μblog: engineering from the trenches

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

- Newton, 1676

Nikola Tesla was undoubtedly one of the greatest inventors of the late 19th/early 20th century and a true master of the magnetic field. Although Tesla’s 150 patents pale in comparison to Edison’s 1000, it was Tesla that suggested an alternating-current power distribution system and is credited by some as the proper inventor of “radio” communication instead of Marconi. One might think that a man of such scientific merit would have a single devotion, however, Tesla was also a poet, a connoisseur of food and wine and an excellent swordsman. As a side note, it is pretentious to cite Maxwell’s treatise on electricity and magnetism whenever electrostatics are mentioned. However, in the spirit of one-up-manship, Tesla’s patents on electrical distribution can be cited whenever 60/50Hz noise is mentioned in a paper.

( 1916_my_inventions.pdf ) ( talking-with-the-planets-1901.pdf )

( pat0416194.pdf ) ( pat0455068.pdf ) ( pat0455069.pdf )

( pat0685958.pdf ) ( pat0725605.pdf ) ( pat0390413.pdf )

( pat1061206.pdf <- Tesla turbine)