THE MASTER OF LIGHTNING

A memorial to Nikola Tesla, the celebrated Serbian scientist, physicist and inventor, is to be erected in Baku. During his recent visit to Serbia Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced that the mayor's office in the capital had been entrusted with this task. "On this historic day I would like to present to you a copy of the decision of the Baku mayor's office on the erection of a memorial to Nikola Tesla," President Ilham Aliyev said at a ceremony to open the Tasmaydan Park in Belgrade where there is a memorial to Azerbaijan's national leader, Heydar Aliyev. Serbian President Boris Tadic attended the ceremony.

Who was this Nikola Tesla? The sound of his name recalls his inventions in the fields of electrical and radio engineering and the international unit of magnetic induction. We know that 20th century energy was formed as a result of his discoveries. Tesla solved the problems of alternating current and wireless energy transfer and brought to light the first electronic clocks, the turbine and the solar powered motor. Tesla worked for several years on the problem of the energy of the Universe. Although all mankind widely uses his inventions, his name and his achievements have almost been forgotten and one is astounded at the extent to which he has been taken for granted.

Nikola Tesla was born on 9 July 1856 in a small mountain village in Croatia. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church and well known as a respected and intelligent man. There were many books in his house, including books on natural sciences. Up to the age of eight Nikola was a weak and diffident child. He had neither the strength nor the tenacity to achieve anything. He could rejoice or grieve without particular reason. He was unable to shake off thoughts of death and was particularly God-fearing. At night he was afraid of bogeymen and evil spirits and, however much he tried, he could not get rid of those fears. But all the time Nikola had one passion - books. His father tried to distract him from what he saw as a destructive exercise. He feared it might affect his son's eyesight. But Nikola persisted and made long, tapering candles out of lard so that he could read his father's books at night when everyone had gone to bed. It was at this time that the boy began to sense strange things. On one occasion he was sitting in an outbuilding at dusk, stroking a black cat with thick fur. His attention was struck by a light made up of tiny sparks between his fingers and the cat's fur. Surprised by this, he asked his father what was causing this. His father said: "I don't know why exactly, but it seems to me it is a power within lightning." His father's reply astounded the 10-year old Nikola and this aroused the boy's interest in secret electrical power. He wondered if it was possible to subjugate electrical power. However, his father was against this - he wanted his son to become a priest like him, but his father's efforts were in vain.

Then, suddenly, Nikola was struck down by a serious illness which the doctors were unable to treat and Nikola asked his father if he would allow him to become an engineer if he managed to get better. His father agreed. A miracle occurred and a few days' later he had recovered.

By the end of his studies at the Higher Technical School Tesla stood out among his school friends in both academic performance and physical strength. He had an athletic figure and had grown to a height of nearly two metres. He not only won all his sports events but obtained excellent marks in all subjects and had acquired intuitive mathematical and physical capabilities.

Inventions began to come to life in his imagination, the main one being an alternating current generator. The top physicists preferred engines that worked with direct current. But Tesla announced that he would invent an engine which was much simpler and more effective than ordinary electrical engines. And he did. However, nobody wanted to put money on the ideas of a 20-year old, but this only served to inspire the young engineer.

In 1882, in Paris along with the eminent American inventor Thomas Edison, Tesla developed a working model of an alternating current generator. And although the client company failed to carry out its promise to pay him for his work, this did not upset Tesla. After reading foreign technical magazines containing articles about the new experiments of the Russian electrical engineers A.N. Lodygin and P.N. Yablochkov, he decided to travel to St Petersburg. Hearing about Tesla's plans, an administrator of the Continental Company, Charles Batchelor, decided to help him. This kindly man, who could see Tesla as a talented engineer, was a close friend of Edison's. He told the young man: "You must realize that your plan to go to St Petersburg is madness. Surely you know what happened to poor Yablochkov, who was almost killed in his own laboratory? This world-renowned scientist and inventor was forced to travel to Paris to perfect his invention. And here you are planning to leave Paris and go to St Petersburg! I'd like to help you. Come to America. Give Edison a letter which I have written to him." The letter said: "To allow such a talent to go to Russia would be an unforgivable mistake. Mr Edison, if you knew how many hours of my valuable time I have spent trying to dissuade this young man you would be pleased with me. I know two great men - one is you and the other is this young man."

After selling everything he had, Tesla bought a steamer ticket and in 1884 set out for America with his letter to Thomas Edison. Having earned the title "king of the inventors", Thomas Alva Edison put out the red carpet for him and listened closely to what he had to say. Edison was only nine years older than Tesla. He had reached the peak of his fame and become a millionaire thanks to his carbon transmitter, electric lamp, phonograph and dynamo engine. But all these inventions by the celebrated American had been based on direct current. Edison was amazed when this unknown Serb whose eyes burned with fire explained to him about alternating current. He was also worried that Tesla would become a dangerous rival. Nevertheless, he asked Tesla if he would like to work with him and he agreed without hesitation. While working for Edison, he did not forget about improving his own alternating current system and in 1887 he obtained a patent for it. And so, a "cold war" began between these two great inventors. Deep down Edison cursed Tesla and reproached himself for taking on the "ignoble Serb". He spoke with malice about Tesla's generators being unnecessary. On one occasion Tesla asked Edison if he, the great inventor, would allow the system of alternating current generators to be applied at his own enterprise. Edison surprisingly agreed to this with the proviso that if Tesla succeeded in supplying electricity to one of his factories by this method, he would award him $50,000. He had earlier decided for himself that this was impossible. After preparing 24 different types of device Tesla set to work. The economic effect turned out to be higher than expected. Edison was amazed but he failed to keep his word and refused to pay out the $50,000.

It so happened that in April 1888, with the help of a financier friend, James Carmen, he founded his firm Tesla Electric Light Company.  In May of that year he addressed the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and showed his invention. The millionaire Westinghouse, who had developed a hydraulic brake for a steamer, was very impressed by Tesla's speech. Westinghouse offered Tesla a million dollars for his patents, in addition to copyright royalty. After completing a contract Westinghouse Electric Company began the construction of a hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls based on Tesla's inventions. Having obtained financial independence, Tesla began to broaden his research. Visitors to the World Fair in Chicago in 1893 looked in amazement and awe at Tesla's work. Tesla calmly passed an electric current of 2.5 million volts through his body and nothing happened to him, although by all known laws he should have been burned to ashes. Edison had said in newspaper articles that high-frequency alternating current could kill anyone who touched it. But Tesla, in order to prove him wrong, conducted experiments in which he wired himself up to a high-frequency alternating current as a form of resistance and calmly observed the clear light of Edison's lamp which he was holding in his hand. People observing Tesla in complete darkness could see his body seized by a yellow-blue flame. Tesla knew that the death factor was not the tension but the strength of the current, but a current of high tension cannot harm the body because it runs through its surface layer. This, so to speak, trick was seen as a miracle at the time.

In 1895 Westinghouse started work at the hydroelectric power station at Niagara where Tesla's very powerful generators were operating. By that time the inventor had developed a series of radio-controlled "tele-automatons". For example, he operated a number of small boats by remote control which people thought was magical. People in his laboratory were also hugely impressed when they saw how he manipulated ball-shaped lightning radiating light in the air.

It seemed that Tesla knew everything about electricity! He predicted the possibility of treating patients with high-frequency current, as well as electric stoves, luminescent lamps and electronic microscopes. The streets and squares of New York were lit by Tesla's spiral lamps and his electric motors, rectifiers, electric generators, transformers and high-frequency equipment were used in factories. In 1917 he proposed an operating principle for a device for the radio detection of submarines. In the last few months of his life Tesla said that he had invented "death rays" capable of destroying 10,000 aircraft at a distance of 400 km. He tried to develop an artificial brain and worked on obtaining photographs of thoughts. In the pre-war years he tried to implement secret projects for the US Naval Department on wireless energy transmission and creating resonant weapons to destroy an enemy. He also showed initiative in controlling time.

Demonstrating his new phenomenon to an audience in 1931, Tesla ordered the engine of an ordinary petrol-driven car to be removed and replaced with an electric motor. He then placed a small box under the hood. It had two short wires pointing upwards. He sat in the driver's seat, pressed on the pedal and the vehicle started to move. In the course of a week Tesla drove this car at 150 km an hour. His scientific colleagues were amazed that there was no battery or accumulator in the vehicle. Asked where he got the power from, Tesla replied: "From the air all around us". If people of the time had not described his work as that of the devil, we could have been driving cars with a perpetual motion engine. Angered by this attitude, Tesla removed the mysterious box from the vehicle and took it away to his laboratory. The secret of that box has still not been revealed. Out of spite for those who did not understand and appreciate the merit of his projects, Tesla sold off some of his patents and became rich and independent. He set up his own laboratory in New York focusing more attention on his scientific research. As well as electrical engineering, he also studied linguistics to a professional level, wrote verse and acquired a good knowledge of music and philosophy and learnt to converse in eight languages. A great many of his diaries and manuscripts disappeared for unexplained reasons. They may have been stored in the safes of the Pentagon and may some day be made available. According to his biographers, Tesla himself may have burned these documents at the beginning of World War II to prevent the possibility of innocent people being killed. Having devoted all his life to scientific research, Nikola Tesla died in the guests' room at the New Yorker Hotel in 1943. With his death the world lost a great scientist who was way ahead of his time.