2-7-18

2-7-18
Carson 1-2
map for Tesla's youth

rural tinkering--farmers who made the things they needed
channel a powerful imagination--thought experiments
childhood and youth interrupted by illnesses both physical and mental

Tesla's thought experiments allowed him to imagine machines in their ideal form
tension between the ideal and the practical
Carson attributes this to the Orthodox Christian emphasis on Jesus as the word (or logos--order) of God, existing before his incarnation
Tesla may not have been religious but his way of understanding the world was shaped by growing up in the church

Tesla was able to go to study at the Joanneum Polytechnic School in Graz, a university specializing in science and engineering
one of four in the Austrian Empire that gave engineering degrees--learning engineering in school was a relatively new idea

generating electricity:

relationship between electricity and magnetism--induction

discovered by Oersted in 1820
principles worked out by Faraday in 1831
to generate electricity you move a conductor relative to a magnetic field
a motor is on the same principle, in effect running the generator backward
in its simplest for, moving a conductor in a magnetic field gives you an alternating current, a commutator turns that into direct current like a battery

Around 1876, Tesla's university acquired a Gramme dynamo (generator), invented by Belgian inventor Zenobe Gramme in 1871
Tesla imagined it would be so much more efficient if it could be designed without a commutator
to do that you need a different generator and motor, both running on alternating current

Tesla then makes a mess of his life for several years before resuming study at the Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague
when his family runs out of money to send him there he moves to Budapest
works for a telegraph office and then decides to concentrate on invention but falls into depression

walking in a park reciting Faust he has a flash of insight to solve a problem with the motor design he had been thinking about
he could use induced currents in the rotating part of his motor, creating a rotating magnetic field
but this story may be a later elaboration (p. 52)

first level explanation:

to generate an electric current you move a wire (coil of wire) in a magnetic field
most simply this creates an alternating current
the inventors of generators had to figure out a way to turn alternating current into direct current, because that was what people already knew how to use (from a battery)
you need an extra system to do that, the commutator, which is messy
generators and motors operate on exactly the same principles, so a DC motor is equally messy
no one thinks that you can use alternating current by itself
until Tesla comes along and says we can make a much simpler generator and motor by just using the alternating current

Level two explanation

in a motor, the alternating current pulls the rotating part in a circle by switching back and forth
Tesla has to imagine in his head how to make that work
he can change both the current and the magnet because he is using an alectromagnet

objective vs. subjective rationality
incremental vs. disruptive innovation