Post # 067
Nikola Tesla - Forgotten genius!
In 1884, a 28 year old physicist arrives in New York from Serbia, with a letter of recommendation and met Thomas Alva Edison. The letter said, "I know two great people in my life. One of them is you, Mr. Edison. The other is this young man." His name was Nikola Tesla. What happened to him?
A bit of context first. Late 19th century America is booming with industrialization and progress. But once the sun sets, darkness sets in. Only candles and lanterns dispel darkness and light the homes. In this backdrop, a genius called Edison triumphs against all odds and creates an Electric bulb! Great! But how to transmit electricity to each home? Edison's company develops a technology based on Direct Current (DC), which necessitates building electric grids in every block of the street. These grids were messy and used to break down often.
Enter Tesla with his recommendation letter. Edison employs him skeptically and says he will pay Tesla USD 50000 if Tesla can solve the problem. Tesla improves the grids vastly and claims his money. Edison rebuffs him saying it was an American joke. Tesla quits and from here on begins a life-long rivalry with Thomas Edison.
A few years later, another inventor-entrepreneur called George Westinghouse got interested in the electricity distribution game and funded Tesla to come up with a competing technology. Tesla came up with the Alternating Current (AC) technology and a method to transmit current to long distances - the transformer. This tussle of technologies was called The war of currents.
The final battle was won by Westington and Tesla when they got the contract to light the Chicago Fair in 1891. The electricity was generated by using the force of Niagra falls to move turbines in a magnetic field. Today, this technology is called Hydroelectricity. It was pioneered by Tesla. Below is an old photo of the beautifully lit Chicago fair.
The legend goes like this. Edison got so mad at this loss that he launched a powerful smear campaign against Tesla and his AC current. How? He publicly had a cat, a horse and an elephant electrocuted to demonstrate how dangerous AC current was! What's more, he had a death row inmate electrocuted by AC current. Talk about being a bad loser, huh!
Inspite of all this, AC current ruled the electricity distribution circuits for the past century or so. Yet, even today, Edison is venerated and very few people know about Tesla. Edison lived a wealthy life, Tesla died a debt-ridden, lonely death.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Westinghouse went through hard times and pleaded with Tesla to renegotiate his royalties. Tesla simply tore the royalties contract and left behind millions of dollars of royalty income.
In his lifetime, Nikola Tesla invented, designed, patented innumerable things.
In 1931, Times magazine commemorated his 75th birthday by having him on its cover.
In 1943, aged 87, he died, alone, eccentric, penniless, in debt, in a New York hotel room, his bills unpaid. Fittingly, the Westinghouse Electric Company paid his due bills.
After his death, Tesla and his work were forgotten. Until 1960, when the SI unit for magnetic flux density was named Tesla in his honor.
Post Script: In 1896, he met Swami Vivekananda and stated that his views on energy matched those of Vedic cosmology.
