NIKOLA TESLA'S DEATH RAY

The reporter was shaking as he left the hotel. Could it be true? Could Nikola Tesla really have invented a death ray that could destroy 10,000 enemy airplanes from a distance of 250 miles? If President Roosevelt knew about this invention, then he could use it to protect America from war. The world could use it to stop all wars. This was a miraculous discovery ... if it was true.

After all, Tesla was an old man now. He had celebrated his 78th birthday on July 10, 1934. He spent his days feeding the pigeons of New York City. And talking to them. Maybe he was just plain bonkers. The reporter stopped to think. This was the man who had discovered alternating current. He had made electricity available to every home in the world. He held more than 700 patents. The man was a genius. The reporter ran for his office. Tesla inventing a death ray—this story was sure to sell newspapers.

Invention was as natural as breathing to Tesla. His mother was always inventing tools to help her with work around the house, and Tesla copied her example. When he was just 6, he invented his own frog hook and used it to bring home nice plump frogs for supper. He also invented a propeller that ran on the energy of June bugs. He attached four June bugs to a small cross-shaped piece of wood. The wood balanced on a thin spindle. As the June bugs flapped their wings, the spindle rotated. Young Tesla considered his invention a success even if the June bugs weren’t too happy about being subjects of his experiment. But his bug energy propeller was ruined when another little boy decided to make a snack of the June bugs. Tesla watched in gross amazement as the boy ate all four of his bugs like they were popcorn. Tesla never played with bugs again, and as he got older he refused to ever touch an insect.

Tesla had such a vivid imagination that as a child he suffered from what he called “visions.” Sometimes he had trouble distinguishing the visions from real life, and they caused him to be depressed and frightened. But as he got older, Tesla said he learned how to control these visions and manipulate them to his advantage. His parents were both good at memorizing and encouraged Tesla to exercise his mind this way. He memorized poetry, long sonnets, and whole books. He could look at diagrams and remember every detail without ever seeing them again. He began picturing inventions in his mind in such detail that he would imagine the tiny gears and screws needed to build each part. He would test the invention in his mind until he was sure it would work in real life, and only then would he build a test model. The test models always worked.

Growing up in Serbia, Tesla attended the local schools and excelled in science and mathematics, but he was horrible in art class. His vivid imagination did not translate to paper, and Tesla never became good at drawing. Many of his inventions were never drawn out as plans. He simply built them from the idea he had in his mind.

One of Tesla’s first major inventions was an electromagnetic motor. It came to him in a vision. Like a flash before his eyes, he said he could see the with a friend in the park, and he immediately picked up a stick and drew his idea in the dirt. He knew it would work and would revolutionize how electricity was distributed.

When Tesla immigrated to the United States he went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison was impressed with the younger man’s ingenuity and asked Tesla if he could redesign the Edison company’s direct current generators. He told Tesla, “There’s $50,000 in it for you—if you can do it.”

Tesla took the challenge, and in a few months, he showed up in Edison’s office asking for his money. Edison told Tesla that he had only been “joking” and that he didn’t understand American humor. Tesla was furious and immediately quit working for Edison. For the rest of their lives, Edison and Tesla were enemies. motor. He was walking

Part of what angered Edison was Tesla’s pure genius. Edison worked with a huge staff of scientists to develop his inventions, while Tesla was mostly a one-man show. Tesla received 300 patents for individually unique inventions. These inventions included the first radio-controlled boat, fluorescent lighting, alternating current electricity, and of course, the lightning-shooting Tesla Coil.

Tesla even had the idea for cell phones way back in 1901. He spent nearly 17 years working on a huge tower that was to be used for wireless telecommunications. It was being financed by millionaire J. P. Morgan. But when Morgan found out that the power created by the tower could not be metered and sold, Morgan pulled the funding. Teslas dream of wireless communication died, and the world had to wait 60 years for cell phones to be invented.

With so many amazing inventions to his credit, the world was always anxious to learn what new ideas Tesla had cooked up. So when he announced that he had created a death ray, many people were sure he had. Others scoffed that Tesla was an old man who did nothing but feed pigeons and wander the streets mumbling to himself. He wasn’t capable of inventing a death ray.

Tesla even had the idea for cell phones way back in 1901, He spent nearly 17 years working on a huge tower that was to be used for wireless telecommunications.

TESLA THE LIGHTNING MAN

Tesla created the largest man-made lightning bolt In 1899, he sent waves of seismic energythrough the Earth to prove his theories about earthquake stations. As the energy rebounded, he added electricity and made a lightning bolt that was 130 feet high. The thunder was heard 22 miles away, and the meadow outside his Colorado laboratory glowed blue with the energy.

But when Tesla died in 1943 at the age of 86, the FBI ordered that all of his belongings be seized, Every one of his papers was taken and examined by the National Defense Research Committee. After reading the papers, the Defense Committee officially stated that Teslas thoughts and efforts during his final years were primarily speculative.

Once Tesla died, his great ideas died with him. He was the only one capable of imagining a death ray, or cell phone, and then creating it. Other people needed detailed plans. Did Tesla have the ideas for a death ray? Probably. But like many of his other ideas, they needed his genius to complete them, and Tesla’s imagination was so far ahead of his time that we are just now understanding his ideas.

QUIRKY GENIUS

Nikola Tesla had some odd quirks to his personality. He was obsessed with doing things in threes and would only stay in a hotel room that was divisible by the number 3. For the last 10 years of his life, he lived in room 3327 on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker.

He suffered from insomnia and claimed that he only slept for 2 hours a night, although sometimes he did take an afternoon nap. He hated jewelry, especially on women, and was so repulsed by human hair that he could not bear to touch it.

In his old age, he became obsessed with pigeons and spent hours feeding them and talking to them. Sometimes neighbors in his hotel would complain about the smell when he kept too many of them in his room.