How Nikola Tesla embodied sustainability in the early 1900S
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system.
His ideas propagated inventions like the radio, microwave, X-ray, remote control, and hydroelectric power.
In fact, “there’s not a lot of modern conveniences that we currently enjoy that weren’t touched by Nikola Tesla in some way,” said Marc Alessi, executive director of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in New York.
Tesla saw the world in a unique way. He believed in the Earth’s untapped potential as a ball of infinite energy. Tesla brought sustainability to science in every way imaginable, without even realizing it.
He sought to create an energy grid that not only harnessed renewable forms, but also accelerated mankind in an economic sense.
Here are just a few ways Tesla embodied sustainability in the early 1900s.
A few things Tesla did:
In 1904, Tesla invented an efficient bladeless turbine.
Tesla proposed electric power generation through geothermal, solar and wind energy.
Tesla speculated on the existence of the ionosphere (an electrically charged layer of the atmosphere) years before we discovered it.
In many ways, Tesla imagined the world more like a philosopher than a scientist. But his scientific mind was as infallible as any.
Bottom line: The modern world would be far behind without Nikola Tesla.
In 1904, Tesla invented an efficient bladeless turbine.
Dating back to his youth, Tesla experimented with the idea of bladeless turbines playing with homemade waterwheels.
Without the need for propellers to catch air or water as they move in a certain direction, Tesla believed he could power “automobiles, locomotives and steamships,” and in a more modern sense, airplanes and ocean liners.
Could his invention be used for wind turbines too? Critics of wind energy point to the the millions of bird deaths per year from turbine blades. A bladeless unit would be less invasive on its surrounding environment.
Unfortunately, the device did not find a commercial application in its time.
Tesla proposed electric power generation through geothermal, solar, and wind energy.
Tesla believed in the Earth (and the universe more largely) as an abundant, organic life force capable of re-harnessing energy on an infinite scale. He called it cosmic energy. That was how he approached electricity – he saw the world as a collection of frequencies and vibrations.
In the post-Einstein world (a man whom Tesla despised), Tesla’s outlandish theories about the universe are generally dismissed. But given his exceptional IQ, relentless work ethic and pretty accurate vision for the future of electricity, perhaps we should give his ideas a second look.
Thomas Edison famously said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Tesla was much different. He worked as hard as anyone, but he was a deeply inspired, other-worldly person.
In his later years, he was convinced he could communicate with outer space, he was obsessed with the number 3 and talked to pigeons. Many wrote off his eccentricity as the effect of genius.
Tesla speculated on the existence of the ionosphere, years before we discovered it.
The ionosphere is an electrically charged layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. Tesla realized that if such a layer existed, it could use it to wirelessly broadcast news, pictures, radio waves, and other forms of energy. That’s a pretty heavy idea for the 1900’s.
Today, Tesla’s altruistic vision for wireless energy transmission has been little studied. Even his famous Tesla coil, found in science museums around the world, remains nascent in terms of research.
In some capacity, Tesla’s work is used in a US government program called HAARP. The project was set up in the 1990s with hundreds of millions in funding; their primary objective is to study the ionosphere.
Some speculators believe the secretive program may be designed for less benevolent reasons than Tesla imagined (reminder: Tesla thought the ionosphere could be the source of free renewable energy for Earth).
HAARP spans multiple branches of the military in the middle of Alaska. Some people say it is used for the propagation of military-grade death rays (another Tesla idea/invention). Others suggest they are building electromagnetic pulse (EMP) shockwaves to disable weapons and radar systems as a war tactic. More fringe theories suggest it is used for weather control.
All we know is… there’s a lot of research & funding poured into HAARP… and they study the ionosphere. We don’t know too much else. Even the European Union has called for the US to be more transparent about HAARP research.
The legacy of Tesla, 100 years later
The broader point of HAARP?
Most of Tesla’s more innovative and imaginative ideas were not continued in the 21st-century lab. Where research does still exist, it appears in garages of genius outcasts, or shady research centers in remote places like suburban Moscow. These labs are obscure to the general public.
When Tesla died at the age of 86 in the New Yorker hotel, the FBI ceased his documents and research.
Source : sustainblereview.com
