Tesla Fact vs. Fiction: Why the Public Perception is Wrong
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- Almost everything commonly told about Tesla is wrong! He didn't invent AC, he didn't battle Edison over AC vs. DC, he didn't even have a rivalry with Edison, he didn't want to give everyone free electricity and he wasn't a Physics genius! Referencing primary sources I can show you why we have such a perverted view of Tesla's real accomplishments and life.
If you want to read this as an article (with lots of references) click here:
kathylovesphys...
I have a lot of videos about different elements in the history of electricity, including:
Faraday discovering induction • How Faraday Made Elect...
The invention of generators: • Where Electricity Come...
Edison creating the light bulb empire: • Thomas Edison Biograph...
The AC/DC war: • Physics of "The Curren...
Hertz discovering radio: • How Heinrich Hertz Dis...
The Discovery of the Tesla Coil & How it Works: • How Does a Tesla Coil ...
Marconi Creating a Wireless Empire: • Who Invented Wireless?...
The lovely modern tesla coil movie comes with permission from Greg at hotstreamer.dea... He has some great advice if you are crazy enough to try to make some of these machines yourself.
And, as always, thanks to Kim Nalley for the great music.
If you want more details and are interested in WHY these myths became so popular: I made another video on the subject which you can see here: ruclips.net/video/kSyGFEjoYOM/видео.html
I also have a book on the history of electricity from 1580-today: "The Lightning Tamers" by Kathy Joseph
It's late now, but I will look at your link, because I'm also interested in how all that hype accumulates - like detritus in flowing water that collects around an obstacle. He is overhyped now, but he was a clever man. I just saw a RUclips heading about how Tesla understood the pyramids. I haven't watched it, but I don't imagine it will be 100% factual! More hype than fact - but who knows - maybe he designed them!
Nice link. I would recommend Hans Camenzind's book "Much Ado about Nothing." It's a summation of the history of our use of the electron and electrical engineering. No mathematics were harmed in the writing of the book, it is quite readable, and it was written by the guy who invented the 555 timer, which was a fairly significant integrated circuit, and possibly? the most produced IC of the 20th century. Meaning he knows something of what he is talking about.
Thanks very much, Kathy, I followed the link and listened to yout talk. History is never absolute, and there are always differrent opinions, and indeed, different versions of what actually happened. Even people who were there at the time and knew the characters would have had different opinions - but your talk was clearly the result of a LOT of research. It was well put together, logically structured, flowed well and stayed on track.
I'm retired, but at the beginning of my carreer, I did a NASA-sponsored course in electronic engineering, covering all aspects of space research at the time - radio, analogue and digital electronics, space physics, orbital mechanics, and, of course, maths - but also covered electrical engineering, and the college had a basement full of heavy motors and generators from the Johannesburg tram system, which had become defunct, and from the gold mines. I was studying how things worked, not who invented them - not the history of it all, as you have done, but I came across the names - Edison and Tesla among others, and was tangentially aware of them. As time went on, I heard more and more about Tesla that didn't seem true - and when I now see RUclips headings of how "Tesla understood how the pyramids worked" (in Egypt), it becomes more and more clear that he has been made the centre of some sort of cult - and cults are self-perpetuating. It was really good to hear your programme, which seemed to me as near factual as we're likely to get, undazzled by the characters, but not cynical or unkind to them either. It was a well-balanced summary, and though I don't know much about the historical aspects, your talk also corroborated what I already believed, especially about Tesla. The modern history of the adoption of the Tesla name by Tesla motors has put his name back into the spotlight, and goes some way to explaining the adoration of his modern-day followers.
I wonder what history will say about Elon Musk! He's another who is strong on self-promotion, and may be grabbing more of the lime-light than hsi share - though there's no doubting that he has made his mark. I just have a feeling that there are aspects of his story that he would rather not make public.
Thank you for the history lesson. I, too, fell for the myths & legends surrounding Tesla's life and work... mostly because I wanted to believe them. But I am pleasantly surprised to find this video and your channel.
Wow! Very revealing, especially since I'm from the Balkans, where he was born and where a "war" is led between nations on who does he "belong" to - don't remember any of this from school back then. I'd love it if you could share a link to that The Age of Electricity article, as I can't find it anywhere. Thanks!
Oh, and the link to the article doesn't seem to work, as I'd love to see the references...
There's a broader thought problem involved here. Nearly every great inventor or philosopher or whatever is thought of as being completely right about all their idea, or completely wrong about them. In fact, every great figure you could name throughout history had a couple of good ideas (at most) and then a whole bunch of others that were flat-out wrong. They aren't noteworthy in history for being "great" people who are always right, but only for having come up with those one or two good ideas. That's a distinction that more people need to consciously remind themselves of whenever considering the history of ideas.
I like the way you think.
Great comment. I think about this when thinking about Einstein's discoveries and gaffes but missed it a bit this time for some reason. I guess this video is trying to say not that he wasn't right but that what is quoted of him is, technically, wrong. But the problem of words like "wrong" is that it's incendiary and divisive which is what attracts our attention, and thus makes it more likely we'll make the mistake you described (and definitely a lot of the time).
I'd recommend 'Lies my Teacher Told Me: And Everything Thing Else My American History textbook Got Wrong' by James Loewen. He highlights how so many historical figures are whitewashed and made boring and how it happens. It's actually MORE interesting and makes their accomplishments seem more attainable for us as present day people when we know their fallacies and what they got wrong. It might be my favorite book of all times in terms of how it influenced the way I think
There is an even broader thinking problem in your comment. You include Tesla as a "great inventor or philosopher or whatever". Is he? The video is about what's wrong with the public's perception of him. It is not a judgment that he is completely right or completely wrong. There's no point in trying to "defend" him by saying he had some good ideas. Are the facts presented in the video false? If yes, then we have a problem. If not, then why the need to state the obvious? That nobody is perfect? Maybe because you want to salvage some of that feeling created by public perception? "Maybe he's not perfect, but he's STILL great, an imperfect hero." But the problem is that you would probably never think of Tesla the way you do if it weren't for him being singled out by some people as a kind of exotic genius and presented as a hero to propagate a certain ideology. If the facts hadn't been distorted, you might not have heard of him.
I run into this same paradox with art. I hear people say things like "movies are garbage nowadays". But really, movies are probably about the same quality on the whole, it's just that we remember the good ones and not the bad ones, so of course it seems like all the old movies are good. Oh course retrospectively it would seem that movies were better in the past.
Westinghouse was not only a brilliant engineer but a visionary & savvy businessman who took care of his workers. He holds gobs of patents that changed industry, many still used today in the railroad industry and natural gas distribution. It is an absolute shame how his contributions have been somewhat erased for a narrative. I can't count the number of times I've corrected people about the "current wars" over the last 25 years. Thanks for making this. Have a wonderful day.
People hate rich people and when comparing themselves to these rich people, it became very very convenient to lie to oneself that ones own paltry fortune is unrelated to ones own deficiencies, and then when they turn to certain people who do achieve more its very convenient to just say they didnt really deserve it and just boil it down to immoral corporate practices, or inheritance money, etc.
Westinghouse was different to Edison as the latter demanded all the patents of his staff, while WH allowed his engineers to benefit and develop their own patents.
While Edison ended up as the biggest individual holder of patents, WH’s legacy is said to have created more industry and innovation that spread the success amongst engineers who went on to create their own empires.
@@man.inblack George Westinghouse was the classic engineer's engineer and his staff respected that.
Should I take your word for it?
Or should I do my own homework? ... But I dkn't have time for it. :(
@@man.inblack He's a different person to Edison, but Westinghouse was the son of a machine shop owner, while Edison was struggling most of his early life to become an inventor. The reason why Edison was celebrated was because his story is much more of an "American story", but also because J.P. Morgan owns GE. Today, the anti-Edison narrative, a push back against American educational system and media putting Edison everywhere, is woefully misguided. The man had his flaws, but while he was a ruthless hustler, he's also a real eccentric inventor. After all, unlike the clean, intelligent Westinghouse and brilliant, popular Tesla, Edison was uneducated, ruthless, unkempt and a slob.
Very good video. I came across several of these documents myself some years ago when researching Edison, but I didn't feel like kicking this particular beehive. I'm glad you did though. We're all a lot more easily deceived than we realize, by both internal and external pressures.
Hey bro .
How u doin !
Nice to see you being active .
Really like your videos , never thought I'd ever discover a RUclips channel that's informative , practical and fun .
Loved your Starlite , and Calcium *somethin coating for cooling videos . Love the others as well .
I just thought I'd bother you ,.. seeing you here .
@@yasirrakhurrafat1142 Space goes after punctuation. Like this. Never before. Only after. Including, commas. But (parenthesis) are different. Treat them as their own word, kind of.
Even after... Three dots.
Even after: a colon
Even after; a semicolon
And so on...
@@aqua-bery
Sorry.. its kind of a force of habit.
( The putting space thing... )
My grammar or punctuation isn't up to par. I'll try to learn more, expand my vocabulary a bit, improve my punctuation. ( I'm quite dumb in general, an Illiterate Indian guy. )
I've not even graduated high school, dropped out.. I'm old.. .
( Not trying to guilt you. Just saying. )
Hopefully I'll try to be more involved.. someday. In some major ( breakthrough-esque ) things and make a difference someday.. hopefully.
Thanks!
Its a long tangent. I apologise for... Idk.. being so incompetent.
( Edited punctuation again .. *had to )
@@yasirrakhurrafat1142 hey it's ok. I'm sure it will all workout man!
@@aqua-bery appreciate you taking a moment to be wholesome.
Thanks bro.
I hope the best of the best for you too!
"Tesla's devices are a gateway drug for many electrical engineers, and that is not a small thing." I do love it
I am an Electrical Engineer. Tesla's devices apart from the AC Induction Motor are a complete waste of time.
@@seanm8030 Yeah, I remember most of our elec professors ripping into most of his devices...this lady is another non-applied physicist...it's all about the concept (even if it's not realistic, viable or possible).
Mr. Danforth 374 If you want to talk about things Tesla had nothing to do with or had peripheral involvement in, such as radio, the fluorescent light, or high power transmission, go right ahead. That's rather what I am talking about. Seems like this would not be the place to do it, Id recommend starting another thread. If you want to talk about things that are truly useless like the Tesla coil or high frequency AC whatever that means, go right ahead.
@@Lancia444 I don't have a problem with people liking Tesla or with the author of the video. What I can't stand is people saying he's some wonder genius that invented infinite power transfer or whatever. He didn't. Infinite power transfer is not possible.
"Tesla's lab notes are a gateway to many abilities some consider unnatural."
We have turned Tesla into a Merlin-like figure who fills a need for Secret Knowledge That The Man Is Concealing. He was a great electrical engineer, a not-so-great businessman, and a profound eccentric.
Almost everything commonly told about Tesla is wrong! He didn't invent AC, he didn't battle Edison over AC vs. DC, he didn't even have a rivalry with Edison, he didn't want to give everyone free electricity and he wasn't a Physics genius! WHAT THE FUCK MY MIND IS BLOWN. LIKE A FAULTY BATTERY.
I would like to say one thing though…….! Why did the CIA take all his material after his death?
-and why was his tower taken down in a hurry? -
Surely instead of demolishing it - you would have just disassembled it and sold the materials on to a respective buyer? - or maybe they were troubled about the possibility that this inventor maybe on to something???
I think we are all swayed by the so called facts and maybe a little disinformation was added just to enhance flavour of making him appear to be an eccentric.
Human beings seem to be drawn to ridicule like a moths drawn to light!- because it gives them something to do and makes them feel just!!!
The fact is he was not an in your face kind of guy nor a bully! just quirky with fanciful ideas, but ideas with purpose, had he been left to his own devices and given the financial backing he deserved, then maybe we would be honouring a different legacy…..???
Anyway JP Morgans legacy ain’t pretty!!!!!
@@Jonodrew1286 he piss of JP morgan as inventor, so inventor take tower by money. (coper very expensive in that era)
Seems funny that in America, they are now using mini Tesla Towers, what gives, maybe they knew the implications and wanted to shut him down and brand him a madman failed inventor🤔
@@Jonodrew1286 Where may I see one of these mini Tesla towers?
i was a young man lecturing people on how misunderstood and brilliant Tesla was. general knowledge overtime tempered my attitude. this video brings a mystic fantasy masquerading as conspiracy back into reality. thank you so much.
Tesla was never that brilliant and never misunderstood. He was simply not that relevant. To any electrical engineer the dude is a foot note at best. No discipline within electrical engineering, except one type of high voltage source in high voltage engineering (ergo: a niche application), uses any of Tesla's "inventions" and Tesla was literally overrun by Europeans. All the innovations happened in Europe hammerblow after hammerblow while Tesla sat on an irrelevant North American patent. At the same time a much brighter guy, Michail Doliwo-Dobrowolski, chief engineer at AEG, invented three phase AC generation, transmission, and distribution, and AEG became the global market leader for electrification.
We may be a little disappointed in having some favourite myths "busted" but it is far more satisfying to see credit given to the ones that deserve it. Thank you Kathy.
She is cancel truth portion of cancel culture.
@@jasonlawson8619 what?!
@@bluetoad2668 He's saying his childish emotional religion was violated. The fragile Nikola Tesla cult has been an obvious farce for many yrs.
@@Mrbfgray Ya, your right. Tesla only had like just under two hundred patents to his name. What a hack! Just a question for you. Do you have any patents to your name Bo!? One could wonder, how the crazy "Nikola Tesla" could complete so many accomplishments. Hmmm......🤔
@@hexstar8576 jesus, look at this tantrum, he starts with sarcasm, proceeds to ad hominem and finish with ad absurdum.
My Dad was an electrical engineer specializing in control systems for AC motors. He's long argued that Tesla's gotten more credit than he deserves, but he's never taken the time to explain his assertion. Thanks for doing so!
Thanks. I have been "battling" this nonsense for years now...
Ole Nikola has somehow jumped from being unjustly unknown 15 years ago to become some kind of absurd pop-science comic superhero... it's fascinating. And exhausting.
So…exhausting
I have a sinking suspicion a lot of exhausting people just found out about him more recently.
And are more likely to only know a finite amount and possibly only what others have told them.
What I find exhausting is the new fanboys that know little of him or his experiments speaking as if they have been studying him for years.
I suspect it's due to the "making electricity free" so people view him as a martyr for the "anti-capitalists."
@@sol-hunter2332 Tha'ts part of the mystique, sure
Nobody remembers the Death Ray :(
:D
@@YouFallenforit i suspect we will get a more accurate consensus amongst the general public in a few decades, because to me it feels alot of fanboys are overcorrecting for him beeing ralatively underplayed in the us until recently
It is so very time consuming to skip summaries and read all the relevant Original sources. But this video is an excellent example of how important it is for someone take on the research burden and share her findings, to improve our access to accurate history. Thanks Kathy.
Thank you
I have that same feeling in the pit of my stomach as when I learned that the Santa Claus I loved so dearly was actually my grandfather dressed up in a homemade Santa suit.
hello... spoilers! my christmases will never be the same knowing your grandfather is sneaking into my house and eating all my milk and cookies!
Your grandpop is Santa that is so cool
That your grandfather? That means your grandfather is my father. HFS!
@@madero-jb5ri his grandfather is my father too... hi brother
Are you related to Michael Jackson? Just wonder since his mother kissed Santa Clause.
Hey Kathy. I just want to say that as a physicist I really appreciate all the work you put into this channel. While my focus is on advancing out knowledge into the future, the history of science is grossly underappreciated and is incredibly important to developing a stronger understanding of why we do things certain ways.
Thank you so much for combatting this nonsense. The worst thing about this whole Tesla vs. Edison pop culture meme is that people have come to despise Edison, who was a brilliant inventor and Entrepreneur who overcame a disability to make significant contributions to history.
In the twitter, Tesla is a wizard and Edison a thief. The Elon Musk influence in this is horrible
They were both brilliant in their own rights, there’s no need to pit them against each other for some fairy-tale like battle
The left rewrite history to discredit Edison. He was being portrayed as a greedy white capitalist who abused his minority workers.
why did tesla emigrate to the US in the first place, and whose lab did he use twice, later on?
edison built a business by himself, and had employees and businesses relying on him to provide a service.
then theres the westinghouse deal with making lightbulbs and ignoring patents "until we recieve the court order to stop making them..." unbeknownst to his pet "lab rat"...
the money he blew at colorado was invested to do something entirely different... make a better lightbulb.
the whole nonsense about three, yet he didnt even develop 3 phase beyond one generator that i am aware of, and that wasnt for any practical application but merely yet another one of his little devices for the lab...
Being from a physics background, and having noticed over the last several years what has seemed to be a sort of "stealth PR campaign" to promote the idea that Tesla was an unsung genius who has been jilted by history, I found myself often wondering what was behind all of it. All I knew of Tesla up to that point, was that the mks unit of magnetic field strength was given his name, and that he invented that thing with the sparks flying everywhere, that appears in all the old monster flicks (but not to be confused with the van de Graff generator).
I'm glad to see someone has gone to the trouble to ferret out the truth of the matter. Thank you, Kathy.
Fred
They’ll probably tie Tesla into what physics is needed for FTL travel. They’ll blow up a ship & discredit Tesla. Science will stop looking for FTL.
Well, I don't blame Tesla for believing relativity is a pseudoscience. It took me a LONG time to accept time dilation as even remotely possible.
It appears he was still gifted.
@@thegroove2000 Oh yes, no doubt! But he suffered from lack of knowing what it was that he didn't know.
Fred
It's not hard to see why. Everyone who has fringe ideas about technology and wishes to promote them or products or services based on them has an incentive to dig up other examples of outlier technologists whose ideas were unjustly shoved aside. If it can be established that Tesla, or Wilhelm Reich, or some other pioneer who got carried away with hirself and went beyond the bounds of their own competence actually had "it", then why listen to skeptics about other technologies?
On this very channel I've brought up a radio pioneer who tends to be ignored and whose theory was wrong, but who actually did devise and demonstrate a somewhat workable (verified independently by experimenters many decades later) radio telegraphy (and later telephony) system in 1865. It was a technologic and financial dead end, but had it been taken more seriously at the time, it likely would have sped the development of the field. Sometimes people with the wrong ideas can honestly produce results "by accident", but that doesn't mean they had the magic touch or that we should be contrarian in all our thinking. It still usually pays to bet "the chalk" against overoptimistic suckers.
I don't think we can say that tesla was terrible at physics: he has some inventions involving fluid mechanics that are fascinating to look into, namely the tesla valve and the tesla turbine. The tesla valve acts like a valve but contains no moving parts, great for reducing failure, and the tesla turbine uses fluid viscosity to generate power and is used nowadays as a pump for viscous fluids like sewage.
It can be said the reason his fluid mechanics stuffs are so strange and great IS BECAUSE HE IS TERRIBLE AT Physics. Physics at that time can't explain how his invention works ... (funny as it sound) neither can he. Tesla was a man with ideas ,money to spend and most important of all: the motivation to spend them. He just make them, modify them to make it work and then leave the rest to scientists.
Although I can think of one weakness of both these valves and turbines, which is the existence of very tiny spaces where even tiny amount of deposits or changes in the geometry of the cavities (e.g. calcium and dust) would greatly diminish their efficiencies. This means more frequent maintenance and thus downtime
Tesla clearly didn't understand wireless energy !
"spooky action at a distance" well I guess Einstein was a terrible physicist.
@@de0509 unless there's a simple solution that can be added to it the clean it out without it being that difficult
I’m an autistic 14 year old with a special interest. Learning about scientists (not science in general) keeps my attention. This video intrigued me a lot! I love learning about scientists like Michael Faraday (I love him, I nearly gasped when you mentioned him), Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, etc. I have been meaning to learn more about Tesla so thank you ^^
April, I’m glad you liked my video. I have made a lot of videos about Michael Faraday - I am a big fan of his as well. Good luck in your studies
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics thank you, I’ll make sure to check it out!
@@deathsee ???
@@deathsee "watching click bait, from a person with an agenda ..." What is her agenda?
@@deathsee I mean…you could at least elaborate
WOW, that was amazing Kathy. I always wondered why Telsa went down the wacky rabbit hole of wireless transmission, but understanding his rejection of some fundamental physics really puts it into perspective.
Indeed an analog of how Tesla understood the Physics of Electric could be compared to someone understanding technology just before the tube era and someone understanding the Semiconductor era. It's that different . He also still believed in the either.
He went mad. Batshit crazy, in fact.
Much like another famous man who uses the word Tesla!
@@Chris.Davies who else?
@@BartdeBoisblanc You can believe in the existence of the luminiferous ether and reject Einstein's theories and still utilize physics quite nicely _if_ you stick to low velocities and short distances. Tesla went through university physics courses, and modern physics wasn't universally recognized as being all that vital. Most elementary college physics courses barely touch Einstein or the ether even today.
Neither Edison nor Tesla understood or cared about radio waves because radio and electric power were widely-separated fields at that time. Edison made a primitive vacuum tube but couldn't think of a commercial application for it, and it's likely that Tesla was aware of Maxwell's equations and perhaps Hertz' work, but neither thought about wireless communications much. (It's surprising that Edison, who had a deep knowledge of telegraphy, wasn't interested in wireless.) It all had to wait for Marconi, Armstrong, and others to pursue radio.
@@markkinsler4333 As always, hindsight is flawless. I don't think Tesla was all that crazy when it came to his ideas about electrical transmission through the air, but his vision was not perfect, but if can get past the Einsteinian blinders look enough to take an open minded look at the Electric Universe and it's understanding of Birkeland currents and electrical transmission of power between planets and suns, Tesla looks a bit more attuned to reality. I predict the James Webb telescope is going to cause far more consternation to NASA than it will to Wal Thornhill.
I don't remember being taught anything about Tesla when I learned science at school. We were taught about Edison and a lot about Faraday, and I've always been confused about all of the fascination that the public and media seems to have with Tesla
Tesla groupies cannot name a single other electrical engineer.
"Tesla was the smartest man who ever lived!"
*Koff*John Von Neumann"*Koff*
I wish Faraday got the kind of deification Tesla had received
In a way I do too because Faraday was so amazing but In another way I’m glad he’s not revered as a god because he would’ve hated that he was a very humble man who did not like adoration or undue attention.
Faraday's name is all over physics textbooks while Tesla's name is only mentioned in physics textbooks when talking about the SI unit of magnetic flux. That, in my opinion, is real deification, not some temporary internet hype.
Nobody should ever be deified.
Interesting. Faraday was experimenting with Chromite, and saw its potential for alloys decades before anyone else.
Having an basic electrical unit named after you is pretty high praise. That's like having an element named after a famous chemist.
I like very much in your videos how you can be a deep critic to someone, but also recognize one's great accomplishments and put all of this in historical and human perspective. This kind of balance is sweet and I don't think at all that the very much needed popularization of scicence needs to be sensationalist to attract people, in fact, people are attracted by twisted plots and complex narratives.
Sure, she is not the decended or relative of Edison the theif.
Tesla has a mixed history, but he is not alone. William Shockley, the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor, later became an ardent believer in eugenics and white supremacy. So you think you know a guy...
@@democracyforall Prove it
It’s great to come across a YT channel that puts the myth of Tesla in its right place.
This is the stuff all electrical engineers know from academic study but RUclips has its own armchair professors who through the empty clanging and reverberation of self assured dunces become more ignorant than the day they were born.
Bravo!
Same as with the Tesla brand and Musk who highjacked it to sell his snake oil.
@@johnnycash4034 The Venn for Musk fan boy and Tesla fan boy is pretty much a circle...
@@johnnycash4034 _"highjacked it to sell his snake oil"_ - He backed and sacked, which isn't unusual. He then SUCCEEDED. That IS unusual. "Snake oil", I suppose, is the suggestion that an electrical economy will stop your descendants from dying in wars brought about by mass starvation, mass migration, caused by global warming. That's too hard for you to deal with. Well, your ideology is _my_ snake oil. I celebrate the distance between us.
@@anullhandle _"The Venn for Musk fan boy and Tesla fan boy is pretty much a circle."_ - The enclosing circle is ENGINEERING SCIENCE, which is truth, not opinion.
Resenting reason and truth is a destructive trait of humanity. Grow up.
@@tonyduncan9852 No problem with science or engineering it's fan boys that swallow the hype that's annoying. Still a chuckle when they get their panties in a bunch. Thanks.
Tesla didn't invent AC but he popularised it so much that people believe he invented it, just like people believe james watt invented steam engine when he didn't actually.
If you go through the technical know-how of wireless electrical transmission through earth and air, you will find that it was actually free energy distribution, because even if 100 receivers receieved 100 watts each (100x100 in total) the one transmitter would still be consuming 100 watts, he was not sending electricity wirelessly, he was creating a situation (rapid (very high frequency) ionisation and de-ionisation of air at nano scale under miles of radius from tower) so receivers would induce (not receive) the same amount of electricity.
He could light bulbs with one wire because air was ionising and deionising rapidly and bulbs small capacitance was enough to hold opposite (to wire) polarity of charge momentarily until the cycle is reversed.
He has patents showing harnessing cosmic rays, he created a motor that ran on cosmic rays.
Even though he didn't create AC, but he was a genius and an electrical wizard.
I am wondering who is funding you to spread lies and defame tesla?
Must be big oil corps.
"created a motor that ran on cosmic rays"
Yeah, right 🤦♂
SATAN
In the late 90s, I had an assignment that wanted me to evaluate a page on the Internet if it was fact or fiction. It depicted these myths as fact. I easily saw that they couldn't be true then. I was quite surprised to see how much the myths spread since then.
Tesla wasn't as crap a physicist as you say, though he wasn't a modern man of science either. He invented a very interesting practical turbine pump, no small feat, in a manner very similar to the way he envisioned the rotating fields that led to his practical AC motor. That's some impressive brain power. Tesla sold his patent(s) to Westinghouse, but when Westinghouse couldn't pay he tore up the contract. So he really *_gave_* them to Westinghouse. He wasn't a striving businessman, for sure! And broadcast power does work - it will illuminate a neon tube with no direct connection to the power source. I used to be a sign maker, we did it in the shop for fun and tube testing. But it suffers from the same inverse square law that the transmission of light or radio suffers - you have to be very close. In general, impractical and unfeasible on scales much smaller than Tesla was imagining. And the earth *can* be used as part of a circuit as anyone who has built a crystal set knows, but not in the way - much less the scale - that Tesla was envisioning.
it is not broadcasting tho, if the objects are very close they are literally interacting with the magnetic fields around the conduit. Look up veritasium's video of how current is actually transmitted.
@@ArseneGray I've seen Veritasium's vid, but he is talking about the transmission of current through a conductor. That's different from broadcasting, but broadcasting is still interacting with electro-magnetic fields. When you pick up a radio station from a hundred miles away, you are receiving the variations in the magnetic field at a particular frequency (if it's AM) and it can be measured as a voltage, even though the conduit (using thousands of watts in a cable sent to an antenna) is a hundred miles away. That's broadcasting.
@@ThePeaceableKingdom Actually you can equally well can receive variations in the electric field.. The only thing that reacts to the magnetic field is a ferrite rod or a eire wound into a large coil. Using the electric field in all sorts of different antennae is far more prevalent.
@@rogerphelps9939 It's the electro-magnetic field. Magnetism creates electric fields, as Faraday showed, and as it does in an old fashioned car generator. And electricity creates magnetic fields, as demonstrated a decade earlier by by Oersted. The coil has a resonance depending on the diameter, length, guage of the wire, number of turns and many other factors, that selects and excludes and intensifies the received signals. That's definitely broadcasting, when the source is hundreds or thousands of miles away. But broadcasting _usable amounts of power,_ as Tesla imagined, would require enourmous energy being pushed out and it would be very dependent on distance. Increasing the distance arithmetically decreases the power received geometrically.
@ThePeaceableKingdom, inventing something and being a good physicist is not the same. It may overlap, but not always.
Tesla's most important creation was AC-DC, I saw them live a couple of years ago and my ears are still ringing
But why is the government take his notes and whatnot?
Shhhhhhhh!!!!!!!........let this gatekeeper get her scooby-snack from the powers that be who know trying to contain the Truth on the internet is racking leaves in the wind - shhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!🤫............
Your presentations are so excellent and thorough and cover the interesting facts so coherently. I have always admired Tesla for his electrical engineering prowess, and believed in some of the myths until reading further about him and discovering some of what you reveal here. I think he is still to be admired as having a genius years ahead of his time in some respects, but it is good to have a realistic view of his contributions rather than myth.
I recall a quote from Tesla that was somewhat critical of Edison's trial-and-error approach to development of technology which he attributed to Edison's lack of formal training.
Edison was more of a thief than anything else.
What video games did you hear about Tesla in lol?
Probably played red alert and built Tesla coils
Red dead two 😔
Hearts of Iron 4.
The game was called Tunguska. 🤪😳
Call of duty
I just can’t understand how the name “Tesla” had more panache and historical staying power than “Zipernowsky-Blathy-Deri”.
Power of the propaganda machines work on social media.
Distorting the truth & magnifying the small truth out of proportion to make their chosen hero to a worshiping grade.
I think the best assessment of Tesla was that he was very savvy as an electrical engineer. His refinements of a few handful of existing designs helped the developing field of electrical generation toward but didn't change it profoundly. The more far-reaching concepts he had that could have profoundly changed humanity all came to failure. His imagination surpassed the reality of his capacities in those instances. He deserves praise, but not unwarranted deification.
So wrong lol
Jdm: “His imagination surpassed the reality of his capacities”. I would say: surpassed the reality of physics.
Thats only an opinion. Fortunately historically the facts which the vast majority don't bother to look at are there for the finding. If an opinion is sourced solely from someone else's opinion then its still just that, opinion, and that by the way is perfectly OK as long as it is never put forth as fact.
Sebastian de Ferranti, British, has as much a claim over AC as anyone else and designed the *world's* first electricity generating station (1887, completed 1891, Deptford in London) that's recognisable as being similar to today's (with 11kV to substations) but never gets a mention.
Gracias. Lo voy a buscar y trataré de difundirlo
I always found it disturbing that Edison electrocuted dogs, horses, and even an elephant just to discredit a rival
This was in the day when people believed that god placed animals on the Earth for us to use as we see fit. It was before we appreciated animal rights, or indeed developed much respect for other creatures.
Westinghouse was a brilliant engineer, Edison was a pompous ass who took advantage of people whenever possible so it's not really surprising.
@@Chris.Davies Contemporary beliefs have no bearing on morality. That just means his excuse might have been that others were fine with it, in no way absolving him of any guilt. If consciously torturing animals is immoral today, it was immoral yesterday and will be tomorrow.
@@Chris.Davies which we still hardly do, just see factory farming
@@oiytd5wugho Morality is relative.
Thank you for this upload. I've been saying yhis for years, but if you make any comments of this nature on the pro myth RUclips channels you get verbally assaulted by the Tesla fanboys who believe Tesla never made a mistake or wandered down the wrong technical rabbit hole!
What a great example of how history can become twisted over time.
Half that shit was twisted right off the bat! Still happens these days: People believe what they want to believe, truth be damned!
perhaps, history as it is taught, cannot be trusted unless there are also counterpoints?
@@JayDee-b5u the math and physics claim is not accurate. I’ve seen pages on pages of his notes that aren’t widely available. He just didn’t publish research papers in a way that we would have a vast array of his theoretical works. Most of his writings left that are even being shown to the public by the museum are for his patents and/or articles he wrote for widely publicized magazines. Through the Tesla turbine R&D I do I have acquired a lot of documents of his that come directly from the museum. Not to mention I am proving that the Tesla turbine (what everyone said cannot work because it either has to be spun to fast to work or it “doesn’t get any torque” both are abysmal lies) actually does work if you know how to design and optimize the key parameters for them. already showing a peak of 2.75kW and 6.22ft-lbs torque at 4150rpm with just 150psi compressed air. As well 1200watt continuous electrical load outputs all the way down to even 65psi. All from a plastic and cheapo aluminum version. 😂 There’s just as many examples where the critical points in his work have been misunderstood, and also faked about what he has actually done, as there are examples of him actually producing legitimate work.
Hell his DC generator alone, patent 406,968, was major improvement upon the faraday disc to eliminate any need for a sliding contact at the periphery and make it effective to put many faraday discs in series while having mind numbingly high max current capacities, as well as low ohmic loss within the unit, because of the massive increase in electrical contact area for current to flow.
His lightning protector patent 1,226,175 (that does the exact opposite of what everyone thinks it does) was genius yet everyone sleeps on it. Not to mention how bastardized people have made what they think Tesla coils are supposed to do because people only ever show them arcing off the top despite the fact that they are NEVER supposed to arc of the top to work properly and the torus dome on the top is literally designed to reduce electron densities on its surface, not encourage arcs, so that it can be brought up to much MUCH higher voltages to eliminate discharges and leakage of electricity into the air, in the identical way that the lightning protector patent works.
Tesla’s fountain patent 1,113,716 was an entirely novel and new way to get the most efficient way of bringing water up to a height to be splayed out into a shower requiring the least amount of energy to keep the water flow in full motion. With the properly designed basin to recoup any falling kinetic energy to continue the flow, and a height of 18 inches it only requires 30watts to keep 100gallons per minute in flow. This equates to the most efficient way to swirl water around to work as an air to water heat exchanger. Giving up the least amount of energy to keep cooling water in flow for steam turbine systems is PIVOTAL to efficient overall operations.
Even his non-dispersive energy projector is another novel way to essentially put a van degraff generator on steroids, with his vacuum bulbs with single pole mini-lightning protector umbrellas inside them that are meant for going all around the top of the dome allowing it to be brought to upwards of +50million volts without arcing off, and fully pneumatic system that works to charge the top dome via the circulation of a non conductive gas using his pump at high speed, instead of a motor spinning a nonconductive band to work as the charge transporter. (Coincidentally the letter head that he had commissioned an artist to make for him for the wardenclyff tower enterprise actually had the bulbs depicted all over the top dome too)
Furthermore there’s an entire book put out by the museum called “the unresolved patents of Nikola Tesla” that has a myriad of his patents that either got turned down or never completed. There are some amazing ones in there. He literally applied for a patent for a way to cause rain that he was denied. He actually and effectively designed a way and system to cause rain from induced lightning strikes but, and this is what’s written by the patent clerk who denied his patent, he was denied the patent because in the patent Tesla says this happens regularly in nature during lightning strikes but even though he could artificially induce them “you can’t patent a process that already happens in nature”
Even the article he wrote “Our Future Motive Power” is a brilliant example of his vast thermodynamics understanding for high and vacuum pressure Rankine steam generator systems and a vast array of the viable power generating capabilities from low grade heat sources.
There’s SOOO much more to what he did than just the handful of electronics stuff that everyone talks about, while they also still get flippantly wrong.
@@JayDee-b5u you’re very welcome! And I got my copy from Amazon, although now I’m wondering if I’m also missing 300 pages lol sadly it’s certainly not cheap though. They know they are re the only ones with those documents so they have blown their price up. And I’m not even getting commission 😭😂 it’s just such a good book that I think everyone should hear about it. Don’t expect their to be some super duper secret stuff in there though. It’s definitely got a lot of worthy goodies but there’s no like anti-gravity stuff or anything 😂 I would also suggest picking up the “complete us patents of Nikola Tesla” book of you get your hands on it cheaply. Not that you can’t find all the patents in there individually online but it’s a very well put together in order collection of his works. There’s some lesser known ones in the back of that too. But to be clear it’s only the US patents. There’s SOO many more that he applied for in other countries. Specifically everyone think he patented the turbine in 1911 and then just did nothing with it because it never went anywhere. But he did 10 years of R&D and then in 1921 patented 4 improvement patents and “hid” some more improvements in another one for the Tesla turbine that EVERYONE sleeps on. Patent GB 186,082 (improved construction of turbine disc stack), GB 186,083 improved design for a multifluid (steam + combustion) turbine with a thermal recoup boiler for the still hot exhaust not utilized for power out in the turbine is used to raise more steam and warm the boiler feed water before leaving to drastic any increase the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the system. GB 186,084 another multi fluid combustion steam superheater heat exchanger for superheating the steam just prior to going into the turbine and then a special coaxial design nozzle for admitting the two motive fluids into the the turbine at the same time such that the steam constantly pulls a low pressure on the combustion exhaust nozzle going into the turbine to maintain the flame front propagation forward and prevent flame out that is again meant to be able to utilize the vast majority of the thermal energy dumped into the already steam because none is given up to the latent heat of vaporization. And GB 174,544 Is a hybrid Tesla Turbine direct on shaft with a bladed parson turbine for max thermodynamic efficiency usage of superheated steam that the blades turbine couldn’t handle at the time and utilize, (even inefficiently first using the extremely hot steam with a Tesla disc stack prior to being admitted into a bladed turbine, that can’t be taken that high of temps, still gets a higher efficiency then not having one there.) Then lastly he has other improvements to the turbine nozzles and exhaust hole sizing tucked away in one of the two Aerial apparatus patent 1,655,114 that was his very last patent.
As well if you’re interested in Tesla turbines there are recorded videos of the power outputs I was talking about before that are on the RUclips’s that you can see as proof too. Lots of them.
The Non-dispersion concentrated energy projector device paper he wrote and his expose of the 4 part inventions he designed to improve the performance of the van degraff generator is also a really good read. He as well goes through all the math for the basic proofs of even just a modest sized unit and just how fast it can accelerate projected ionized matter. Because of how high of a voltage the dome can reach (because of the special vacuum lightning protector bulbs eliminating the possibility of arcing off), a 2.5meter radius dome of the bulbs charged up to 60million volts can be brought into electrical contact with a neutral conductive small bb in a nozzle at the high vacuum section (the dome and the bb equalize voltage potentials, become the same 50million volts from a minute current, dump of electrons from the dome onto the bb) and be accelerated away from the dome down the length of a 15cm barrel kept in high vacuum, at a rate where the charged metal bb goes from 0m/s to 16,300m/s within just the length of the 15cm, high vacuum, barrel….. 🤯
I would also highly suggest reading “The problem of increasing human energy” by him as well. It’s a great read.
One of the most fascinating ones to read and really quite hard to wrap your head around is “Notes on a Unipolar Dynamo”. It’s kind of a side paper to his DC generator patent 406,968 about a special case faraday disc type generator thats just an utterly tantalizing dive into new potentials of the faraday disk type generator.
@@CharlieSolis oh dang! Dropping fact bombs!
AC is better for arc lamps because the electrodes burn off on both sides. With DC, the positive electrode is consumed faster.
Years ago, Tesla wasn't really in the public concious and not heard too much by the general public, it seemed. When the myths started coming up, I was young ate it up and assumed he was decades ahead of his time. However, at some point, I got the impression that Tesla's accomplishments was probably a collaborative effort since the stories of him only started coming out relativiely recently. Thank you for this video. I now feel more informed and see who credit should be given to for certain discoveries. Although, I find it funny that of all the myths that got busted, it was the pigeon one that was the only one that apparently was not a myth.
Surprised how wrong I also were. So thank you for enlighten me with real facts and not all these myths. The importance of fact check can’t be overstated.🎸😊
This vid was debunked Klaus
@@Neil-Aspinall debunked by who. The whole Tesla myth needs to be debunked.
@@tedrobinson372 Mr. Robinson I will not do your research for you. Good day to you Sir!
@@Neil-Aspinall I have done the research and the information cited in this video was accurate.
Tesla's accomplishments have been overblown. Cheers.
@@tedrobinson372 The authorities want Mr. Tesla written out of invention history and you are buying into it Edward.
It should be noted that the animals killed in the War of Currents demonstrations were largely, if not entirely, performed on condemned animals. The common way of disposing of dogs at the time was by strangulation or drowning. Thus a quick zap was seen as being much more humane. In fact it was the SCPA which provided at least some of the animals, and it was the SPCA that suggested (though not to Edison) that "Topsy" the Elephant (who had killed at least one, possibly other people) should be killed quickly. Edison had nothing to do with Topsy's electrocution, which occurred more than a decade after the War of Currents concluded.
Very interesting. However, I am pretty sure that Brown's electric deaths were pretty gruesome as he specifically did them to demonstrate how horrible AC was (there were reports of how viewers were appalled). But as you said (and I think I included in the video) the elephant was not killed by Edison and had nothing to do with the war of the currents. Also, the electric chair was pushed because a doctor thought it would be more humane.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics What we consider a quick humane execution would certainly be considered shocking to someone who had never seen death administered so instantaneously and certainly.
@@jamespfitz Besides, the times were different. Our understanding of how painful a zap can be was still somewhat limited and humans are always in constant learning.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics Kathy,I believe topsy was killed by Edison,Edison even filmed it.
@@johngellard1187 Nope, but that is easy to be confused about. Topsy was killed by his owner as the elephant had killed a person. Edison's film company then decided to film it as they knew people would like to watch an elephant die (gross). Edison didn't kill Topsy nor did he get involved in the decision to make that film and it didn't have anything to do with the war of the currents. However, Edison put his name on the film so it certainly seemed that way to many people.
This is one of the best science channels on youtube. It's so well done.
As for "free" electricity, this seems a very odd idea to me. I should think that all electricity is manifestly free. It's moving it to where you want it that costs money.
Tesla did not believe in free energy and explicitly states it in many of his writings. When he’s talking about “free energy” he means “monetarily free” energy and vast sources of energy all around us that we can tap into, like Niagara Falls for example. This is yet another bastardization of what Tesla actually said and believed.
Thank you very much for this. At the moment the link to your wordpress site for the associated article just takes me to a "Coming soon" placeholder page. I'd like to read the article, if only to get to the references.
I'm glad you uploaded this. I can't tell you how many times I've suggested that Tesla wasn't all he's cracked up to be, only to be told that I'm an ignorant fool who should do some research... which is annoying, because I did considerable research to arrive at my conclusions.
I will note that the primary source of the wonders of Tesla come from Tesla's autobiography. I would say that this source is not reliable.
Unfortunately, many Tesla fans simply refuse to consider anything that might refute their ideas. Maybe it's because Tesla is a hero to them, and they can't bear the thought that their hero was actually just a human being...
It’s all such a shame because the tesla coil in particular is so cool and inspires so many people to study electrical engineering and then it turns into this cult of personality.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics My physics Lab at high school had one a Tesla coil you are right it made me want to become an electrical engineer
How many patents of his are using to write your message? He is all he is cracked up to be, even if you only consider the contributions he made to the poly phase system. I do agree with the misunderstanding pointed out in the video, but that's only the genral public making these assumptions.
@@darrinseelye2091 Name one Tesla patent used to post to the Internet.
@@craigtevis1241 Well first there is a technicality here, patents expired in about 17 years at the time. Nikola Tesla contributions to the Polly phase system sums up your question though. One of high importance being that of his contributions to the reciprocating engine. Patents are always being modified for better practices, and obviously engineering has come a long way sense those original patents. Oh and yes he is all he is cracked up to be, and we should all be praising the godfathers of our modern society. Kathy's chanel from what I have seen has done a credible job giving credit were it should be given, and I'll probably go crazy watching all her videos.
Thank you for separating fact from fiction. I’ve often wondered WHY a car company would go so far as to name their company after him when, in my observations, few if any components of the car sprung from his mind.
I think it's because Tesla is a cooler name than Farraday.
Just found this excellent presentation on You Tube - thanks for a cogent, sensible report based on primary sources - the best way to get to the truth. I graduated from Shimer College where we used primary sources and Socratic method discussion classes - very enlightening. As a retired middle school Earth Science teacher, I value folks promoting science in an honest. open manner - so I subscribed. I feel you gave Tesla his true place in history without diminishing him. Please keep up the good work.
Randomly stumbling across a video about Tesla on RUclips where the creator doesn't think he's some kind of god is as rare as hen's teeth, yet here we are. Fantastic stuff!
This video mirrors what I have told people for years. What’s weird about Tesla is that it’s just this century that the history about him went all wacky. As someone who was aware of Tesla and his accomplishments long before that, it was really weird to see him go from “guy who invented a practical AC motor” known by nerds only, to “techno wizard visionary” revered by quacks and laypersons.
It is the inherent desire of humanity to see a down-trodden genius (good powerless man) triumph against evil corporation (bad powerful men) with nothing but intelligence. The classic David vs. Goliath match up. NO ONE ROOTS FOR GOLIATH!
The trouble is that David usually loses. And why we find these stories easy to believe.
@@Chris.Davies Yes, I think you’re right.
What’s a pity about it is that the quackery may end up overshadowing (and thus calling into question) his actual achievements, which were still significant. (I mean, we don’t name SI units after people for nothing.)
I first heard these myths in the 80s and 90s-Tesla was conspiracy theory fodder because these myths supported the idea of “The Government” or “Big Corporations” suppressing scientific knowledge that would benefit mankind. They were plausible because there have been examples of scientists facing obstacles thrown up by business interests threatened by scientific, medical, and engineering research.
I don't think you appreciate the importance of the practical AC motor. It changed the world almost more than anything.
@@robertv4076 Nonsense. Nothing in my comment claims disagrees with that.
That Alleluya praise of Tesla has got also me suspicious so I thank you very much for showing that the reasons for lifting him up as a mistreated genius are very obscure. The blaming of Edison did hurt me personally because my first school lecture (nearly sixty years ago) was about just the great inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
I think a lot of the Internet hype comes from only hearing the cool stuff, and little things getting ramped up to make it cooler. This is the story I heard first. That said, I think that the seed of the stories is that if his underground transmission worked, even if the intention was not to make it free, how would it be monetized? With wires, it is possible to track to amount of electricity a home uses, how do you do that when it's going through the ground? That is why people jumped to "free". I think Tesla was in it for the discovery and didn't care so much about that part.
Nice work I always thought after reading many books on Tesla both Esoteric and Pedestrian that people were conflating Tesla's inventions with Mysticism. Thanks for confirming he was not a fake but an eccentric who held on to ideas that had be proven wrong. His actual contribution to the modern world is something to admire.
esoteric and pedestrian people turned Tesla's biography into a cult of personality
@@backslash68 Exactly, well said. This gullible people ultimately doesn't know genuine inventions that have been contributed much our society today since all are being eclipsed by the fake image promoted by the social media propaganda.
“‘Tesla’s developments are a gateway drug for many electrical engineers.” That is a an acknowledgment and tribute that reverberates like a symphonic crescendo. Magnificent phrasing.
Thank you!!
As a physicist, I have always seen the comparison of Tesla to Einstein a sign of a total misunderstanding of the contributions of both. Tesla was a player in the "wild west" of early electrical engineering He was a very clever engineer and made some interesting and lasting contributions to the field. Einstein, using the discoveries of Maxwell and Planck, made some of the greatest contributions to our understanding of the universe in all of human history. There really have been only a handful of people in history whose contributions are comparable to Einstein.
James Maxwell deserves all this attention that they give this average scientist Tesla. Einstein said, 'I stand on Maxwell's shoulders' and had it not been for Maxwell, there wouldn't have been an Einstein and a mediocre inventor like Tesla wouldn't have become the poster boy of Tinfoil heads.
Did you see my video on Maxwell? And how about Faraday? (Einstein had drawings of both guys on his wall)
Oliver Heaviside is an unsung hero. The current expression of Maxwell's equations were simplified by him from 20 ugly equations to the four that we know.
I remember in high school hearing and believing the narrative of Tesla, up until a history teacher of mine told the class that everything surrounding Tesla Vs. Edison was either overblown or untrue. I still believed in the narrative a little because, as I recall, my teacher didn't go into detail as to how and why it was unfounded. In bad faith I assumed that he was espousing a narrative of his own that falsely painted Edison in a good light. Even though I still wanted to believe the story, I didn't believe it with all my heart as I did before because I respected that teacher too much to think he would make a claim like that without doing his homework. I put it out of my mind until watching this video, and I'm glad to see he was right, and I know a bit more about what really happened with the development of electricity at that point in time.
The video is good and you make good points, and I agree on them. Tesla absolutely needs demystification. But while maybe you have time constraints when making videos, at 9:13 it seems a little bit superficial to say that "Tesla wanted to electrify the whole Earth, so he could input energy at one spot and remove it anywhere else in the world". These are the kind of sentences that makes one sound crackpot and silly, biasing the public in a negative way.
It is not good for a physicist (or engineer as well) to fly over the real mechanism this man envisioned. It's true that Marconi did transmit wirelessly and his method "works", Tesla never denied this, he simply told that this is a lossy method that was uninteresting to him. Tesla transmitted what we consider regular radio signals many years before Marconi, according to many sources (the most importat being the book "On his Works.... by Leland Anderson"). Instead, Tesla wanted to irradiate electromagnetic energy **INSIDE** the ground, looking to get reflection on the opposite side of the planet and thus, owing to constructive interference, estabilish a standing wave with nodes and antinodes on the whole planet. Energy could be "removed" only on those voltage antinodes and NOT "anywhere else in the world". This method would also be nearly lossless. This specificity should be clear to a physicist like you, I mean, electromagnetic reflections on transmission lines, dielectrics, metals, etc are common knowledge.
The fact that this nuances never get mentioned (in this video too) makes me wonder if really the method is understood to his core or not, even by highly educated content makers like you. Anyway, to conclude, one should say that nobody ever replicated a transmitter such powerful to be able to reach the opposite side of the planet and able to get reflections, so from an engineering point of view his claims remain **UNPROVEN** until someone tries again with modern equipment end measurements. On the other side, standing voltage waves on dielectric materials are easily achieved with small scale Tesla coils from everybody willing to try some experiments in their backyard, so I wonder if more instructed people and scientists are aware or not of these feats easily accomplished even by amateurs.
This is brilliant Kathy. It has been a nonstop battle to tell the world who the real Tesla was because of all of the blind faith people have in the endless nonsense that has been published. Even the most successful and unique of Tesla's ideas were brought to light by other people who were inspired by him and that had the wherewithal and focus to develop something to completion. He was an important person in history - I have an entire museum based around him - but the serious advances were made by other people who simply honed in on any one of those ideas and made them practical. The more you dig into this history, the more interesting it gets - and especially with GE, I even have letters of Edison promoting AC because of Elihu Thomson's work, post GE of course, but in complete contradiction of the "popular stories" or fairy tales littering the place...
Thanks Jeff, I have to see your museum some day. Have. To.
Well said. Most importantly Original Source Material was used! Bravo. I have always said Tesla was a brilliant inventor. That is different than saying someone was a brilliant scientist. Neither Tesla nor Edison had great degrees of rigorous formal scientific education. I think Edison's greatest invention was the Process of Invention, the application of the effort of significant numbers of engineers and dollars to solving engineering problems.
I agree with you 💯 I think Edison’s invention of the factory of innovation is also part of why he is so vilified today. We have a hard time with not either lionizing or vilifying our scientists and inventors when the truth is often in between. Fun fact, Edison once saw his employees reading a calculus book and wrote on it “this way lies madness”.
Tesla did get formal scientific training in both mechanical engineer and physics. He attended Technical University at Graz and University of Prague. He just never finished all his classes at one university to get his piece of paper that said he has a “degree”. He was far more formally educated then Edson was.
I’ve personally seen pages on pages of his notes that have plenty of maths that aren’t widely available plus many that are. He just didn’t publish research papers in a way that we would have a vast array of his theoretical works. Most of his writings left that are even being shown to the public by the museum are for his patents and/or articles he wrote for widely publicized magazines. Through the Tesla turbine R&D I do I have acquired a lot of documents of his that come directly from the museum. Not to mention I am proving that the Tesla turbine (what everyone said cannot work because it either has to be spun to fast to work or it “doesn’t get any torque” both are abysmal lies) actually does work if you know how to design and optimize the key parameters for them. already showing a peak of 2.75kW and 6.22ft-lbs torque at 4150rpm with just 150psi compressed air. As well 1200watt continuous electrical load outputs all the way down to even 65psi. All from a plastic and cheapo aluminum version. 😂 There’s just as many examples where the critical points in his work have been misunderstood, and also faked about what he was actually doing, as there are examples of him actually producing legitimate work.
Hell his DC generator alone, patent 406,968, was major improvement upon the faraday disc to eliminate any need for a sliding contact at the periphery and make it effective to put many faraday discs in series while having mind numbingly high max current capacities, from low ohmic losses well as low ohmic loss within the unit due to the massive increase in electrical contact area for current to flow.
His lightning protector patent 1,226,175 (that does the exact opposite of what everyone thinks it does) was genius yet everyone sleeps on it. Not to mention how bastardized people have made what they think Tesla coils are supposed to do because people only ever show them arcing off the top despite the fact that they are NEVER supposed to arc of the top to work properly and the torus dome on the top is literally designed to reduce electron densities on its surface, not encourage arcs, so that it can be brought up to much MUCH higher voltages to eliminate discharges and leakage of electricity into the air, in the identical way that the lightning protector patent works.
Tesla’s fountain patent 1,113,716 was an entirely novel and new way to get the most efficient way of bringing water up to a height to be splayed out into a shower requiring the least amount of energy to keep the water flow in full motion. With the properly designed basin to recoup any falling kinetic energy to continue the flow, and a height of 18 inches it only requires 30watts to keep 100gallons per minute in flow, only needing to make up for the slight friction losses once the fountain is in motion and has a toroidally “fluxing” angular momentum (a torus/donut spinning about major radius like a traveling smoke ring vortex does) This equates to the most efficient way to swirl water around to work as an air to water heat exchanger. Giving up the least amount of energy to keep cooling water in flow for steam turbine condenser systems is PIVOTAL to efficient overall operations.
Even his non-dispersive energy projector is another novel way to essentially put a van degraff generator on steroids, with his vacuum bulbs with single pole mini-lightning protector umbrellas inside them that are meant for going all around the top of the dome allowing it to be brought to upwards of +50million volts without arcing off, and fully pneumatic system that works to charge the top dome via the circulation of a non conductive gas using his Tesla pumps at high speed, instead of a motor spinning a nonconductive band to work as the charge transporter. (Coincidentally the letter head that he had commissioned an artist to make for him for the wardenclyff tower enterprise actually had the bulbs depicted all over the top dome too)
Furthermore there’s an entire book put out by the museum called “the unresolved patents of Nikola Tesla” that has a myriad of his patents that either got turned down or never completed. There are some amazing ones in there. He literally applied for a patent for a way to cause rain that he was denied. He actually and effectively designed a way and system to cause rain from induced lightning strikes but, and this is what’s written by the patent clerk who denied his patent, he was denied the patent because in the patent Tesla says this happens regularly in nature during lightning strikes but even though he could artificially induce them “you can’t patent a process that already happens in nature”
Even the article he wrote “Our Future Motive Power” is a brilliant example of his vast thermodynamics understanding for high and vacuum pressure Rankine steam generator systems and a vast array of the viable power generating capabilities from low grade heat sources.
There’s SOOO much more to what he did than just the handful of electronics stuff that everyone talks about, while most also still get flippantly wrong.
@@CharlieSolis yes, very true. Tesla had a good theoretical foundation. It would interesting to know if he would have finished his degree(s) if his father had not died! Tesla’s EM training was just not at the same level as Hertz or Maxwell.
@@CharlieSolis thank you Charlie for pointing to specific patents! I am not familiar with these. I often wonder what was lost in his terrible fire of 1895.
Not many on RUclips go back to primary sources and go beyond the retelling of well-told stories. Thanks for the depth and insight into who Tesla was and was not.
Mostly lies- Tesla rejected a Nobel prize (never awarded) Tesla was cheated- when he charged Westinghouse $170k for his patent which did not even work well, then the old somebody once asked Einstein what it was like to be a genius- ask Tesla nonsense. Plus his time machine, death ray and being responsible for just about everything today including mobile phones and the internet. The Tesla fan boys just want somebody to identify with as a 'cheated' genius.
As I understand it, many of the primitive radio transmitting and receiving circuits used early in the development of radio worked much better if grounded. I suspect this was a major factor in leading Tesla to conclude, erroneously, but not unreasonably, that the signal was transmitted through the ground, rather than by electromagnetic waves.
That is a good point. Still, engineers at the time quickly discovered that the Earth isn't such a great conductor after all. I think Tesla simply ignored this because it didn't agree with his ideas.
The radio circuits themselves don't need to be grounded. Antennas for the very long wavelengths used for early communications were grounded so the earth be used as the other element in the antenna, in a manner similar to the way that the earth was used to as the return conductor for telegraphs and power lines. Antennas for AM broadcast radio are still made this way.
Tesla was sure the electrical resistance of the earth could be somehow tuned out if he could broadcast power at the earth's resonant frequency. It doesn't, and can't, work that way.
Common, how he made wireless remote controlled boat? Obviously he was aware of how signal is transmitted. And he made Tesla's coil, so again he is absolute aware what's going on there.
@@joshicune it's fundamentally possible to get a lot of mileage out of brute force and ignorance. A lot of accomplishments we have today, the insight was gained due to incessant tinkerers from centuries ago discovering something unexpected, and eventually science caught up with an explanation.
Tesla was just like many other brilliant people who did not work or play well with others. However there are still many single-wire ground-return grid systems used worldwide, especially in rural areas, that use a single insulated high voltage transmission wire with individual pole mounted transformers at their service drops, and that use the ground as the return path for the other half of the circuit. It definitely looks odd seeing a single conductor on the utility poles! The reason for grounding all electrical circuits, but especially communications, is to prevent the buildup of static charges that can reach thousands of volts and cause damage to equipment and signal interference.
Very good video, I appreciate the effort of correcting the hype that goes around one guy. One thing I'd point out, you contradict yourself at 4:48 when you say 'Tesla didn't independently invent', when at 3:53 you said the opposite, and based on the video the first statement seems to be true.
12:38 "Tesla was a wizard of electricity." (Merlin II)
An elecgician!
That was interesting, thanks. Yes people do love the rivalry story.
Ironically there was evidence as electricity began to be used in the home that AC was indeed deadly, for a time. Before standards for installation, use, and manufacturing of safe products began to be adopted, there were a lot of fires and electrocutions in private homes. Who knows, maybe Edison was privately saying “I told you so” :)
As an electrician, I have a hefty respect for all voltages and types of current, but especially DC current. If you complete a circuit with your body, the current flow can cause your muscles to contract and cause one to grip onto an electrified object. AC current goes to 0 volts 60 times a second, which does allow for the possibility of our muscles to react and pull away. DC current will just hold your muscles in a contracted position. According to the history told by the IBEW, one of the reasons the IBEW was created was to protect early electricians who were being killed at a prodigious rate by all forms of electrical power, and the early workers had to develop the safety protocols and practices to protect themselves and others. The reality has always been that DC and AC are equally dangerous, it is the voltage that matters. Up to 24 volts is generally much safer regardless of it being AC or DC, but do not count on it.
In an age of disinformation, this web site is gold
I'm late to the party but I always thought Tesla's contribution during the war of the currents was to provide Westinghouse a working polyphase motor. As you mentioned that was a big problem with early AC systems. I thought Tesla come up with the mathematical benefits of 3-phase power. I had not realized the co-invention of 2-phase.
Thanks for taking the time to set it strait. Your contribution to history is absolute.
Another fiction is that the coil with a sticky-up single electrode you picture is a Tesla coil. It's a Oudin coil.
Wow! Thanks for sharing this with us. I love history - especially the history behind the technology we use (and take for granted) every day. You have enriched this geeks life.
Glad you enjoyed it
People today just love to wipe it out for Nikola Tesla, like they're rooting for some underdog sports team, and then shun Edison like he's the singer of some boy band that went out of style. It's so funny to me
It's funny how internet is filled with "Tesla the god vs Edison the devil" bullshit
Tesla also rejected modern physics despite the evidence already there in his time. He also didn't believe in subatomic particles. He even considered the EMWs propagate through ether. The man trashed Einstien's theory of relativity. At his later age, He invented his own version of physics, which was absolutely pure pseudoscience. He was an engineer who was good at making devices from elementary scientific ideas that others had already discovered years ago.
This should be required viewing in public schools, to reverse the misconceptions so rampant in the world today about Tesla. And once having rejected such misguided thinking, perhaps young people would reverse the current popularity of believing every claim they read and every advertisement they see. We need more critical thinking and less ignorance, to make best use of our lives and especially of government by representative democracy.
I always appreciate people who ACTUALLY study rather than THINK they study by just reading what others believe. And isn’t it just like our modern era to put fools and buffoons and thieves and liars upon pedestals, and vilify the real producers and genius. Great report.
Myths are fascinating truths for lazy, who satisfy their curiosity with incomplete incorrect unverifiable falsehood.
Thank You for your efforts. 🙏🏻
I could listen to you all day! That's a very hard task, cause my brain runs at a million miles an hour and my attention span is that of a fruit fly. Keep up the great work!!!!
The "free energy" comes from the fact that it would be basically impossible to put a rate on using wireless electricity (via a huge Tesla coil) to the masses, while conventionally they could charge people per kW hour (as they still do)...which is why JP Morgan decided to end their contract towards the end, as he could find no practical way to use the technology to make money.
Also, while Edison was certainly a profound inventor, the majority of his patents were created by the inventors he had working for him at his company. There is a huge misconception that he was this super human inventor that created so much, but in reality he had a staff of over 100 who were creating all of these inventions for EGE; including Tesla. Edison didn't believe in Tesla, so instead he found an investor who did - Westinghouse.
I, too, did some biographical research into Tesla last year and came away understanding that he, at best was great at self promotion or, at worst, he was a charlatan. A collection of his articles in a thin volume entitled "My Inventions" left me knowing that the only real invention was himself! Thank you, Kathy, for your excellent line of videos.
Wiki: "On 11 March 1888, Ferraris published his research in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin (two months later Nikola Tesla gained U.S. Patent 381,968, application filed October 12, 1887. Serial Number 252,132). " This shows that "Tesla did not independently invent electromagnetic motor" ???
No, but the other evidence cited does. That only establishes a time frame
@@jamespfitz "Other cited evidence"" proves nothing. Quite a number of others were working on motor designs. Tesla borrowed his designs from Galileo Ferraris, who never patented his own designs. All Tesla did was patent his own particular designs.
4:24 I believe I need to take issue with your conclusion that Tesla "... didn't independently invent AC poly-phase current."
Just because 2 people had the same idea and came to the same conculsion at the same time, doesn't mean they didn't do it independently.
I'm an Electronic Engineer and Software engineer with 12 published video games. I can't tell you how many times I've seen code by others that matched the code I wrote. Or the times I've been working on a problem at the same time as others and 2 of us had the exact same idea and execution.
It's more common in the world of electronics, because in software, the possibilities are as boundless as your imagination, in this case, their conclusions are limited by Faraday's law of induction among other things.
It's disingenuous to not give credit to Tesla for "independence" of thought without direct evidence.
Also, on the patent, it doesn't matter who built it "first" what matters is who registers it "first." That's also the basis of copyright law.
I think geniuses are perceived in many different ways. I understand these are facts regarding Tesla and his life. Tesla wasn't scientific and he obviously got many of his ideas from predecessors. However, we know that Newton, one of the most scientific geniuses in history, spent much of his secluded hours searching for irrational riddles in the Bible and Einstein's still dominant ideas directly derived from Newton's work. I think the point is, Tesla, as an egotistic and unscientific man and as you stated at the ending, was without a doubt "a wizard in electricity".
Kathy, another great video. You have done what most of us have not - you read Tesla’s writings and have done your proper research. I am guilty of just parroting the fables of Edison Vs Tesla wars when it really was between Edison and Westinghouse (George who btw seemed a really decent human being - a father figure in his day). Thanks for the info.
You know, I too was guilty of spreading misinformation about Tesla before I read his original work. We can't research everything! Glad you liked the video BTW.
he had a great moustache and beard,ngl.
The biggest problem with AC is that voltage and current are shifted out of phase by induction from motors, making it necessary for power companies to use banks of capacitors to bring them back into phase.
10:33
"His ideas were well, nonsense"
Indeed they were, but people like to eat up modern myths
Thanks for your research. This was very interesting and well made.
I just wanted to say that I hope these hundreds of aggressive comments attacking and mocking you don't affect you. You should ignore those, since the writers don't even put 1min of effort into them, and are aimed to just ridicule.
Be proud of what you have done here!
this is the first time i've heard any talk against Tesla's credit. i guess we tend to root for the underdog
No this is just inaccurate misrepresentation
@2009G8Gxp wym
That's probably why the conspiracy wingnuts like him.
@@XXXXXX-dy5fs it’s not a conspiracy
@@rivieres2401 So it's an accurate representation.
Where was the Internet when I did my undergraduate? I am an EE but I think i have learned more from this lady than all of my professors combined! Practical and easy to understand. Thank you! Plus, it is kind of weird but I swear Tesla and stories were all underground until about 10 years ago. Bnow there are so many stories, right and wrong.
That’s either a raving endorsement for this channel or a derisive criticism of your university. Or both. 😊
Its an odd way to end the video. That the takeaway is that he inspires engineers. I think the takeaway should be all the inventions that he did in fact patent which are mentioned throughout the video.
I...did not expect to see his use of equations to be that...tortured. Was it really that he was an electrical engineer wizz that could create some astounding machines through intuition, but when it came to a base understanding of what he was using, he really did come up blank?
I'd done my own research before, and came up completely empty on anything involving him wanting electricity to be free, and knew his tesla tower simply couldn't work, and was squandering a LOT of the money that was invested in him. But I had no idea just how sloppy his working and understandings were. I really need to read some of his writings one of these days.
Wow, I had believed all of these myths. You have performed an immense service, not only for society, but for me. Yes, Tesla no longer seems to me to be such a magician of physics, but my faith in Edison had restored. Sorry, Edison, thank you, Kathy!
A bit disappointed that you didn't mention how many years later the patent office reversed its decision again and Tesla won the Edison award (I believe after his death). But otherwise, very interesting to hear the truth, especially when concerning Edison and Westinghouse.
So we were taught wrong all these years until a youtuber bring it up?
Didn't Albert Einstein himself complimented Tesla on his findings, when people told Einstein how does it feel like to be the smartest person in the world, Albert Einstein said that he didn't know and that we should ask Tesla instead. Tesla thought that Einstein's general relativity was wrong because Einstein didn't take into consideration of the presence of the Ether. Also Einstein felt a little uncertainty when it came to his discovery of his general theory of relativity. Tesla was an experimenter of electricity, could it be that all his experimenting done over the years opened him up into a whole new way of seeing the Universe?. I wouldn't say that he was only an inventor, he was also like a mystic who was able to see far beyond anyone else.
So, that quote where Einstein said that Tesla was the smartest person in the world has not been validated but it totally could have happened and non-ironically at that. However, even if Einstein did think that Tesla was a genius it doesn't take away from a single fact in my video. Yes, Tesla could have been a mystic who saw that all of modern Physics is bunk, but then you have to think that all of modern Physics is …. bunk. In no way do I think that Physics is complete or infallible, but I think much is validated by experiment and time. Also, some of Tesla's comments (like the *we can increase human energy with good hygiene and religion* or the *let's electrify the atmosphere to light up the night*) are not scientific facts they are just mysticism.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics
Yeah you're right the quotes have not been validated. Although, most of Tesla's mysticism does actually make sense. He always looked at things in terms of vibrations, frequency and energy. I would say that Tesla had a way of thinking which was that he always thought about things clearly instead of deeply. I feel as if physics haven't caught on to the point of explaining all of this. Physics always explained about phenomena's occuring in the Universe but Nikola Tesla included us human beings in how we perceive and interact with the Universe in terms of vibrations as part of physics. I guess, we will only know with time and furthur experimentation if Albert Einstein's theory of Relativity was right or wrong, or if there was some bigger explanation to all of this. Also, i think that the conflict between westinghouse, Edison and Tesla mentioned in this video is right. Tesla wasn't very much involved in it. The real riot was between Westinghouse and Edison. Thank you for making this video because people always viewed Tesla as being the victim and Edison being evil. We shouldn't look down upon them, they were both great inventors whom managed to uplift the quality of humanity.
@@rochanajayakumar8308 time to time einstein's theories have been proved right . don't forget he disregarded electrons , his credibility over physics is not much
In Europe, Mikhail Dobrovolsky and AEG developed first three-phase induction motor in 1888 and patented in 1889. In following years they develop three-phase transformator, squirrel cage three phase induction motor, delta and star connections and first complete modern three-phase system. System is displayed in Frankfurt back in 1891 and since then began to spread all over the world.
Meanwhile in US Tesla and other enginers were stuck in making Tesla two-phase motor practical.
Funny thing is that today, people credit Tesla for three-phase tech even though he has zero connection to it 🤦🏼♂️ Even Wikipedia... wrong informations. Both Tesla and Ferraris motors were two-phase.
@@UKimpress I think your comment was supposed to end up somewhere else lol
@@UKimpress That motor in video is made by Mikhail Dobrovolsky lol, that is the 3-phase motor i mentioned above , even those guys gave credit to Tesla 🤦🏼♂️
@@xdmilos1 will check it out
@@xdmilos1 HI sorry my friend, I was just copying my comment everywhere:))), dont like this ladies attitude. Hey... I am actually Polish and I once heard something about a Polish guy contributing to polyphase .... do you know that the Prussian guy Steinzmetz ... I mention in my comment actually studied in wroclaw - Poland ...Yeah, I copied my comment in yours but thanks to your comment foudn out about Dobrovolsky ...
As I agree with most of your points, the points around Marconi don't really fit all of the way in what I've found. Marconi not only patents of teslas but he literally used parts that teslas company manufactured. While tesla was in Colorado and heard the infamous Martian message, it was Marconi's test with the us navy. He heard it because it was the exact frequency. We have a few reasons to believe that tesla had far more knowledge of the transmission of radio than Marconi, he just was more interested in transmitting power wirelessly. Marconi was denied his patent until the patent clerk was finally switched out. I fully agree with everything else in this video, but not Marconi.
😀
Nice Job. I agree that he was a wizard and exceptional mind in the early field of synchronous machines and resonant circuits. He was a gifted inventor. He certainly enjoyed the limelight.
As an electrical engineer I wondered of Tesla's command of mathematic modeling. Regardless, like many creative people that I've worked with, he did advance the practices and machines of the time by his inventions; great achievements for an individual.
When it comes to myth or falsity #4, I find it kind of admirable and pragmatic to research into at least "cheaper" commercial electrical alternatives to the widespread standard ones built from pricey COPPER wires. Free electricity always was too good sounding to be true even solar electricity. The truth sounds way better to me than the widespread antigovernment and anticorporate rumor behind #4.
That 1/2mv^2 thing really blew me away. Somehow, it's hard for me to imagine, it almost seems like an early deep fake. It doesn't seem reasonable for any sane minded technologist to hold such a psychotic definition of mass.
The following quote about marriage, children and religion might mean that his idea of "mass" was "people piled up in a church".
@@IlBiggo I wonder also if this was his trying to explain it to the layperson, rather than what he actually believed.
on one part he seems to be making fun of Kinetic energy, then in the next, an example of mass with full understanding. I think there was more to his comments than meet the eye, not the rants of someone that was making fun of mathematics. I feel this was misrepresented by our host on this occasion... Otherwise, yes. Tesla was not the man we have displayed to us by the media. One can find his own quotes from the period in which he dispels anything smaller than an atom as make believe (Yet we used to watch electrons hitting the inside of a vacuum tube every time a new episode of M*A*S*H came available...
Because Tesla was not physicist, just a brilliant electric engineer. When he started to write about physics he went outside his competence area.
@@arctic_haze I dunno about that. As an electrical engineer I had to learn a bunch of physics. Much of the new physics being discovered seldom is accepted by concurrent scientists or academia. Only two or three scientists of his day understood Einstein's theories.
Finally - Thank you! I've read some of Tesla's writings and I got the impression of a fairly bright engineer who got things done because he obsessed about AC and resonance but I never got the feeling of a physics genius.
Thank you. I'm really tired of hearing these web tales about Nikola Tesla being a Physics genius, wronged by the greed of Edson and capitalism. He was a great engineer, but he lacked a theoretical basis. And he also had a disturbed personality.
I think that "thinking relativity is pseudo-science" was quite normal back then. There was good reason to be skeptical. 2/11/23
OMG! I’m an electrician, most of what I believed about Tesla was wrong. Thanks for your research and posting. Knowledge is power.