Doktorski studij na FSB: Uvod u znanstveno istraživački rad 2017/2018

Tihomir Polanović

NIKOLA TESLA – CREATIVE MIND

UDC

Essay

Summary

Nikola Tesla was one of the most intriguing person of late 19th and early 20th century,

mostly known for his inventions in a field of electrical engineering. He was not only inventor;

he was gifted person who didn’t know how to deal with other people, politely said egocentric

person. He was born in Croatia, raised by his orthodox family and died like American in a

room 3327 in Hotel New Yorker at age of 87. His futuristic ideas have been concurring world

even today. Alternating current development, wireless energy transfer, CT, induction motor are

his most important products of his creative mind.

Key words: Nikola Tesla; creativity; inventor; electrical engineering;

1. Introduction

Tesla's creativity fits the definition that Howard Gardner defines in his book, Creating

minds, where he defines the creative individual as a person who regularly solves problems,

fashions products, or defines new questions in a domain in a way that is initially considered

novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting[1].

According to him, a person need only be creative in a domain, as opposed to being

creative across all domains. This applies to Tesla, as he was not known for his creativity in the

arts or music as much as his creativity with electronics. Gardener's second point about the

creative individual is that they regularly exhibit creativity, and Tesla dedicated his life to his

work and created new ideas or products throughout his life. The third point, ties into the second,

in that creativity can involve fashioning of products, which is exactly what Tesla did in his

career. Lastly, Gardener states that the creative activities are accepted in a particular culture,

and the scientific and general community has come to accept and revere Tesla's inventions. For

his work, he was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from Columbia and Yale University,

among many other honors [1].

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2. Tesla’s life

Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan. His father, Milutin, was an Orthodox priest,

and his mother, Georgina (born Mandić) was a housewife without formal education, but an

extremely intelligent woman whose desire for knowledge had a strong influence on her son.

The night he was born was stormy, just as the atmospheric electricity generated determined the

future of Nikola Tesla.

From childhood, he was a curious, intelligent, and unusual child. Already as a boy, he

showed an extraordinary interest for knowledge and it was visible from his behaviour that he

had brilliant memory. Tesla had a photographic memory, which enabled him, besides

everything else, to know Goethe's "Faust" from heart. Before he began to engage as serious

scientist, he showed his ingenuity. He was a man who completely devoted himself to one

problem until resolved it, and after resolving it, he was no longer dealing with it and started to

explore next issue on his mind.

During his studies in Graz, he discovered Voltaire and decided to read his collected

works in seventy volumes. He did not give up, read the collections of Voltaire's works, and later

admitted that, besides other student obligations, reading of Voltaire almost killed him [2]. In

1881 he worked for the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest, then in the telephone center

where he made a number of technical improvements. In 1882, young Tesla had been employed

in the Paris office of Thomas Alva Edison Telephone Company. For Tesla in start, Edison was

a man for who is considered to be the greatest inventor of the period, but later after short time

working with him, Tesla was disappointed with Edison as a inventor, as a scientist and finally

as a person.

Most of his life he lived in the United State, where he arrived in 1884 (without dollar in

his pocket) and he was recruited at Edison's company upon recommendation letter from Europe.

In this company he advocated production and transmission of alternating current, actually

advocated his model of future current model, but since Edison invested huge money into the

production and distribution of DC, he was not interested in Tesla’s ideas. He quickly quit,

earning for his meal, as a channels digger for same Edison cables in New York. After some

time he founded his company with a laboratory and constructed alternating current electric

motors. In 1887 he registered the first patents on the production and transmission of multi-phase

AC. Tesla’s model had, and still has enormous advantages despite Edison’s supremacy in that

time. The main benefit of Tesla’s model is that one power plant could produce huge amounts

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of electricity and transmit it over long distances without huge losses from transmitting

and power line mass due to reduction in power line cables cross-section area [2].

New York then had several hundred local power plants, and Tesla’s model could

provide the supply of electricity from a single power plant upon Edison’s model with many

small locally distributed power plants. But the "war of electricity" between Tesla and Edison

had soon come to an end, and Edison was aware of how much Tesla's model could endanger

his business interests. The war was unmanageable, Edison organized presentations that, using

the Tesla high-power model, killed animals, to see how dangerous it was. In the end, one man,

George Westinghouse, inventor (inventor of the air brake), and a bizarre businessman who

believed in Tesla agreed with Tesla. About the Tesla's inventions at that time there were

numerous newspapers, he held a series of memorable lectures and performed new, until then

unthinkable experiments. Tesla's multi-stage system and his partners lighting company

"Westinghouse" demonstrated their power in 1893 at the World Expo in Chicago. It was a

triumph, and Westinghouse suggested that Niagara Falls build a power plant on the Tesla

principle. This power plant was completed in 1896, with the high-voltage transmission line

(such a voltage significantly reduced losses) supplied to the Buffalo. It was the moment of the

final victory of Tesla in the "war of electricity"[3].

Westinghouse agreed with Tesla to pay one dollar for each horsepower produced in the

plant. Soon he realized that the power plant was so productive and that the amount was so great

that he could not pay it. This was said by Tesla, not denying his debt, and Tesla took the contract

and simply put it down, abandoning the opportunity to become an extremely rich man

concluded that Westinghouse helped him when no one wanted him, so it is normal for him to

return him now his hospitality..

Tesla had a number of important discoveries. He discovered the radio transmission

(though it was attributed to Guglielmo Marconi, who received the Nobel Prize for this, but the

American Supreme Court in 1943 gave the right to Tesla) and by using them developed the

concept of "remote control". In 1898 he demonstrated his ship (actually a boat) on remote

control, without a crew. A great accident hit him in 1895 when his lab and archives were caught

with fire. Next year he built a new laboratory and he achieved very high voltages (and several

million volts) and created powerful electric fields. Tesla demonstrated his invention with light

tubes (similar to today's neon lights) that were light although they were not connected to the

lines [3]. This has also demonstrated its great obsession - wireless transmission of electricity.

He also realized that high frequency currents were not dangerous to humans and concluded that

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they could be used in medicine.

For the research of wireless power transmission in 1897, he built a great station near

Colorado Springs. There he conducted some experiments that have not been repeated until

today. He experimented with wireless signal and electricity transmission systems in the

distance. In the middle of day he sparked public lighting in settlements tens of kilometers away

and accidentally damaged with his system of several million volts the electric powerlant there.

Tesla considered that electricity should be available to everyone and free of charge. In 1901,

on Long Island, he built a 57-meter high pylon, which had a 20-meter-diameter wire wedge. He

was aiming for wireless signals and electricity, free of charge. But the investor, powerful banker

John Pierpont Morgan has stopped funding these experiments. A man committed to earning

money, who invested a considerable amount in business with electricity, did not like the idea

of free electricity for everyone [3]. The experiments were suspended in 1905, and the station

was demolished in 1917 for fear of being able to serve German spies.

Tesla also discovered much of what was not attributed to him, although he was, in many

respects, entitled to the championship. It seems he has discovered the electron, which is one of

the most important discoveries in physics for the past 150 years, and he experimentally first

observed X-rays, which was later revealed by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and for that discovery

became the first winner of the Nobel Prize for physics at all.

For the last decade of his life, Tesla has been honored but forgotten. Physicists

remembered his 75th birthday and sent a congratulatory message signed by Einstein. Depleted,

he has considerably reduced his contacts with people. All his life remained connected with the

indigenous people. Before gaining US citizenship (and the decision granting it was the only

acknowledgment that was framed on the wall of his office) his patent application was initiated

by a statement "let me know that I, Nikola Tesla from Smiljan in Lika, border the Austro-

Hungarian province invented. For his 80th birthday Vlatko Maček sent him a greeting card, and

he said he was proud of his Serbian birth and Croatian homeland [3].

He died in New York City at the New Yorker Hotel (for years, when he was financially

better was living in "Waldorf Astoria"), and shortly after his death, US government officials

from his apartment took up a considerable part of his records, apparently considering them to

be important for US defense and security and scientific development. The mayor of New York,

Fiorellola Guardia, on the radio, sent a dead letter to Nikola Tesla three days after Tesla's death.

The last goodbye to the Great was held on Wednesday, January 12 in the Cathedral of St. Ivan.

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Famous violinist Zlatko Baloković played a song from the First World War "There Far". It was

a commendable song for a farewell to a man who was born in little Smiljan, near Gospić, and

died in New York. The next day, "The New York Times" published a report of the Tesla's

forgiveness. Two thousand people were in the last whirlwind. The religious service was served

in Serbian with the participation of the priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church and was opened

by bishop William T. Manning. Telegram complied by Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She wrote that "the president and she are grateful for his

contribution to science and industry in this country". The telegram was also sent by Vice

President Henry A. Wallace. He stated that "by the death of Nikola Tesla ordinary people lost

one of their best friends". Telegrams were also sent by Nobel Laureates Robert Millikan, Arthur

Compton, James Francis.

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3. Tesla’s creativity

Most creative personalities oscillate between states of inspiration and idle phases. Often the

creative process starts and ends in depressive states. Only a few Europeans seem to have

experienced creativity as a permanent state over a long period of time and one of them is Tesla.

As Tesla and many other creative people experienced, permanent creativity is not always easy

to handle. It may bring forth somatic as well as psychic disorders. Those who experience such

a phenomenon usually develop means to control the never ending influx of inspirations. Tesla

was quite successful in doing so. But such taming strategies have significant effects on

creativity itself. Its intensity lowers and it ‘specializes’ more and more on fields and topics of

social interest. The focus of the creative personality shifts gradually from the process to be

controlled to the invention to be produced. More and more the (former) creative personality

produces what society waits for instead of genuine innovations. At this point scientific and

technical progress profits best on short terms. On long terms the original, poorly socialized and

partly uncontrolled form of inspiration keeps on fascinating, while quite some of it’s once

innovative and useful productions turn to be routine or sink into oblivion [6].

Very few creative personalities escaped such social functionality. Nikola Tesla no doubt

was one of them. Part of his creative energy never stopped to bring forth fantastic projects. He

never fully specialized. His main intent was all his life to help mankind find peace and start

functioning on a higher level. Most of his inventions were meant to help correct and heal the

innate defects of the human brain, as he said in his autobiography [6]:

“Everybody understands,…that if one becomes deaf, has his eyes weakened, or his limbs

injured, the chances for his continued existence are lessened. But this is also true, and perhaps

more so, of certain defects of the brain which drive the automaton, more or less, off that vital

quality and cause it to rush into destruction.” [6]

The innate defects of the brain are responsible for the fact that we function as a machine.

Tesla was proud to function differently [6]. But he payed such extravagancies on the long run

by some desocialisation whereby his behaviour turned more and more excentric. He also said

that a very sensitive and observant being, with his highly developed mechanism all intact, and

acting with precision in obedience to the changing conditions of the environment, is endowed

with a transcending mechanical sense, enabling him to evade perils too subtle to be directly

perceived. When he comes in contact with others whose controlling organs are radically faulty,

that sense asserts itself and he feels the ‘cosmic’ pain.

Sentence that describes best his pain is well known [6]:

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“These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was

retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but

the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphant success.”

Tesla was highly inspired by poetry. It was a passage of Goethe’s Faust that inspired him

to invent the alternating current-motor. Story of that invention goes in this way [6]:

We write the year 1881. Tesla walks with his friend Antal Szigety through the Varosliget

City Park in Budapest, reciting poems. As the sun sets he remembers Faust and Wagner having

a walk in the sunset. So he starts reciting from this passage of Goethe’s drama because it

parallels what he himself does and experiences at that moment. Goethe’s reflects in this first

act the despair of a scientist who finds out that all cognition is uncertain, all knowledge futile.

The passage Tesla quotes reports a dream; the dream of flying behind the sun in eternal daylight.

But the dream ends in melancholy, in despair about the impossibility of constructing flying

machines; at Goethe’s times a generally accepted notion – at Tesla’s times no more. Former

parallelism between the inspiring verse and the inspired scientist gives way to opposition.

Tesla’s creativity revolts against Faust and his depressed mood. At least in his mind he does fly

behind the sun – and proves what man can do by inventing the alternating current-motor. It

might well be Faust’s lament on technical impossibilities that inspires Tesla and drives him to

turn one more great idea to be real. Tesla laughs at Faust and destroys his despair, as Picasso

said one time:

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction”

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4. Conclusion

Nikola Tesla was a great man who invented the 20th and 21st centuries. Today's energy

cannot function without its invention. Many honors have overtaken him. Fully devoted to the

research (he called himself a researcher, a man invoked in an unknown, and not an inventor)

had no gift or desire for the commercialization of his own inventions, many of his inventions

had been attracted and commercialized by them. He was pleased to have helped humanity with

his inventions. He did not receive the Nobel Prize, so he belongs among the great ones (such as

Lava Tolstoy and James Joyce in Literature), which rewarded the prize. In the end, he was, after

the end, confessed to being bigger than the Nobel Prize. At the 11th General Measurements and

Weights Conference in 1960, the name of tesla was accepted for the magnetic induction unit

and it is among the twenty scientists named as a unit of measurement in the International System

of Units. For the past fifteen years, Tesla's interest has been reinvigorated, and his work includes

numerous works, films, exhibitions, and in 2006, when he was marked a century and a half of

his birth, UNICEF also proclaimed the year of Tesla.

REFERENCES

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/278.Nikola_Tesla (available on 15-2-2018)

[2] https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/miracle-mind-nikola-tesla (available on 1-2-

2018)

[3] http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm (available on 18-2-2018)

[4] http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/04/28/nikola-tesla-unique-genius-or-a-

model-for-everyone/ (available on 25-2-2018)

[5] https://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/tesla.php (available on 26-2-2018)

[6] Tesla, Nikola: My inventions; The autobiography of Nikola Tesla, Wildside Press, LLC

Defined: 25.0.2018.

Delivered 03.03.2018.

Supervised by Kalman Žiha

Tihomir Polanović, tpolanov@gmail.com Facility of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture

I. Lučića 5, 10002Zagreb, Croatia