 Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla | |
| Author | Marc Seifer |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Citadel Press |
Publication date | 1998 |
| ISBN | 978-1-55972-329-9 |
The book Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla is a biography of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer published in 1996.
Seifer follows the life of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian American Invention|inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist. He covers the high points of the inventor's life through his designs used in the modern alternating current system, experimentation with high frequency current and wireless power transmission, wireless remote control, X-ray imaging, and Tesla's "death ray". Seifer goes on to cover Tesla's downfall, attributing it to Tesla's megalomaniacal, neurotic, self-destructive tendencies, and Tesla's interactions with financier J. Pierpont Morgan. [1]
Seifer based his book largely on primary sourced documents including Tesla's writings and patents. [1] Also including papers of Tesla's in the Tesla archives in Yugoslavia as well as manuscripts in the United States. Seifer filed Freedom of Information Act requests to get documents from the FBI and other United States government agencies. [2]
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Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is best-known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
George Westinghouse Jr. was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age of 19. Westinghouse saw the potential of using alternating current for electric power distribution in the early 1880s and put all his resources into developing and marketing it. This put Westinghouse's business in direct competition with Thomas Edison, who marketed direct current for electric power distribution. In 1911 Westinghouse received the American Institute of Electrical Engineers's (AIEE) Edison Medal "For meritorious achievement in connection with the development of the alternating current system." He founded the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1886.
Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla on Long Island in 1901–1902, located in the village of Shoreham, New York. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony, and even facsimile images across the Atlantic Ocean to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to increase the scale of the facility and implement his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio-based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project's primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
The Tesla Experimental Station was a laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA built in 1899 by inventor Nikola Tesla and for his study of the use of high-voltage, high-frequency electricity in wireless power transmission. Tesla used it for only one year, until 1900, and it was torn down in 1904 to pay his outstanding debts.
Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company was an electric lighting company in Rahway, New Jersey that operated from December 1884 through 1886.
Nikola Tesla is portrayed in many forms of popular culture. The Serbian-American engineer has particularly been depicted in science fiction, a genre which is well suited to address his inventions; while often exaggerated, the fictionalized variants build mostly upon his own alleged claims or ideas. A popular, growing fixation among science fiction, comic book, and speculative history storytellers is to portray Tesla as a member of a secret society, along with other luminaries of science. The impacts of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla are a recurring theme in the steampunk genre of alternate technology science-fiction.
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla is a book compiled and edited by Thomas Commerford Martin detailing the work of Nikola Tesla through 1893. The book is a comprehensive compilation of Tesla's early work with many illustrations.
Colorado Springs Notes, 1899–1900 (ISBN 8617073527) is a book compiled and edited by Aleksandar Marinčić and Vojin Popović detailing the work of Nikola Tesla at his experimental station in Colorado Springs at the turn of the 20th century.
Tesla's electro-mechanical oscillator is a steam-powered electric generator patented by Nikola Tesla in 1893. Later in life Tesla claimed one version of the oscillator caused an earthquake in New York City in 1898, gaining it the popular culture title "Tesla's earthquake machine".
Tesla's Egg of Columbus was a device exhibited in the Westinghouse Electric display at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition to explain the rotating magnetic field that drove the new alternating current induction motors designed by inventor Nikola Tesla by using that magnetic field to spin a copper egg on end.
Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger was an American electrical engineer and inventor. He is associated with electrical inventions related to alternating current. He is most noted for inventing the first successful alternating current (AC) electrical meter, the forerunner of the modern electric meter. This was critical to general acceptance of AC power.
Teleforce is a proposed defensive weapon by Nikola Tesla that accelerated pellets or slugs of material to a high velocity inside a vacuum chamber via electrostatic repulsion and then fired them out of aimed nozzles at intended targets. Tesla claimed to have conceived of it after studying the Van de Graaff generator. Tesla described the weapon as being able to be used against ground-based infantry or for anti-aircraft purposes.
The Secret of Nikola Tesla, is a 1980 Yugoslav biographical film which dramatizes events in the life of the Serbian-American engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla. This somewhat fictionalized portrayal of Tesla's life has him contending with Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan in his attempts to develop alternating current and then "free" wireless power.
Marc Jeffrey Seifer is an American author who has published books on handwriting analysis (Graphology), human consciousness and the mind, biographies of the inventor Nikola Tesla, and several works of fiction. His book Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius has been called "Serious scholarship" by Scientific American, "Revelatory" by Publishers Weekly and is "Highly Recommended" by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The World Wireless System was a turn of the 20th century proposed telecommunications and electrical power delivery system designed by inventor Nikola Tesla based on his theories of using Earth and its atmosphere as electrical conductors. He claimed this system would allow for "the transmission of electric energy without wires" on a global scale as well as point-to-point wireless telecommunications and broadcasting. He made public statements citing two related methods to accomplish this from the mid-1890s on. By the end of 1900 he had convinced banker J. P. Morgan to finance construction of a wireless station based on his ideas intended to transmit messages across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea. His decision to change the design to include wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's new radio based telegraph system was met with Morgan's refusal to fund the changes. The project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
Martin Sekulić (1833–1905) was a mathematics and physics teacher from Karlovac, one of the few high-school professors who were members of the Croatian community of physicists at the time.
Benjamin Franklin Miessner was an American radio engineer and inventor. He is most known for his electronic organ, electronic piano, and other musical instruments. He was the inventor of the Cat's whisker detector.
Nikola Tesla patented the Tesla coil circuit on April 25, 1891. and first publicly demonstrated it May 20, 1891 in his lecture "Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination" before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, New York. Although Tesla patented many similar circuits during this period, this was the first that contained all the elements of the Tesla coil: high voltage primary transformer, capacitor, spark gap, and air core "oscillation transformer".