You have to give this guy Tesla credit!
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Tesla--A Great Serbian Inventor
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The name of Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), wizard of light and father of electrical engineering, is linked to around 800 inventions which have made it one of the symbols of modern civilization.
He was born into the family of an Orthodox priest in the village of Smiljan in the province of Lika, the southwestern part of Croatia.
He went to school in the towns of Gospic and Karlovac and continued his studies in Graz and Prague. He never graduated, however, for he was compelled to abandon his studies for financial reasons when his father died. Yet the fact that he lacked the formal qualifications of an engineer did not prevent Tesla from becoming one of the world's greatest inventors and an honourary doctor of many renowned universities.
When his application for a scholarship was turned down by the Matica Srpska Association, Tesla got himself a job through a family connection in the Telephone Exchange in Budapest. Working in the Exchange he was able to increase his technical education and as early as 1882 he invented the principle of the rotary magnetic field on which he also based his new electric motor. He then went to Paris where he further developed his concepts of the induction motor and polyphasic system while working for the Edison Continental Company.
Finding little understanding in Europe for the practical application of his inventions, Tesla went to the United States in 1884 and worked there for a while with the Edison Company. But soon he became one of Edison's main rivals for in 1888, with the support of a few bankers, he succeeded in patenting forty of his basic inventions, which the well-known American firm, Westinghouse, purchased for one million dollars for practical application.
By his visionary and inspired invention of the principle of the rotary magnetic field and induction motor, which secured a future for his system of polyphasic and alternating currents and his other inventions--dynamos, transformers, induction coils, condensers, arc and incandescent lamps--Tesla made an invaluable contribution to the massive utilization of electrical energy for practical purposes and thus, in fact, revolutionized the world.
Once applied in practice, Tesla's inventions replaced coal, eliminated the steam engine and introduced electricity everywhere from industry to private homes--all of this to the benefit and well-being of mankind. Tesla's inventions have also been applied in medicine and thanks to this current millions of people have been brought back to life. Only recently the world learned that three years before Roentgen's invention, Tesla had experimented with rays and made successful photographs of the inner parts of the human body by means of waves of a "very specific character." The American expert Beck therefore gave him due credit by declaring: "Out of the work of Nikola Tesla Roentgen's great deed emerged."
Among Tesla's numerous patents which were not applied for practical purposes in his day was his aeroplane capable of a vertical take-off and resembling in appearance the modern helicopter. It was only in the Second World War that radar, the concept of which was first described by Tesla in 1917, was developed. Apart from a project on the utilization of cosmic rays, Tesla published an article in 1921 under the title "The Inter-Planetary System" in which he examined the possibility of a link being established with the planets of the solar system by means of ultra-short waves. On Tesla's principle, in 1946 the first ultra-short waves were sent by radar to the moon and the sun, from where they brought back data on how far removed these were from the earth. Just how far Tesla was ahead of his time is shown also by his description in an article of the present-day guided missiles and rockets based on remote control and of experiments with atomic energy forty years before these were actually made. In this manner, Tesla's inventions have contributed, among other things, to the exploration of outer space.
Unfinished Autobiography
That Tesla was a gifted narrator is shown by his autobiography which was published in instalments under the title, "My Inventions," in the American journal, "Electrical Experimenter," between February and October 1919. Since Tesla enjoyed great popularity in the States at the time of the publication of his life story, his well-written memoirs raised the circulation of this scientific journal from 26,000 to 220,000 copies, a record number at that time. But as soon as the modest and reticent author learned from the publishers what a success his autobiography was he stopped writing it any further. This move of Tesla's merely enhanced the interest of readers, but wishing o avoid publicity the great scientist forbade the further publication of his memoirs, in spite of the enormous fees offered him.
"Faustus" and the Momentous Invention
Tesla invented the principle of the rotary magnetic field and the new electric motor based on it in a moment of inspiration as he was strolling in a park in Budapest and reciting to a friend parts of Goethe's "Faustus." "When in a moment of inspiration I was pronouncing these words, the idea occurred to me like a flash of lighting and in a second the truth revealed itself," Tesla wrote. "With a stick I drew in the sand the diagrammes which six years later I demonstrated in a lecture before the American Institute of Electrical Engineering."
A Noble Gesture
To help his friend, the industrialist Westinghouse, who was the first to put to practical use Tesla's brilliant ideas, the famous scientist tore up a contract worth several million dollars saying: "You believed in me when no one else did; you were courageous enough to go ahead of others and to pay me a million dollars...The advantages which civilization will derive from my polyphasic system mean more to me than the money now involved.... You need not be concerned any more over my fees...." By this generous act, Tesla ruined his finances to the extent that he ultimately faced poverty, while he had helped Westinghouse to extricate himself from his financial troubles and to amass a huge fortune. Many years later, when living in poverty, Tesla refused to accept a single dollar of financial assistance offered him by Westinghouse's heirs.
Tesla Declines the Nobel Prize
The entire world press carried the news in 1912 that Tesla had declined to accept the Nobel Prize for physics which, according to the decision of the Swedish Academy, he was to share with Thomas Edison. Although in serious financial trouble, Tesla then declared: "Such a decoration means a great deal to a man. In a thousand years there will be many Nobel Prize winners. And I have four dozen papers which bear my name in technical literature.... For any one of them I would give all the Nobel Prizes that will be awarded during the next several thousand years...."
Lawsuits
According to the writings of the American press, in his lifetime Tesla won about twenty lawsuits against those he had sued for infringement of his patents. In fact, it was not Tesla himself, but rather his financiers who had legal action instituted on this count, for it was they who stood to gain. It was only a few months after Tesla died that the American Supreme Patent Court passed a verdict nullifying the patents filed in the sphere of radio engineering by the Nobel Prize winner, Marconi, on the grounds that they were contained in Tesla's patents. "He was my assistant," Tesla said once in reference to Marconi. "He was thoroughly familiar with my experiments in radio engineering. He knew well that compensation of receiving waves was the basis of transmission of all signals. It was I who had laid that basis." Consequently, it is Nikola Tesla who is the father of radio engineering, and not Marconi.
Affection for Pigeons
Tesla had a great affection for pigeons. Passersby on Fifth Avenue were familiar with the sight of the tall, bony old man in front of the Library feeding his white and grey pets, which at his call would alight on his head and shoulders. Those which were sick or hurt he would take with him to his hotel to look after them until they were well again.
A Yugoslav Pension
To mark Tesla's 80th birthday in 1936, an institute named after him was founded in Belgrade. Thanks to the Institute, the great inventor was granted a pension by Yugoslavia to the amount of 7,200 dollars per annum, which he received until he died in 1943. The pension, granted him by his native country, was the only financial benefit Tesla accepted, although much larger sums had been offered him by his wealthy financier friends.
Tesla a Poet
In his youth Tesla wrote poetry, probably under his father's influence, but he never had any of his poems published. From what his friends said later, we know that he took his unpublished collection of poems with him on board the Saturnia when he left Europe for America. Contemporaries claimed that the reason why Tesla did not want to have his poems published was that they were deeply personal, expressing his innermost sentiments. He never even let himself be persuaded to read some of his verses to friends, to whom he would say: "There are those of us who sing, but there is none to listen!"
Kosta Dimitrijevic, "Tesla--A Great Serbian Inventor," Ethnic American News, Volume 4, Number 10, 10.
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