Would Nikola Tesla drive a Tesla?
Monday, 9 January 2017
Say the name 'Tesla' these days and most people will think of the maker of electric cars that has enjoyed cult-like worship of its miraculous products in the last few years.
A small handful may think of the second-tier Californian hair-metal band of the same name that was almost successful in the late-1980s.
But a few of you may think of the Serbian-American genius Nikola Tesla, who is the man the car company is actually named after. And the band too, for that matter.
Nikola Tesla was born in a village in the Austrian Empire (modern day Croatia) in 1856 and emigrated to the United States in 1884.
He spoke eight languages, could memorise entire books and then recite them at will, and could solve complex mathematical equations and visualise devices entirely in his head without writing anything down.
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He was undoubtedly a genius.
While most people think of Thomas Edison as the father of the modern electric age, it was actually Tesla that the world owes its electricity to. Where Edison took other people's ideas, patented them and marketed them, Tesla invented things.
While Edison was a proponent of the DC electrical system, Tesla perfected the modern AC system we use today, despite Edison's best efforts to discredit it by holding demonstrations where he would electrocute various animals with Tesla's 'dangerous' technology.
All of the work Marconi did with radio was based on Tesla's research, even using 17 of Tesla's patents in the field.
Tesla came up with radar 18 years before Robert Watson-Watt is credited with its invention, built the first hydroelectric power plant in the world, held patents used in the development of the transistor for more than 100 years before said development, invented the remote control, neon lighting, the modern electric motor, discovered the resonant frequency of the earth, is the only man to ever successfully produce ball lightning in a laboratory and is reputed have built an actual earthquake machine.
He may also have been quite mad, as he is known to have suffered from hallucinations, had difficulty distinguishing between reality and his imagination and once admitted in an interview to being in love with a pigeon that would come whenever he called it.
Still, crazy or not, Nikola Tesla was a complex man with a thoroughly remarkable mind. One of his projects that died with him was a remarkable desire to provide the world with free, wireless electricity.
Stories and rumours swirl around the tangible legacy of Tesla hinting and surmising at what he was responsible for in his efforts to harness an endless supply of electricity that could be transmitted through the atmosphere; the alleged 'earthquake machine' was apparently part of it.
He is even said to be responsible for the enormous explosion in Siberia in 1908, commonly known as The Tunguska Event that flattened more than 2000 square kilometres of forest.
Another rumour that circulated about Tesla many years after his death in 1943 was that he built an electric car.
In 1967 a man named Peter Savo, who claimed to be Tesla's nephew, told a story about Tesla showing him a Pierce-Arrow that he had removed the gasoline engine from and replaced it with a brushless AC electric motor powered by a 'cosmic energy power receiver'.
The receiver was a box about 600mm long by 250mm wide and 150mm high that contained 12 radio vacuum tubes connected to a 1.8m antenna.
Save claimed that Tesla drove the car for around 80km at speeds of up to 150kmh.
All of this sounds pretty amazing, and would make for a great tie to the company that currently bears his name, except for the fact that it almost certainly isn't true.
There is no physical evidence that the car ever existed and given Tesla's fondness for sharing his inventions with the world, he would almost certainly have publicised such a propulsion device.
More damning, however, is the fact that there's no evidence Tesla had a nephew called Peter Savo.
Still, what would this remarkable man have thought of the company that currently bears his name?
Given his passion for sharing his innovations and patents, he would no doubt have been hugely impressed by the fact that Tesla Motors has made all its patents open source, essentially sharing them with the world - even its competitors.
He would also be impressed by CEO Elon Musk's wildly enthusiastic, almost reckless approach to throwing out ideas and making promises, as well as constantly pushing the envelope and driving the technology forward at a rate that far exceeds that of the large mainstream car manufacturers. Even if it sometimes doesn't come off.
The idea of all this development happening in expensive, high-end cars may have rubbed him the wrong way in an ideological sense.
But he would also no doubt have understood that someone has to pay for it all - a fact he found out the hard way several times when he was pushed out of companies by his partners and investors because they couldn't see a way to monetise his inventions.
But he still probably wouldn't have been patient enough to stand for the trickle-down of that technology to lower-priced cars for the masses that we are starting to see the first signs of now.
Above all though, the man who dreamed of free wireless electricity for the world would probably be utterly horrified at our lack of progress on that particular front.
Even more so at that fact that even Teslas, the current technology leaders, still need to be plugged in to charge and, despite their impressive-by-industry-standards of driving range, ultimately don't go all that far.
Still, it could be worse. If Edison were still around today he would probably be out running over dogs to prove how dangerous Teslas were.