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Nikola Tesla Discussion Thread...

rockchucker

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From Wiki...


Nikola Tesla (Serbian: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor, which helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, Croatian Military Frontier in Austrian Empire (today's Croatia), he was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen.[1] After his demonstration of wireless communication through radio in 1894 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.[2] Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture,[3] but because of his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist by many late in his life.[4][5] Tesla never put much focus on his finances and died impoverished at the age of 86, alone in a hotel room in which he lived, in New York City.[6]

The International System of Units unit measuring magnetic field B (also referred to as the magnetic flux density and magnetic induction), the tesla, was named in his honor (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the Tesla effect of wireless energy transfer to wireless powered electronic devices (which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale with incandescent light bulbs as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial power levels in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project).

Aside from his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar, and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics,[7] and theoretical physics. A few of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, anti-gravity and UFO theories, early New Age occultism and tele[trans]portation.



These are just the tip of the Iceberg when it comes to Nikola Tesla.



This thread was created for discussion, debate and personal opinions on the findings, inventions and the very sad demise of Nikola Tesla who we all owe a thanks to if we use power daily.
 
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rockchucker

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To think that we would have never even needed Power Lines if G.E. and Westinghouse would not have shut down Tesla's research.

Off Topic I know but the Article about Electricity flowing through the ground sprang it in my head.

Not around where the power companies run a neutral/ground. In residential split phase service where the transformer is center tapped and grounded for a neutral a discontinuous neutral will cause unbalanced voltages line to neutral depending on the loads. When this happens lights go bright/dim when loads change and all sorts of other odd things happen.

BTW- I have first hand experience with your quoted question. I lost my neutral a few years ago due to a tree branch.

The power companies would have had a real problem trying to bill customers for their power consumption had Tesla's broadcast power system prevailed. :lol_hitti

I watched a TV show on that. JP Morgan was bankrolling Tesla until Tesla revealed his true plan was to give away free power worldwide to people. JP Morgan had asked him how he could meter the power and Tesla either would not design that or did not know how. So JP Morgan pulled his funding and the whole project collapsed. Eventually Tesla died a pauper.

there was something else about a wireless electric car which Tesla drove around running off his system. He could drive all over a large area. Someone who had seen it said it was full of wire like antennas which Tesla moved around to capture the flow.

http://waterpoweredcar.com/teslascar.html

You would think if it had been real that someone would have figured out how again today.

Yes they would have. We would also not be in such a world of hurt right now seeing how 2/3 of ALL Energy that we produce is lost by transmitting it through Power Lines. So dumb. We could all have had free Power and vehicles that needed no Fuel.



Yeah it is too bad that they pulled his funding. The world would be a VERY different place today if it he was allowed to continue his research. Hell 90 % of the crazy **** he though of was doable. A lot he had already proved it worked on smaller scales. All of the money Tycoons shut him down though. What a shame.

Just to think that our Electrical Consumption for the WORLD could be cut in 1/3...and no power lines or poles to deal with EVER! Just large Tesla Towers that could be powered by low consumption Diesel or Gas Engines. Get a receiver and tap in wireless. Or just stick a rod in the ground and start drawing power from the Earth.


Sorry end Rant/


Mods if you want you could move these posts over to a new "Tesla Discussion" thread. I didn't mean to thread jack. Sorry OP.

So I just quoted these posts from other Members over to here from the Backfeeding Electrical Panel thread here...


http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26640
 

porschedude996TT

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I've been following him for years. I have a VHS Tape that my father gave me on NT. He was an incredible guy. I saw a more recently done version and he comes off as a little luney in the end with the free electrical in the sky stuff.
 

Torque1st

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I played a bunch with a 100KV Tesla coil when I was a kid. It had been built by a neighbor. It was great fun but they could be dangerous. I intend to build one someday. Every mad scientist should have one.

BTW, that 2/3 of all power produced lost in transmission would have been much higher in a Tesla system.
 
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rockchucker

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That was because he had tried so many times to tell people and had been shut down by the big bankers and moneyholders. This pushed him into a reclusive state where he had to build his inventions out of sticks and twigs instead of proper gear. I would go crazy too if I had actually proved something works and then had the rug pulled out from under me. It was a long road for Tesla and the end of his life.


This is a pretty good book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931882045/?tag=atomicindus08-20
 
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rockchucker

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BTW, that 2/3 of all power produced lost in transmission would have been much higher in a Tesla system.

I was under the impression that the Tower would only produce what it needed to produce as opposed to having to keep the power flowing through the lines like we do today. There may be more power lost in transmission but we would not have to keep it in the lines 100% of the time as in today's System. Which causes us to lose 2/3 of the Power created ALL of the time. Not just when transmitting it.
 
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sdowney717

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The guy was really an amazing fellow.
Some of his technology and ideas are turned into myths today.

You can understand that any new wonderful thing, even if it works great and would bring great relief to the huddled yearning masses wishing to breathe free, if a company can not make money off it then it most likely wont be developed or happen.

For example pharmaceutical companies today wont develop a drug because too few people will benefit even if it means life or death for them. Even if the research is done and they know it will work.
 

Tscott

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Tesla was pretty cool, but a lot of what he proposed just is not practical. A lot of his work centered around using the earth as a return conduit for the current that he was trying to broadcast. This system was used in the early distribution systems and has subsequently been determined to be dangerous. It is too easy to encounter touch potentials in a system that uses the earth as a return path for current. You can get very funny things happening when you induce a voltage through the earth between 2 points. It has actually been made against the rules, and distribution systems governed by the NESC must have a neutral for return currents.

Tesla did a ton of great work though and is probably the reason why DC is not the standard for electricity today. I think his research was really interesting, but I believe a lot of the legends are just that, legends.

Tom
 
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rockchucker

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Well my opinion differs greatly. A lot of the technology we use today is based off of Tesla's "Theories". If they were just legends then we would not see his work in our everyday life. He was shut down due to the fact that he knew too much.

Tesla IS the reason in 1896 when the first 40 Power users paid for Electrical Lines and power run to their homes near Niagra Falls.



PBS....




The Niagara Falls Power Project was an act of pure technological optimism. Americans had dreamed of pressing the Falls into "an honest day's work" since the first pioneer sawmill had been built there in 1725. But schemes for extracting power had never been adequately conceived.

Since his childhood, Tesla himself had dreamed of harnessing the power of the great natural wonder. And in late 1893, his dream became a reality, when Westinghouse was awarded the contract to create the powerhouse.

The contract came as a result of a failed competition spearheaded by the international Niagara Falls Commission. The commission, charged with planning the power project, had solicited proposals from experts around the world only to reject them all. The schemes ranged from a system using pneumatic pressure to one requiring ropes, springs and pulleys. And there were proposals to transmit DC electricity, one endorsed by Edison. At the head of the commission was Lord Kelvin, the famous British physicist, who had been as opposed to alternating current as Edison until he attended the Chicago Exposition. Now, a strong convert to AC, Kelvin and his commission asked Westinghouse to use alternating current to harness the power of the falls.

The construction period was traumatic for engineers, mechanics and workers, but it weighed most heavily on investors. Project backers included several of the wealthiest men in America and Europe, including: J. P. Morgan, John Jacob Astor, Lord Rothschild, and W. K. Vanderbilt. After a five-year nightmare of doubt and financial crises, the project approached completion. Tesla had not doubted the results for a moment. The investors, however, were not at all sure the system would work. While the machines were running smoothly in Tesla's three-dimensional imagination, they were still unproved and expensive.

But the worries were unwarranted. When the switch was thrown, the first power reached Buffalo at midnight, November 16, 1896. The Niagara Falls Gazette reported that day, "The turning of a switch in the big powerhouse at Niagara completed a circuit which caused the Niagara River to flow uphill." The first one thousand horsepower of electricity surging to Buffalo was claimed by the street railway company, but already the local power company had orders from residents for five thousand more. Within a few years the number of generators at Niagara Falls reached the planned ten, and power lines were electrifying New York City. Broadway was ablaze with lights; the elevated, street railways, and subway system rumbled; and even the Edison systems converted to alternating current.

But there were complications. Both the Westinghouse and General Electric corporations were morally and financially drained by the War of the Currents. Years of litigation, the absorption of Edison's company and others by professional managers at GE, and the financial teetering of Westinghouse all contributed to a takeover. This was the era of the Robber Barons, and one of the biggest was ready to make his move. J. P. Morgan, hoping to bring all U.S. hydroelectric power under his control, proceeded to manipulate stock market forces with the intention of starving out Westinghouse and buying the Tesla patents. Thanks in part to Tesla, this did not happen.

Westinghouse called on the inventor, pleading for an escape from the initial contract that gave Tesla generous royalties. In a magnanimous and history-making gesture, Tesla said he tore up the contract. He was, after all, grateful to the one man who had believed in his invention. And he was convinced that greater inventions lay ahead. The Westinghouse Electric Company was saved for future triumphs. Tesla, although sharing the glory, was left forever afterward in recurring financial difficulties.



http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_niagara.html
 

78Bird

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Tesla was a genious, and yeah even though a lot of his ideas really didn't pan out as practical, it's that kind of thinking and effort that comes up with the stuff that DOES work.

At least he tried the things, and proved that it wasn't really gonna work. These days noone has the guts it seems to just go ahead and BUILD one and see if it'll work or not.

He was the closest thing to a real mad scientist, and a very interesting guy.
 
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