Утраченные изобретения

by Nikola Tesla, Никола Тесла

О нем распространяют самые невероятные слухи, но реальные факты его жизни еще более ошеломляющи. Он удостоился высшей почести, доступной для ученого, - его именем названа физическая величина: единица измерения магнитной индукции. Его открытия в области электротехники предопределили развитие человеческой цивилизации, а на его патентах выросла практически вся энергетика XX века. Мало того - в последнее время просачивается информация, что львиная доля изобретений Николы Тесла, способных буквально перевернуть наш мир, была спрятана в секретных хранилищах американских спецслужб, завладевших личным архивом ученого после его смерти. Есть ли в этих обвинениях хотя бы доля истины? Имеются ли серьезные основания подозревать власти США в сокрытии информации о достижениях Теслы? Какие открытия совершил он сам - а какие приписаны ему падкой на дешевые сенсации прессой? И соответствуют ли действительности упорные слухи об утраченных изобретениях славянского гения?

Данная книга ставит окончательную точку в этом вопросе. Здесь представлены не только подробные аналитические описания патентов Николы Тесла, но и собственноручные признания самого ученого, так и озаглавившего свои бесценные мемуары: "Мои изобретения".

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla first studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree. He then gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His AC induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed.
Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wirelessly controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited. Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.
After Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. He died in New York City in January 1943. Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the International System of Units (SI) measurement of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.