Nikola Tesla Question??

I am trying to gather some info for a collection of the greatest scientific minds of our times. Nikola Tesla comes to mind as one of course, but I have to ask you all what you know him to be most influential about?? What is he known for to you?? How has he affected our scientific community and way of life?? Is there a darker side that is not commonly known??

Also, anybody else that you think would be of this degree of contribution to science/physics?? Please include what you know of him/her and a web link if you can!

Thanks for your help, Peace....Mondo

I think he is a visionary and a legend, alot of people praise him more so than einstein, but they were both of completely different fields, and deserve equal respect.

teslas ideas and theorys are still around today, he is one of if not the most influencial scientists of the past 200 years.

Wiki has some good information on him, and there are 100s of conspiracy related books, theorys about HARPP being based on tesla tech, ufo antigravity systems.


very much the conspiracy theory communities favourite scientist.







[edit on 23-2-2007 by The Blade Runner]

Exactly what I am talking about!! Thanks for the reply by the way. Yeah, do you think he had anything to do with the HAARP program?? I mean i know Tesla himself did not, but maybe his discoveries were used in some way.

By the way, why is Tesla so intricate in the conspiracy boards??? Let's start a list of some of his contributions.

1) Tesla Coils

Okay, you're turns to start listing things off now.

Peace, Mondo

im not much of an expert on tesla, i know he invited the standard of AC power.

I cant think of anything off the top of my head other than the tesla coil, his experiments with radiowaves and electricity and his AC standard.

like i said, en.wikipedia.org... would probably be the best place to start and to expand your reseach on whatever you are looking for, there is to my knowledge a huge wealth of speculation and information availible on tesla online, 100s of books, 100s of websites, this could turn into a very long thread, but im sure a good thread, id rather not intefear with the flow of it and let people who are much more knowledgible on tesla speak.

Tesla invented AC power, electric motors, and tesla coils, amongst many other things. He did a lot of high frequency and wireless work in things like tuned circuits, and wireless transmission of power. There is evidence that he may have beaten Marconi to the invention of radio and Roentgen to the discovery of X-rays.

Tesla designed power distribution systems based on his superior AC power (as opposed to Edison's DC power, which requires stations every few miles due to the higher power losses in the wires), hooked up a hydroelectric generator to Niagara Falls (which was a childhood dream of his), provided the first city night lighting for a city (I forget which one now), demonstrated a remote control 'toy' boat in a day when wireless communication was almost unheard of, built Wardencliff Tower (sp?), and probably a lot more. All this stuff is just off the top of my head, which means there are probably way more things he did than I'm listing here.

Tesla was a bit of a loner, though, and his business sense just plain sucked. Later in life he developed obsessive compulsive disorder, and became obsessed with the number three. Depending on who you believe, he may also have developed a death ray, unified field theory, and developed a way to solve the energy crisis. I suspect he didn't do those things, however.

As an electrical engineer by training, I consider Tesla to be one of the greatest engineers of all time. Things that he developed in my field are now so taken for granted that we cannot imagine a world without them. You owe probably 99% of the electronics in your house to something or other that Tesla worked on. If it has a motor, plugs into the wall, talks wirelessly, or uses high frequency, you have it, in part, because of Tesla.

Originally posted by DragonsDemesne
Tesla invented AC power, electric motors, and tesla coils, amongst many other things. He did a lot of high frequency and wireless work in things like tuned circuits, and wireless transmission of power. There is evidence that he may have beaten Marconi to the invention of radio and Roentgen to the discovery of X-rays.

Tesla designed power distribution systems based on his superior AC power (as opposed to Edison's DC power, which requires stations every few miles due to the higher power losses in the wires), hooked up a hydroelectric generator to Niagara Falls (which was a childhood dream of his), provided the first city night lighting for a city (I forget which one now), demonstrated a remote control 'toy' boat in a day when wireless communication was almost unheard of, built Wardencliff Tower (sp?), and probably a lot more. All this stuff is just off the top of my head, which means there are probably way more things he did than I'm listing here.

Tesla was a bit of a loner, though, and his business sense just plain sucked. Later in life he developed obsessive compulsive disorder, and became obsessed with the number three. Depending on who you believe, he may also have developed a death ray, unified field theory, and developed a way to solve the energy crisis. I suspect he didn't do those things, however.

As an electrical engineer by training, I consider Tesla to be one of the greatest engineers of all time. Things that he developed in my field are now so taken for granted that we cannot imagine a world without them. You owe probably 99% of the electronics in your house to something or other that Tesla worked on. If it has a motor, plugs into the wall, talks wirelessly, or uses high frequency, you have it, in part, because of Tesla.

Exactly.
Tesla was known primarily as a rogue scientist, and in his time wasn't taken too seriously by the scientific community, however, the citizens of the town he gave AC electricity to took him seriously enough.

I would suggest Wikipedia for information on him.

Without Tesla we wouldnt have AC electricity (or rather it would have taken alot longer to get). Some of the things we take for granted and owe completley to Tesla are

AC Electricity.
Radio transmissions.
Inductors.
Pretty much any electronics that use sign waves, such as microwaves, radios, radar, etc.
It is also thought that if his financer of the wardecliff tower hadn't backed out on him, we would have long range wireless power transmission.
The words of his financer "If I can't put a meter on it, I'm not going to fund it".
The problem with wireless power is there would be no way to determine how much power each induvidual person was consuming, so the project was scrapped because it wasnt financially viable. What had been completed of the tower was left behind... you can find some cool pictures of it on google if you like.

Tesla coils, while not being of much use to us yet, are very cool to play around with. Think of a huge radio that can pump out extroardinary amounts of electricity over a distance.

There are two main types of tesla coils, a transmitter and a reciever. The transmitter is the one everyone knows about, throwing bolts of electricity here and there. Most science centers have at least one.
The reciever is the opposite, it purposely attracts the electricity emited from the transmitter, and draws it in, effectively getting it's power from the transmitter which could be quite the distance away.

Tesla coils are able to transmit their energy that distance because it converts almost all of it to Voltage, leaving little amperage to be impeded by air resistance. The charge is then shunted out of the tower via the primary coil winding, with nowhere to ground to, the electricity has to leave the secondy coil. If we could push it that much further, and make it transmit completley voltage with little or no Amperage, I believe you will see effects similar to zero point energy... but if we were able to do that, we'd be able to soak up static electricity from the atmosphere and say goodbye to all generators and power plants.

Above all, Tesla is my personal hero. Without him, I wouldnt be able to be a roboticist. I owe all work and discovery to his experiments and unwavering determination.


Imagine that though, immediately after creating AC power, he starts work on making it wireless... amazing. Many people tried to tell him that his work was a waste of time, and yet here we are with AC.

Ooh, I just found this...

video.google.com...

It's a great video on his work... it goes into some work after his, but it covers alot of what he did himself.

Enjoy.

You forgot florescent lighting and car speedometers. He also contributed to plasma deposition such as sputtering which is used in manufacturing electronic components. I think you may have mentioned ion beams as weapons.

Oh, that's right, Tesla did do fluorescent lighting. I hadn't heard about those other things, though. A speedometer is simple enough, not really impressive, but I had no idea he was involved with plasmas. I took a course on microfabrication, which included working in a lab with plasma sputtering, and not once in the course were any contributions of Tesla mentioned, which is unfortunately a rather common experience. In my entire electrical engineering degree, Tesla was only mentioned 3 times, in my electric motors class, in my history of technology class, and indirectly as the unit of magnetism, the Tesla, is named after him. Given the frequency of names I encountered like Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, and others who are comparable to Tesla in scientific contributions, I don't see why this is.

A friend lent me a book about Tesla.

Very interesting, The book covered Tesla turbines and how he built a flying craft by manipulating the ether.

Had some wealthy enemies too.

In the book "The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla" under the section containing his lectures he describes evaporating various materials such as zirconia with high potential and under a vacuum.

At the PBS site they have a Drawing showing a component of Tesla's beam weapon. It describes how to pull a vacuum and still eject plasma to open atmosphere.

From what I understand about plasmas, if you set a current flowing it will tend to form filaments or threads. I guess you could use a high frequency beam with low divergence to set up you current flow.

i have been a long time fan of what Tesla has done to the world, as several posts has said; he had many enemies. but one stands out;

Edison... with the battle between DC and AC. i have read many books on Tesla and found that Edison would do animal testing with Tesla's AC electricity.....though it backlashed on him cause he was doing the testing on stray pets from the surrounding neighborhoods.

Tesla was also friends with Mark Twain which they hung out at the Players Club or his lab. One part of the book i read (Man out of Time) tells a great story on how they would go to the lab and Tesla would disapear into the darkness, then a loud switch being pulled and a large humming sound, followed by light from lamps with no wires. now for some of you that dont know, the loud humming was a transformer inwhich lets out a large magnetic field, which lights up the lamps that are placed all around, now the lamps could have been flourecent lighting (which he invented).

there are to this day alot of experiments tha thave not been able to be replicated....or that we know of.

one person that posted in this thread mentioned that he was a loaner type person, which is true but he was also OCD.....people would say he would eat by himself and with each spoon full of food he would calculate the amount of food that was on the spoon.

now in Colorado Springs where his lab was, he would conduct experiments which in some ways endangered the people in the nearby city, there were reports of people walking on the street and you could see sparks come up from the ground to the bottoms of there feet...........the people would not be harmed by this.

Now then there was the Philadalpia experiment which people say he was a part of, lord knows his experiments reflect everything that happened in philadlphia, during the USS Eldridge experiments, it was said that they tried the experiment with live animals, inwhich the animals all died, then when the US military wanted to try again, it is said he quit the experiment......it was said that Tesla was a humanitarian and didtnt believe in human or animal testing.

Tesla also invented the technology for the MRI, inwhich he was granted the international unit of magnetic flux density called "Tesla". All magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines are calibrated with Tesla Unit (from .2 Tesla to 9 Tesla).

Then we have the Wardenclyffe tower, which he wanted to give the world free power, this very large tesla coil was to generate enough electricity to bounce off the ionosphere and provide the world with power, but with financing problems and being bankrupt, it was tore down. the power supply for this tower was to be the Niagra falls power plant which was also invented by him.

This man, has provided everyone in the world with his experiments and inventions in one way or the other. Its is a huge shame that to this day that not alot of people know of him or that he hasnt been granted with more credit for what he has done.

If i remember right during the beginning i believe alot of his funding came from a company which today is known as Westinghouse.

In the end when he passed away in New York, it is now the conspiricy that the US government seized his lab in Colorado Springs and took all of his known....or Unknown technology.

forgive me for any spelling or grammer mistakes. below ill provide some very interesting links. And if anyone is interested, i highly recommend the book: "Man out of Time"

www.nuc.berkeley.edu...
www.teslasociety.com...
www.lucidcafe.com...

I'm a big fan of Tesla, but not the most educated in science.

But I do believe his invention for free energy/electricity was suppose to be that he somehow was working with the resonance of the planet?

And somehow he caused a building to collapse by attaching a device to the structure that matched its resonance, causing it to collapse?

But I do remember "The Mythbusters" doing a show on this where they put a small device on an old bridge, that supposedly matched the resonance of the steel on the bridge, and they claimed the whole bridge started shaking so bad that they turned the device off because they were scared that the bridge might end up being damaged.

I might be wrong here too, but, I think I read somewhere he might have had something to do with "The Philadelphia Project" also.

Originally posted by Keyhole
And somehow he caused a building to collapse by attaching a device to the structure that matched its resonance, causing it to collapse?

it is true that he did this experiment, but the building did not collapse, it is said that it shook so bad that they thought it may collapse but before it did, they terminated the experiment due to fear.

i never knew mythbusters did this experiment, i would be very interested in seeing this episode. ill have to see if i can find it on google video or even youtube. unless you know of a better source.

I just watched a movie called "The Prestige" in which a magician seeks out Tesla in colorado springs to build him a machine in which to do magic trick's with, I dont know if the movie had any authentic information in it but it sure seemed factual, complete with Edisons men coming after him and a light bulb being pushed into the ground and becoming lit. This movie actually caused me to want to know more about Tesla and his discoveries.

[edit on 28-2-2007 by the_sentinal]

Originally posted by TeslaFan

i never knew mythbusters did this experiment, i would be very interested in seeing this episode. ill have to see if i can find it on google video or even youtube. unless you know of a better source.

Believe it or not, The Mysthbusters are going to do their Tesla earthquake macnine experiment on the bridge RIGHT NOW on the Discovery Channel.

You got broadband?
If so, here you go..

Google Video Link

I recall a "carbon button" lamp of one wire that streamed light to
the outer glass and showed the image of the surface.

Now its called the electron microscope.

The origin of most devices never tell Tesla as the origin.
Only in books about Tesla.

Not even in college books about the florescent light circuit is his name
mentioned.

An X ray originator, Tesla with high voltage equipment was recognized the
the scientific communities recommended discoverer.

The list goes on. He mostly envisioned devices and went on to other
projects. His last announced was to make Radium cheaply. Why.
So far I found the best use of Radium is to make Helium.
Why Helium, is there a zero point connection.

His aether flying machine, is there such a thing.

He also made ball lightning in front of parlor guests like Mark Twain.

How did The Myth Busters do?

I wonder if they could make a proper device.

The best way is to acknowledge the return vibration.

Just tapping away at the non resonant frequency might not do it.

en.wikipedia.org...

Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble a ion-propelled aircraft. Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.

Very interesting, under Theoretical inventions.

They didn't like my posting how William Lyne came up with the whole
idea in 1993 that Tesla was working on saucers, guess they still don't
Some one got that in under a unique posting.

Forget ion mass propulsion, is ion or plasma against the flat coils magnetic field, anyone can tell you that.

Another gem, a Tesla patent, of the anti rotational motor generator for
a helicopter was used to stop saucer wobble seen by William Lyne in the 50s. He theorizes perhaps Von Braun delved into Tesla's notes the FBI-
Air Force saved or checked with old Nazi notes to find Tesla's original
solution, his patented motor.

If anything, saucers hover or slide on a layer of ions or plasma generated
by electric field coils.

Check here:
video.google.com...
for more Tesla inventions. 60Hz power from a vibrating aluminum disk?

If so, invest in aluminum and steam hammers.

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[edit on 24/7/07 by masqua]