Monday, May 23, 2016

Nikola Tesla - Biography

My husband introduced me to the whole new series of biographies of which the story of Nikola Tesla was also one. I read this biography on Kindle which was a new experience.

The man Tesla is a creator of 20th century. His inventions have shaped our lives and continue to do so even after centuries.

He was born in Croatia in 1856 and later migrated to the United States of America. He dreamt of working with Edison and briefly did so before realizing that Edison is no friend.

Edison hired Tesla to fix problems he was having in DC generators and motors and promised Tesla a very huge amount. But when the job was done, Edison laughed away on the promise he made to Tesla on the monetary part. 

Tesla could not stand the argument with Edison that the direct current is the one world class solution for the electrical supply concept against his own alternating current. 

Thomas Edison - already established as an inventor and the business mogul in electrical science and technology could not stand the idea of alternating current and hence dismissed the idea and went on to speak negative about it in the scientific forums.  Tesla in one of the forums wore the alternating current carrying wires to prove that its not dangerous. He also organised the forum to run completely on the alternating current concept so that people find its merit. 

Tesla was met with numerous failures in his journey of innovation. He was rejected in various stages by the sponsors, fund providers and general public. He kept his attitude to invent no matter what came his way. One of his important inventions - Radio was stolen and a year later Marconi was awarded the Nobel prize for the same invention. It does not end here. Some other examples are - X-Rays, Radar, Hydro Electric Plant, Transistors. 

He died in his room on 7th Jan 1943. He was found by his maid. Tesla obtained around 300 patents worldwide for his inventions through out. Any gratitude to this man I harbor is simply not enough.

1 comment:

  1. Great to know about him -

    Good review.
    Thanks for introducing Tesla..

    ReplyDelete