Nikola Tesla FBI Files - Page 60

erator-put Tesla's name the among the world's top scientists.

        From his invention sprang the industrial are we live in. For without his alternating current, there would be no mass production of automobiles, aircraft, refrigerators; no great water-power dams and generating plants, no Diesel-electric trains; we could not have developed radio, television or atomic power.

        The direct current that Edison worked with-a feeble force at best-could be sent no more than a couple of miles over wires because its power leaked away rapidly into the surrounding atmosphere. Lights near the power station might burn brightly and steadily, but those near the end of the line would be dim and fluttering.

        Tesla sold his basic alternating-current patents in 1888, for a million dollars down. By 1895, the first great power station at Niagara Falls had been built, and by the end of 1896, two more Tesla generators had been installed. Within a few years, the pace of life over half the earth had changed from a crawl to a fast gallop-and it has been gathering speed ever since.

THE MAN WHO by his brilliant idea of a "rotating magnetic field," changed the face of the earth and the living habits of the human race was a Croat, born in 1857 in Smiljan, a village in what is now Yugoslavia, but was then part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

        When he was about six, Nikole Tesla's father, the village priest, was transferred to a larger parish in the city of Gospic. There, the lad grew up and perfected his earliest "inventions." Of these, his favorite was an "engine" powered by 16 June bugs, harnessed in sets of four to spokes which radiated from the drive shaft.

        Nikola was a frail lad, often ill; and he nearly went blind from too much reading. He read everything he could get his hands on, not only science but also religion, philosophy, history, literature. By the time he finished high school, he was fluent in French, German and Italian, as well as his native Serbo-Croat.

        He got his schooling-the best his doting family could afford-at Gospic, Carlstadt, Gratz, the University of Prague and, finally, at Budapest. At the University, he saw his first electric motor, a new type direct-current affair whose brushes and commutators sent out showers of crackling blue sparks.

        "If we got rid of those brushes and commutators, with all that noise and loss of energy, we'd have a much better motor," Nikola told his professor. "Perhaps it might be done with an alternating current."

        "Nonsense!" barked the professor. "An alternating current would never run anything. You're not the brilliant student I thought you were. Forget it!

        But Tesla could not forget. The teacher's ridicule only stamped the idea indelibly on his brain. It became an obsession, a passion-how to make an alternating current drive a motor. In every idle moment, wherever he went, he wrestled with this problem.

        Tesla's mind had an unusual twist. Almost from infancy, he had been able to see things in his mind's eye so vividly-and in such minute detail that often he had trouble telling the real from the imaginary.