19 Dec Nikola Tesla Inventor of the electrical power that our low voltage landscape lighting systems operate on
By Mike Gambino
The Low Voltage Landscpe Lighting industry has a debt to pay to not only FB Nightingale, whose classic Garden lighting book, Myself and Mark Carlson added content to and republished, but to Nikola Tesla as well. Our low voltage landscape lighting systems primarily operate on AC or alternating current technology that powers our transformers that power our lights.
Tesla is the father of high frequency high voltage electricity which is used today in radio and other communication devices. Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was the genius who lit the world, whose discoveries in the field of alternating polyphase current electricity advanced the United States and the rest of the world into the modern industrial era. Nikola Tesla had 700 patents in the US and Europe. Tesla’s discoveries include the Tesla Coil, fluorescent light, wireless transmission of electrical energy, radio, remote control, discovery of cosmic radio waves and use of ionosphere for scientific purposes.
Talk about work ethic, according to Wikipedia- Tesla worked every day from 9:00 am until 6:00 p.m. or later, with dinner from exactly 8:10 p.m., at Delmonico’s restaurant and later the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Tesla would telephone his dinner order to the headwaiter, who also could be the only one to serve him. “The meal was required to be ready at eight o’clock … He dined alone, except on the rare occasions when he would give a dinner to a group to meet his social obligations. Tesla would then resume his work, often until 3:00 a.m.
Although born in Croatia, Nikola Tesla was a New Yorker, who lived and worked in New York City almost 60 years and died at Hotel New Yorker, in Manhattan, on January 7, 1943.
The electrical current wars
Edison’s lamps were weak and inefficient when supplied by direct current. This system had a severe disadvantage in that it could not be transported more than two miles due to its inability to step up to high voltage levels necessary for long distance transmission. As a result, a direct current power station was required at two mile intervals.
Tesla pointed out the inefficiency of Edison’s direct current electrical powerhouses that have been build up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The secret, he felt, lay in the use of alternating current, because to him all energies were cyclic. Why not build generators that would send electrical energy along distribution lines first one way, than another, in multiple waves using the polyphase alternating current principle?
Direct current flows continuously in one direction; alternating current changes direction 50 or 60 times per second and can be stepped up to vary high voltage levels, minimizing power loss across great distances. The future belongs to alternating current.
Nikola Tesla developed polyphase alternating current system of generators, motors and transformers and held 40 basic U.S. patents on the system, which George Westinghouse bought, determined to supply America with the Tesla system. Edison did not want to lose his DC empire, and a bitter war ensued. This was the war of the currents between AC and DC. Tesla -Westinghouse ultimately emerged the victor because AC was a superior technology. It was a war won for the progress of both America and the world.
Tesla introduced his motors and electrical systems in a classic paper, “A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers” which he delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1888. One of the most impressed was the industrialist and inventor George Westinghouse. One day he visited Tesla’s laboratory and was amazed at what he saw. Tesla had constructed a model polyphase system consisting of an alternating current dynamo, step-up and step-down transformers and A.C. motor at the other end. The perfect partnership between Tesla and Westinghouse for the nationwide use of electricity in America had begun.
Light – Of course he didn’t invent light itself, but he did invent how light can be harnessed and distributed. Tesla developed and used florescent bulbs in his lab some 40 years before industry “invented” them. At the World’s Fair, Tesla took glass tubes and bent them into famous scientists’ names, in effect creating the first neon signs. However, it is his Tesla Coil that might be the most impressive, and controversial. The Tesla Coil is certainly something that big industry would have liked to suppress: the concept that the Earth itself is a magnet that can generate electricity (electromagnetism) utilizing frequencies as a transmitter. All that is needed on the other end is the receiver — much like a radio.
Radio — Guglielmo Marconi was initially credited, and most believe him to be the inventor of radio to this day. However, the Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patent in 1943, when it was proven that Tesla invented the radio years previous to Marconi. Radio signals are just another frequency that needs a transmitter and receiver, which Tesla also demonstrated in 1893 during a presentation before The National Electric Light Association. In 1897 Tesla applied for two patents US 645576, and US 649621. In 1904, however, The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, possibly influenced by Marconi’s financial backers in the States, who included Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie. This also allowed the U.S. government (among others) to avoid having to pay the royalties that were being claimed by Tesla.
Remote Control — This invention was a natural outcropping of radio. Patent No.613809 was the first remote controlled model boat, demonstrated in 1898. Utilizing several large batteries; radio signals controlled switches, which then energized the boat’s propeller, rudder, and scaled-down running lights. While this exact technology was not widely used for some time, we now can see the power that was appropriated by the military in its pursuit of remote controlled war. Radio controlled tanks were introduced by the Germans in WWII, and developments in this realm have since slid quickly away from the direction of human freedom.
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