NikolaTesla-HarnessingElectricity by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub

58 NIKOLA TESLA achieved them. He also made more rapid strides than Tesla in showing that wireless message transmission could be commercially practical. ACCIDENTAL EARTHQUAKE Some experiments that Tesla conducted around 1898 produced results so startling that they must have driven worries about Marconi completely out of his mind, at least for a while. They involved mechanical oscillators, which Tesla had invented in the early 1890s as a variation on the oscillators that he used to produce high-frequency alternating current. In this kind of oscillator, the primary and secondary coils are on a shaft attached to a piston. When powered by steam or compressed air, the piston moves the shaft up and down very rapidly between the poles of two electromagnets, making the oscillator produce an alternating current whose frequency depends on the speed of the motion. Electric clocks often use a device of this kind. A mechanical oscillator can also be used in reverse; that is, electrical energy can drive the piston to produce mechanical energy. In this mode, the oscillator is essentially an engine with almost no moving parts. Unlike a standard engine, which changes reciprocating (back-and-forth) motion to rotary motion by means of a crankshaft, the oscillator produces only reciprocating motion. If its mechanical vibrations are set to resonate with and therefore amplify each other, they can have effects far greater than one would expect, just as the resonating oscillations in the Tesla coil can produce much higher voltages than those in a standard transformer. A troop of soldiers marching in step across a bridge provides a common example of mechanical oscillations that resonate and amplify one another; they can shake the bridge apart if their timing is right. Tesla knew that as he tuned his oscillators to different frequencies, different objects in the laboratory responded to them. When he activated an electrical oscillator set to a given frequency, other coils in the laboratory, set to either the same frequency or one of its harmonics, sprouted crowns of sparks, even though they were not receiving current from a power source. Similarly, when he ran an oscillator in its mechanical mode and changed its frequency, different objects in the laboratory took turns shaking and rattling as the oscillator’s frequency passed through the frequencies at which the objects resonated. The inventor did not realize, however, that these effects could extend outside the laboratory. Tesla and his neighbors learned one day just how powerful the resonance triggered by his oscillators could be. His laboratory was on the upper floor of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.