Category talk:Nikola Tesla

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Content from TESLA (now a redirect):

Nikola Tesla was an electrical inventor, and lived during the late 1800's into the mid-1900's. He was a brilliant person, yet was an enigma to practically everyone. Known for his eccentric lifestyle, Tesla nevertheless maintained a rather high social profile, despite his prolific inventiveness. Some of his phobias included pearl earrings worn by women, never staying in a hotel room or floor whose number was divisable by three, and insisting on a large number of napkins at every meal with which he would meticulously polish his silverware.

Tesla's main claim to fame lay with his invention of the alternating current motor. Tesla believed that alternating current was vastly superior to (Edison's) direct current, but the problem was the lack of a practical motor. Alternating current is practical because of the fact that it can be altered or converted to suit a variety of situations. For example, if the voltage is made quite high, then the current necessary for a specific level of power is very low. This low current then becomes very efficient when sending electrical power over very long wires. (This is the reason why the power lines running across the countryside are at very high voltages.)