Екатерина Вавилова – All sciences. №1, 2023. International Scientific Journal (страница 2)
By the spring of 1884, the work at the Strasbourg railway station was completed, and Tesla returned to Paris, expecting a bonus of 25 thousand dollars from the company. After trying to get the bonuses due to him, he realized that he could not see this money and, offended, resigned. One of the Soviet biographers of the inventor, B. N. Rzonsnitsky, claims that Tesla was thinking about moving to Russia, but one of the administrators of the Continental Company, Charles Bechlor, persuaded Tesla to go to the USA. Bechlor wrote a letter of recommendation to his friend Thomas Edison:
«It would be an unforgivable mistake to allow such a talent to leave for Russia. You will still be grateful to me, Mr. Edison, for the fact that I did not spare a few hours to convince this young man to give up the idea of going to Petersburg. I know two great people – one of them is you, the other is this young man.»
Tesla with the «Theory of Natural Philosophy…» by Ruger Boskovich against the background of an RF transformer coil in his laboratory on Houston Street
On July 6, 1884, Tesla arrived in New York. He got a job at Thomas Edison's company (Edison Machine Works) as an engineer for the repair of electric motors and DC generators.
On each material, gentlemen, there is a certain charge, both positive and negative, when they are together, then any object is neutral, but it is only necessary to excite these charges by moving the wire between the magnets, as a current appears in it, which is excited by these magnets. This phenomenon, called electromagnetic induction, when a current arises in a wire due to movement, was discovered by Michael Faraday. If the magnets are in the form of a torus, one of them is smaller, and the second is larger, and if you move the wire between them in a circle in only one direction, then you get a separation of charges into positive and negative, which can be accumulated on capacitors, which are only large metal plates that retain a charge. Of course, direct current is safer, it is easy to work with motors, it is easier to save it, but all these positive aspects are outweighed by one huge drawback – the difficulty of transportation.
Electric current is the movement of free charged particles, electrons between atoms in a directed way, and not chaotically, as it happens in thermal motion. And if the electrons move only in one direction, then they encounter a large number of collisions and quickly lose their energy, so for each enterprise there was a need to create its own power plant, because the maximum DC transmission length is no more than a mile, and already at longer distances the current dropped almost to zero.
Speaking of alternating current, there is already the case with whole coils, when rotating them in one direction, the magnetic fields were not always directed correctly, if they were directed in one direction to one plate, then the direction changed on the next turn. That is, if the current went from left to right, then in the next period, it went from right to left. The electrons did not have time to make such a long journey and only oscillated, while not losing energy, but, of course, transporting it. In such a current, positive and negative polarities change with a certain frequency and losses in such a system are minimal, which allows you to transmit alternating current over simply huge distances.
That was one of Tesla's million ideas. Edison, on the other hand, rather coldly perceived Tesla's new ideas and more and more openly expressed disapproval of the direction of the inventor's personal research. In the spring of 1885, Edison promised Tesla $ 50,000 if he could constructively improve the DC electric machines invented by Edison. Nikola actively set to work and soon introduced 24 varieties of Edison machines, a new switchboard and regulator, significantly improving operational characteristics. Having approved all the improvements, in response to a question about remuneration, Edison refused Tesla, noting that the immigrant still does not understand American humor well. Offended, Tesla immediately quit.
After working for only a year at Edison's company, Tesla gained fame in engineering circles. After learning about his dismissal, a group of electrical engineers offered Nikola to organize his own company related to electric lighting issues. Tesla's projects on the use of alternating current did not inspire them, and then they changed the original proposal, limiting themselves to a proposal to develop an arc lamp project for street lighting. A year later, the project was ready. Instead of money, entrepreneurs offered the inventor a part of the shares of the company created to operate the new lamp. This option did not suit the inventor, the company in response tried to get rid of him, trying to slander and defame Tesla.
In 1886, from autumn to spring, the inventor had to survive on auxiliary work. He was engaged in digging ditches, "slept where he had to, and ate what he found." During this period, he became friends with engineer Brown, who was in a similar position, who was able to persuade several of his acquaintances to provide financial support to Tesla. In April 1887, the Tesla Electric Company, created with this money, began to arrange street lighting with new arc lamps. Soon the company's prospects were proved by large orders from many US cities. For the inventor himself, the company was only a means to achieve a cherished goal. For the office of his company in New York, Tesla rented a house on Fifth Avenue near the building occupied by Edison's company. An acute competitive struggle, known as the "War of Currents", was unleashed between the two companies.
In July 1888, the famous American industrialist George Westinghouse bought more than 40 patents from Tesla, paying an average of $ 25,000 for each and a dollar for each horsepower issued by his generators. After that, he thanked his friend Brown by giving him half of the million dollars he received.
So the work continued, but there were also clashes with Edison, also at the trials. Also, due to Edison's merit, a new type of execution was introduced – in the electric chair, using alternating current. Large-scale executions of animals on alternating current, including Topsy the elephant, were also carried out to demonstrate the dangers of alternating and direct current safety. Westinghouse was against all these measures, he even hired a lawyer for Kemler, the first convict and subsequently executed in the electric chair. But even so, the work of victory followed victory and alternating current spread more and more, entering the life of modern cities.
Westinghouse also invited the inventor to become a consultant at the plants in Pittsburgh, where industrial designs of alternating current machines were being developed. The work did not bring satisfaction to the inventor, preventing the emergence of new ideas. Despite Westinghouse's persuasions, a year later Tesla returned to his laboratory in New York. Shortly after returning from Pittsburgh, Nikola Tesla traveled to Europe, where he visited the Paris World's Fair in 1889 and visited his mother and sister Maritza.
But one day, Westinghouse investors reminded him of the need to pay a dollar for each horsepower issued by generators, but the number of generators increased so much that it was necessary to give Tesla $ 12 million and although this would make him one of the richest people in the states, George would be ruined, so Nikola Tesla broke the contract without any additional conditions. So time passed and finally, in the end, Edison himself began to produce alternators. It was a victory.
In 1888-1895, Tesla was engaged in research of high-frequency magnetic fields. These years were the most fruitful: he received many patents for inventions. The leadership of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers invited Tesla to give a lecture about his work. On May 20, 1892, he spoke to the outstanding electrical engineers of that time and was a great success. There he demonstrated a large number of his experiments, he lit light bulbs by introducing them into an alternating electromagnetic field. He demonstrated how to transmit electricity without wires, controlled lightning and with the help of his hands passed a voltage of millions of volts through his body. It was a huge success, he was given an ovation and for the first time called a man from the future.
After that lecture, Tesla was shown the chair of Faraday himself, offering to take it and noting that after his death no one was worthy of such an honor, and then treated to whiskey from his cherished bottle. On March 13, 1895, a fire broke out in the Fifth Avenue laboratory. The building burned to the ground, destroying the inventor's latest achievements: a mechanical oscillator, a test stand for new lamps for electric lighting, a mock-up of a device for wireless transmission of messages over long distances and an installation for studying the nature of electricity. Tesla himself said that he could reconstruct all his discoveries from memory.