Nikola Tesla Research Paper

Imagine a world by candlelight or inefficient and or dangerous incandescent or arc lamps, a world without practical electricity, transformers, and many other things necessary for modern life that most take for granted or haven’t even heard of. This could be the scary reality we may live in if it wasn’t for an ingenious inventor named Nikola Tesla. With at least 278 patents to his name, Nikola Tesla changed the world through the application and use of his inventions. Despite all this, he wound up penniless, alone, and rejected while others were making the equivalent of millions with his inventions, only becoming a common household name by around the 2000s. Any and everyone should be able to state, with complete certainty, that Nikola Tesla is

one of the most underappreciated scientists by the general public in history.

Perhaps the most important and prominent invention created by Nikola Tesla in modern life is AC or alternating current.

Starting in the late 1880s, the rivalry between Tesla and Thomas Edison started to skyrocket after Tesla quit his job with Edison when he didn’t accept the improvements Tesla proposed for his DC system and the War of the Currents began, with Tesla on team alternating current (AC) and Edison on team direct current (DC) (Uth). During this, in 1888, Tesla’s alternating current system caught the eye of George Westinghouse and he was offered $60,000 in cash for his patents and $2.50 per horsepower generated by a Tesla device, eventually leading to the creation of the Westinghouse Electric Company that we know today, providing thousands of jobs (Uth). Edison built his entire business around DC and was committed to promoting its success because, if he didn’t, Edison would lose the contract to power the entire world to alternating current (Sadaghdar). Though most home appliances and electronic devices use direct current and can’t accept alternating current before it is rectified into direct current, it would seem obvious that direct current is the better choice, but, unlike alternating current, direct current has many disadvantages outside your home in power lines (Sadaghdar). AC can be stepped up to thousands of volts from a power plant and then sent through power lines for very long distances, where a transformer can step down the voltage to a usable amount

(Sadaghdar). To transmit DC for very long distances, one would need to have very high voltages due to the resistance of the power line, and have to have very thick copper wire to withstand the current, but it will still blow out the bulbs closest to it and barely light the bulbs farthest from it, because DC can not be efficiently or cost effectively stepped up or down in voltage, so there has to be a power station every mile or so (Sadaghdar). Edison, due to Tesla’s high voltage requirements in his AC system (10 kilovolts), tried to discredit AC by publicly electrocuting animals with it, and an Edison associate suggested that prisons can use AC as a means of execution with the use of electric chairs, not because it was a cleaner or more effective way to execute someone, but because it was intended to make AC look bad by permanently associating it with death (Sadaghdar). Without the contributions of Nikola Tesla, power would be way to impractical and expensive to get and our way of life would be substantially different to how it is now (Uth). Nikola Tesla’s willingness to prove and demonstrate the advantages of alternating current admirable despite Thomas Edison’s attempts to deface Tesla’s system is an admirable trait, moving to the next point (Sadaghdar).

Nikola Tesla was selfless and truly believed in the future of mankind, as iterated by the quote “The Present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.” (Uth). Another example of Nikola Tesla’s selflessness was when he forgave his contract that paid him $2.50 per horsepower generated by a Tesla device, which would have been worth trillions in today’s money, in order to save the Westinghouse Electric Company after it over extended its resources (Uth). Nikola Tesla also, in his later years, attempted to create a tower, now known as Wardenclyffe, that could theoretically transmit power through the ionosphere in order to provide free and power to everyone for free but, because of his intentions in the use his invention, funding was cut and he ended up in severe debt after continuing his attempt to complete the project (Nikola Tesla).

Some of Nikola Tesla’s contributions are also either entirely miscredited or are not associated with him due to common misconceptions (Uth). For example, Guglielmo Marconi was initially credited with the invention of the radio and many people still believe he was the original inventor of this technology to this day but the Supreme Court overturned his patent after confirming that Nikola Tesla invented the radio years prior to Guglielmo Marconi. Tesla demonstrated that radio signals are just another frequency that needs a transmitter and receiver in a presentation for The National Electric Light Association.