2-19-18

In class test Feb. 28
Write one essay.  You will have a choice of two questions, one of which will focus on some aspect of Tesla's method of invention and the other of which will focus on some aspect of Tesla as an example of business strategy (and the role of innovation).

professions were in the process of organizing at the end of the 19th century

• example: medicine required one or two years of education after high school and an apprenticeship
• the first law schools were established in the 1870s and 1880s but most people still trained by apprenticeship
• before schools professions organized themselves by forming professional societies

what is a profession?

• specialized skills (today gained through specialized education)
  
• licensing and other certification
• serving the good of society

T.C. Martin worked to publicize Tesla, including a book and an early recording of his voice
Robert U. Johnson became Tesla's connection to high society

• Tesla is building a network who he hopes will invest in his ideas
• Players Club contains people in literature and the arts
• people like Mark Twain who will get him publicity
  

All this publicity was important before he set up a new company to develop and sell his patents
he needs to build up his reputation as a great inventor
but it wasn't successful because the economy was in recession
and because Tesla hadn't show he could develop his patents into something profitable
Tesla was less good at this part, which Carlson calls convergent thinking

Tesla is going in too many directions at once:

• alternating current, particularly a lighting system using high frequency AC
• xrays
• remote controlled boat carrying a torpedo
• photographs with new kinds of light from his new light bulbs
• transmitting power wirelessly through the earth, with the idea that it would draw on power in the earth
• different ways of transmitting power wirelessly
• via electromagnetic waves, but receiver has to be tuned to exactly the same frequency as the transmitter
• standing wave or electromagnetic field for wireless power and light in a room
• transmitting power through the earth
  

Tesla was more interested in a more radical step
he would send out a current through the ground and it would return as electromagnetic waves
(confusingly this is not what is called a ground wave today)

this doesn't show the return current, which is what Tesla was interested in
he thought he was not just creating a circuit but tapping energy in the earth
Tesla coil (right) is part of how he is trying to send electricity through the earth

Tesla was going in four different directions in a manic way
when his laboratory was destroyed by a fire he became depressed
he treated himself with electric shock, related to today's electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)

since his wireless lighting system was not selling he went in new directions
Xrays:

• he had problems with photographic plates being spoiled
• did not realize until Roentgen's discovery that it was by invisible electromagnetic waves that could pass through the black paper covering the plates--xrays
• Tesla's technology allowed him to produce more powerful xrays
• but he did not come up with a patentable product

Tesla next turned to remote controlled devices

• his practical use was to carry a torpedo
• this was in effect radio control before the invention of radio
• with the technology available it wasn't easy to do

To ask whether Tesla was gay is tricky because the categories were different then
Tesla was more prone to say he didn't marry because he needed to not be tied down to a domestic world, his imagination needed to be wild and his concentration intense

Tesla made another step with his ground current idea and finally got funding for that from Astor
Tesla became aware that Marconi was developing a wireless telegraph, but Tesla was still focused on wireless power