If not for cholera, he would have become a priest. The Incredible Fate of Inventor Nikola Tesla

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Nikola Tesla is one of the smartest and most productive inventors in human history. We can safely say that it is the Serbian scientist who developed multi-phase systems and devices operating on alternating current, which became the foundation of the industrial revolution in the 20th century, should be thanked for the technological equipment of modern society. In total, Tesla has more than 300 official patents for inventions, many of which have seriously changed the world. We tell how a guy from the Balkan hinterland managed to become the greatest scientist.

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the small village of Smilyan. It is located 6 kilometers from the city of Gospic in the western part of present-day Croatia, which was part of the Austrian Empire in those years. The Tesla family considered themselves Serbs. His father was a clergyman of the Srem diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, his mother was the daughter of a priest who also considered himself a member of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In addition to Nikola, Milutin and Georgina had four more children - three daughters (Milka, Angelina and Maritsa) and a son, Dane. When the future scientist was 5 years old, his older brother died after falling from his horse.

Nikola was quick-witted: he quickly learned to read, had a photographic memory, and such that he could quote Goethe by heart, and subsequently mastered 8 languages. In addition to his native Serbo-Croatian, Tesla was fluent in German, Hungarian, Czech, French, English, Italian and Latin. But at the same time, boyish amusements, like football or shooting from a slingshot, were not alien to him.

In elementary school, Nicola liked the exact sciences - he saw himself as an engineer in the future. After graduating from the Lower Real Gymnasium in Gospic, where the whole family moved after his father's promotion, he entered the Higher Real School in Karlovac. There the young man became more closely acquainted with physics and mathematics. And for the first time, he discovered his unique abilities: after setting a problem, within one or two minutes, a board with a description of the solution appeared in his HEAD.

However, having received his Abitur in 1873, Tesla returned home to Gospic to become a clergyman: he promised his parents to study spiritual sciences. But the plans were not destined to come true, because a cholera epidemic broke out in the city, which wiped out a tenth of the inhabitants. Nicola himself fell down. For 9 months he was bedridden, the doctors already put an end to the guy. During the aggravation of the attack, when everyone thought that Tesla was dying, his father came into his room to support his son. Nicola told him, "Perhaps I can get better if we let me study engineering." Milutin gave the go-ahead, answering that his son would go to the best university in Europe.

Coincidence or not, but soon Nikola got to his feet: a decoction of beans, which an old woman gave him to drink, helped. True, he had to forget about his studies for a while: in order not to thunder into the army and not further undermine his HEALTH, Tesla hid in the mountains for several years. When the situation calmed down a bit, he entered the Technische Hochschule in Graz, where he began to study electrical engineering.

Twice I could not graduate from the university, and then I left for the usa

Thanks to his abilities and inquisitive mind, Tesla quickly became one of the best students. For example, while watching Gramma's machine in his first year, he came to the idea of ​​the imperfection of DC machines. The teacher criticized Nicola and gave him a whole lecture about the impossibility of using alternating current in electric motors.

Nevertheless, Tesla was set as an example to others, as he grasped the sciences on the fly. Because of this, classmates did not particularly like the guy and mocked him. To be like the rest, Nikola began to go to bars and got hooked on gambling: first billiards, and then cards, and he could sit at the playing table for several days without a break. All this was reflected in academic performance, and Tesla was soon expelled from the university. This did not affect Nicola in any way, and he continued to lead a wild life until he was sent home on a police report for vagrancy. Returning to his parents, the unlucky student realized that it was time to take up the mind, and tied up with gambling and ALCOHOL.

In 1879 Nikola's father died. To help the family make ends meet, the young man went to teach at a gymnasium in his native Gospic. They paid little there, therefore, in order to give her son a second chance, the mother turned to her brothers for help, and they financed admission to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague. But already after the first semester, Nikola abandoned his studies and went to work at a telephone exchange in Budapest, where young engineers were required.

Now Tesla had the opportunity to experiment and implement his own ideas, thanks to which he made the first invention - a telephone amplifier. News of this achievement spread throughout the continent, and soon Nicola was invited to the Thomas Edison Continental Company in Paris as an engineer for the installation and repair of electrical installations.

In 1883, a Serbian engineer was assigned to start up a new power plant at the railway station in Strasbourg, promising $25,000 if successful, a huge sum in those days. Nikola coped with the task, and along the way he made a model of an asynchronous electric motor. However, the efforts went unnoticed, Tesla refused to pay the bonus, and he quit. There were rumors that Nikola was going to go to the Russian Empire to carry out his scientific activities there, but one of the administrators of the Edison Continental Company persuaded him to go to the USA and work with Thomas, sending him a letter of recommendation. As a result, the young man did just that and in 1884 he arrived in New York to get a job as an engineer for the repair of electric motors and DC generators at the Edison Machine Works.

Work and War of Currents with Edison

The relationship between Tesla and Edison did not work out from the very beginning: Thomas did not particularly like the ideas of the Serb. And in 1885, an American inventor promised Tesla $50,000 if he could improve his DC electric machines (they kept breaking down). Nikola made 24 varieties of the device, upgrading performance. Thomas approved the work, but when it came to the promised money, he said that it was a joke and suggested that Tesla increase his weekly salary by $10. Nicola did not put up with such an attitude and quit again.

Immediately after that, the capable engineer was offered to participate in the work of a company specializing in electric lighting. As a result of research, Nicola invented the arc lamp for street lighting. Everything would be fine, but Tesla again refused to pay honestly earned money, and later they were completely kicked out of work, dissolving a lot of rumors about him and undermining his reputation. As a result, from the autumn of 1886 to the spring of 1887, the inventor lived on ancillary work like digging ditches, and slept where necessary. But soon fate returned the favor.

Tesla became friends with an engineer named Brown, who introduced the Serbian scientist to his wealthy acquaintances, and they gave him money to create his own company, called the Tesla Electric Company. Nikola is back to building street lighting with new arc lamps.

The reputation was gradually restored, and in the spring of 1888 the inventor was invited to give a lecture on his system of AC motors and transformers at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. There he met the famous industrialist George Westinghouser, who invited Nicola to become a consultant at a plant in Pittsburgh, where industrial designs of AC machines were developed. Westinghouser provided the scientist with everything necessary for work. This was the beginning of the so-called War of the Currents between the companies of Tesla and Edison.

In 1890, there were more than a hundred DC power plants in operation in the United States, and Edison was going to significantly increase this figure. However, Tesla assured that alternating current had two main advantages over direct current - the ability to transmit electricity over long distances with minimal losses, as well as the simplicity and reliability of machines (generators and motors).

True, Thomas was not going to back down and, in order to discredit Tesla's theories, he contributed to the adoption of the law on execution in the electric chair, where alternating current was used. Nicola responded with demonstrations in which he passed current through his body to light electric lamps. As a result, in 1893, Tesla and Westinghouser managed to get an order for 200,000 lamps for the Chicago World's Fair.

pioneer of radio, remote control and X-rays

Perhaps the last decade of the 19th century was the most productive period in the life of a brilliant Serb. At this time, he studied high frequency currents and the possibility of obtaining light through high frequency oscillations in incandescent lamps, investigated high frequency magnetic fields.

In 1893, the scientist began to develop remote-controlled machines. Tesla demonstrated that radio signals are another wave frequency that requires both a transmitter and a receiver. He gave a presentation of the technology to the National Electric Light Association and received two patents for his invention in 1897. But in 1904, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi managed to challenge Tesla's patents for the device, and the US Patent Office overturned its decision, transferring the patent for the invention of the radio to Marconi. True, after decades of litigation and after the death of both scientists, the US Supreme COURT nevertheless restored Tesla's patents for wireless communication.

Another invention that Tesla argued with Marconi in absentia was the remote control. In 1898, at one of the exhibitions, Nicola showed a radio-controlled boat with a metal rod in the middle and lights on the stern and bow. With the help of the remote control, it was possible to make her move in different directions and perform maneuvers. The Italian at the same exhibition presented remote mines. However, the patent for the invention still went to the Serbian inventor.

Also, Tesla in a sense can be considered the father of X-rays. Back in 1887, Nikola was experimenting with vacuum tubes. By introducing them into the field of high-frequency currents, the scientist recorded two types of radiation: visible light and ultraviolet. But there were also very special rays that left strange imprints on metal screens. Six years later, the inventor noted their ability to penetrate surfaces, which made it possible to see objects in the boxes. However, things did not go further, as Tesla was busy with other projects. Only after Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen reported his discovery in 1895 did Nicola begin to study the nature of X-rays in depth and improve Roentgen's setup.

With age, Tesla gradually moved away from inventive affairs, and closer to the age of 80, his health began to deteriorate rapidly. In 1937, while crossing the street, Nikola fell and injured his back and broke three ribs. The inventor refused medical attention, and pneumonia broke out, which later became chronic. For several months the man was chained to the bed, but at the beginning of 1938 he still recovered.

Despite all the health problems, Nikola lived for another five years. In January 1943, the wife of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor, wanted to see Tesla. On the 5th, the scientist's nephew Sava Kosanovich visited his uncle and arranged a meeting, but on the night of January 7-8, the Serbian scientist died. The cause was presumably coronary thrombosis. On January 12, Tesla's body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was installed at Ferncliffe Cemetery in New York. Only in 1957 it will be transferred to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

| Vadim BANNY, photo from open Internet sources.

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