Nikola Tesla and His Huge Impact on Technology

The famed writer Hugo Gernsback once said “if you mean the man who really invented, in other words, originated and discovered - not merely improved what had already been invented by others, then without a shade of a doubt, Nikola Tesla is the world’s greatest inventor, not only at present, but in all history.” Powerful words from an influential man, and he was not wrong.

Nikola Tesla, born July 10th 1856 in what is now modern day Croatia, is widely considered to be one of the most influential scientists to have lived. It is very clear to see how he has gained such a reputation by delving deep into three of arguably his most significant inventions and roles with: AC current motors and the war of the currents, the tesla coil, and the radio.

In class we learned that in DC current the current only flows in one direction, whereas for AC it alternates going in each direction, hence their names direct current and alternating current. The large debate that was had, pitting the two all started in 1884, the year Tesla began working for Thomas Edison. The two got on well, they would play pool and joke around on their off time, and were generally agreeable, but one place they tended to disagree on was on the subject of AC electricity. Whilst working for Edison, Tesla created the first AC motor. He did this by taking Edison's dynamos and remaking them by doing such things as replacing their long magnets with ones with short cores. He believed that this was three times as efficient as the DC equivalent.

In the late 1880’s Edison created a cost efficient way of creating DC electricity and dynamos and machines to go with it. The problem with this is that there was no way to increase or decrease the voltage. It was in this aspect that AC had the advantage, for it had the transformer. Transformers are made from two coils of wire wrapped around an iron core. When an electrical current passes through one of them it causes the iron core to become magnetized which, in turn, induces an electric current in the other wire because, as we learned in class: “current can be induced to flow through a conductor in a changing magnetic field.”(Faraday’s law) This transformer allowed the companies using AC current to either step up or step down the voltage depending on the ratio of the number of turns of wire in each coil. This magical device could increase the output, while decreasing the loss of voltage over long distances, then cut the voltage down again to safer values for final delivery to the consumer. This started a huge controversy which came to be known as the war of the currents as a lot was at stake for Edison and the electric companies using DC electricity. So much so that Edison and a man named Harold Brown started spreading news that this AC electricity was dangerous and would publicly electrocute stray dogs, cats, horses, and famously Topsy the elephant to prove this to the public.

In 1855, George Westinghouse, a notable figure in the sale of electricity at the time, began experimenting with a transformer created by Lucien Gaulard and John Gibbs, and by May of 1888 Tesla presented a paper to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers to convince everyone of the superiority AC has over DC, by then Westinghouse had sold more AC power stations than all of the companies providing DC power combined, and AC reigned victorious because of the obvious benefits.

Another one of Tesla’s influential devices is the Tesla coil. Simply put, a Tesla Coil is a device that enables the wireless transfer of electricity. This invention all started with a man named Heinrich Hertz, who was the first person to transmit and receive radio waves. Tesla took Hertz’s basic designs modified them to run on AC current. This upped the frequency the original device would give off from a few hundred cycles per second to ten thousand to twenty thousand. Through experiments he eventually created the Tesla coil. The Tesla coil is made up of two coils of wire, a step up transformer, a top load, and a capacitor with a spark gap. In the device, the transformer boosts the voltage in the circuit, the charge would then be stored in the primary coil’s capacitor. Here the current builds up until it reaches a tipping point, and creates its own voltage which tries to act as a bridge across the spark gap. This eventually closes the circuit and current then bursts through the coils, causing a very strong magnetic field in the primary coil. This change in the magnetic field causes voltage to run through the coils, and the top load maximizes this energy received from the primary coil. The voltage produced is so incredibly high that it can break apart air molecules and push their electrons in arcs, which creates enormous sparks.

This amazing piece of equipment has been used by Nikola Tesla himself to experiment with, and discover more about fluorescence, X-rays, radio, wireless power, and the earth's atmosphere. Different versions of it are even used currently in modern technology such as CRT displays, combustion engines, welding machines, lighters, and even in special effects for the entertainment industry.

Tesla’s dream of a wireless world didn’t stop at the Tesla coil, it went on to be seen in much more of Tesla’s work, including the radio. Tesla first had the idea of the radio in 1892, and in 1898 he had created a radio controlled robotic boat. This boat was run on batteries, and had switches activated by radio signals which would control the propeller, rudder, and lights. Through various different frequencies Tesla could start and stop the boat, steer it, and switch lights on and off again. In 1900, once coming to the realization of what could be done with radio, Tesla developed a transmitting tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island. The goal of this tower was to create radio transmission services available worldwide.

Marconi had a similar idea, erecting a power transmitter himself at Poldhu in Cornwall England. He managed to send a signal 320 Km away on December 12, 1901. Upon hearing about this, an engineer working for Tesla, Otis Pond, reportedly told Tesla “Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you.” To which Tesla replied “Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.”

According to Tesla, Marconi hadn’t believed that it wasn’t even possible to send a signal across the Atlantic because the curvature of the Earth would result in a wall of water that the signal wouldn’t be able to pass through.

Despite all this Guglielmo Marconi usually gets the credit for the invention. This is due to the fact that Marconi got patents for his radio devices. Marconi even got a Nobel Prize for what should largely be considered Tesla’s work. An article in the National Press Reporter 1912 sums it up best reporting that “Mr Tesla in 1892 showed that the true Hertzian effect was not a means by which it was possible for a sending station to communicate with a receiving station at any great distance. He demonstrated furthermore, that waves propagated at a transmitting station travelled along the ground as a conductor. Today it is acknowledged that these views are correct. It was, however, left to the splendid enterprise of Marconi to crystallize the results of the previous investigators into a complete and practical system of space telegraphy.” This explains how Tesla discovered the science behind the radio, while Marconi brought those discoveries into the light, getting the credit in the process.

A battle for the patents went on for years, and didn’t end until after both of their deaths. Six months after Tesla’s death in 1943, and six years after Marconi’s death the US supreme court ruled that all of Marconi’s patents for the radio were invalid, and awarded them all to Tesla, making him the true founder of this monumental device.

In conclusion, after discovering more about AC current, the Tesla coil, the radio, and their creator, it is apparent that Tesla has had a huge impact on technology, not just in his own lifetime, but in modern day as well. Gernsback was definitely right in calling him the world’s greatest inventor.