Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is 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.
The electric chair is a specialized device employed for carrying out capital punishment through the process of electrocution. During its use, the individual sentenced to death is securely strapped to a specially designed wooden chair and electrocuted via strategically positioned electrodes affixed to the head and leg. This method of execution was conceptualized by Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist based in Buffalo, New York, in 1881. Over the following decade, this execution technique was developed further, aiming to provide a more humane alternative to the conventional forms of execution, particularly hanging. The electric chair was first utilized in 1890 and subsequently became known as a symbol of this method of execution.
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.
William Francis Kemmler was an American peddler, alcoholic, and murderer, who, in 1890, became the first person in the world to be executed by electric chair. He was convicted of murdering Matilda "Tillie" Ziegler, his common-law wife, a year earlier. Although electrocution had previously been successfully used to kill a horse, Kemmler's execution did not go smoothly.
The war of the currents was a series of events surrounding the introduction of competing electric power transmission systems in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It grew out of two lighting systems developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s; arc lamp street lighting running on high-voltage alternating current (AC), and large-scale low-voltage direct current (DC) indoor incandescent lighting being marketed by Thomas Edison's company. In 1886, the Edison system was faced with new competition: an alternating current system initially introduced by George Westinghouse's company that used transformers to step down from a high voltage so AC could be used for indoor lighting. Using high voltage allowed an AC system to transmit power over longer distances from more efficient large central generating stations. As the use of AC spread rapidly with other companies deploying their own systems, the Edison Electric Light Company claimed in early 1888 that high voltages used in an alternating current system were hazardous, and that the design was inferior to, and infringed on the patents behind, their direct current system.
Michael Almereyda is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer.
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.
Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. He is often portrayed in popular culture as an adversary of Nikola Tesla.
The book Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla is a biography of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer published in 1996.
Benjamin Garver Lamme was an American electrical engineer and chief engineer at Westinghouse, where he was responsible for the design of electrical power machines. Lamme created an efficient induction motor from Nikola Tesla's patents and went on to design the giant Niagara Falls generators and motors and the power plant of the Manhattan Elevated Railway in New York City.
JLA: Age of Wonder is a 2003 two-issue mini-series of comics from DC's Elseworlds imprint. Taking place from 1876 to 1913, the comics follow Clark Kent and Lex Luthor as they use superpowers to create technical innovations. The comics also follow the creation of the League of Science, a superhero league dedicated to spreading these innovations for the good of mankind. The series was written by Adisakdi Tantimedh, with art by P. Craig Russell and Galen Showman.
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.
The Invention of Everything Else is a 2008 novel written by American author Samantha Hunt. The novel presents a fictionalized account of the last days in the life of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American electrical engineer. Other fictionalized versions of historical characters include Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Mark Twain. Tesla is the novel's protagonist along with a chambermaid named Louisa with whom he shares some common interests including science and pigeons. Much of the book takes place in the New Yorker Hotel. The book also includes elements of science fiction, namely time travel.
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.
Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story or Experimenter for a alternative title, is a 2015 American biographical drama film written, directed and co-produced by Michael Almereyda. It depicts the experiments Milgram experiment in 1961 by a social psychologist Stanley Milgram. The film co-produced and stars by Danny A. Abeckaser, stars Peter Sarsgaard, Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, Kellan Lutz, Dennis Haysbert, Anthony Edwards, Lori Singer, Josh Hamilton, Anton Yelchin, John Leguizamo.
Uri Singer, is a businessman and film producer. He is the owner and CEO of Passage Pictures.
The Current War is a 2017 American historical drama film inspired by the 19th-century competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over which electric power delivery system would be used in the United States. Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, written by Michael Mitnick, and executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Zaillian, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Edison, Michael Shannon as Westinghouse, Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla, and Tom Holland as Samuel Insull, alongside Katherine Waterston, Tuppence Middleton, Matthew Macfadyen and Damien Molony.
"Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror" is the fourth episode of the twelfth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One on 19 January 2020. It was written by Nina Metivier, and directed by Nida Manzoor.
Blake Anthony DeLong is an American film, television, and stage actor best known for originating the role of Andrey/Old Bolkonsky in the hit musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. He played the lead role opposite James Hand in Matt Muir's film Thank You a Lot, which premiered on the opening night of SXSW Film Festival in 2014. He is featured in Ava DuVernay's When They See Us on Netflix and played supporting roles in Spike Lee's 2018 film Pass Over, as well as Sister Aimee and Late Night, which both appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019. He recently earned praise as axe murderer William Kemmler in the 2020 Sundance film Tesla, by Michael Almereyda. Notable stage work includes Othello at New York Theatre Workshop, a turn as David Amram in Illyria at The Public Theater, and the sixth Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, opposite Wendell Pierce.
