The inventions
What he saw first
Six of Nikola Tesla's ideas, one at a time, with the piece in your hands. Switch on the rotating field, bring the lamp to the coil, steer the boat by radio, blow on the turbine.
The phases are off.
1882 · Budapest
The rotating magnetic field
As a student in Graz, Tesla told his professor that a dynamo could run without a commutator. The professor said that was like chasing perpetual motion.
In February 1882, walking through Budapest's City Park at sunset with his friend Antal Szigeti, he suddenly saw the principle: a magnetic field that turns by itself. He drew the diagram in the sand with a stick. In 1883, in Strasbourg, he built the first prototype in his spare time, and it worked.
“The glow retreats, done is the day of toil; / It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring…”- Patent
- US 381,968
- Patent
- «Electro-Magnetic Motor»
- Filed
- October 12, 1887
- Granted
- May 1, 1888
What it changed
It's the basis of the polyphase AC induction motor. In July 1888, George Westinghouse licensed his polyphase patents.
The lamp is off.
Move the lamp toward the coil: the sparks reach for it and it lights up on its own.
1891 · New York
The Tesla coil
It's a resonant, high frequency, high voltage transformer. Between 1889 and 1895, in his lab on South Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, Tesla used it for his high frequency and wireless lighting experiments.
He lit wireless lamps just by bringing them into the coil's field. He showed it at Columbia College in May 1891, and in London and Paris in 1892.
- Patent
- US 454,622
- Patent
- «System of Electric Lighting»
- Granted
- June 23, 1891
What it changed
The coil and the transformer carry his name. Since 1960, so does the SI unit of magnetic flux density: the tesla.
1893 to 1896 · Chicago and Niagara
Alternating current goes out into the world
At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, open from May 1 to October 30, 1893, Westinghouse won the contract to light it with alternating current. Tesla and Westinghouse showed the polyphase system, including a 500 horsepower generator.
That same year, the Cataract Construction Company chose Westinghouse's polyphase system, built on Tesla's patents, for Niagara. The Edward Dean Adams Power Plant started up in August 1895, with 5,000 horsepower generators.
- 500 HPthe polyphase generator in Chicago, 1893
- 5,000 HPeach Niagara generator, 1895
- 40 kmto Buffalo, 1896
What it changed
It was the first large AC power plant. On November 16, 1896, the current reached Buffalo, about 40 kilometers away.
Steer it with the arrow keys, the buttons, or by tapping the water.
1898 · Madison Square Garden
The teleautomaton
At the Electrical Exhibition at Madison Square Garden in New York, in 1898, Tesla showed a boat steered by radio. He called it a teleautomaton.
Nobody touched it. The commands came through the air, down its mast.
- Patent
- US 613,809
- Patent
- «Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles»
- Filed
- July 1, 1898
- Granted
- November 8, 1898
What it changed
It's radio remote control, in 1898. The Zagreb museum rebuilt it from the patent for its demonstration room.
1901 to 1917 · Long Island
Wardenclyffe
In 1901, J. P. Morgan put up $150,000 for a telegraph and worldwide wireless transmission station in Shoreham, Long Island. The plant was designed by Stanford White's firm.
The tower stood 187 feet tall, about 57 meters, with a 68 foot dome. In December 1901 Marconi sent a signal across the Atlantic, and Morgan didn't put in any more money. Work stalled around 1904 and 1905. In 1917 the tower was torn down and sold for scrap.
What it changed
Today the site is the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe: the land was bought in 2013 through a crowdfunding campaign.
Hold the button, or swipe fast across the turbine: the air spins the discs.
1913 · The turbine
The bladeless turbine
A stack of smooth, parallel discs, packed close together on a shaft. Not a single blade: the fluid drags them along by the grip of its boundary layer.
It never caught on commercially. The Zagreb museum has a model in its demonstration room.
- Patent
- US 1,061,206
- Patent
- «Fluid Propulsion»
- Filed
- October 21, 1909
- Granted
- May 6, 1913
What it changed
A machine that turns with no blades at all, just smooth discs: the idea lives on in the patent and in museums.
Around 300 patents
In 26 countries, 112 of them in the United States. On June 21, 1943, five months after his death, the US Supreme Court recognized that his patent US 645,576 had anticipated the tuning that Marconi's patent relied on.
- 300patents in 26 countries
- 112in the United States
- 1960the tesla becomes an SI unit