Well, here's a handsome fellow!! He was born in what is now Croatia, in 1856, in what was then the Austrian Empire. While he attended universities in Graz and Prague, he was largely self-taught. He worked for the Continental Edison Company in France designing improvements to electric equipment brought overseas from Edison's ideas, before moving to the US in 1884. Edison hired him to work for his Edison Machine Works.
In 1885 he claimed he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy. According to this fellow, Edison remarked "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you - if you can do it". This has been noted as an odd statement from an Edison whose company was stingy with pay and did not have that sort of cash on hand. After months of work when he finished the task and inquired about payment Edison claimed he was only joking replying, "Sir, you don't understand our American humor". Edison offered a $10 a week raise over his US$18 per week salary, but he refused it and immediately resigned.

Hmmm...genius and pride...there's a combination. When he died he held well over 100 patents world-wide. Who are we talking about?? I have lots of clues, if you guys need them!!

Nancy.

TM

Annette

Cynthia

OK, more clues you say. Alrighty then:

~ The SI unit measuring magnetic field B (also referred to as the magnetic flux density and magnetic induction) was named in his honor (at the CGPM, Paris, 1960).

~ his work fell into relative obscurity after his death but since the 1990s his reputation has experienced a popular culture comeback. In 2005 he was listed amongst the top 100 nominees in the TV show "The Greatest American", an open access popularity poll conducted by AOL and The Discovery Channel.

~ In 1887, he constructed a brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his _____ coil, and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs.

~ In April 1887, he began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single terminal vacuum tubes (similar to his patent #514,170). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that it had no target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking radiation).

~ he demonstrated wireless energy transmission as early as 1891.

So, what do you think?? A pretty impressive mind, yes?? His name became familiar to me, though, not because of his impressive scientific portfolio, but because his name is used for a character on one of my favourite sci-fi shows, Sanctuary. Any of this helping??

Nancy.

TM

_ _ _ _ _ and George Westinghouse built the first hydro-electric power plant in Niagara Falls and started the electrification of the world. Adam's Power Station (Power House No. 3), the only remains of the old Niagara Falls Power Plant, may become a science museum. This museum would be devoted to Niagara Falls Power Plant, the first hydro-electric power plant in the world, this location is a great turning stone in the history of electricity. Adam's Station is registered as a National Landmark Historical Site. About eight million tourists a year visit the American side of Niagara Falls. About 20 million tourists a year visit the Canadian side. Niagara Falls is one of the most beautiful places in the world, where the electrification of the world started. Niagara Falls are the final victory of ?'s Polyphase Alternating Current (AC) Electricity, which is today lighting the entire globe.

Oh yeah, and he made the cover of TIME, in 1931.

There are statues of this guy on both sides of the border here!! And still you don't know his name???

Nancy.

It would help a lot if you knew of a certain very expensive modern day electric car headquartered in Palo Alto CA.

Hope this hint is OK, Nancy.

TM

Boy, I thought we Canadians were the only one who ignored our pre-eminiment genius'(genii??).

At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an international exposition was held which, for the first time, devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was a historic event as ? and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were fluorescent lamps developed by Westinghouse and single node bulbs. An observer noted:

Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the current was turned on, the lamps or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by ? in London about two years previous, "where they produced so much wonder and astonishment"

In 1897, at age 41, ? filed the first radio patent (U.S. Patent 645,576). A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio-controlled torpedoes. ? claimed to have developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control. In 1898, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. ? called his boat a "teleautomaton". In the same year, ? devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline engines.

This guy's imagination just did not quit. Am I helping?? TM, any other ideas for clues?

Nancy.

TM

Nickle leads to Nicola -----.

Publicity picture of our mystery man sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs with his "Magnifying transmitter" generating millions of volts. The arcs are about 7 meters (23 ft) long. (his notes identify this as a multiple exposure photograph.) - is this like the coil, TM??

Nancy.

There is a huge one in Oklahoma that you can see on the video I've linked to below, although going there will give the answer away.

Well, I guess the clues weren't as good as I imagined!! Nikola Tesla was who we were looking for!! He, along with Edison and Westinghouse were the pre-eminent leaders in the electric revolution. Tesla struggled with illness(unspecified) as a young man, then later with mental illness, OCD, etc. He often took breaks from science, working at a labourer. He was prideful, arrogant, dismissive of Einstein, and had a life-long feud with Edison. Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through the ground as well as between the Earth's surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was approximately 8 hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was in this range (later named the Schumann resonance). In Colorado Springs Tesla carried out various long distance wireless transmission-reception experiments. Tesla effect is the application of a type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Through longitudinal waves, Tesla transferred energy to receiving devices. He sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred electrical energy to a wireless receiver. Tesla left Colorado Springs on 7 January 1900. The lab was torn down ca. 1905 and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared Tesla for the establishment of the trans-Atlantic wireless telecommunications facility known as Wardenclyffe near Shoreham, Long Island. In 1900, with US$150,000 (51% from J. Pierpont Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. During 1910-1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100-5,000 hp. However, when Marconi successfully transmitted from Canada to England, Morgan withdrew his funding. Tesla continued his project for another 9 months. The tower was raised to its full 187 feet. In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against Marconi's claims. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the tower was seized and blown up with dynamite for scrap by the Marines, due to fears that German spies were using it and that it could be used as a landmark for German submarines.

Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Guglielmo Marconi for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned in a press dispatch as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some sources have claimed that because of their animosity toward each other neither was given the award, despite their scientific contributions; that each sought to minimize the other's achievements and right to win the award; that both refused ever to accept the award if the other received it first; and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it. In middle age, Tesla became close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.

Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his dispute with Edison. The day after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as saying:

He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene ... His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.
Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest mistake had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.

Tesla died on 7 January 1943 at age 86 from heart thrombus, alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Soon after his death Tesla's safe was opened by his nephew Sava Kosanović. Shortly thereafter Tesla's papers and other property were impounded by the United States' Alien Property Custodian office in Tesla's compound at the Manhattan Warehouse, even though he was a naturalized citizen. He was penniless at death.

So there you have it. I am sorry more people don't know about this amazing mind. I could go on and on, as you know. At the end of his life, he believed that vegetarianism was a proper way to go, and that women would become the natural leaders of the world. Huh!

so for TM and Bobbie:

For Annette and Cyn, better luck next week. Thanks to all for playing!! I am off to tie up my tomatoes and am hoping that the rain will hold off!! We are around 60F today, quite a difference!!

Nancy.

Thanks for the fun and knowledge, Nancy.

TM

Cynthia

Thanks for the stars, Nancy, and for the good clues, TM.