Unesco lecture on Tesla
Tesla's Time and Application of his Achievements in the Future
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by Kurt R. Richter, LF IEEE In 2006 we celebrate the several outstanding personalities, like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sigmund Freud, Berthold Brecht, and, last not least Nikola Tesla. On the 10th July 1856 Nikola Tesla was born, the "Man who Invented the 20th Century" as the Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" entitled an article in 1992. On the 17th January 1756 Mozart was born and 100 years later, Tesla, two geniuses who were so different and yet very similar in their ingenuity. I even dare to compare Tesla and Mozart two outstanding personalities whose achievements, of course, were totally different. Mozart, for instance, wrote more than 600 compositions while Tesla's patented inventions count more than 200, some even count 700. Both had the ability to develop and design their ideas in their heads so completely that no corrections were necessary to be made at the later stage of realisation. Mozart's handwritten handwritten sheets of music of his compositions show almost no corrections. It was the same with Tesla who said about himself, that he had developed all his inventions and experiments in his head ready for realization. Tesla once wrote "The images I saw were to me perfectly real and tangible". Tesla was a marvellous inventor, an "Ingenieur" in the very meaning of the word ingenious and not an engineer the roots of which are the engine. In my presentation I will try to cover the time Tesla lived, studied and worked in Europe before he left for the United States of America in 1884 to work as an employee of Thomas Alva Edison. In my presentation I will try to cover the part of Tesla´s time before he left Europe emigrating to the United States of America. As one of 5 children Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan in the province of Lika, which was in the frontier lands between the KK Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, one of the strong powers in Europe and the Osman Empire. Figure 1 shows the map Austria- Hungary before and after World War I, when it fell apart into several states of various nationalities. Tesla was born after the Crimean War and died during the most disastrous World War II. No wonder he became a pacifist as so many others. As a young boy he very soon became passionate about reading first in the library of his father who was a Serbian-Orthodox clergyman. However, after he had met Edison in USA Tesla believed he "… had studied a dozen languages, delved in literature and art, and had spent all my best years in libraries reading all sorts of stuff that fell in my hands". Later he became extremely self-disciplined and accurate. He learned to memorize whole books with poems which seems that he had trained his brain so much that he could imagine complicated structures and coherences. Tesla's education started in primary schools of Smiljan and Gospic followed by 4 years at the middle school there. He finished middleschool in 1874 in Karlovac. Only after a critical Cholera disease his parents agreed that he might study physics, and so, in 1855, Tesla became a student at the "Kaiserlich-königliche Technische Hochschule in Graz" which is today the University of Technology in Graz. Only one year before Tesla registered the Polytechnic Institute, financed by the province of Styria, it was transferred to a Technical Hochschule which would be called nowadays a federal school. From 1878 on the "Kaiserlich-königliche Technische Hochschule in Graz" final examinations became "Staatprüfungen" (stately examinations). However, doctoral degrees could not be awarded before 1901. But all this did not bother young Tesla. He left Graz without any degree after the Education Department of the "K.K. Generalkommando in Agram (Zagreb)", which administrated the Borderland, stopped the continuation of the stipend. The last recording in the registration reads: "Wegen Nichtbezahlung der Unterrichtsgelder fuer das 1. Semester 1877/78 gestrichen". Probably in order to avoid military service in the Austr-Hungarian monarchy he applied for financial support to the Serbian patriotic organization Serbian Queen Bee in Novi Sad on October 14, 1976. However, his request was rejected. Tesla was an excellent student and in his annual report he had the best marks available even he had an interesting discussion with his professor in Experimental Physics. Prof. Poeschl was a well known professor of high reputation. In a lecture he demonstrated a Gramme machine which he had recently received when Tesla meant that a brushless motor would have much less spark generation and therefore less losses and noise. Poeschl answered that Tesla might be a very clever man, however, his ideas could never become reality because it would be equivalent to a perpetuum mobile. Much later, Tesla received the Honorary Doctorate from the Technische und Montanistische Hochschule Graz in 1937. That of the University in Vienna he had received already in 1908. Also in 1937 he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics by the Viennese professor of Physics at the University of Vienna Felix Ehrenhaft (1879 - 1952). Because of the lack of financial support Tesla left Graz without graduation and went for a short time to Maribor where he stayed from autumn of 1878 to March 1879. After almost one year in Gospic he went to Prague in 1880 following the request of his father to graduate from a university. He never graduated from the university there either and some biographers mention that he could not even register at the university because he did not speak Czech. However, the registry of the university in Prague show that Tesla was registered as an "external" studentattending lectures in analytical geometry and experimental physics. When he felt that his parents had to make too great sacrifices for him he decided to be no longer a burden for them. He accepted a position at a Hungarian telephone company in Budapest. There, in February 1882, as a 25 years old man he had the innovative idea of the principles of rotating fields. 37 years later Tesla himself described it that the idea had enlightened him like a flash. It happened during a walk in the City Park of Budapest when the age of alternating current machines began. In this moment his further fate determined him to become an "engineer" and inventor whose genius even today seems to be an inexhaustible source for science and technology. Nevertheless, again and again his name became forgotten, however, popping up brilliantly periodically. This Symposium and all the events in connection with his 150th birthday are perfect opportunities to let Tesla's name shine as brilliant as it deserves. In the same year of this important walk, in Budapest by recommendation of a friend he was offered a position at Continental Edison in Paris. There he experimented with rotary current field motors and built first models whenever he had the opportunity. In Summer of 1983, in Strasbourg he was successfully building the first operable motor without sliding contacts (brushes) and without commutator. Encouraged by the director of Continental Edison and American friends in Paris he left Europe in June 1884 and joined Edison Machine Works in the United States. In 1891, when Tesla was 35 years old, he received the Citizenship of the United States of America. Until then all his inventions and all patents granted to him are achievements of a European living and working in the United States of America. At this time he was still a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and in particular a citizen of the Kingdom of Hungary. His inventions and discoveries were pioneering in many areas. But already during his life time his personality was disputed and he was involved in many quarrels as far as his patents were concerned which all seemed to have been solved in his favour. Already during the turn of the last century in many textbooks his name did not exist. Nowadays his name is remembered only by the Tesla transformer to generate high voltages at high frequency and by the measuring unit of the magnetic field. Also many of his patents are so much forgotten that today sometimes patents are issued which can be seen near those of Tesla's. Maybe Tesla himself contributed unconsciously to the loss of his high reputation by his patents applications and publications of his later years. Mostly the clarity of engineering thinking seems to be missing or are his ideas not understood yet? I do not dare to answer this question. Who knows what will be in the future and how many thoughts will be thought which Nikola Tesla had already thought. What the application of his achievements in the future is concerned I would like to refer to what Niels Bohr once said: "Predictions are very difficult to be made, in particular when they deal with the future". There are many open questions and open for speculations, like what Tesla meant by the Death Rays. Did he mean by it a corpuscular radiation? He was talking about these rays as a weapon, which will banish wars for ever? Unfortunately, however, in this case I believe he was absolutely wrong. Because with weapons wars are never avoided as soon as the other side possesses the same or equivalent weapons. I believe in Mahadma Ghandi's words: "There is no way to peace, peace is the way". Another example is the Free Energy of Tesla which would help to solve the energy problem of the world. Is it just an illusion or had he already heard about the dark energy in space which plays an important role in cosmology nowadays? After all the scientific community continues to be interested and mankind still benefits and even in the future will benefit from the numerous contributions to modern technology of this genius. No doubt, his contributions changed the world and still are not out of date. They will help to keep on developing civilisation and the wellbeing of humanity. References: |
