The Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla and his Tower

Smithsonian ^ | February 4, 2013

[mylife]

I know a guy that had the cathode on a TV arc on his nose LOL

[The Cajun]

Worst with me was the anode of an old thyratron tube that fired our sonic tools at work.
2000V at 50 amps for fraction of a second, flash bulbs going off inside your eyeballs :)

[mylife]

That’s bound to leave an impression.

[Lancey Howard]

By 1912, Tesla began to withdraw from that doubting world. He was clearly showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was potentially a high-functioning autistic. He became obsessed with cleanliness and fixated on the number three; he began shaking hands with people and washing his hands—all done in sets of three. He had to have 18 napkins on his table during meals, and would count his steps whenever he walked anywhere.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Tesla but who is the other guy?

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Is it Sarkozee?

[P.O.E.]

Mark Twain in Tesla's lab

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Tesla was the true Mad Scientist of fiction.

[imardmd1]

... “Westinghoused”...

"We sting,you use!" (This has been around for a century, about)

[Talisker]

Westinghouse had been paying his room and board at the hotel for years

This was nice.

Nice? Westinghouse deprived him of millions by cheating his good will, and then paid his room and board?

Yeah, real nice.

[JDoutrider]

...

[Lancey Howard]

Adrian Monk.

[EEGator]

Is Monk his descendant? They are both rather quirky, to say the least.

[bkepley]

With the advent of power electronics that can work on the power levels involved now, you will see more and more DC systems going on line, at least to the substation. They have a dramatic drop in line loss due to capacitance and inductance in the system. At the termination point, you have a monster inverter to convert it back to pure sine wave AC current, 3-phase.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Induction and capacitance don't cause any power loss while low voltage DC means in order to deliver power you have to increase current, a lot, which means real power losses in the power lines.

[Mr. Lucky]

...but a lousy attorney general.

[fishtank]

A very good movie, "The Prestige", has Tesla portrayed by David Bowie. Also in the movie are Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Scarlett Johannsen.

[Aqua225]

Not talking low voltage here. Because DC doesn’t have some of the effects of AC current, you can go much higher on voltage. Think millions. I think some AC systems have gotten that high, but it’s much easier with DC.

And line reactivity *is* a major loss point in the power system. You have a virtual power consumption caused by stray capacitance interacting with the AC signal, which causes a current flow that is out of phase with the voltage, which is unfortunately reflected by extra heat dissipation in transformers, etc., because they are flowing current to feed the reactivity of the line. Heat is loss.

On those big long distribution lines, this is a major problem. The power companies stack capacitors to bring down the reactivity of the distribution lines, but it’s not perfect, it’s only a stop gap actually.

[Aqua225]

Agreed. AC was the best tech of the times in which Tesla lived.

It still does a good job even now, but DC is coming of age with the advent of high voltage power semiconductors.

I don’t think we have to worry that AC is going away at the wall for a long time to come, but it will slowly make its way down to street level in the coming decades as semiconductors just keep getting cheaper and better.

[cva66snipe]

The reason you go with a much higher AC transmission voltage is to achieve a much salller Transmission Conductor.Very High Voltage Low Amps. At the substation you go to lower voltage somewhat larger conductor and the same from transformer on pole to home.

Truth is you will also have significant loss in that Monster Inverter you speak of. Telsa was right back in the day and he is still right today. AC is the best means of long distance power transmission.

[Aqua225]

There will be loss in the inverter, I agree. But not as much as we are losing on line reactivity now.

And the boost in transmission voltages and reduction in line reactivity related losses will easily overcome the small loss in the inverter.