Questions about Tesla

[Lord Antares]

You often hear how Tesla is underrated and uncredited for his work.

You hear how other inventors stole all of his work and presented it as his own. You hear how he had the key to unlimited and free energy

 

It is somewhat of a mainstream opinion among non-scientists to think of Tesla as the greatest genius who ever lived.

 

I noticed that no one mentions him here and that people are more objective. It can't be a coincidence that scientists have less regard for him than regular people. It can't be because they are ''jealous of his achievements and support the system''. That makes no sense.

 

So my question is how much of this is true? Is he possibly overrated? Don't get me wrong, he was clearly a genius, but does he get more credit than he should? Is it known how many of these claims that other people stole his inventions are true? What is it that he was actually responsible for inventing but didn't get credit for it?

 

At a later portion of his life, he made claims of having discovered unlimited energy, developed lasers and VTOLs and actually claimed that he teleported an army submarine. That's an actual claim. I would guess that there is no evidence for this whatsoever. He also claimed that he can develop a weapon so powerful, that it would end all war because it would be able to destroy the whole world. Was he possibly a crackpot in his later years?

 

Anyways, there must be a reason why scientists don't talk about this other than this being a conspiracy cover-up. I would appreciate it if someone gave an objective answer.

 

I wasn't sure where to post it. It might fit in other sciences or the lounge, but seeing how we are talking about his work in physics, I thought this was the most appropriate place. If a mod disagrees, then by all means, feel free to move this.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Lord Antares

[StringJunky]

Just because someone has come up with one, or some, good ideas doesn't mean that they don't produce crap ones as well.

[Lord Antares]

Yes, I know. That's why I started this thread. I never claimed he did. I did state I'm rightfully sceptical of all of these claims.

 

I wanted someone who knows more to explain what he actually should get credit for and if his later ideas have any merit or basis in reality.

[Tim88]

A nice and perhaps fair overview is given in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

 

He is probably overrated in crank circles; I don't think that he is underrated in scientific circles. The fact that magnetic fields are measured in his name shows appropriate appreciation.

[StringJunky]

Yes, I know. That's why I started this thread. I never claimed he did. I did state I'm rightfully sceptical of all of these claims.

 

I wanted someone who knows more to explain what he actually should get credit for and if his later ideas have any merit or basis in reality.

OK. understood.

[Lord Antares]

 

He is probably overrated in crank circles; I don't think that he is underrated in scientific circles.

 

No, in scientific circles, he is rated precisely as per his achievements. That's how science works.

By ''overrated'', I just mean he's usually given more credit than he has proof for.

 

For example, I've often read that if the ''system'' let Tesla build his devices, the world would now run on free energy because he would have provided a source of unlimited energy. That's an unfounded claim and there is no evidence that there is such a thing as unlimited energy source. Right?

[Phi for All]

One could argue that Tesla's alternating current placed us all at the mercy of utility companies we may or may not have control over. I've often wondered how our society would have developed if personal direct current power sources had been chosen instead. Would single home/neighborhood generators have led us more quickly to alternative energy sources like solar? Imagine thinking about your energy not in terms of a grid, but more as a system piece like your furnace, a major part of your house that needs occasional maintenance, perhaps replacement every decade or two.

[Danijel Gorupec]

At a later portion of his life, he made claims of having discovered unlimited energy, developed lasers and VTOLs and actually claimed that he teleported an army submarine. That's an actual claim.

 

If this are his claims, and I guess so, then for sure are false. I can only suppose that he was either looking for funds or for attention or he just lost it. Any of these reasons won't surprise me because it seems that human ultimate destiny is to fail, one way or another... So I like to say, don't measure a man by computing his average, but measure him by finding his peak size.

 

Although personally I am not much of a Tesla fan, I must admit that he was great at his peak. Always considered him an excellent engineer and fairly good scientist. I find his recognition and development of AC (multiphase) system quite cool. Even cooler is his recognition and development of asynchronous motor.

 

I consider him properly recognized by scientific community (as Tim88 said, they gave him an SI unit!... I myself cannot hope that they will even consider my name for the unit of mediocrity, lol). In popular science he is, imo, mentioned more often than expected (in comparison to, say, Oliver Heaviside or Murray Gell-Man).

 

The real problem regarding Tesla is this kind of mysticism (or whatever) that surrounds his name. I cannot tell if he personally did something to become this kind of mystic/guru (can a man do this intentionally?). Probably not, he is just the 'chosen one' by those many people that search for occult in their lives.. I am afraid that it will grow worse. I won't be surprised if one day there will be a sect and Tesla will be their god... So, the thing we hear about Tesla in certain society groups tell us more about society than about Tesla.

[Lord Antares]

 

 

The real problem regarding Tesla is this kind of mysticism (or whatever) that surrounds his name. I cannot tell if he personally did something to become this kind of mystic/guru (can a man do this intentionally?). Probably not, he is just the 'chosen one' by those many people that search for occult in their lives.. I am afraid that it will grow worse. I won't be surprised if one day there will be a sect and Tesla will be their god... So, the thing we hear about Tesla in certain society groups tell us more about society than about Tesla.

 

Yes, exactly this. This is what is appealing to conspiracy theorists, ghost hunters etc. They like this mysticism and they think it must be true because it would be interesting to believe it is.

 

 

 

 

I cannot tell if he personally did something to become this kind of mystic/guru

 

He makes people wonder what could have been.I think it was because of his experiments where current was coming out his hands, his coils, his Wardenclyffe tower, the fact that his lab got burned down, his attitude etc.

 

 

I've often wondered how our society would have developed if personal direct current power sources had been chosen instead. Would single home/neighborhood generators have led us more quickly to alternative energy sources like solar?

 

Interesting thought. Do you think it would work like that?

[Country Boy]

You often hear how Tesla is underrated and uncredited for his work.

You hear how other inventors stole all of his work and presented it as his own. You hear how he had the key to unlimited and free energy

 

It is somewhat of a mainstream opinion among non-scientists to think of Tesla as the greatest genius who ever lived.

 

I noticed that no one mentions him here and that people are more objective. It can't be a coincidence that scientists have less regard for him than regular people. It can't be because they are ''jealous of his achievements and support the system''. That makes no sense.

 

So my question is how much of this is true? Is he possibly overrated? Don't get me wrong, he was clearly a genius, but does he get more credit than he should? Is it known how many of these claims that other people stole his inventions are true? What is it that he was actually responsible for inventing but didn't get credit for it?

 

At a later portion of his life, he made claims of having discovered unlimited energy, developed lasers and VTOLs and actually claimed that he teleported an army submarine. That's an actual claim. I would guess that there is no evidence for this whatsoever. He also claimed that he can develop a weapon so powerful, that it would end all war because it would be able to destroy the whole world. Was he possibly a crackpot in his later years?

 

Anyways, there must be a reason why scientists don't talk about this other than this being a conspiracy cover-up. I would appreciate it if someone gave an objective answer.

 

I wasn't sure where to post it. It might fit in other sciences or the lounge, but seeing how we are talking about his work in physics, I thought this was the most appropriate place. If a mod disagrees, then by all means, feel free to move this.

 

Tesla worked for Edison with a contract that assigned all patents to Edison. I suspect whether or not one would be willing to sign such a contract depends up how much confidence one had in one's own ability to produce. It seems likely that Tesla did not have enough confidence in his own abilities to refuse to work for Edison. It is true that one of the things Edison was much better at than Tesla was "blowing his own horn"! Perhaps because of that, and the fact that he was working under Edison, Tesla does not get as much credit as he should but he certainly is well known to physicists and engineers.

 

As for "the key to unlimited and free energy", that's non-sense. Tesla, and Edison, were inventors and engineers, not physicist. Nothing Tesla was working on had anything to do with refuting or altering the laws of physics and "unlimited energy" would violate a basic law of physics. I hadn't read that Tesla had claimed to do all those things but they are certainly not true, especially "teleporting" anything.

[arc]

 

Tesla worked for Edison with a contract that assigned all patents to Edison. I suspect whether or not one would be willing to sign such a contract depends up how much confidence one had in one's own ability to produce. It seems likely that Tesla did not have enough confidence in his own abilities to refuse to work for Edison. It is true that one of the things Edison was much better at than Tesla was "blowing his own horn"! Perhaps because of that, and the fact that he was working under Edison, Tesla does not get as much credit as he should but he certainly is well known to physicists and engineers.

 

I recently viewed a wonderful documentary on George Westinghouse by Mark Bussler.

 

 

It really captures the era and the social dynamics between Tesla and his relations with both Westinghouse and Edison. They mention that Edison required all of his employees to sign an agreement to forfeit any claim to their creative work. Westinghouse on the other hand actually helped his employees in securing their rights to their ideas. They mention the discrepancy between the sizable number of patents held by Westinghouse employees as compared to Edison's, and this of course explains rather pointedly why Edison personally held so many more patents than George Westinghouse.

 

 

As for "the key to unlimited and free energy", that's non-sense. Tesla, and Edison, were inventors and engineers, not physicist. Nothing Tesla was working on had anything to do with refuting or altering the laws of physics and "unlimited energy" would violate a basic law of physics. I hadn't read that Tesla had claimed to do all those things but they are certainly not true, especially "teleporting" anything.

 

I think much of Tesla's cult status relates to his misjudgment of his own abilities. His extraordinary ability to develop and "bench test" designs such as his poly-phase system in his mind before ever building any actual physically examples makes him appear super human. He unfortunately later in life exceeded these extraordinary limits of his mind's abilities without building the resultant, and more important, fully working examples that would have maybe humbled his estimations of these creative abilities. Most of the current woo woo about him relates to these extraordinary imaginary creations of a once very productive and creative mind that had entered its post professional era of simply speculating some rather super extraordinary possibilities.

[Lord Antares]

I hadn't read that Tesla had claimed to do all those things but they are certainly not true, especially "teleporting" anything.

 

I just searched a bit for the claim, and I'm sorry. I read this in a Croatian magazine in high school and I either misremembered or they gave false info.

 

Tesla never claimed to have done this. Other people did.

For example, take this article:

 

https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/books/nikola-tesla-and-secrets-philadelphia-experiment

 

Wikipedia, on the other hand, says a completely different story about the experiment. It says that it was only an attempt to cloak the ship from radar and no gives no mention of Tesla, only Einstein:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment

 

 

Tesla, and Edison, were inventors and engineers, not physicist.

 

Well, it depends. For example, as I understand it, there are claims that Tesla discovered and used radio waves before Marconi and invented or at least concepted the telephone before Bell.

These are not unsubstantiated claims either like the unlimited energy ones, as I think he later got credited with radio waves by the scientific community. Surely, if he discovered radio waves and such, he should also be called a physicist, not only an engineer.

My questions were more about these claims, rather than nuclear lasers etc.

 

 

Most of the current woo woo about him relates to these extraordinary imaginary creations of a once very productive and creative mind that had entered its post professional era of simply speculating some rather super extraordinary possibilities.

 

I agree, that plays a big role.

 

Well, to be fair, most of what I've heard about Tesla is probably due to the fact that I'm Croatian. (whether he was Serbian or Croatian is an endless debate here. Never start that debate!)

Here, he is considered to be a god. It is widely believed by the general population in the Balkans that all of his concepts like free energy and the death ray are correct and that he would have done them given the chance. Why? Because Tesla said so.

[Delta1212]

Tesla was a brilliant inventor who was not at all good at marketing himself or just business in general, and had a habit of chasing ideas very far down their rabbit holes. That persistence led him to discover a great many important things but also led him astray more than once, and based on things I've read, I would not be at all surprised to find that he suffered from some sort of mental illness late in his life.

 

Tesla was a true brilliant "mad scientist" whose life ultimately ended in a very disrupted and unsatisfactory state given his accomplishments because he was failed by, even taken advantage of by, the system in which he lived. That is all entirely true, and throw in a few of his wilder ideas and it's a story that is fertile ground for applying lots of conspiracy theories and even more outlandish speculation on what he could have accomplished by people who themselves feel like they've had a creative stroke of (impractical) genius but aren't being dealt with fairly by the system.

 

He looks, essentially, like what a crackpot imagines himself to be in every respect except that he had quite visible success in many areas and is taken seriously for real accomplishments.

[Lord Antares]

He looks, essentially, like what a crackpot imagines himself to be

 

QFT. This hits the nail on the head.

This is the reason why crackpots quote him much more often than other scientists.

[Phi for All]

Interesting thought. Do you think it would work like that?

 

It's more than just Betamax vs VCR marketing. DC current has its advantages. AC has a lot of versatility, but only when considered as a grid. It's actually pretty difficult/costly to match the phase between grids. If you don't have a grid in the first place, a lot of the advantages disappear. Transforming voltage up and down more easily is still one of ACs big advantages, but lower voltage requirements, less danger, and longer appliance life are very tempting.

 

But my real point was more of a mindset. What if the right to control energy utilization personally had become as important to many as the right to bear arms? I would argue that perhaps, in the modern US, being in control of the power sources that run virtually everything important in your life is much more important than having guns to defend yourself. Or perhaps we need the guns because others can shut off our power?

[zztop]

 

It's more than just Betamax vs VCR marketing. DC current has its advantages. AC has a lot of versatility, but only when considered as a grid. It's actually pretty difficult/costly to match the phase between grids. If you don't have a grid in the first place, a lot of the advantages disappear. Transforming voltage up and down more easily is still one of ACs big advantages, but lower voltage requirements, less danger, and longer appliance life are very tempting.

 

But my real point was more of a mindset. What if the right to control energy utilization personally had become as important to many as the right to bear arms? I would argue that perhaps, in the modern US, being in control of the power sources that run virtually everything important in your life is much more important than having guns to defend yourself. Or perhaps we need the guns because others can shut off our power?

Your point is about to get a lot stronger with the advent of solar energy. In effect solar panels constitute a "personal" power plant. They produce DC current which, unfortunately, needs to be transformed (at significant energy loss) into AC because of the fact that the appliances can only work off AC.

[Delta1212]

Your point is about to get a lot stronger with the advent of solar energy. In effect solar panels constitute a "personal" power plant. They produce DC current which, unfortunately, needs to be transformed (at significant energy loss) into AC because of the fact that the appliances can only work off AC.

Currently (no pun intended), sure. If a significant number of people become users of DC current, expect a market for DC appliances to start opening up to take more efficient advantage.

[zztop]

Currently (no pun intended), sure. If a significant number of people become users of DC current, expect a market for DC appliances to start opening up to take more efficient advantage.

Agreed, since all solar "power plants" come with their own inverters in order to be able to pump the energy back into the AC grid.

[Phi for All]

Currently (no pun intended), sure. If a significant number of people become users of DC current, expect a market for DC appliances to start opening up to take more efficient advantage.

 

Cost of the units will come down with demand. While some appliances like refrigerators are about equal in energy use and efficiency between AC and DC, many of the appliances that don't need power until we actually use them will save a tremendous amount of energy. Trickle usage nationwide would go way down.

 

Agreed, since all solar "power plants" come with their own inverters in order to be able to pump the energy back into the AC grid.

 

So now imagine that the concept of individual power is thought of more like home heating, rather than like shared plumbing for water. Everyone tapping wells on their property for water wouldn't work, but we heat our homes by both shared heating pipes in apartments and individual furnaces in private homes. Imagine if Tesla's work had spawned a desire for small generators capable of powering electrical appliances for a single home, or block of apartments, or perhaps a neighborhood unit of multiple private homes. I think if we'd suspected, in Tesla and Edison's time, how much we'd depend on electricity every day, we might have been more protective of the ability to create our own.

[zztop]

 

Imagine if Tesla's work had spawned a desire for small generators capable of powering electrical appliances for a single home, or block of apartments, or perhaps a neighborhood unit of multiple private homes. I think if we'd suspected, in Tesla and Edison's time, how much we'd depend on electricity every day, we might have been more protective of the ability to create our own.

According to the excellent video posted by "arc", the initial implementation by Edison DID have "local" power plants. In this age of cyber-terrorism it makes perfect sense to move away from central power plants and from distribution grids.

Edited February 19, 2017 by zztop

[Lord Antares]

 

Cost of the units will come down with demand.

 

You do mean cost will come down with supply, right? Because increased demand = increased cost.

 

 

According to the excellent video posted by "arc", the initial implementation by Edison DID have "local" power plants.

 

Yes but they were very inefficient. A lot of them were required as they couldn't travel far because of the loss of energy. Perhaps distributing DC to a whole nearby block was their biggest blunder?

[Phi for All]

 

You do mean cost will come down with supply, right? Because increased demand = increased cost.

 

We already have the infrastructure for manufacturing these appliances. The demand for DC versions is low now, so the prices are high. With more demand for DC and less for AC, it should flip at some point. Right now a DC refrigerator can cost the consumer three times the price of AC.

[Lord Antares]

No. It doesn't only depend on one, it depends on both supply and demand.

For example, if the demand is high but supply is low, the prices would skyrocket.

 

Only if there was an equally high supply would the prices balance out.

 

Prices are currently high because demand is low, but supply is even lower.

 

High supply = low prices

High demand = high prices

Combine for balanced effect.

[Tim88]

 

No, in scientific circles, he is rated precisely as per his achievements. That's how science works.

By ''overrated'', I just mean he's usually given more credit than he has proof for.

 

For example, I've often read that if the ''system'' let Tesla build his devices, the world would now run on free energy because he would have provided a source of unlimited energy. That's an unfounded claim and there is no evidence that there is such a thing as unlimited energy source. Right?

 

It's a big mistake to confound science (a discipline) with scientific circles (groups of people who are subject to all kinds of pressures, including highly unscientific ones); it's even an important topic of discussion. My estimation that Tesla is not underrated in scientific circles is therefore a matter of opinion but it's not superfluous.

 

Apart of the shaky theoretical basis, the claim that Tesla's inventions allow free, unlimited energy is extremely doubtful to me for the simple reason that no "allowance of the system" is required for a few electrical engineers to build such a magical machine. It's a hilarious conspiracy theory.

[..] Tesla, and Edison, were inventors and engineers, not physicist. [..]

 

Wikipedia labels him as an inventor, engineer and physicist. Tesla had a similar education as Einstein (polytechnic university in Austria + university in Czechoslovakia, vs one in Switzerland) but due to personal (gambling!) issues he never graduated.

[Endy0816]

Mad Scientist with expensive tastes.

 

He could have been looking at making electricity freely available wirelessly. Besides transmission losses, health risks and interference; poses a problem with getting someone to actually pay for it.