The Scientist from Croatia who did a favor for the whole world

There is an old Croatian saying; ‘The more languages you speak, the more you are worth’. We could add to that – the more you know about others, the more educated you are! So in future we are going to do our best to inform you about Croatia and related items of which we are proud. There are some famous Croats who have been valuable not only to Croatia, but to the rest of the world as well. And we won’t overlook its tourist features, nor the famous products, culture, sports, customs, and other features which might be of interest to you either. We were dubious as to what was the best article to put in our first issue, but the Croatian government resolved our dilemma by proclaiming the year 2006, the year of Nikola Tesla. Apart from the fact that he has done all mankind some great favours, and that we are proud of him for his Croatian origin, we should remember too that; each time we turn a computer on, we should remember this great scientist from history, since the alternating current is produced by Tesla’s three-phase generator, transformed by Tesla’s high voltage network, and Tesla’s solenoid produces voltage for the screen image. The wireless mouse too operates by the waves that were first produced by Tesla

In the writings to date about Tesla, often we see that he was “beyond his time”, or we can find references to his words expressing pride in his Croatian homeland and Serbian roots. Many try to elevate him saying he is an American, Austrian or Hungarian scientist, but the real truth is that Tesla was a citizen of the world, a man that does not belong to anyone but to everyone, a genius who was misunderstood and lived centuries in advance of his civilization.

Discord with Edison

The Croatian inventor, electro -technician and physicist Nikola Tesla was born in July of 1856 in the small village of Smiljan near Gospić, Croatia. His parents pressed him to become a priest but he resisted and attended the school of Technical Science Study in Graz. Later he would further his studies of Technical Sciences in Prague. For a time he was working as an engineer of the Telephone Company in Budapest. After that he became an employee of the Continental Edison Company in Paris. On a mission in Strasbourg in 1883 he constructed the first inductive motor. A year later, in 1884, he left for the USA and became an American citizen. His first employment in the USA was with the Thomas Edison's company, but the two inventors could not come to an agreement on the way of working, which led to an inevitable confrontation.

In May of 1885, Mr. George Westinghouse, Head of the Westinghouse Electric Company from Pittsburg, bought the rights on Tesla's patent on the multiphase system of alternate mobile dynamo, transformer and motor.

Soon after,(1887) Tesla established his own laboratory in New York, where he worked up till his death in 1943. There he finally invented the electro-magnetic motor, which was to become the basis for all the machines ran by alternate current. He continued inventing important items like high frequency electricity. In his lab he conducted the experiments with a shadow-graph, similar to what Wilhelm Röntgen was doing when he discovered the X-ray in 1895 (certain sources claim that it was Tesla who had contributed to X-ray discovery).

Apart from this he was working on a lamp with a carbon gadget and different types of light. In 1891 he invented Tesla's coil; the induction solenoid frequently used in radio technology. Two years later, in 1893, the Expo was held in Chicago, and Tesla was in charge of the illumination. He also supervised the construction of the power plant drive in Niagara Falls in 1896.

The full article can be found on pages 78-79 of January 2007 issue.