Nikola Tesla: Inventions, Mysteries & Possibilities

[taylaron]

what do you think about nikola tesla's inventions?
i know the resonence frequency has some truth in it. but it can't collapse a skyscraper.
but all the "crap infomation" on the net providing that tesla invented a "death ray" i think they put more emfasis on the name than nessairy.
is tesola's invention even plausable? is it possible that this guy could create such an invention. is it possible in the world of physics.
after all, he did invent the tesla coil. pretty cool tool.
obviously a wackey guy though. crazy ideas and inventions.
what about his invention that "pumped millions of volts into the ground and which the ground itself became a conductor" with lightning bolts jolting up off stationary ground objects such as firehidrants etc.
IS THIS POSSIBLE?


obviously his idea of wireless power is complete ludicris.
we've prooved that idea wrong. we would all be fried crisp my microwaves.

one last mysterious concept. when he worked with einstein on the uss eldridge and apparently made the ship disappear and travel something like 200 miles and "reappear" with people imbedded in the hull etc. they soke of extreemly powerfull magnetic wires around the entire ship. creating a magnetic field around it.
i don't know what I am talking about. I am trying to repeat what nova etc... said on the matter. obviously a conspiricy theory.BUT IS THIS POSSIBLE!??!?



one possible source on teskla is

http://amasci.com/tesla/teslabad.html

 

[Chi Meson]

The so-called "Philadelphia Experiment" is right up there with the "Death by Pop-Rocks" urban legend. Only those who are convinced by every single conspiracy theory give this hogwash a shred of belief.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Tesla was a brilliant electrical engineer who, unfortunately, suffered from some indeterminate form of mental illness along with obvious symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. In the latter half of his life these things got the better of him and his ideas became less and less realistic. Before this, though, he was vastly ahead of most of his contemporaries in understanding the possibilities of alternating current. Westinghouse won the electrical wars over Edison because he secured Tesla's AC patents and his help in implementing them. Tesla made the electric grid as we know it today possible, and variations of the induction motor he invented are ubiquitous: no home or business is without one.

Tesla and Einstein never collaborated on anything. During WWII a physicist named Francis Bitter was called into create a way to demagnetize steel ships to make them "invisible" to a magnetically triggered mine, newly invented and deployed by the Germans. These mines sat on the bottom and were triggered when a ship passing overhead, mildly magnetized in an orientation different from the Earth's field at that location, caused a dip needle to move. The explosion sent up a huge geyser of water that damaged and sunk many ships. Bitter had to do a lot of experimenting with how best to degauss the ships and this large project couldn't be hidden from sailors. Rumors of making the ships "invisible" started. Later, some sailor who was on one of these ships or had heard the rumors confabulated a fantastic, insane, elaborate sci-fi version of the degaussing, probably just to amuse himself.

 

[taylaron]

thanks Chi Meson and zoobyshoe. there is a lot of conspiricy theories out there. he was indeed a genius. until he went psycotic. he has changed the way we all live. thankyou for your help on this unclear subject.

 

[GCT]

Tesla was an interesting guy because he seemed so naive, yet he had such high ambitions. His father was a minister back in his country, he came all the way over here to the US and met with Thomas Edition with whom he did not get along with very well. My professor in Instrumental Analysis recalls Tesla as a freak and spoke about all of his very eccentric behavior as well as inventions.

Many believe that he was cheated out of a Nobel prize by a very annoying individual by the last name of Marconi, the patent of the invention which gave Marconi his Nobel was eventually attributed to Tesla.

All in all, I believe that Tesla was pretty clueless, but had some genius in him, that which pertains to fluid intelligence. He had some great inventions during the beginning of his career here at the US, however, he got a little too excited afterwards...all of the dufus millionaires supporting his crazy inventions didn't help in clearing up his delusions either.

He should have at least been able to cash in on his earlier status, however, it seems that he thought he was invincible in a sense. He passed away, in a manner very unfitting of someone with his intellectual prowess and for an individual who had made a considerable prosocial contribution to the society here at the US.

 

[zoobyshoe]

My professor in Instrumental Analysis recalls Tesla as a freak and spoke about all of his very eccentric behavior as well as inventions.

Old Tesla was especially freakish and eccentric, and I would like to say that the stories told by your Instrumental Analysis Prof reflect the mental decay of Tesla's old age. However, the truth is he was exceptionally eccentric all his life and stories of his strangeness seem to come from all periods of his life.

Still, young Tesla was not the least bit clueless when it came to engineering. His lectures and writings are published and are solid and articulately written. He also wrote a short autobiography that is a fascinating read.

He worked for Edison for a year fixing DC generators. Tesla advised him once on the advantages of AC, but Edison wasn't interested, and they didn't argue further about it. They got along fine until Edison apparently renegged on a bonus he'd promised Tesla. Tesla quit in a rage and went, literally, to digging ditches rather than work for a man he felt had cheated him. Edison thought Tesla was a good employee and remembered the promised "bonus" as an exorbitant sum he'd thrown out as a joke that Tesla apparently hadn't understood to be a joke.

In addition to his contributions to the use of Alternating Current, it should be remembered that Tesla also invented remote control. It was in the course of that, IIRC, that he patented all the elements of radio without actually having presented them as radio. Nothing Marconi brought forth hadn't been previously patented by Tesla, so, technically speaking, Tesla had beat Marconi. I, personally, feel Marconi deserves the credit for radio as we know it, though. It's doubtful in my mind Tesla was thinking in that direction, even though he had all the elements in hand.

 

[Chi Meson]

I don't think they "shared" Nobel prizes in those days, did they? A modern Nobel committe would probably have split the Nobel between them.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't think they "shared" Nobel prizes in those days, did they? A modern Nobel committe would probably have split the Nobel between them.

I'm not sure what the difference between them sharing it or having it split between them might be.

At any rate, there are different reports about a rumored Edison/Tesla Nobel prize:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tesla+nobel+prize&btnG=Google+Search

which is a whole different matter than the Tesla/Marconi debate, which was settled postumously in Tesla's favor, not for Nobel purposes, but for legal matters.