Tesla was born in Smiljan on July 10, 1856. He studied engineering at the Technical University of Graz, Austria, and at the University of Prague. In Graz, he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator, and, when reversed, an electric motor. After seeing the device, he conceived of a way alternating current could be used to an advantage. Later, in Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become the first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current.
After his father?s death, Tesla did not finish university, but worked in Budapest?s Ganz factory between 1880 and 1882. It was here that he met Ferenc Puskás, the brother of Tivadar, who arranged a job for Tesla at the Hungarian Telegraph Service.
In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, with Tivadar Puskás. While on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, in his spare time, his first induction motor.
Tesla sailed for America in 1884. There he found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable. In May 1885, George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh, bought the patent rights to Tesla's polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a big power struggle between Edison's direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current ones, which eventually won out.
Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where he experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that would later be used by Wilhelm Röntgen. Tesla's countless experiments included work on a carbon button lamp, on the power of electrical resonance, and on various types of lighting. Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lighted lamps without wires by allowing electricity to flow through his body, to allay fears of alternating current. The Tesla coil, which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and other electronic equipment. That year also marked the date of Tesla's United States citizenship.
Westinghouse used Tesla's system to light the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. His success was a factor in winning him the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla's name and patent numbers. The project carried power to Buffalo by 1896. In 1898 Tesla announced his invention of a teleautomatic boat guided by remote control. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery ? terrestrial stationary waves. With this discovery, he proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor and would be as responsive as a tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain frequency. He also lighted 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 kilometres.
At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals. Returning to New York, Tesla began construction on Long Island of a wireless world broadcasting tower, with $150,000 in funding from the American financier J. P. Morgan. Tesla claimed he secured the loan by assigning 51 percent of his patent rights of telephony and telegraphy to Morgan. He expected to provide worldwide communication and to furnish facilities for sending pictures, messages, weather warnings, and stock reports. The project was abandoned because of a financial panic, labour troubles, and Morgan's withdrawal of support. Tesla's work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still being examined by engineers for unexploited inventions.
In 1915 he was bitterly disappointed when a report that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize proved erroneous. Tesla was the recipient of the Edison Medal in 1917, the highest honour that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow. After Tesla's death, the custodian of alien property impounded his trunks, which held his papers, his diplomas and other honours, his letters, and his laboratory notes. These were eventually inherited by Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanovich, and later housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
Ludwig Museum spokeswoman Orsolya Csejtei told MTI that the ?Resonance, Eletromagnetic Bodies? show has arrived in Hungary after visiting cities around the world, including Montreal, Karlsruhe, Madrid and Rotterdam. In Budapest, it has been expanded to include works by local artists, which was the case in every city it visited.
The exhibition includes an installation by Jean-Pierre Aubé, which continuously gauges the electromagnetic field created in the exhibition space and transfers the data into audio speakers. Marie-Jean Musiol?s light statue Light Bodies depicts the energies of the living world with the help of photos made by the electromagnetic aura of plants.
?Brain Mirror? by Szabolcs Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sjölen and Danil Lundbäck is a cooperative work by architects and engineers. It is a unique work that displays the mirror image of the viewer?s body and brain at the same time. Csaba Csiki and Péter Szabó?s installation ?MetalSkin? turns into an electrostatic instrument when it is touched.
In addition to digital art, the exhibition also contains traditional artwork, such as Attila Szűcs?s oil paintings and Gábor Kerekes? photographs of electric phenomena.
The project aims to discover the nature of invisible but sensible material forces, the effects of vibrating energy on the environment and the human body, and to this through the medium of art.
The exhibition is open at Ludwig Museum, in the Palace of Arts at 1 Komor Marcell Street in Budapest?s district IX, until 27 August.
Source: Múlt-kor
