Ideas fundamental to the making of the modern Information Age – high frequency oscillations, the wireless transfer of energy and news, rotating magnetic waves – all came from the mind of one man: Nikola Tesla. At the turn of the twentieth century, Tesla was working to develop the technology upon which the entirety of today’s world was built.
From his laboratory at Wardenclyffe, Tesla would patent over 300 hundred of his own unique ideas (though many more were stolen and credited to his peers). Dying alone and forgotten in a New York City hotel, surrounded only by his beloved pigeons, Tesla never did become rich. But now more than ever, as Internet-enabled devices propel us towards another new era in science and technology, Tesla’s discoveries are worth remembering.
His figure has enjoyed a contemporary resurgence in film, comics, and literature, and it’s easy to see why: without him, we’d still be living in the dark. Here are just few of Tesla’s most daring discoveries.
Alternating Current
The rivalry between Tesla and Edison is the stuff of legend. While the “War of the Currents” proved that Tesla’s alternating current was far more practical and safe for the transmission of massive quantities of energy, their feud continues – in our plug-in appliances, laptop cords, and the rock band AC/DC.
Tesla eventually sold most of his patents to businessman George Westinghouse, who enabled the popularization of AC current and helped fulfill Tesla’s dream of powering large cities and industrial centers.
Today’s energy grid infrastructure is built upon the basic principles of Tesla’s AC discovery. As electricity use spread across the United States, AC was the current that could be stepped to high voltages and transported to millions of homes.
According to Direct Energy, the average home today uses 10,932 kilowatt hours of electricity a year – for a total usage of about 1.3 million kilowatt hours nationwide. Thanks to Tesla’s ingenuity (and willingness to electrocute himself for science) AC has illuminated the lives of Americans for nearly a century.
The Tesla Coil
The Tesla coil is more than just a neat thing to look at in museums or a way to play music and woo your crush a la The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. It’s actually a high-voltage transformer that is capable of wirelessly transmitting power up to 50 feet away via electric arcs. Tesla coils can even light up bulbs that have previously burned out!
In 1901, Tesla began the construction of his high-voltage wireless power station: the infamous Wardenclyffe Tower. Essential a large Tesla coil, the tower was intended to be used as a prototype transmitter for his “World Wireless System” that would be capable of transmitting power and information across the world.
Unfortunately just three years later the project lost funding and was never completed. The Tesla Coil may not have any immediately practical applications anymore, as the first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity, the Tesla coil was a truly revolutionary invention that continues to spark the minds of young scientists.
Radio Waves
Throughout his career, Nikola Tesla saw his discoveries succeed at the hands of his competitors, falling victim to intellectual property theft.
While Edison comes to mind as Tesla’s most prominent rival, Guglielmo Marconi is another famous inventor who built upon Tesla’s innovative visions after the fact. The invention in question this time? The radio.
With the Tesla Coil Tesla was able to send and receive radio waves, which he viewed as just another form of energy, half a century before Guglielmo Marconi. However, Marconi was able to secure a patent first, and it wasn’t until 1943 when Tesla would finally get credit thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
For fifty years, however, Tesla received no credit or royalties for his idea, which was heavily used by the United States government throughout wartime before attaining worldwide popularity in the 1920’s.
Radio-Controlled Boat
What would we do without a remote control for our TVs, toys, games and stereos? Again, Tesla was the father of this invention. Of course, Tesla’s first remote control relied on radio waves rather than the Bluetooth technology we’re now used to.
When he first took to a Chicago pool to showcase this new technology, it astounded audiences to see him control a boat’s propellers, rudder and lights from a distance.
From here Tesla predicted the rise of automated technology, even modern robotics. Saying, “In the twenty-first century the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.
There is no reason at all why most of this should not come to pass in less than a century, freeing mankind to pursue its higher aspirations,” we can see that his mind was already working towards to conception of unmanned flight vehicles which are used from everything to delivering packages to taking aerial footage.
Though he may have died in relative obscurity, today there’s no doubt that Tesla’s genius allowed us to make rapid scientific and technological advancements. And all this occurred in spite of adversity from the U.S. government, powerful companies and even Tesla’s fellow inventors!
About the author -:
Beth Simone is a freelance writer and blogger. Born and raised in Michigan, she moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University where she graduated with a BA in Communications and Media. She lived in Krakow, Poland briefly before moving to South Korea to teach English.
