Nikola Testa – Father of Modern Electricity
Tesla Motors was incorporated in 2003 by electrical engineers, Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning. Their idea was to bring to life their dream. They wanted to create a mass produced car powered totally by electric, thus reducing dependency on oil. Today, Tesla’s market capitalization is over one trillion dollars. The company’s name was a tribute by its founders to the inventor and electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla.
Recharge your phone, iPad or laptop. Flick on a light switch. Use your house thermostat to kick on either heat or cooling. Turn on the tv. Pop something in the microwave. Throw your clothes in the washer. Everyday normal events that you do without a second thought (until a storm knocks the power out). All those actions have one common denominator. They all use alternating current electricity.
When you think of electricity, maybe you think of Ben Franklin doing his kite thing. Perhaps Thomas Edison comes to mind and his introduction of the incandescent light bulb. Allow me to throw one more name out there, namely the aforementioned Nikola Tesla. His introduction of alternating current as a means of distributing electricity removed the barrier of delivering electricity over long distances that the system of direct current was not able to do. Alternating current and the induction motor still form the basis of power grids to this day, linking the power grids to homes, farms, offices, businesses and industry.
A Little Background Info On Tesla
Nikola Tesla was born in 1856. He lived to the age of 86, dying in 1943. He was raised in modern day Croatia to parents of Serbian heritage. His father was an Eastern Orthodox priest. His mother was the daughter of an Eastern Orthodox priest. After Tesla graduated high school, he contracted cholera. He was close to death many times during the course of this illness. After recovering, he ran away to another region of Croatia to avoid being drafted into the army of the Austrian-Hungary Empire. He later enrolled in a technical institute in Austria but did not graduate.
When Tesla was 25, he moved to Hungary and worked for the Budapest Phone Company as an engineer. The next year he got a job in Paris with the Edison Company. He displayed an advanced knowledge of electrical engineering and physics. The company designated him as a company troubleshooter. At 28 years of age he moved to America and worked for Edison in New York City. He lasted 6 months there until he quit. He quit abruptly when Edison reneged on a promised bonus.
His Big Breakthrough
For a few years after, he struggled financially. He continued to work on his ideas however. At age 30, he partnered with some entrepreneurs. His luck changed. He subsequently sold his patents for the induction motor and alternating current. He sold them to the Westinghouse Company for a princely sum. As a result he became a wealthy man.
For the next 20 years he incessantly experimented and filed new patents. He spent much of his time and most of his fortune experimenting with transmitting electric power without use of wires. By 1920, he had lost almost all of his fortune. He was a great inventor but a terrible businessman. He died in his hotel room in New York City in 1943.
Over 300 Registered Patents
Alternating current is the worldwide standard for generation, transmission and distribution of electricity to the masses. Tesla developed the technology for this. He also invented the induction motor. This type of motor is used in countless items . Automobiles. Water pumps. Elevators. Washing machines. Vacuum cleaners. Hair dryers. Refrigerators. Industrial turbines. Basically wherever something is powered by some type of motor. If the above two inventions alone were all that he invented, he would still be one of the greatest innovators in history.
Tesla registered over 300 patents. He also had hundreds of inventions that were never patented. Tesla invented, predicted, or contributed to the development of literally hundreds of technologies used in today’s world. Remote control technology (think drones). Neon and florescent lighting. X-rays. Wireless wave transmission (think wi-fi). Computers. Smartphones. Lasers. Robotics.
Some Further Facts
He was a polyglot. Tesla was fluent in eight different languages. Linguists refer to a person proficient in six or more languages as a polyglot. He was fluent in Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Italian, German, French, English and Latin!
He was eidetic. Tesla had the inner ability to memorize entire books and periodicals. He used that stored information as his own personal internal library. He rarely made drawings of his inventions. Tesla merely copied down the picture of the invention that he had in his head.
He rarely slept. Tesla was an insomniac. He usually only slept about two hours a night. As a result sometimes he would nap at his work desk during the course of the day. Assistants noted that sometimes he would just fall asleep in mid sentence due to exhaustion.
A lifelong bachelor. Tesla never married. As a result of his intense focus on his inventions as well as his documented OCD, it was never in the cards for him to marry.
An interesting quote. Here is a most mysterious quote from Tesla for you to ponder. “If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration”.
Penniless to Wealthy to Penniless. Tesla was wizard like in the ideas and inventions that flowed from his mind but he was a terrible businessman. Unlike Edison, he just did not possess business acumen. After selling his alternating current and induction motor patents to George Westinghouse, Tesla was a multi-millionaire. He proceeded to plow all that money back into other ideas he desired to explore. The tragedy of the fire that destroyed his New York City lab was financially devastating because Tesla had neglected to purchase insurance.
The Battle Of The Currents
In the 1880’s, the use of electricity was growing by leaps and bounds. In addition to street lamps and industrial usage, the world wanted electricity in their homes. The market for electricity was huge. The big question was how to get it to the people.
There were two competing methods of distributing electricity. The first was direct current. Edison and his partners were the proponents of direct current. This is the method he used to supply his customers with electricity. The other method of distributing electricity was by alternating current. Tesla and his business partners championed alternating current.
Edison was the quintessential businessman. He did not want to lose the royalties for his direct current patents. Thus began a campaign to discredit alternating current. He said alternating current was too dangerous. He conspired to have the first electric chair (for executions) powered by alternating current. The idea was to create a perception of alternating current as very hazardous.
In 1893, the war came to a head. This was the year of the Chicago World’s Fair. It was electricity’s “coming out party” to the world. Edison’s company bid $554,000 to electrify the fair. They lost the bid to Westinghouse and Tesla. Westinghouse’s bid was for $399,000. The fair was a resounding success. Alternating current was here to stay.
A few years later, Westinghouse and Tesla provided power to all of Buffalo, NY. They successfully used Niagara Falls as a giant power generator. At that point, Edison’s company jumped on the alternating current bandwagon. The war was over.
Tesla’s Mental Illness
Tesla was one of the most brilliant minds in human history. His personality disorder however did impinge on his daily life. We know today that Nikola Tesla suffered from OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. There were also other things that he dealt with. These difficulties may have interfered with his ability to act in his own interests throughout his life.
Tesla was a germaphobe. He obsessively washed his hands. He usually wore gloves to avoid anyone touching his skin.
Tesla was a certified insomniac. He awoke at 9:00 am. He worked at his lab until 6:00 pm. Then he ate dinner at the same restaurant at 8:10 pm. He then went back to work after dinner. He usually worked until 3 or 4 in the morning.
Tesla had an obsession with the number 3. He would walk around a building three times before entering. He required 18 napkins when eating his meal. The number 18 was divisible by 3. At any hotel, he would request a room number where the sum of the digits were divisible by three.
Before eating, Tesla would cut his food at precise right angles. Then he would precisely determine the cubic mass of the food. Next, he would calculate the exact number of jaw movements required to digest the food properly.
He had a phobia regarding pearls. He would get uncomfortable when in the company of a woman wearing pearls.
While these strange rituals may appear funny to the casual observer, OCD is no joke. It is a hell of sorts. I know. I struggled with recurring OCD in my earlier years. In time, I became free of it. I have compassion for those that struggle with it. Every day I am thankful that I am free.
A Wild Claim
A newly declassified FBI document puts forth a wild claim about Tesla. The document is known as the “Interplanetary Sessions Newsletter”. Why was the FBI involved? Why was it classified information? This document makes the wild claim that Tesla is from the planet Venus. It states that he was brought to Earth as a baby in 1856. He was left in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Tesla. The document further states that Tesla was visited many times by Venusians. A wild claim indeed.
An interesting snippet from the document relates an alleged Venusian quote. “Our world (Earth) is not hopeless by any means. As a species however, we are too lazy. In a spiritual sense, we must become more potent. This is necessary to hold the planet together against the dark forces that would destroy it”.
Where Did His Knowledge Come From?
Tesla’s mind yielded much that is used in today’s world. Many of his inventions were far ahead of his time. In fact, he was probably too far ahead of his time. Tesla predicted that people all over the world would be able to hear and see each other using a device small enough to fit in their pocket. Sounds like a smartphone to me.
How different the world would have been had he given himself over to depression and bitterness in the mid 1880’s. His business partners abandoned him. They left him without a dime. He had to dig ditches at $2 a day to survive.
He had a dream however. This dream was to manifest on the outside what his mind saw and believed on the inside. The vision was inside his mind. He knew that it simply had to be expressed. He proceeded forward in faith. Thus it is with your life. The desire, the manifestation that is within you yearns to be expressed. To deny it, to refuse it, to ignore it, to decline it, is a falling short of the mark. Proceed forward in belief. Purge yourself of doubt. Believe. Let Universal Mind handle the details.
Conceive. Believe. Receive.