Nikola Tesla Research Paper

Well, let’s play a game. Match these inventions to the correct inventor, out of Nikola

Tesla or Thomas Edison: The Tesla Coil, Alternating Current Motors, radio, and a rotating magnetic field. If you do a bit of research, you’ll find that all of them are Tesla’s ideas. (Hall-

Geisler) Surprise? Not for me. The man was a man ahead of his time. Take this quote, for instance: “The spread of civilization may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.” This is but one of his many futurist quotes.

Late one summer night, in Serbia, a child was born during a lightning storm. This led the midwife attending to say, “He will be a child of the Storm.”, and the child’s mother

He fell incredibly ill during his teens, and recovered when his father allowed him to attend engineering school, rather than becoming a priest. He eventually withdrew from the school, and worked for the Continental

Edison Company. (The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla) He was told by Edison that he’d get

$50,000 dollars if he could improve Edison’s Direct Current Dynamos’ design. Through diligence, perseverance, and (presumably) many sleepless nights, he came to work one day with an improvement. Edison revealed that the entire thing was a joke. Tesla quit not even a year later.

(The History Channel) Later, he opened Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing, with the support of two businessmen. He then filed several electrical patents, assigned to the company. The two businessmen, who backed his company, decided that they wanted to go strictly into electric power supply. They then proceeded to take his intellectual property and founded another firm.

Tesla himself stated that he worked as a ditch-digger afterwards, for $2 a day.

In 1887, Tesla was backed again by two different investors. He opened Tesla

In 1895, the Manhattan Laboratory was devastated by a fire. Near everything was lost. In

1898, he piloted a remote-control boat about a pond in Madison Square Garden, although many believe it to be fake. In 1909, a Mr. Marconi won the Nobel Prize for the development of radio. 6 years later, Tesla sued Marconi on the grounds of patent infringement, albeit unsuccessfully. (The

Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla) He did, however, earn the Edison Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1917. This is ironic, seeing as how him and Edison were bitter enemies at this point. (Hunt) Later in his life, he claimed to have built a new weapon which would end all war (The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla), and claimed to communicate with the pigeons he fed (The History Channel). On January 7, 1943, he was found dead in his hotel room, aged 86.

I believe that this man…no, this legend is an American hero because he was ridiculed… despised…laughed in the face, even, and still turned out to be a modern-day Prometheus. He raided the skies, and brought us lightning as a gesture of goodwill. That, I believe, is why he is an American