Famous Engineers #1 – Nikola Tesla
Engineers have helped shape the world to become what it is today, sharing their brilliance with research and inventions. Today I will be covering a short piece about Nikola Tesla, an Engineer who gained fame for his invention of the first alternating current motor. AC technology is used worldwide today and while people may feel that Tesla’s inventions could not amount to much financial success, we must remember the greatness for what was achieved.
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American scientist and was able to underpin some of the most widely used power and communications used in the world today. He actually worked under Edison for a while and the two quickly became rivals. After Tesla’s departure it very much became “warfare” between AC and Direct-Current (DC) systems. If you have ever sat through a physics class you might recall the fundamental differences in these systems. Tesla had a brilliant mind that was actually eidetic. This is an amazing ability that allowed him to vividly recall images with pinpoint precision after a mere few moments of exposure.
Tesla had reportedly said that he had seen visions in his younger years which may have been triggered when his Brother, Daniel Tesla suffered a fatality from a riding accident. Tesla built up an extensive list of accolades over time and of course his academic success hailed from various institutes. He studied math and physics at the University of Prague and eventually went on to land a job in Paris working in the Continental Edison Company. After a short while he would immigrate to the States and meet Thomas Edison. In an episode that can be described as naive and unfortunate, Tesla diligently developed an improved version of Edison’s DC dynamo under the premise of receiving a fifty thousand dollar reward. The payment was brushed off as a bit of American Humour and of course Tesla soon departed from Edison’s company.
This part of Tesla’s life was a little difficult, he was still ambitious in pursuing his research of an AC solution but would have to survive through trench digging in the interim. This is perhaps one of the most admirable things I have come to know about the genius inventor, with such a brilliant mind he was not afraid to grind for a means to reach success. With another ambition run in securing patents, Tesla was met with more misfortune and would once again have to work to get by. He continued to strive and obtained around three hundred patents in his lifetime. As time went on, his health deteriorated and mental state deemed unstable. He would later pass away in the early forties.
We thank Tesla for his hard work and world changing inventions for innovations across a number of technologies. His advancements have remained to be a global standard to this very day.
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