- What have you heard about Tesla? That he invented alternating current (AC) and electrified our world. That he and Edison have
the "War of the Currents" between AC and DC. That Edison hounded Tesla
for the rest of his life. That he wanted to give
everyone free electricity That he was a physics genius. That's what I heard on
YouTube, and websites, and even TV shows and video games. But I researched it by
reading primary materials, and ready to have you're mind blown? They're all wrong. All of them. Ready to learn the real story? Let's go. ♪ Electricity electricity ♪ ♪ Electricity electricity ♪ What are the facts
commonly told about Tesla? Tesla invented AC and
created our electrical world. AC was invented and
utilized way before Tesla. In fact, the first AC
generator was invented in 1832 when a french tinkerer
named Hippolytle Pixii created a machine that spun
a magnet near coils of wire. Pixii was inspired by
Michael Faraday's paper from the previous year that stated that changing a magnetic field will induce a current in a coil. In Pixii's machine, as the magnet spun towards
and away from the coil, it created alternating current, or AC. Pixii however, used brushes
to force the current to always go in one directional, or DC. Over the years, the generators
got more complicated, and according to a 19th
century electricity book, in 1856, after frustration
with some faulty brushes, a large generator was
used without brushes, and it was found that
electric lights could be lit with alternating current. Tesla was born that very year, so it seems very unlikely that he had anything to do with it. For many years afterward,
AC was often used to power bright outdoor arc lamp. Although, Dyanmos with post DC were considered better
for the incandescent lamp. The big change in
electricity came in the 1880s with transformers. Transformers could transform AC current into high voltage, low current waves that could travel long distances without losing much energy to heat, and then transform back to
low voltage, high current to be used in the home. A trio of Hungarian engineers,
whose initials are ZBD, patented what is now called
the ZBD transformer in 1885. George Westinghouse became convinced that AC was the future
for incandescent lights after reading about the transformer. Westinghouse's assistant, William Stanley, patented a simpler and more
useful transformer in 1886. That same year, Westinghouse
and Stanley created the "first practical system
for providing electrical illumination using alternating
current with transformers." Now, we finally get to
Nikola Tesla, sort of. See one the biggest
handicaps to the AC system, is they didn't have a way
to make a true AC motor. How do you get something
to spin in a circle, when the current goes back and forth. In 1885, an Italian names Galileo Ferraris solved this problem by
building an AC generator with two separate coils,
which produced two separate AC currents at different peak times. Ferraris found that these two AC currents could push a cylinder in a circle. This was the first true
polyphase, or multiple phase, AC current and motor. However, the motor didn't
work efficiently at all, and he didn't publish
his findings until 1888. Meanwhile, independent of Ferraris, Tesla had a similar idea, but with a more powerful
and practical motor, which he patented in 1887. Although polyphase AC was
eventually appreciated for its efficiently,
which is why we now use three phase current. At the time, people were
mostly interested in the motor. In 1888, George Westinghouse
bought Tesla's patent, because according to Westinghouse, his company needed to control the alternating motor business. Although there's much debate, about whether Tesla first
invented polyphase current, or if Ferraris did. At the time, Tesla admitted
that they had the same idea. "Professor Ferraris not
only came independently to the same theoretical results, but in a manner identical
almost to the smallest detail." So wait, if Tesla didn't invent AC, and didn't independently
invent AC polyphase current, and Westinghouse was
already implementing AC for his lighting systems two years before he got Tesla's patent, why was the war of the currents
between Edison and Tesla? That brings us to fact number two. The war of the currents
was a battle over AC vs DC between Edison and Tesla. Edison's real rival was Westinghouse, and Tesla was just a minor player. In 1880, Thomas Edison got
a patent for the light bulb, and was having great
success with his company, Edison General Electric, which used Dynamos ad post-DC current. In 1886, George Westinghouse
started using AC and transformers to light up buildings. Edison hated Westinghouse and AC, because he thought the high voltage alternating current was dangerous. Writing a private note that,
"Just as certain as death, Westinghouse will kill a
customer within six months." Edison then wrote a public
manifesto about the dangers of AC where he mentioned Westinghouse
24 times and Tesla zero. Edison then let a man named Harold Brown use his space to conduct
gruesome public experiments killing dogs and horses with AC, to promote how dangerous it was. As well as promoting the use
of AC in the electric chair. Edison even wanted death by electric chair to be known as Westinghouse. And AC did become cheaper
and more powerful in 1888, when Westinghouse bought Tesla's patent for a polyphase generator and motor, but it wasn't a pivotal moment in the war. What was pivotal was when J. P. Morgan, who was a major stockholder
of the Edison company, got sick of all the
money wasted in lawsuits, and wanted to use the
cheaper and more powerful AC. So in 1892, he orchestrated a coup, fired Edison from his own company, and even removed Edison's name from it, leaving plain old GE, or General Electric. However, an Edison vs Westinghouse rivalry doesn't fit the narrative
of a corporate Goliath versus the individual brilliant David. So, it's been remade into a rivalry between Edison and Tesla, where Westinghouse is
just erased from history. So if Edison didn't battle
Tesla in the war over AC and DC, why did he harass him and
thwart all of his efforts? This brings us to fact number three. Edison hounded Tesla, starting
when Tesla worked for Edison. Not true according to Tesla. It's true that Tesla did work for Edison briefly in 1884, and
according to his biography, when Tesla worked for the New York branch of the Edison company, the local manager offered
him 50,000 dollars if he completed a task, but then said it was a joke
and Tesla resigned in protest. This local manager was not Edison, but it was changed into Edison as the origin story of their rivalry. On the previous page, Tesla wrote how honored
he was to meet Edison. He wrote that Edison was
a, "wonderful man who, without early advantages
and scientific training, had accomplished so much." It made him wonder if his
formal education meant that, "most of my life had been squandered." He wrote his nice words about Edison in the same book where
he described the people who thwarted his efforts to build an all Earth transmission tower, as, "nothing more than the
microbes of a nasty disease." So it doesn't sound like Tesla felt like Edison was responsible
for his hardship, although he was clearly distressed about the loss of his tower. Why was Tesla's tower destroyed? This leads us to the next fact about him. Tesla wanted to create free electricity and was stopped by money
hungry corporations. Tesla never had anything
to do with free electricity and he was stopped because
his methods didn't work, and Marconi's did. See, in 1891, he invented the Tesla coil and took the world by storm with his amazing demonstrations of lighting bulbs with one line, then lighting fluorescents
in his bare hand. Tesla became convinced that
he could use his machine to electrify the whole Earth, so that he could input energy in one spot, and remove it anywhere else in the world. This was a different
was to transmit energy, through the Earth instead of through wire, but he never said
anything about free energy or energy from nothing. It was supposed to be cheaper because the copper in the
wires was so expensive, not because Tesla was tapping into some mystical source of Mayan energy the government doesn't
want you to know about. In 1901, Tesla convince J. P. Morgan, the same guy who screwed over
Edison nine years earlier, to give him 150,000 dollars so he could build his all
Earth transmission tower. Meanwhile, the inventions
in the Tesla coil were quite useful for
sending long distance wireless telegraph signals. In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi said
he got a wireless telegraph to go across the Atlantic. Tesla was unconcerned, as he
was doing much grander work, electrifying the Earth. And also, he knew that
Marconi was using several of his patents. However, in 1904, Marconi
got the patent office to reverse its decision,
and awarded Marconi the rights to his
transmitter and receiver. Around that time, J. P. Morgan
became irritated with Tesla, his money pit of a tower,
and stopped funding him. Tesla failed to get
other people to fund him, because more and more
people started to notice that his ideas were, well, nonsense. To quote from an article from 1903, Tesla's, "lectures abounded
in fallacies and absurdities, but that spectacular
sensationalism was accepted as a substitute for scientific method," which brings us to fact number five. Tesla was a physics genius. This was the most surprising to me. Tesla was an electrical
genius with great intuition on how to build amazing
electrical devices, however, his physics was bad, like demonstrably horrible. He didn't believe in electrons. He thought relativity was pseudoscience. And astonishingly, considering
his interest and influence on wireless, he never
believed that Hertz's radio was electromagnetic vibrations in the air. The best way to demonstrate
Tesla's tortured relationship with physics is an
article he wrote in 1900. This article contains
some iconic pictures, but in 36 pages, only
include one equation, 1/2 m v squared, where the velocity v is a
certain hypothetical velocity, which we are unable exactly
to define and determine. And m is the mass of mankind,
that can be increased by, "the promotion of marriage,
by conscientious attention to the children, and by the
observance of all the precepts and laws of religion and hygiene. See what I mean? This article wasn't written
at the end of his life, when he was in love with
a pigeon, don't ask. This was written at the
height of his powers, and was actually the article that convinced J. P. Morgan
to give him the money to fund the tower in the first place. Conclusion. When I started to research
the history of electricity, I expected Tesla to be a major part of it. His devices are so
beautiful, and far and away, his name seems to be the
most closely connected to the word electricity. However, I found most of my knowledge came from a complete misunderstanding
of his life and ideas. Nonetheless, we shouldn't discount that Tesla was a wizard of electricity, and his devices are still,
over a hundred years later, things of beauty and wonder. Tesla's devices are a gateway drug for many electrical engineers, and that is not a small thing. ♪ Electricity electricity ♪ ♪ Electricity electricity ♪ Thanks for watching my video. Please remember to give it
a thumbs up if you liked it, also join if you want to see more videos about the history of the real people who discovered electricity. Okay, have a good day. (relaxing music)
Interesting video! Really nice to see all of your references on the article as well.
I have to admit that I believed most of the stories about Tesla. I'm bloody delighted to be shown how wrong I was.
I wonder, we know a lot more about physic now than in the 1920s, so are your assertions about Tesla's physics understandings (specifically the existence of the electron) contemporaneous with the state of the art at the time or are they judged by current (pun!) standards? He certainly wouldn't be the first nor the last scientist in history who made apocryphal statements about their own or related fields when judging from hindsight.
But I do want to ask about the pigeon!
On a serious note I found it interesting learning that I was wrong about the war of the currents for so long.
Okay, so anyone who has studied this material knows that the "war" was between Edison and Westinghouse. Aka, the guys who had the money. But, you can't downplay Teslas brilliance and role in these events. It was Tesla who put the work in to make this technology practical. It was he who attended the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago and, btw, lit the entire fair with his AC systems, ultimately proving it's efficiency was greater and more practical than Edisons systems. Not to mention all of the other parents and inventions attributed to him. Much of this info is in his own biography.
Not sure what your motivation is but you're take on these historical events is mostly wrong. I'll grant you that there were other engineers around that time that were inventing designs in parallel to Tesla, such as the radio, but you are misguided to try and discredit the brilliance of this great engineer. And obviously, Tesla and Edison were the primary engineers of these designs, not Westinghouse, so that's why people compare them more often than not...
Good video, thanks for making it.
I have a few questions.
How much did Edison know of Tesla, and what was his personal opinion of him?
It wasn't quite clear to me what the intended purpose of his tower was. Was it to transfer energy, or was it to transfer signals? If I remember correctly, Marconi was using his spark gap transmitter to send signals, and I always imagined that Tesla was trying to build an electrical distribution system. I agree that they operate on similar principles though. Were they aware that they were on similar tracks, and did they ever communicate with each other or express opinions about each other?
What were the details about why his tower was shut down? Did they realize that it wouldn't work, or did they just lose faith in him in general?
I actually had a professor that taught the class tesla created ac and reinforced the idea of a current war.... Me and my friends kinda just shook it off and kept writing.