nikola tesla was responsible for the creation of alternate current moters, (which is the type of power that runs everything in your home) he invented the idea of radio as we know it today, (patents prove this) and demonstrated that power could be transmitted across distances with the use of powerlines.

Tesla: master of lightning

selected Tesla patents

Tesla: inside the lab

inside Tesla's niagra power system

Nikola Tesla, summerized history.

given all of this, why is it that a man that was so brilliant and contributed so much (radio, radio controlled devices, etc...) is so ignored by the history books? should he not be given more attention in schools? (I learned edison was responsible for eletrifying the world. it was actually tesla, and his AC motor that did)

This is undeniable if you ever actually think about it. The essential elements of AC power can be traced back to him, there's just one fundamental problem with this enigmatic figure from history. Perhaps the fact that electricity is ubiquitous to modern technology creates a need to make it more, not less, comprehensive. Knowledge is power and there may well be a reason why dumbing down the common herd as to the true nature of technology. Namely, the accumulation and control of power. Maybe just an idle thought but I'm prepared to try to defend it if need be.



Some would contend that even if Tesla had not developed AC power then someone else would have. I am of the opinion that it goes back to the rise of public authority in general and especially public utilities. The infrastructure of electrical generation and transmission generates more then power, it makes money. My point is, (even though its being poorly made here), that the individules role in natural science is swallowed up in a persumption that it was all a result of natural processes and an individule like Tesla was just one of many who would have developed it. So you tell me, wouldn't AC power and radio have happened anyway or would we be surfing the net of DC power?

Although he later became an American, Tesla was a Serb and I reckon this perhaps why he is largely unknown. Because as an immigrant, he never had the comfort of truly belonging as Edison did.

Edison personally, it seems invented nothing much at all. His greatest claims to fame, were in fact invented by his staff. According to a BBC documentry I once saw, the light bulb was in fact invented by an African American who worked in Edison's work shop... (I'd be interested if any one knows any thing further about that)

Tesla, although he was a genius, was a genius who worked in isolation. He had few friends and did not have Edison's ability to contect with people. I think this, as well as Edison's genius for self promotion (Tesla was once granted the Edison medal as a sign of recognition) is the reason why Tesla is a relative unknown.

Edison worked long hard hours and was probably a genius. I don't have the details but the African American I think you are talking about was the one who lite up London the way they did New York. When Edison won a Nobel Prize for science Tesla only said that he had earned at least four and its about time they recognized him.



Tesla is not so much unknown as incomprehensible. He had what is refered to as photo cognition and he could draw up schematics, blueprints and did experiments in his head. The trouble is we have very little, except his actual work, because of that. Tesla supposedly realized how AC power is possible from, of all things, the poetry of Gothe. He tried to explain it a couple of times but never was able to communicate it. I know he worked in Hungry on the phone systems there for a while before coming to America and working for Edison. He entered into a verbal contract with Edison where Edison was supposed to reward him for his work on DC power and when Tesla tried to collect Edison refused. Tesla, as the story goes, just tiped the brim of his top hat and went to work for Westinghouse. When Westinghouse got into trouble trying to compete with Edison Tesla turned over the patents and the rest is history.

Tesla is supposed to have made a resonance vibrating machine that only he understood. He put a prototype of it on the steel infrastructure of a building and the vibrations became so intense that the workers fled. He built a larger version and it shook the area so violently that by the time rescue workers found him he had completely destroyed it and nothing more is known of it.

Perhaps the best thing about Tesla was not the things he did but what he could have did and didn't.

One of the most amazing things about Tesla was that he could "build" a machine in his head, and start it running, to find out how to improve it, or what was wrong with it, thus testing the prototypes without having to actually build them.