History, they say, is written by the victors, but that's cold comfort to the men and

women x-ed out by the editor's pen. For years, science textbooks
equated electricity and light with one man, Thomas Edison, while the genius whose
pioneering electrical technologies truly power the modern world languished as a
minor note in scientific history, sandwiched between Edward Teller and Thales of
Miletus.

Before the turn of the 20th century, electricity remained a mere scientific curiosity --
one that many doubted would ever do an honest day's work. Nikola Tesla, arguably
more than anyone else, changed that, but his pioneering research in electricity
represents only a portion of the scientific and technical innovations that elevated him
to science godhood.

Tesla not only expanded and revolutionized the work of his predecessors; he also
leapfrogged ahead of his contemporaries to the next step, and the next. But, just as it
takes more than groundbreaking music to give rise to a rock god, we think it takes
more than innovative breakthroughs and amazing machines to make a scientific one.
We'd argue that such a figure must also possess intriguing facets -- qualities like
eccentricity, vision and the will to suffer for science. Nikola Tesla was such a man.

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History, they say, is written by the victors, but that's cold comfort to the men and women x-ed
out by the editor's pen. For years, science textbooks equated electricity and light with one
man, Thomas Edison, while the genius whose pioneering electrical technologies truly power
the modern world languished as a minor note in scientific history, sandwiched between
Edward Teller and Thales of Miletus.

Before the turn of the 20th century, electricity remained a mere scientific curiosity -- one that
many doubted would ever do an honest day's work. Nikola Tesla, arguably more than anyone
else, changed that, but his pioneering research in electricity represents only a portion of the
scientific and technical innovations that elevated him to science godhood.
Tesla not only expanded and revolutionized the work of his predecessors; he also leapfrogged
ahead of his contemporaries to the next step, and the next. But, just as it takes more than
groundbreaking music to give rise to a rock god, we think it takes more than innovative
breakthroughs and amazing machines to make a scientific one. We'd argue that such a figure
must also possess intriguing facets -- qualities like eccentricity, vision and the will to suffer
for science. Nikola Tesla was such a man.
AHEAD OF HIS TIME: MILITARY MEDDLING
Before America's involvement in World War I, Tesla outlined a means of detecting enemy ships
and submarines using electromagnetic induction. Induction is the process by which a
changing magnetic field instills an electric current in a metallic object located within it. The
reverse is also true, so currents inducted in the skin of a nearby submarine, for example, would
create their own magnetic fields, which would "push back" against, or dampen, the original
field, theoretically rendering the sub detectable.

The inventor also warned against wingless, remote-controlled craft that might deliver
explosive ordnance [sources: PBS]. Late in life, he designed and patented a design for
a V/STOL (vertical or short takeoff and landing) aircraft [sources: Cheney; PBS].
In an era when the dollar was king, in which scientists and engineers built business
empires on the backs of one or two breakthroughs, Tesla's focus never strayed from
his work. Consequently, he was both prolific and, at times, poor.

While his competitors in the War of the Currents -- the struggle between Tesla's and
Edison's camps over whose electrical technology would reign supreme -- fought
tooth-and-nail to secure electrical monopolies, his desire to acquire funding for his
next big project repeatedly trumped his interest in protecting his patents and
inventions [sources: Cheney;Jonnes].

Tesla's focus and farsightedness worked to the inventor's detriment almost as much
as they benefited society. UnlikeEdison, he did not actively cultivate a reputation with
the public, wield the press for publicity (or to launch attacks) or possess a strong
business standing. More to the point, his work delved into realms beyond the grasp of
many of his contemporaries. Consequently, Tesla struggled to gain funding to support
his research [sources: Jonnes; PBS; Secor]. For example, Tesla suggested bouncing
high-frequency electrical waves off the hulls of ships and subs made of nonferrous
and nonconducting materials. The Navy passed on funding his research
Like any world-changing inventor, Tesla was a man of vision, and his career ran most
smoothly when he could convey that vision to other pioneers. In 1893, his alternating
current beat out Edison's direct current proposal to light the monumental World's
Columbian Exposition in Chicago (aka the Chicago World's Fair). Not only did this
event mark a turning point in the War of the Currents, it also enabled him to follow his
grandest ambitions, including his childhood dream of harnessing the power
of Niagara Falls [sources: Cheney and Uth; Jonnes; PBS].

Even after he'd won the Niagara contract, most of his backers remained dubious
about whether Tesla's hydroelectric machines would work. The inventor did not.
When the switch was thrown at midnight, Nov. 16, 1896, lights turned on in Buffalo,
N.Y., 21 miles (34 kilometers) away. Within a few years, the station expanded its
reach to New York City, roughly 400 miles (644 kilometers) away [sources: Cheney
and Uth;Jonnes; PBS]. Tesla's youthful dream had come true.
Tesla also proposed controlling, or at least catalyzing, weather with electricity. He
visualized transmitting power globally and, with it, information -- an early version of a
global wireless communications system [sources: Cheney and Uth; PBS]. The
scientist told investor J.P. Morgan, "When wireless is fully applied the Earth will be
converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts"
Oh, we're sorry, did we say "death ray"? We meant "peace beam that can
knock airplanes out of the sky hundreds of miles away and give infantry a very, very
bad day."

Amid the gathering clouds of World War II, Tesla announced that he had conceived a
new "peace beam" weapon capable of ending war forever. He saw his device, which
we now know as a charged particle beam, as a kind of "Chinese wall," an anti-war
device that would safeguard national borders. The papers took a different view:
"TESLA, AT 78, BARES NEW 'DEATH BEAM'" blared The New York Times' front
page on July 11, 1934.

The possibility of a world power developing a particle beam haunted the Cold War,
especially after some of Tesla's papers went missing following his death
[sources: Cheney and Uth; Jonnes; PBS; PBS].

CPBs were made famous by Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars,
program, but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was
investigating them as early as 1958 [source:Roberds].
CHARGED PARTICLE BEAMS
A charged particle beam (CPB) is a directed-energy weapon that fires pulses of charged
particles to heat and potentially explode a target. Theoretically, such a weapon could reach a
target almost instantly and at enormous range, delivering lethal doses of energy in seconds or
less. However, the technical challenges involved in building a beam like this -- especially one
capable of firing in the atmosphere -- remain daunting [source: Roberds].
For good or ill, quirkiness is a quality we associate withgenius, and Tesla does not
disappoint.

Some say Tesla constructed his greatest inventions, including his induction motor,
entirely within his own mind. UnlikeEdison, who worked a problem through
prototyping, trial and error and similar hands-on methods, Tesla found that key
solutions sometimes came to him in blinding flashes of insight [sources: Cheney and
Uth; Jonnes].

By his own account, Tesla suffered from visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as
hypersensitivity to vibrations and strong light [sources: Chandrasekhar; Pickover]. He
also feared round objects, such as women's pearls, and fixated on the number three
[sources: Jonnes; Pickover].

The inventor also suffered a progressive germ aversion and eventually limited his diet
to boiled foods. This phobia reportedly arose after a scientific colleague showed him
unboiled water under a microscope. Late in life, the aging scientist kept pigeons in his
hotel room, but continued to dress as nattily as ever -- behaviors that led some to
question his mental state [sources: Jonnes; PBS].
Tesla's peculiarities did not impair his socializing, however; reporters and friends
described him as charming, humble and well-spoken.
They don't just hand those things out like party favors, you know.

Tesla, like Carl Friedrich Gauss, lends his name to a unit of magnetic flux density in
the International System of Units (abbreviated SI). A tesla can also be thought of as a
unit of magnetic induction [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]. At one time, high-
frequency currents were known as Tesla currents [source: Houston and Kennelly].

One tesla equals one weber per square meter, or 10,000 gauss (hence, scientists
often use gauss to measure weak magnetic fields, reserving tesla for stronger ones,
like those used in MRIs). A weber is a unit of magnetic flux, which can be thought of
as the amount of magnetic energy "flowing" over an area, such as the surface of a
magnet.

Remember above when we described induction, and how changing magnetic fields
can induce currents to flow in a conductor? One weber is the amount of this magnetic
energy "flow" required to induce one volt of current in a loop of wire. Actually, it's a bit
more specific than that: The definition assumes that you drop the flow, or flux,
to zero at a uniform rate, and do it in one second [source: Encyclopaedia Britannica].

The weber is named for Wilhelm Eduard Weber, a German physicist known for his
work in terrestrial magnetism and his invention in 1833 of an electromagnetic
telegraph
VITA-RAYS?
Scientists at the turn of the 20th century were just becoming familiar with radiation and what it
could do; in the process, they sometimes raised strange hypotheses or drew dubious
conclusions. Numerous manufacturers, for example, added radium to products after it was
discovered that radiation could shrink tumors [source:Blum].

Tesla was no different; he reported to the journal Electrical Review that, when someone's
head was exposed to high radiation, it produced warmth, a tendency to sleep and a
sensation of time passing quickly. "Who knows but that the X rays may yet banish insomnia
and ennui from the world," said the journal [source:Electrical Review].
Over his long career, Tesla registered more than 111 American patents and around
300 patents worldwide [sources: Jonnes; arboh].

While investigating high-frequency electricity and trying to improve upon Edison's light
bulbs, which were only 5 percent efficient, Tesla developed some of the first neon
lights. He premiered them at that same 1893 World's Fair we mentioned, twisting their
tubes to spell out the names of beloved scientists such as Michael Faraday and
James Clerk Maxwell [sources: Cheney and Uth; PBS]. He also developed early
fluorescent lights, which he illuminated wirelessly using electrostatic waves
[sources: Cheney and Uth; Jonnes].

Tesla's invention and demonstration of radio-controlled vehicles has earned him a

place among the pioneers of robotics. In fact, the scientist described his
"teleautomaton" as the first step in a race of robots, although it had no more
programming or self-guidance than a modern RC car [sources: Cheney and
Uth; PBS].
A novel bladeless turbine designed by Tesla rotated at such high speeds that its
component disks distorted. Tesla never solved the problem, but modern materials
such as Kevlar, carbon-fiber and titanium-impregnated plastic have inspired some to
pick up where he left off [sources: PBS].

Tesla also reported taking X-ray photographs in 1896, a short time after Wilhelm
Rntgen discovered X-rays [sources: Electrical Review; PBS]
Radio arose from an array of discoveries and innovations, but Tesla's work devising
and refining its foundational technologies has earned him hard-fought recognition as
its father [sources:Jonnes; Vujovic].

The scientist's work in the field grew out of his foray into the wireless transmission of
energy -- which, if you think about it, is exactly what radio is.

Not only did Tesla file the first radio patents, he also gave a lecture in1893 -- two
years before Marconi began experimenting with radio -- that laid out how radio
broadcasting worked, complete with a demonstration of radio communication. By mid-
1894, he had built and begun testing a small, portable radio-transmitting station
[sources: Cheney;Jonnes].

As with the induction generator and transformer, Tesla built upon the work of his
predecessors, but with unparalleled vision. James Clerk Maxwell had theorized
electromagnetic waves, and Heinrich Hertz had figured out how to transmit them, but
the Tesla coil, and Tesla's four tuned circuits for transmitting and receiving, made
radio a reality. His patents describe the fundamental way we still transmit and receive
radio signals [sources: Cheney and Uth; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia
Britannica; Vujovic].

Tesla also pioneered radio control -- an idea he patented on Nov. 8, 1898, and
demonstrated at the 1898 Electrical Exhibition at Madison Square Garden
THE STATIC OVER RADIO'S INVENTOR
For decades, Guglielmo Marconi was known as the father of radio. Marconi, an Italian
nobleman with strong connections to British aristocracy and backing from Edison, contributed
significantly to the field and made radio a business success. In 1904, he convinced the U.S.
Patent Office to grant him the radio patent, despite previous rejections based on Tesla's widely
recognized primacy [sources: Harkins; PBS].

Not until 1943 did the U.S. Supreme Courtuphold Tesla's radio patent number 645,576,
arguably to get the United States out of a lawsuit with the Marconi Company. The decision
came six months after Tesla died and 34 years after radio had garnered Marconi the Nobel
Prize in physics [sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica; Harkins; PBS].
Like any great movie scientist or Bond villain, any self-respecting science god
requires a secret laboratory -- preferably one located in some remote locale and
bristling with mad machines. Tesla had two.

In 1899, Tesla constructed a lab in Colorado Springs, Colo., to delve into the
mysteries of high voltage and high frequency electricity [sources:
Jonnes; PBS; Vujovic]. In one experiment, a 42-foot (12.8-meter) metal mast drove
huge electrical impulses into the ground; in another, a Tesla coil shot 100-foot (30.5-
meter) arcs of electricity across the room. The latter's surge blew out the electric
company's dynamo and cast Colorado Springs into darkness [sources: Jonnes;PBS].
While at Colorado Springs, Tesla proved the existence of terrestrial stationary waves
-- a means by which the Earth could conduct energy at certain electrical frequencies -
- by illuminating 200 lamps from 25 miles (40 kilometers) away
[sources: PBS; Vujovic]. As far as we know (contrary to the film "The Prestige"), he
never worked on human teleportation.

Tesla later built his second secret lab, Wardenclyffe, closer to his Manhattan home.
The Shoreham, Long Island, facility featured a 50-ton, 187-foot-high (45,000-
kilogram, 57-meter-high) transmitting tower above a 120-foot-deep (36.6-meter-deep)
well, along with 16 iron pipes sunk 300 feet (91.4 meters) deeper. Tesla planned to
transmit power through the planet, using the rods to "get a grip of the Earth ... so that
the whole of this globe can quiver." [sources: Greenfieldboyce; Jonnes; PBS].
SAVING WARDENCLYFFE
Tesla's Wardenclyffe work was over almost before it began. While the tower was still under
construction, Marconi made his famous trans-Atlantic radio broadcast, robbing Tesla of his
great moment, and the stock market crashed. J. Pierpont Morgan, who financed Wardenclyffe,
was already dubious about providing free electricity, and backed out of the deal. The
government demolished the tower in 1917 as a wartime security measure
[sources: Jonnes; PBS; Vujovic].

In August 2012, Matthew Inman, the Web cartoonist behind The Oatmeal, raised enough
money through crowd-funding to enable The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe to buy
the land. The plan is to turn the land into a museum [source:Greenfieldboyce].
We revere geniuses as much for their struggles as for their triumphs. Perhaps it
comforts us to know that brilliance comes at a cost, or maybe we find that suffering
humanizes those rare souls who truly operate on a higher level.

Tesla, an outsider, fought an uneven battle against wealthier and better-connected

businessmen: Edison smeared his name and took his electric fame; Marconi beat him
in the radio market -- and to a Nobel Prize -- using his own technology; and
industrialist George Westinghouse built an empire out of his torn-up patent
agreements [sources: Cheney; Harkins; Jonnes; PBS].

Tesla's loyalty to his first loves, science and progress, cost him his fame, his fortune
and, some argue, his sanity. Indeed, it is likely that, after losing J.P. Morgan's
financing and, with it, his dreams for Wardenclyffe, Tesla suffered a nervous
breakdown. "It is not a dream," he said. "It is a simple feat of scientific electrical
engineering, only expensive ... blind, faint-hearted, doubting world"
[sources: Jonnes;PBS].
Tesla's system of alternating current generators, motors and transformers powers the
world's industry, lights our homes and underpins most modern electronics. Edison,
though more famous, backed a direct current (DC) system used today primarily in
batteries.

DC vexed Edison because he could not find a way to send it long distances
[sources: Jonnes; Vujovic]. He also struggled to convert the alternating current
produced by his dynamos into direct current. Edison's solution involved
"commutators" -- brushes that allowed current to flow in only one direction but created
inefficient friction and required frequent replacing [source: Jonnes].
Tesla's generators didn't require such a cumbersome approach. Moreover, his
system could "step up" voltages for transmission over long distances, then "step
down" voltages at the destination to levels usable in homes and factories.

Take the electric motor pioneered by Belgian engineer Znobe-Thophile Gramme.

Whereas Edison and others tried to tether the device inefficiently to DC, Tesla
revolutionized it by adding a second circuit that would "alternate" a current out of
phase with the first, creating the prototype for his successful polyphase system.

The transformer, like the generator, was invented by Michael Faraday, but both lay
fallow until Tesla unlocked their potential and, by doing so, harnessed electricity to do
the work of the modern world
Tesla was my childhood hero, and I have been excited to witness his recent surge in
recognition and status, especially among young people. At the same time, I have
been increasingly troubled by some of the blatant misrepresentations on both sides of
the Tesla vs. Edison feud. The career of Nikola Tesla, perhaps more than that of any
other scientific figure, is surrounded by a fog of misinformation -- generated first by
those who sought to usurp his place, and later by those who overreached in their
attempts to redress those wrongs -- and to demonize Edison and Westinghouse.

The truth is, Tesla had many more patents and ideas than he could ever test;
inventors still scour his notebooks for clues. Some ideas, like his particle beam,
appear to have been on the mark; others, such as his alleged proto-radar or his
V/STOL aircraft, remain debatable. Of course, Tesla may well have corrected any
oversights or blind alleys through experiment, had he received funding and pursued
these ideas, but that's neither here nor there. As for Edison and Westinghouse, both
were complex figures who have been both vilified and lionized more than they
deserve.

But then again, maybe that's what made Tesla a scientific god: He has inspired
factions ranging from zealots to true believers to doubting Thomases. Depending on
your point of view, Tesla vs. Edison is either like the Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones ...
or the Beatles vs. the Monkees. I'm just glad were having the argument.