Re: Tesla Receiver Coil

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: FIFTYGUY@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 11/27/05 5:00:04 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:

>> Yes you could.  The young Tesla wanted to be an Electrical Engineer,
>> and had to convince his father to let him go to college for that
>> degree.

>Actually I think it was one of his "professors" who, while
>demonstrating a motor complete with sparking brushes on a benchtop,
>told Tesla (and most likely an entire class) that there was no future
>in using AC to run electric motors. I laugh when I think about it :)

    From the Practical Transformer Design Handbook (Lowdon, 1980), pg 25:

    "At the Polytechnic Institute in Gratz Austria, Nichola Tesla, a 
19-year-old student, brashly suggested to his professor that the dc 
Gramme motor being demonstrated was impressive but that it sparked a 
lot around the commutator brushes, so why not dispense with them by 
using alternating current as the source of power instead of direct 
current. The good professor, it is reported, devoted an entire 
lecture period to destroying the suggestion point by point, and he 
proved the impossibility of running motors on alternating current. He 
compared the idea of an ac motor to the naive dreams of those who 
sought to design perpetual motion machines.
    "It took Tesla seven years to find the answer. It came to him 
suddenly while he strolled in the park one February afternoon. In a 
magnificent vision, he saw clearly not only the phased coils 
necessary to make an ac motor work but also the circuitry, the 
materials, and even the tolerances to which it had to be made. In one 
blinding flash he had it. Then, without putting pen to paper, so he 
claims, he designed and constructed, and tested in his mind, 
single-phase, two-phase, three-phase, and polyphase power systems to 
feed his motors - all of which worked perfectly when he finally got 
around to constructing the real thing. And, one of the many ancillary 
devices which he designed for his system was, of course, the transformer."

    So even if Tesla invented the induction motor, were synchronous 
motors unheard of when he was in college? Were there not alternators 
built to produce experimental AC, which could be run backwards as 
wound-rotor motors? The professor never realized obvious possibility 
of the "universal" motor?
    "In one blinding flash" - or nagging years-long desire for 
vindication? At least he channeled his energies into something constructive!
    The above passage also speaks volumes about Tesla's claim to 
"never sign his name under something that didn't work" - as far he 
was concerned, he had always been correct, and *mental* testing was sufficient!
    Did Tesla *really* invent the power transformer? If so, this is 
an oft-overlooked contribution of his, of at least equal importance 
as the induction motor was.

-Phil LaBudde