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Comment by claytongulick | Hacker News Reader

He was quite good at math.

AFAIK, the idea was to "charge" and "discharge" the whole planet, treating it as a giant capacitor - under the theory that a resistive layer (air) is sandwiched between two conductors (earth, ionosphere).

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>> He was quite good at math.

I started having doubts in his mathematical skills after seeing this

youtube.com/watch?v=6331JXvOUGY

I suspect he had a very good imagination and intuition and was good at experimenting but unfortunately there are also a lot of myths surrounding him.

He didn't use math. He described his method of design. His imagination was so honed that he could design a machine in his mind, run it for thousands of (imaginary) hours, and then measure the wear and tear with (imaginary) instruments, which measurements he claimed would match up with the real world results were he to perform the actual test on a real machine.

Dunno if it's true, but it's fascinating.

I have a copy of his Colorado Springs notes, there's a ton of math.

But did he write it, or 'borrow' it?

And is it correct?

http://www.mathematicsmagazine.com/Articles/NicolaTesla.php#...

“Tesla’s physics requires a quite different understanding of mathematics, in some extent it is sacral in the spirit of Pythagoras. Pythagoras considered that numbers and subjects are interrelated. They correspond to each other in property due to informational and mathematical aspects of matter existing as one of the manifestations of the Divine Logos.”

Not totally sure how to interpret that…

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

The exact quotes from Nikola Tesla’s own autobiography are:

I started by first picturing in my mind a direct-current machine, running it and following the changing flow of the currents in the armature. Then I would imagine an alternator and investigate the processes taking place in a similar manner. Next I would visualize systems comprising motors and generators and operate them in various ways. The images I saw were to me perfectly real and tangible.

[…]

The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him: “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”

[…]

The pieces of apparatus I conceived were to me absolutely real and tangible in every detail, even to the minute marks and signs of wear. I delighted in imagining the motors constantly running, for in this way they presented to mind’s eye a more fascinating sight.

In some respects it almost sounds like a late Victorian account of supposed ectoplasmic phenomena. Also reminiscent of the famous story about two experimentees sharing an imaginary cigarette.

Now tell us the story about the backflip and the fish

You can read Tesla's seminar notes and some personal logs at Columbia University. The idea of "genius" is fungible, but he clearly had the math skills to solve problems he was interested in. His design for the three phase generator is a good example of this.

After reading up on Tesla my conclusion that while he was a smart man and had a good understanding of the fundamental physics, he was likely a charlatan who took advantage of the budding electrical industry. Electricity was like the internet, it was a major turning point in human history and a lot of money was going to be made from it. It was new tech and everyone was throwing money at it. And this was the early years, before the physics was well understood. This ignorance was a good cover for charlatans looking to fool investors.

From what I gather, he was able to garner celebrity status among the wealthy businessmen and used this to his advantage. This afforded him the ability to travel and meet with other engineers and talk to them about their projects. He would then take their ideas, work or inspirations as his own and sell them to the industrialists. If the engineer cried fraud, who were they compared to the great Tesla? They were easily silenced or ignored. This is why I think he died penniless: As the industry matured and more people gained knowledge, Tesla's outlandish claims could no longer attract investors. This is why his later inventions were more and more outlandish, he was getting desperate.

Come on, a charlatan who invented the electrical system we are still using today? A charlatans would be looking for an easier grift which doesn't require an engineering degree, year long battles with other inventors etc. Suspect it's more complicated than that.

Indeed. Tesla may have entertained a few kooky ideas -- forgivable in his time because of how little we knew about electricity then compared to now -- but he was an honest man, and AC worked!

Edison was the charlatan.

He did not invent AC. He patented the transformer and a brushless AC motor.

> Come on, a charlatan who invented the electrical system we are still using today?

Did he? http://edisontechcenter.org/AC-PowerHistory.html

I still stand by my opinion and believe his patents and inventions were based on the ideas of others and his celebrity status afforded him this. I also suspect that the USA at the time was more than happy to side with American inventors in patent disputes.

And there he is, right there in your reference (great reference for an unbiased point of view by the way) as an inventor of the AC system.

All inventions are somehow based on the ideas of others, but you still contend that his studying two engineering disciplines, developing several technologies and fighting the current wars were all part of the long grift of a conman? Seems like the long, risky route to the $$$ no?

(Yes, before I said THE inventor - you got me.)

He was definitely not a charlatan; he could barely enough get people to pay him for his good ideas which other people got rich off of. Charlatan implies that he knew his ideas were bunk and tried to sell them anyway; many (most?) of his ideas were not bunk and Westinghouse among others got filthy rich off of his three phase patent, induction motor/generator patents, etc.

Regarding his wireless power transmission ideas, I think it's clear that he thought it was a good idea, and a workable idea, and an idea that needed just a little more time and investment and would shortly be working very well. He was wrong, of course, but I think he thought it would work.

IMHO Tesla was a genius whose spark was rooted in his intuition rather than a solid fundamental understanding of physics and math. His intuition was "weird" and sometimes wrong, but also sometimes very, very right.

Many geniuses got things seriously wrong sometimes. Lord Kelvin was very wrong about the age of the Sun. Newton had some crazy ideas about alchemy. Einstein was famously wrong about quantum mechanics.

Earth's crust is highly resistive and even the much more conductive mantle has a resistivity of a kilohm-meter, which barely even makes it a semiconductor let alone an appropriate material for half a capacitor.

I have no idea if it would work or not, I'm a software nerd and amateur electronics engineer.

Positive charged ionosphere, negative changed earth, air insulator between... Sounds a lot like a giant cap to me.

I imagine if it was a feasible idea folks a lot smarter than I am would be working on it though.

This makes no sense. We use connection to ground as the lowest resistance path for short circuits for safety. https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/what-is-a-good-gro...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return

Even renowned scientists who are good at math, theory, and experimentation can go on some wild-ass goose chases. Look up Nobel laureate Linus Pauling and his advocacy of vitamin C woo, the negative effects of which still persist today because millions of Americans believe vitamin C will cure/prevent a cold.

He lived pretty long as a chemist of that era. People in the older days tended to work with stuff like Benzene as if it were water in labs. The fact that he lived so long despite this, maybe he was onto something? I remember reading that chemists in that era tended to die younger than the general population.

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