factual basis and source.


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Rich Sloan , Co-Founder, Chief Startupologist, StartupNation

I sometimes cite Tesla as a superbrilliant guy with little business sense. As Craig pointed out, he could have been Gigawealthy but he somehow managed to avoid any sort of monetary accumulation.

I like to think that he was still able to do everything that he desired in life and that he knew all along that he couldn`t take it with him so he never bothered.

 

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~Eric
JE Design Group, LLC
If all you do is what you`ve done, then all you`ll get is what you`ve got.
www.jedesigngroup.com

If you want a fun book to read about Tesla, try this one:

TESLA: Master of Lightning
By Margaret Cheney & Robert Uth

http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Master-Lightning-Margaret-Cheney /dp/158663187X/sr=8-2/qid=1162149307/ref=sr_1_2/002-7796470- 7914416?ie=UTF8&s=books

It`s an easy read, full of some awesome pictures, and you will fall in love with everything Tesla.  Very sad that this man does not get the recognition in our society that he deserves.

Think of it this way, it`s possible that none of us would be here at SuN if not for him! An amazing man!

CG

Thanks :-)
I wrote this off the top of my head, having been interested in Tesla since the time I built my first Tesla coil, back in 6th grade. It was an odd name for a device, so I wondered where it came from.

In my opinion, the Tesla v. Edison conflict perfectly exemplifies a crossroads in western civilization that we`re even dealing with in our "Bootstrapping" thread, here on SuN. It`s the difference between pre-planning versus trial-and-error.

There are lots of references for you, and two that I have, of the many, would include "The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla," written by Tesla himself, together with David Hatcher Childress, and the movie, "The Secrets of Nikola Tesla," directed by Kristo Papic, with Orson Wells as JP Morgan.

Although I wrote the post spontaneously, all that I said you can reference through your own research. It`s all been said many times before. What`s interesting is that where Edison went on to become the popularly known example of a classic inventor, Tesla actually created the foundation of modern civilization. The "Tesla" is a unit of measure for the field intensity of a magnetic field. There`s no "Edison" unit of measure at all.

I think people lost track of Tesla mostly because of his atruistic morality, by which he ended up dying broke in 1943. But his legendary status came about when unknown US government agency people came to his room and immediately removed a large trunk of his papers. To this day, people speculate what was in those papers.

Many say that Tesla was the mind behind the famous "Philadelphia Experiment," the referenced movie being entertaining, but based on a true story. The books are better, but this movie gives a good idea.

Tesla is right up there in the minds of many energy physicists and inventors who wonder what was in that trunk, and have gone back to re-examine many of his writings. Some of those papers in the mysterious trunk have been released, but many of the people working with the information are said to be crackpots.

Among the more fascinating references to strange and different ways of handling energy, Tesla is the leading name because everything about his work is true. But there`s also Edward Leedskalnin, who`s work nobody`s explained, and John Keely. Keely`s work with sound vibrations has also been a long-term fascination with me, and Tesla wrote a book about him.

What`s even more interesting to me is the appearance on the scene of Tom Beardon, and his work on electrodynamics, as well as Bernard Haish from CalTech, and his book, "The God Theory." These two are "far-out, man" guys who, like Tesla, are considered either crackpots or ahead of their time. But as Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any technology sufficiently advanced will appear to be magic."

Keep in mind that Clarke, although well known for his science "fiction" and the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, is also the inventor of the idea that a geo-stationary satellite could be used as a telecommunications relay.

The Serbian-American inventor discovered the rotating magnetic field... the rotating magnetic field.

 

PS.  This song will took you back too remember this song from Led Zeppelin "Tangerine"... go to myspace.com.