CROPfm Forum

Please note that I am not a Physicist or a machinist (yet). I have been interested in Nikola Tesla for some time, and I was looking for a project to gain some experience in the machine shop. My job is to provide Lecture Demonstrations, so my goal was to produce a teaching tool rather than an efficient engine.

Last week, the Consolidated Edison utility pulled the plug on direct-current service. Electric operations manager Fred Simms, a Con Ed employee for 52 years, cut a ceremonial cable on a Manhattan street.

The genius who created the base for the modern system of energy generation and transmission also invented a bladeless turbine, properly called “Tesla Turbine“.

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived. His more...technological achievements transformed America from a nation of isolated communities to a country connected by power grids where information was available upon demand. In the 20th century, it was Tesla's technology that united the United States and eventually the world.

In the summer of 1931, Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current and the holder of some 1200 other U.S. patents, along with his nephew Peter Savo, installed a box on the front seat of a brand new Pierce-Arrow touring car at the company factory in Buffalo, New York. The box is said to have been 24 inches long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches high. Out of it protruded a 1.8 meter long antenna and two ¼ inch metal rods. Inside the box was reputed to be some dozen vacuum tubes -- 70-L-7 type -- and other electrical parts. Two wire leads ran from the box to a newly-installed 40 inch long, 30 inch diameter AC motor that replaced the gasoline engine.

There are at least two films describing Tesla's life. In the first, filmed in 1977, arranged for TV, Tesla was portrayed by Rade Šerbedžija. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslav film named Tajna Nikole Tesle (The Secret of Nikola Tesla), in which Welles himself played the part of Tesla's patron, J.P. Morgan. Film was directed by Krsto Papić, and Nikola Tesla was portrayed by Petar Božović.