Tesla

[TimeFlipper]

"Talking With the Planets" by Nikola Tesla

Imagine the past we could have had if we had paid more attention to this man.

Why do you think we paid no attention to Tesla?

The paper you linked was written 11 months before the first long-distance (transatlantic) radio transmission.

At the time, as Tesla clearly states, it had just become obvious that such a thing was possible.

Other people were writing about it too that year.
Maxwell's equations describing electromagnetic waves were only fully developed less than 30 years before Tesla wrote that paper. In the year the paper was written, Marconi was conducting his own experiments with radio waves.

Harte

I suppose iam "splitting hairs" here, but Marconi`s first radio transmission which achieved a distance of 2000 miles was done by a "spark gap" transmitter attached to a coil then sent to a vertical antenna, but was not a radio wave per se..The spark gap actually transmitted "interference" on a very wide band width..

You might recall many years ago when a car was passing by your house, it would create electrical interference on the TV screen and you would also hear the noise from it...That was overcome by using "suppression" on the cars electrical system....I recall taking a very small electric motor around with me and interfering with neighbours TV sets in their houses...I usually did that to the neighbours which i didnt like ..

 

[Harte]

As a Physics teacher, I know about that. The how, why, and solution.
However, does it indicate that "we paid no attention to Tesla"?

Harte

 

[TimeFlipper]

As a Physics teacher, I know about that. The how, why, and solution.
However, does it indicate that "we paid no attention to Tesla"?

Harte

I think lots of Tesla`s work was suppressed after he died, but probably the main reason there was a lack of info about his early days of radio work was due to the fact lots of people thought he was nuts ..
That would be around the time he started making comments about receiving radio messages from the planet Mars, which the newspapers grossly over exaggerated what he was saying to them..

Much more interest has been given to Tesla, thanks to the internet, so i cant say there is a lack of paying attention to him, however lots of erroneous info has been attached to his name for the purpose of selling useless equipment....How to make Tesla`s death ray weapon, the Tesla crystal set, Tesla purple discs you hang around the neck etc etc...Elon Musk is NOT on the list of making useless equipment ..

Obviously there is lots of info out there regarding Tesla`s AC and an abundance on his famous coils..
In the 1930s Tesla worked for radio companies such as RCA and National, and i posted some info here on the receivers he helped design during that period which was mainly the smaller coils that he made..

Finally, you should also be aware of Heinrich Hertz who produced the EM waves that Maxwell theorised...He was given acclaim of his work some years back and that is why we now use the term MegaHertz (Mhz) to describe his waves, and not Megacycles (Mc/s) anymore..
Tesla also received acclaim for his work on magnetism, and instead of Gauss we now use Tesla to illustrate the field strength of the magnetism..im shutting up now

 

[Harte]

I teach people about Hertz in my Physics class.

Tesla was a very innovative engineer, not a scientist. He never actually produced anything at all that in any way revolutionized the field, like Maxwell for instance.
Like many others of the era, Tesla took what became known about electromagnetism (from Maxwell) and created new technologies from it. He just did a better job of that than most of the other people that were trying to do the same thing.

Harte