tesla final copy public speaking

8/6/2019 Tesla Final Copy Public Speaking

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John McCoy

Dr. Thompson

27 April 2011

The Man who changed the World

Nikola Tesla (1856 ± 1943) was one of the most brilliant mechanical and

electrical engineers the world has ever known. Few people recognize his name

today, and even among those who do, the name Nikola Tesla is likely to summon

up the image of a crackpot rather than one of an authentic scientist. Nikola Tesla

was quite possibly the world¶s most brilliant inventor, yet regrettably not given the

complete due credit for his work. Teslawas a man of the future,responsible for

numerouselectrical devices in use today. His world-changing devices are

considered amazing, even by modern scientific standards.

According to the biography by Ben Johnston, Nikola Tesla was born at

precisely midnight between July 9th and 10th, 1856, in a small Hungarian village.

His father was a priest, and his mother, an unschooled but extremely intelligent

woman (22).In 1875, he was nineteen years old, and attended the Austrian

Polytechnic University in Austria. However, university sources say that Tesla did

not receive a degree. He only completed up to the first semester of his third year

(37). In 1880, Tesla attended the Charles Ferdinand University in Prague.



However, during this year his father died and Tesla left the university after

completing only one term (44). Then in 1882, Tesla moved to Paris to work as an

engineer for the Continental Edison Company. Here he designed improvements to

electric equipment brought overseas from Edison¶s ideas. According to Johnston,

this is the same year he conceived the idea for the induction motor and began to

develop various devices that use rotating magnetic fields, which he was able to

patent in 1888 (68). While on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed his

first induction motor (80). While employed in a government telegraph engineering

office in Budapest he made his first invention, a telephone repeater (81).

Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York City with four cents

in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. Here

he found employment with Thomas Edison, but these two men, although both

inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was

inevitable. Tesla soon left the employment of Edison and in May of 1885 he was

offered a job from George Westinghouse who was head of the Westinghouse

Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to many of Tesla's

inventions. According to the biography by David Childress, Teslainvented but lost

his rights to many inventions. So in 1887he established his own laboratory in New

York City (64). Tesla was a determined individual with many ideas that surpassed

his time. However, his biggest rival was Thomas Edison whose name is known to



more than that of Nikola Tesla. These two men continued with their inventing

rivalries for many years (77). Each of them were working, struggling, and

competing to develop their inventions as quickly as possible. Tesla was brilliant

and eccentric, just as Thomas Edison was. However, to add even more burden to

his competition against Edison, in 1915 Tesla was severely disappointed when he

discovered that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize. Edison offered to

pay him a sum of money for a particular inventions and Tesla broke off relations at

once. Tesla had to focus inventing for himself (80).

According to Childress, in 1895, Tesla discovered x-rays after hours upon

hoursof experimentation. The work for this discovery began in 1887 (85). The

modern term for Tesla¶s invention is braking radiation. This device operated by

emitting electrons from a single electrode through a combination of field electron

emission and thermionic emission. Then the electrons are strongly repelled by the

high electric field near the electrode during negative voltage peaks from the

oscillating high voltage output of the Tesla Coil, this then generated x-rays as they

collided with a glass envelope (99). One may wonder what the significance is for

such a technological description of Tesla¶s discovery. The significance is that

today¶s medical technology and treatments use these x-rays. In the booming

medical business of our modern day time, physicians use x-rays to see and assess

patients for injuries anywhere from head to toe. Today the entire medical world



uses what is called computed tomography scans, also known as CT scans, to show

views of our organs in ³slices´. And these ³slices´ allow the physician and

radiologist to assess, diagnose, and treat patients based on what is seen on the CT

scan. It is unimaginable how our world would be without this capability and this is

all due to Tesla¶s discovery of the x-ray (99).

Another Tesla invention that is widely used today is the Tesla Coil, which he

invented in 1891. Tesla was constantly experimenting with power sources and

various types of lightning. Because of this, he discovered and created a coil, now

called the Tesla Coil that is used to produce high voltage, relatively high current,

and high frequency alternating current electricity. Tesla experimented with a

number of different configurations and they consist of two, or sometimes three,

coupled resonant electric circuits. Tesla used these coils to conduct innovative

experiments in electrical lighting, phosphorescence, x-ray generation, high

frequency alternating current phenomena, electrotherapy, and the transmission of

electrical energy without wires. This coil is widely used today in radio and

television sets and other electronic equipment for wireless communication. Tesla

truly impacted the highly technological world we live in today. His coil and

variations of it are still used today. Even nearly one hundred years ago, Tesla¶s

coil gave major head way for our wireless world (Childress 114).



In an excerpt from teslasociety.com, Tesla discovered alternating current

which was in direct conflict to Edison's use of direct current electricity.This

competition between Tesla and Edison ended when Tesla's alternating current won,

being the most favored and most practical. Tesla's alternating current was used to

light the Chicago's World Fair. His success there was a factor in winning him the

contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, where his patent

numbers still remain. His alternating current induction motor is considered one of

the ten greatest discoveries of all time because of its impact in the use of household

appliances. Electricity today is generated, transmitted, and converted to

mechanical power by means of Tesla¶s inventions. His alternating current system

is today lighting the entire globe. Even more substantial, Tesla¶s alternating

current became standard power in the 20th Century after he designed the

hydroelectric power plant in Niagara Falls in 1895. According to Johnston, the

hydroelectric power plant design contributed heavily to mankind, allowing kinetic

energy to be harnessed, providing huge amounts of energy to be used at will.

Today hydroelectric power plants generate huge amounts of power all across the

world all thanks to an idea that developed and came forth from the mind of Nikola

Tesla (226).

By early 1900,Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery,

terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that the earth could be



used as a conductor and would be as responsive as a tuning fork to electrical

vibrations of a certain pitch. He also brought light to 200 lamps without wires from

a distance of 25 miles and created man-made lightning, producing flashes

measuring 135 feet (Johnston 231).

Nikola Tesla holds over 700 patents. He created today¶s fluorescent light,

the remote control, worked on the development of robotics, the radar, expansion of

ballistics, turbines, vertical aircraft takeoff, generators, and transformers.

Childress wrote how Tesla¶s vision included exploration of solar energy and the

power of the sea. He foresaw interplanetary communications and satellites.In his

later years, Tesla was alone with only his inventions and calculations. He died

privately and peacefully at age 87 on January 7, 1943 in a New York hotel room

from no apparent cause in particular. Hundreds filed into New York City¶s

Cathedral of St. John for his funeral services, and a flood of messages

acknowledged the loss of a great genius. Three Nobel Prize winners in physic,

Millikan, Compton, and W.H. Barton addressed their tributes to him. The name

Nikola Tesla may be forgotten, but his ideas, inventions, and contributions to

mankind will forever be valued. Nikola Tesla described himself best is his

quote,³Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work

and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really

worked, is mine´ (314).



Works Cited

Childress, David H. The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla. Steele: Adventures

Unlimited Press, 1993.

Print.

Johnston, Ben. My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla. Austin: Hart

Brothers, 1982. Print.

Teslasociety.com. N.p., n.d., Web. 18 Sep 2010.

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