Facts about Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse

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#2
Most of Edison's lab is in the recently re-opened Edison National Museum in West Orange, NJ -- Henry Ford had a bunch of the stuff moved to Dearborn Michigan when Edison died.

Have no idea whether it's on Youtube or Netflix -- but "Young Tom Edison" is a great movie circa 1940 with Mickey Rooney. "Edison the Man" was filmed in 1940 with Spencer Tracey.

Unfortunately, neither the extremely gifted Tesla or Westinghouse were the subjects of such popular cinematic admiration.
 
#3
jackinnj said:
Unfortunately, neither the extremely gifted Tesla or Westinghouse were the subjects of such popular cinematic admiration.
Click to expand...

Tesla invented the AC power generater
It was a job he did when working fore Edison
But Edison didnt believe in it, but insisted on DC power
Tesla got together with Westinghouse
Together with Westinghouse he built the worlds first power plant at Niagara Falls
The transport of power was made possible because Miller, a German inventor, found a way to transform to very high voltage

strangely, other than Teslas experiments, the first use of his AC power was the electric chair
and the first "chair" was strangely a job done by Edison
and even more bizarre, it started with Edison "roasting" animals in public, using AC power
which he did to try and prove to the public that AC power would be dangerous
a very bizarre side of the story
 
#4
Edison invested a great deal of money in DC, hence sick animal torture "presentations" against AC...
Tesla invented many things we use today, you can trace many modern products to some of Tesla patents...unfortunately, often those products are worse then original invention because of greed...for example, fluorescent lighting (Tesla's invention) originaly uses high frequency and dont need any heating elements. Such lamps cannot burnout, only way for them to stop working is when the vacuum seal breaks...of course, how could lighting manufacturers make enormous profits if they sell lamps that you have to buy only once in a lifetime? So, they put heating filaments inside, and voila!
You can use even burnt fluo lamps if you connect them to HF...no problem.
Tesla has around 300 patents, and many inventions he never bothered to patent...for example, there exist corespondence between Tesla and Roentgen from which is evident that Tesla just gave Roentgen his results from x-ray experiments...when Westinghouse could not pay Tesla royalty contract, Tesla allegedly s

"Mr. Westinghouse, you have been my friend, you believed in me when others had no faith; you were brave enough to go ahead... when others lacked courage; you supported me when even your own engineers lacked vision... you have stood by me as a friend...
Here is your contract, and here is my contract. I will tear both of them to pieces, and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties. Is that sufficient?"



From wikipedia...

"Tesla's inventions and developments include the AC motor, the bifilar coil, various devices that use rotating magnetic fields, the alternating current polyphase power distribution system, the fundamental devices of systems of wireless communication (legal priority for the invention of radio), radio frequency oscillators, devices for voltage magnification by standing waves, robotics, logic gates for secure radio frequency communications, devices for x-rays, apparatus for ozone generation [3], devices for ionized gases, devices for high field emission, devices for charged particle beams, methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current,[4] means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations, voltage multiplication circuitry, devices for high voltage discharges, devices for lightning protection, the bladeless turbine, and VTOL aircraft."
 
#5
Do you know of a book that would contain a healthy portion of Tesla's
inventions with explanations and graphs etc. So that I could learn more
of this amazing mans accomplishments. I have heard he developed a device
that could transmit electrical energy great distances through the earth.
 
#6
There will be a lot of crackpot literature about Tesla- it won't be too hard to find. For whatever reason, he has become a cult figure among conspiracy theorists, and it doesn't help that he had quite a few mental problems.

"The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century" is a very enjoyable "straight" biography.
 
#12
Prestige wpuld have been better if it actually was about Tesla, albeit fictional. David Bowie rocked that part *hard*. Coolest scene in the movie, glowing bulbs planted in the ground and all.

That said, there's a great documentary out there narrated by Stacy Keach, don't remember the name - it covers a lot of what was mentioned in the first couple posts. Very informative and I learned a lot. Just amazing how there are some human beings who are just so far beyond the rest of us. It's almost hard to believe he was a real person, more like a HG Wells character.
 
#13
Contemporary astrophysics explains gravitation by parroting Einstein's general theory of relativity, which theorized that massive bodies exert their pull by warping the metric of space itself. But Einstein never explained HOW mass warped space. In 1932 Nikola Tesla was asked about this problem by the New York Times, which published the Serbian genius's reply in their newspaper on July 10, 1932: "I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties ...... Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view."
Click to expand...

How Nikola Tesla refuted Einstein in 1932. at Facts and Myths, Science Discussion (MessageID: 830302)

Gravity isn't curved space. Experiments show it follows Newton's theory very closely, therefore gravity is a kind of aether density gradient.

Use Eric Baird's correction here:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0011/0011003.pdf
 
#16
"Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney is the best out of several books about Telsa I've read! Some of the stories are just unbelievable! Anybody that has an interest in electronics should take the time to read this one!!

If you want the nitty gritty patent details, there are other books with those too. :t_ache: Her book just happens to be one of the very few that impressed enough to be able to always quote off the top of my head.

Here is a link to her site...

Home - Margaret Cheney
 
#20
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