COMMANDER ZORRO'S MAGIC TME PORTAL ADVENTURE IN SEARCH OF THE GATE KEEPER OF LIGHTING

He was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer, and is often
described as the most important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a
man who "shed light over the face of Earth".

Now, Tesla disproved that claim by letting a charge of one
million volts be passed through his body without harm.
Alternating current had won the "War."

Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the government's Alien
Property Custodian office took possession of his papers and property, despite
his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened.

This person was born in the village of Smiljan near Gospic, in
the Lika region of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to Serbian
parents.

You would not have a televison or a remote control
to zap your TV or change your cat colours!
Joking about the cat that is!

Did you know that he was one of the first scientists on the
American continent who made X-ray photos of hands, sculls,
knees and elbows? That was 3 Years before Roentgen
re-discovered them! Also he was the first to point to the harmful
effects of a long exposure to these rays on human organisms.

In 1897 he applied various patents from the area of wireless telegraphy, and in
1898 the patent of the method and apparatus for controlling the mechanism of
moving vessels or vehicles. In New York he performed the experiment with a
remote-controlled boat. As a result of these patents, the Supreme Court of the
USA granted him - though posthumously the priority in the invention of wireless
telegraphy i.e. of radio.

Later between 1909 and 1922, he was occupied with mechanical engineering,
inventing new types of turbines, pumps, speed indicators, flow-meters, etc. His
pumps without paddles are nowadays still being commercially used.

In 1875, Tesla began studying electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute
in Graz, Austria. In Graz, Tesla was able to observe the new Gramme machine
which generated direct current electricity using electromagnets and could also
be reversed to operate as an electricity-driven motor.

At that time the electrical standard was DC, the same mode produced by a
battery, a mode that everyone was used to and accepted. To even imagine
usable alternating current was visionary! Tesla's strong instincts told him this
was possible but at that time, in spite of his visualization efforts and the mental
gymnastics of picturing many operating dynamo models, he failed to find the
solution to this nagging problem.

He stood transfixed, explaining how an AC motor would work. The vision he
outlined in minute detail had surfaced spontaneously in response to the questions
he had asked himself back in 1875. Tesla later described his visualization
powers with the example that he would envisage a design in meticulous detail,
then return to the retained image days or weeks later and be able to examine it
for wear as if it had been running during the intervening period.

Working for Edison, Tesla again advanced quickly,
his many patentable designs improved efficiency
and controls. Tesla again became convinced that
Edison had not lived up to a promise of bonuses
and he resigned from the company within a year.

We'll get to that, but first let me fill you in briefly because we would need
centuries to tell his whole story! Where to begin.....

Tesla is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of
electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's
patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current
electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems
and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial
Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have regarded him as "The
Father of Physics", "The man who invented the twentieth century" and "the
patron saint of modern electricity."

As Rockin' Groovster said earlier, he was born 10 July 1856 at Smiljan, Croatian
Krajina, Austrian Empire..he was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire
and later became an American citizen.

Westinghouse also used the Tesla polyphase system in harnessing the
power of Niagara Falls to produce 37,300 kilowatts electrical output
from ten generators and transmit it to Buffalo, which was
twenty-two miles away! The system went online in August, 1895

In May, 1893, The Columbian Exhibition opened in Chicago with illumination inside
and out supplied by the Westinghouse Company using Tesla technologies.
The Westinghouse installation was "outshining" Edison's lighting efforts
and Tesla supplied a spectacular personal rebuttal to Edison's claim that
AC current was by nature too dangerous for everyday use.

Since Tesla's first introduction of AC electricity, the "War of
Electric Currents" had been waged, with Edison insisting on
the safety of DC current over AC current. The safeness in
fact came from the minimal strength of the direct current.

The demonstration planted an intuitive seed in Tesla's brain. Why was it
necessary to go to such lengths to convert the alternating (AC) current
produced by the dynamo to direct (DC) current? Why not leave the current AC
and run the motor that way?

The puzzle's solution came to him in dramatic fashion in February, 1882. While
walking with a friend at sunset, reciting poetry by Goethe, a spasm of revelation
struck Tesla. Definitely a most unusual way, don't you think?

Shortly before he died, Edison said that his
biggest mistake had been in trying to develop
direct current, rather than the vastly superior
alternating current system that Tesla had put
within his grasp.

According to John J. O'Neill, author of "Prodigal Genius, the Life of Nikola
Tesla", Tesla told him this story in the presence of William L. Laurence, the New
York Times science writer.

Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very
beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to
follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them.

One night as he was lying in bed, she flew in through
the window and he knew right away that she had
something important to tell him: she was dying.

Tesla admitted to O'Neill that when that particular pigeon died, something went
out of his life. Before that time, he could complete the most ambitious programs
he could ever dream of, but after the pigeon flew into the beyond, he knew his
life's work was done for good.

Tesla the man was a solitary figure, his true love was his inventions. He prefered
his laboratory to public appearances.

If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she
needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose
in his life.

This rare genius who wanted only to help mankind...to give
his inventions away...he died of heart failure alone in room
3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, some time between the
evening of 5 January and the morning of 8 January
1943, at the age of 86.

Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla
was destitute and died with significant debts. Later
that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent
number, in effect recognizing him as the inventor of
radio.

After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared
to be top secret. The so-called "peace ray" constitutes a part of some
conspiracy theories as a means of destruction. His personal effects were seized
on the advice of presidential advisers and J. Edgar Hoover declared the case
most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents. One
document states that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different
places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments". It
was reported that there were several "missing" papers and property.

At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing his work on the teleforce
weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War
Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research
into ball lightning and plasma, and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The
US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe.

Tesla made his first million at the age of forty, but gave away nearly all his
royalties on future innovations. Although others made great fortunes on his
inventions. He was rather financially inept, and was almost entirely unconcerned
with material wealth.

His inventions made possible cheap electrical light and energy as well as travel on
street cars, subways, and electrical railroads.

As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon:
"Yes, I loved that pigeon,
I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me."

"And then, as I got her message, there came a light
from her eyes - powerful beams of light".
"...Yes," "...it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more
intense than I had ever produced
by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory."

A state funeral was held at St. John The Divine
Cathedral in New York City.

He was cremated and his ashes were interned in a
golden sphere, Tesla's favorite physical shape.

They are on permanent display at the Tesla
Museum in Belgrade along with his death mask.

He did, however, establish a permanent reputation as
one of the greatest visionary scientists in the history of physics.

He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's
first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future
vision of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of
business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.

That's where you can see actual 3D models and annimations of some of
his inventions such as the Tesla Fan, Tesla Water Pump and the
Tesla Apparatus for Aerial Transportation

"He'll be a child of the storm,"
commented the midwife who assisted his birth, at the stroke of midnight"
while lightning was striking during a thunderstorm.
His mother replied, "No, a child of light."

Music: Entering the Stronghold by Danman87
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