Posted on 07/06/2006 7:02:41 PM PDT by eleni121
I hear he had a magnetic personality...
One more point as to current and resistance. An average car battery can crank out ninety amps or better at 12 vdc. You would be hard pressed to even feel it if you touched both posts. 277 vac at even 10 amps would tend to ruin your day.
Tesla was a genius. No doubt about it.
One anecdote was that he had a "vision" of a motor spinning in space, suffused with an electric glow, in front of him one night as he was strolling through the park mulling over a problem. He instantly realized what he was doing wrong, ran back to the lab and solved whatever problem he was working on.
AC is what the power transmission grid is, not DC. DC can't be run hundreds of miles (the limit in Edison's time was six miles), and AC can.
Some home devices (electronic ones) do indeed convert AC to DC. Motors are almost all AC.
detailed concise biography of Steinmetz.What is the max. length of a USB 2.0 cable?It is worth noting that in the case of transmitting power over wires, the loss of for DC is quite a bit less than for AC. Steinmetz was mentioned above. Steinmetz drove Edison nuts because Edison loved the idea of low loss DC power transmission. Steinmetz however won the day for one reason: AC lets you change the voltage of the power you are transmitting very simply and economically by using passive power transformers. This let them greatly raise the voltage and reduce the current for the long hauls then at the remote destinations reduce it back down to the desired levels. Doing this AC was the better choice and Edison lost the argument.
jwcrim
7-25-2005 01:33 AM
Niagara Falls Canada 12 noon July 9th---Victoria Park---Come one come all.
Interesting that both Serbia and Croatia agree that Tesla is their greatest cultural asset.
http://www.serbianna.com/news/2006/02018.shtml
Hundreds of villages around the town of Tesla's birth have no electricity
Honour for Croatia's forgotten son
SNJEZANA VUKIC IN SMILJAN, CROATIA
AFTER many years of neglecting his legacy, Croatia is this month fêting the 150th birthday of its "greatest son", Nikola Tesla - one of the most eminent pioneers of electrical power.
But even in 2006, hundreds of villages around the town of his birth have no electricity.
"Is this the 21th century? If Tesla rose from the dead, he wouldn't believe it," said Marija Batinic, 50, who lives in Podum, a hamlet just 16 miles from Smiljan, where Tesla was born at midnight during a lightning storm in 1856.
The villagers' plight mirrors what happened to Tesla's own reputation in the years after Croatia broke away from the former Yugoslavia. Some see a common root in the neglect: ethnic Serbian heritage.
Many Croats still harbour hatred for their ethnic Serb minority, whose rebellion against independence led to a catastrophic war that killed thousands and only ended in 1995.
The government has promised to restore electricity to some 300 villages as soon as it has the funds. But residents like Batinic believe they are being ignored simply because they are Serbs.
Tesla - who ranks with his rival Thomas Edison as one of the greatest inventors of the electrical age - became a forgotten figure in Croatia after independence. His name was barely spoken, his inventions never honoured, his monument was blown up, and nobody cared.
But today, Tesla is suddenly "in" again - thanks to Croatia's bid to join the European Union, which has prodded it to make gestures of reconciliation.
On Monday, Croatia's top officials, headed by president Stipe Mesic and prime minister Ivo Sanader, will come to the central Croatia city to mark the anniversary and open Tesla's restored museum. Serbian president Boris Tadic will also attend.
Parliament recently declared 2006 his year, and the government invested $8.75 million to restore his birthplace.
Tesla was named Croatia's "greatest son" in a recent poll. And his motto - "equally proud of my Serb origin and my Croatian homeland" - is ceaselessly repeated. Tesla studied and worked across Europe, eventually settling in New York in 1885, where he became a naturalised US citizen and lived until his death in 1943.
He was awarded patents on every aspect of the modern system for generating and distributing electricity - and others, including in radio, x-rays and the modern concept of radar.
Those early 20th century breakthroughs play little part in Batinic's life: her refrigerator serves as a closet, she warms the iron on a stove, and a gas lamp hangs from the ceiling.
Even in his lifetime, Tesla was accustomed to enmity and neglect. He fell out with Edison because the latter ignored his inventions in alternating current electricity. He sued Guglielmo Marconi to gain recognition for his inventions in radio. He died in a New York hotel poor, and all but forgotten.
Today, Tesla is honoured as much in pop culture as in scientific circles. He is a superhero in a Japanese comic strip and his Tesla electrical coil figures in the Tomb Raider series. He is portrayed by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan's new movie The Prestige.
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=996192006
"The Prestige" a new film with David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/
I have a device that uses a 555 timer, a couple of pots and an autotransformer (car engine coil); it can go to blow-out frequencies and about 40,000 volts using two nine volt batteries. I couldn't electrocute a cockroach.
A 480 gallon bucket is going to weigh a lot more than an 18 gallon bucket, but it is the raincoat that keeps you from getting wet.
We still have tons of universal motors, brush type, AC/DC; you probably have two of them in your PC.
Clinton put those lights out; shameful, in my opinion.
Edison was no match for Tesla; Edison created the perfect umbilical while Tesla wanted to set the world as free as birds.
I think we will leave it at that.
Edison created the perfect umbilical while Tesla wanted to set the world as free as birds
Hats off to Nikola Tesla -- The man from the future -- in celebration of his 150th birthday.
We owe him much!
Thanks, IK! Haven't seen you for a while. Hope all is well :) BTTT
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