Nikola Tesla 1857-1943

An engineering career of unique and unconventional nature was brought to an end by the death of Nikola Tesla in New York on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86. Some men pursue the even tenor of accustomed ways. Others of greater originality or enterprise live more intensely and often invade the world of imagination. These are the accepted types of research workers, inventors, and advanced development engineers. But Tesla was not found among either of these types of men. He was an example of a still rarer genus-those who consistently live in a land of brilliant concepts, idealized dreams, and aspirations so lofty as to be almost foredoomed. The earlier stages of his career were indeed of a more recognizable and usual type. In 1888 he invented the induction motor. Within a few years later he had devised the specialized high-frequency high-voltage transformer which bears his name. tackled, among many other problems, that of the transmission of power without the use of the usual conductors. For such conductors, Tesla with characteristic audacity dared to plan to use nothing less than our terrestrial globe. He aimed to start at one point on this sphere electrical oscillations of superpotency and by means of them to create standing-wave patterns all over the surface of the earth, withdrawing energy as desired at the antinodes of potential. This theory of the transmission of radiofrequency energy is at variance with that now accepted-and Tesla was never able to bring his plans to fruition. Tesla was a catalyst in the realm of technology, a daring originator, and a dreamer on the grand scale. His passing seems in a sense the end of an epoch.