First Tesla Museum and Science Center International Conference on NIKOLA TESLA

October 6-8, 2006, Long Island, New York, United States of America

Brookhaven Town Hall, 1 Independence Hill, Farmingville. N.Y. 11738

ABSTRACT

Tribute to Nikola Tesla

J.F. Corum, Ph.D.

NIKOLA TESLA

1856 - 1943

 EDUCATION: Austrian Polytechnic Institute at Graz: Separate Baccalaureate degrees in Physics, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Graduate Studies - University of Prague: Physics.


 DOCTEUR HONORIS CAUSA: University of Paris, Columbia University, Vienna Polytechnic
Institute, University de Poitiers, University of Beograd, Graz Polytechnic Institute, University of Brno, Yale University, University of Zagreb, Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, University of Grenoble, University of Sophia, University of Prague. 


 PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES: Vice-President of the AIEE (1892-1894), Life Fellow IEEE (AIEE), Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow American Electro-Therapeutic Association, New York Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, National Electric Light Association, Serbian Academy of Sciences, Societe International des Electriciens, Societe Francaise de Physique, (British) Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE).


 AWARDS: IEEE (AIEE) Edison Medal (1916), The Franklin Institute's Elliott Cresson Gold Medal (1893), The John Scott Medal (1934), Nominated for an undivided Nobel Prize in 1937.


 250 PATENTS: The invention of the Rotating Magnetic Field, The Induction Motor, The AC Polyphase Power Distribution System, the Fundamental System of Wireless Communication (Legal Priority for the invention of Radio), RF Oscillators, Voltage Magnification by Standing Waves, Robotics, Logic Gates for Secure RF Communications, X-Rays, Ionized Gases, High Field Emission, Charged Particle Beams, Voltage Multiplication Circuitry, High Voltage Discharges, Lightning Protection, the Bladeless Turbine, VTOL aircraft.


 HONORS: The name "TESLA" was adopted as the unit of Magnetic Induction (1956). The Tesla Award was created by the IEEE (1976).

 TRIBUTES TO NIKOLA TESLA

 Lord Kelvin: "Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time." 

 Sir Oliver Lodge: "[Tesla's] experiments produced results which exceeded anything previously accomplished."

 Sir J.A. Fleming: "Tesla captured the attention of the whole scientific world by his fascinating experiments on [RF]."

 W.H. Eccles [President of the (British) IEE and co-inventor (with F.W. Jordan) of the Flip-Flop circuit]: þTesla was the greatest electrical inventor we have had on our role of membership; in fact we might go so far as to say that he was the greatest inventor in the realm of electrical engineering."

Noble Prize Winners,

 Niels Bohr: "With deepest admiration we think of how Tesla could accomplish such great achievements and exert such influence."

 Ernest Rutherford (Cambridge University): "... all scientific men will be delighted to extend their warmest congratulations to Tesla and to express their appreciation of his great contributions to science."

 Sir W.H. Bragg: "[Tesla's high voltage experiments] were the most original and daring: they opened up new vistas for exploration by thought and experiment... I shall never forget the effect of [his] experiments."

 Albert Einstein: "[Tesla is] an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate [him] on the great success of [his] life's work."

 Arthur H. Compton (University of Chicago): "[Tesla's] specific achievements are too well known to require recounting... [Tesla] is entitled to the enduring gratitude of mankind."

 Robert A. Millikan (California Institute of Technology): "I have done no small fraction of my research with the aid of the [RF] principles I learned [from Tesla]... I am sending to [him]... my gratitude and my respect in overflowing measure."

IEEE Presidents,

 T.C. Martin (editor): "Tesla's influence may truly be said to have marked an epoch in the progress of electrical science."

 J.S. Stone: "Tesla was the first man to lift his eyes high enough to see that the rarified stratum of atmosphere above our earth was destined to play an important role in the radio telegraphy of the future... [He] also perceived what many of us did not... the [importance of] the currents which flowed away from the base of an antenna... He did more to excite interest and create an intelligent understanding... than anyone else... [Tesla] was so far ahead of his time that the best of us then mistook him for a dreamer. I never came anywhere near having an appreciation of what Mr. Tesla had done in this art until this past year (1915)." [Stone was IRE VP in 1914 and President in 1915.]

 L.W. Austin (National Bureau of Standards): "I am glad to express ... my feeling of the great debt that the radio art owes to [Tesla's] genius."

 H.W. Buck: "The work of Nikola Tesla... in his great conception of the rotary field seems to me one of the greatest feats of imagination which has ever been attained by the human mind."

 E.F.W. Alexanderson (General Electric): "In almost every step of progress in electrical power engineering as well as in radio, we can trace the spark of thought back to Nikola Tesla."

 C.P. Steinmetz (General Electric): "I can find no mistakes in Tesla's thoughts."

 Lee de Forest: "If I could be any other man it would be Nikola Tesla."

 M.J. Pupin (Columbia University): "If there is anything in this world that I profoundly believe, it is certainly one thing and that is, that the credit of showing the practical importance of AC for motor work belongs entirely to [Nikola Tesla]."

 A.E. Kennelly (Harvard University): "[Tesla] devised the rotating magnetic field so prophetically in his mind's eye that the rotating magnetic wheel would set wheels going 'round all over the land and all over the world... [He] also made the phenomenon of [RF] known to us all practically for the first time, and what he showed was a revelation to science and art unto all time." 

 L.P. Wheeler (Federal Communications Commission): "The whole scientific world was challenged by Nikola Tesla..."

 Haraden Pratt (IRE President and later Chairman of the IRE History Committee): þOur existing industrial era would cease to function without Tesla's first and greatest contributions."

 Charles F. Scott (Yale University): "The evolution of electric power from the discovery of Faraday in 1831 to the initial great installation of the Tesla polyphase system in 1896 is undoubtedly the most tremendous event in all engineering history."

IEEE Vice-Presidents (Tesla, himself, served two years as an IEEE Vice-President: 1892 to 1894),

 B.A. Behrend: "Were we to seize and to eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle."

 Sir E.V. Appelton (University of Edinburgh): "The results of [Tesla's] researches... have proved of inestimable value." 

 Jonathan Zenneck (M�nich): "[Tesla's] lectures opened a new physical world to me... [He was] one of the kindest men I've ever encountered. The hours which I was permitted to spend together with [him] will always be among the fondest memories of my life." 

 Other IEEE executive officers (R.H. Marriott [the first IRE President, 1912], Fritz Lowenstein [Tesla's Colorado Springs technician, inventor of the grid biased Class A amplifier, and the first IRE Vice-President, 1912], V. Poulsen, and J.H. Hammond, Jr) were all no less lavish when extolling their professional colleague, as were also Sir William Crooks ('my great friend'), Lord Rayleigh, Sir James Dewer, Hermann von Helmholtz, Vannevar Bush (MIT) and a galaxy of other scientists and engineers still recognized at this end of the twentieth century. 


"Tuning is my specialty. . . " Nikola Tesla, 1902

While there exist many biographical popularizations about Nikola Tesla (several quite bazaar and sensationalized), it would appear that no serious engineering analyses of his work have appeared since the benchmark studies of Bernard Behrend in the years preceding World War I. (Behrend, while an AIEE Vice-President, actively lobbied for the bestowal of the Edison Medal upon Tesla, the seventh of which was conferred upon Tesla in 1917.) 

For quite some time now, the authors have been involved with the analysis and experimental reproduction of the RF aspects of Tesla's work. A major portion of their effort has been to reexpress Tesla's turn-of-the-century physics into the engineering and analytical terms of today. In spite of the fact that his physical explanations often bear the mark of antiquated and faulty theory (he was laboring within the framework of nineteenth century physics), we have been overwhelmed by Tesla's intuitiveness, his careful power of observation, his uncanny experimental technique, and the accuracy of his published data. The man was a genius.

While there exist thorough, in depth, engineering studies of Tesla's polyphase AC power system and his induction motors, dating back to the investigations of Professor William A. Anthony (Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University) and Dr. B.A. Behrend (Vice-President of the AIEE), no such comprehensive analyses of his RF achievements exists to this day. . . .

. . . Tesla had the remarkable talent of charming and astonishing his admirers while at the same time enraging his enemies. (The phenomenon continues to the present day.) It is unfortunate that, despite the fact that several popular biographies are currently available, there still exists no definitive formal authority (other than his own scattered publications) to consult on the technical issues of his intriguing and colorful scientific career. Those misunderstanding Tesla's stature as a first class man of science, esteemed by his peers, should carefully consider the respect and adulations conferred by the foremost living scientists of his own age (Kelvin, Helmholtz, Crookes, Dewer, Rutherford; Noble Prize winners: Rayleigh, Bragg, Bohr, Millikan, Einstein, Compton, Appleton; and many others including university presidents, members of the Defense Science Research Board, and advisors to the President of the United States). No one, since Dr. Franklin, has so stirred the scientific and engineering world. . . .

Latest page revision: 07/24/2006