Nikola Tesla - The Founder of High-Frequency and Radio Engineering Page 7

Our brilliant scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla was the one who, through his long years of work, unparalleled scientific imagination, and extraordinary inventive gift, achieved the transmission of electrical energy over distance, the technology of high frequencies, and radio technology. Tesla’s work in the field of polyphase currents and the transmission of electrical energy over distance (1882–1887), upon which all present-day electrical power stations and strong-current technology are based, is a separate field that we cannot discuss here. Therefore, at the request of the Editorial Board, we will briefly present only Tesla’s work in the field of high-frequency technology and radio technology, to show that Tesla truly deserved to be called, in professional literature today, the creator of high-frequency technology and the founder and father of radio technology.

1) Tesla’s Work in the Field of High-Frequency Technology

When Tesla, in 1887, the same year that Hertz published his experiments with electromagnetic waves, completed his work with generators, motors, and transformers for polyphase alternating currents and laid the foundations for the transmission of electrical energy over distance, he began research in an entirely new field of science. Tesla had carried out his previous experiments with low-frequency alternating currents, mostly with 50–100 periods per second, because for electric lighting and the transmission of electrical energy via wires, it was sufficient to develop apparatus for such a number of periods. However, he was interested in investigating what scientific and practical possibilities lay hidden in alternating currents of a significantly higher number of periods. Throughout two years (1889–1890), he constructed various types of special electric generators for frequencies from 10,000 to 20,000 periods, and in his patents 447,920/21 from 1890, he demonstrated how various types of high-frequency generators could be constructed and built, and what could be achieved with them. Phenomena, especially in the field of light effects, which showed that in a high-frequency electromagnetic field it was possible to make evacuated tubes glow without electrodes and without electrical connection, indicated that significantly greater results could be achieved with even higher frequencies, especially in connection with electrical condensers and self-induction coils and transformers. In his patents 462,418 from 1891, Tesla described these new electrical apparatus for the production of high-frequency and high-voltage currents using Tesla’s oscillators and transformers, which led him