Mr. Tesla held various electric engineering jobs throughout Europe before moving to the United States in 1884. Landing in New York City with just a few cents in his pocket, he found employment with Thomas Edison thanks to a recommendation letter that, if truly written, stands as one of the best in history—Charles Batechelor, a contemporary of Edison and a talented engineer and inventor, is supposed to have written to Edison:

“I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man.”

While working for Edison, Mr. Tesla made major contributions in engine and electrical generation and transmission technology. He and Edison had a falling out and he started his own company in 1886. He continued plowing through science, technology and engineering, making huge leaps in electricity generation (he was transmitting power wirelessly to street lights in a time when most of the world got around on foot or by horse), radio transmission (he built the world’s first transmitter), and computer science (he invented the AND gate, whose cousin the NAND gate forms the base of all that is possible with computers).

Volumes have been and will be written about the breadth and width of the contributions Nikola Tesla made to our world (a good case is brilliantly put forth here by The Oatmeal), but I’ll focus on a few of my favorites here (read a full list of his ~300 patents here). Here are three amazing things invented by Nikola Tesla.

The electronic logic gate
All digital technology, from the computer or smart phone that you’re using to read this to the microwaves that heat up our leftovers to the pacemakers that help regulate irregular heartbeats is built on a sea of 1s and 0s—the binary building blocks of our modern life. Zoom down far enough onto a circuit board and you find a network of connected “logic gates,” tiny little structures that pass and regulate electric current in different ways. You can imagine each gate having a gate keeper that allows the current through if the conditions are right. An AND gate will allow electricity to flow (which is seen as being “on” or 1) only if all of its inputs are flowing with electricity (no electricity is taken as “off” or 0). An OR gate will allow the electricity to flow if at least one of its inputs is “on.” In addition to AND and OR, there are also NOR, NAND, XOR, XNOR and NOT gates. These handful of logic gates can be assembled to do any kind of computation (in fact you can actually build any other gate using just the NAND gate) possible.

Computer chips can easily have billions of microscopic logic gates, all connected in a way that allows them to do the work we design them to do. Logic gates move the electric signals that we abstract our lives on to. As you are reading this article, an untold number of logic gates are clicking on and off to make it happen. There is a connection of logic gates between your eye and my typing fingers, an almost unimaginable number of OR, AND, and XOR gates channeling electric intention to drive the computer I am writing on, the servers and routers that channel my words around the internet, through to the computer, cell phone, or refrigerator that you’re reading this story on.

Tesla invented the logic gate as part of wirelessly controlled miniature boat that he unveiled in 1898. His invention, which he called a “teleautomaton,” was the first machine built capable of being controlled wirelessly with radio waves. His need to control the signals between the boat and the wirelessly connected driver lead him to devise a part that would toggle an electric signal one way or another depending on a set of prescribed circumstances (if all incoming signals are “on,” toggle “on,” else toggle “off”). Tesla’s logic gate was refined, shrunk and propagated throughout the world, but at the most abstract level it hasn’t changed a bit.

The wireless transfer of electricity and information
As the calendar clicked over from 1899 to 1900, Tesla was busy planning the design and construction of a tower that would, if it worked as he thought it would, revolutionize our world, bringing wireless communication and electricity to anyone on the planet more than a hundred years before the iPhone. Tesla was given 200 acres of land in Long Island by James S. Warden, a rich lawyer, banker and land developer, to use to build laboratories, work space and the Wardenclyffe Tower, his most ambitious project at the time. The Wardenclyffe Tower was designed to transmit both electricity and information through the air, allowing any device equipped with an antennae to operate without being physically plugged into the energy grid and to gain access to a worldwide communications network that sounds eerily similar to our modern day system. In an 1908 interview, Tesla described his proposed system:

As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.

Tesla raised funds for his project from investors like J.P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor, then began construction. The Wardenclyffe Tower was nearly completed in 1904 when most of Tesla’s investors withdrew their financial support. Tesla was unable to raise more money and the facility was abandoned by 1911.

Wardenclyffe has been in the news recently thanks to a campaign lead by the popular internet cartoonist The Oatmeal, who is raising money through the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to purchase the Wardenclyffe grounds. The Oatmeal, responding to the possibility that the land could be commercially developed, rallied the fundraising campaign around the idea of turning it into a museum dedicated to telling Nikola Tesla’s story. As of the time of this article’s publishing, $TK has already been raised toward the $850 thousand goal (there is a matching state grant).

Tesla Oscillator
In 1898, Tesla claimed he had built and deployed a small oscillating device that, when attached to his office and operating, nearly shook down the building and everything around it. His oscillator was a small device weighing just a few pounds that would create countering force on a fune-tunable level (think of a free-standing piston popping back and forth that you could control with a dial). Tesla said that he was able to tune the timing of the oscillator to the natural harmonic frequency of the building in such of way that each small oscillator motion added just a little more energy to the wave of flex in the building. Given enough little pushes, even the largest structure could be shaken apart. Make the pushes big enough and maybe even the ground itself could be shaken apart.

That’s what Tesla said happened—his device produced waves of energy that spread to the buildings around his office, causing people to panic at the unyielding earth quake. Realizing the potential for large scale havoc, Tesla said he took a hammer to the oscillator to disable it, instructing his employees to claim ignorance to the cause of the tremors if asked.

Sadly, Tesla never properly demonstrated his oscillator (he told the story of the shaken building years after it was to have happened) and eventually sank into financial ruin as his health and mental clarity degraded with age.

The TV show “Mythbusters” spent some time exploring the idea of the Tesla Oscillator and were able to build a small, 6-lb. oscillating device that created strong vibrations throughout a large steel bridge. It’s not a hard jump to the idea of a larger device (what happens at 25 lbs., 50 lbs., 100 lbs.?) being able to shake loose the bridge. What would happen with a large, 1,000-lb. oscillator? 10,000 lbs.? A better question might be “how much does the oscillator have to weigh in order to cause a proper earthquake?”

Main image credit: Rex Herbert; logic gate credit: Stefan506; Wardenclyffe remains credit: Americasroof; oscillator credit: FreeInfoSociety.com

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And yet, as terrible a thing that war, and the military institutions that support it, has been for humanity and the world-at-large, it remains a truth that many important discoveries have been made in pursuit of a better way to kill the guy on the other side of the battlefield. A lot of medical innovations arose from the carnage of the American Civil War as doctors searched for ways to fight infection and successfully treat scores of horrific wounds. World War 2 provided a huge boost to our understanding of physics as some of the world’s richest nations poured rivers of money into splitting the atom. That same war provided a similar boost to research into computers as many of the field’s top minds threw themselves into projects like cracking the German’s secret Enigma code.

Here are four good things that we can thank war for.

Microwave popcorn
The microwave oven was invented just after World War 2 when engineer Percy Spencer noticed that a chocolate bar had melted in his pocket after he stood in front of a magnetron, a piece of equipment used in radar. Modern day radar can be traced back to American Robert M. Page, who was working for the Navy when he first demonstrated a working model in 1934. Radar was further fined throughout the war to the point when Spencer made his discovery. One of the first foods that Spencer tried heating by microwave was popcorn. It took a couple of decades for the microwave oven to find its way into middle class homes, but by the time it did, microwave popcorn was right there alongside.

Second Law of Thermodynamics
The laws of thermodynamics (there are four of them) are fundamental ideas that describe how temperature, energy, and entropy behave under different conditions. They are form the base of much of our understanding of How Things Work while operating quietly all around us.

The second law of thermodynamics states that temperature, pressure, and chemical potential tend to equalize towards entropy in systems not in thermal equilibrium—put a hot block of wood next to a warm block of wood and the heat will “move” from the hot block to the warm as the system trends towards entropic equilibrium, or when both blocks are the same temperature.

This fundamental law was developed by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, a French military engineer who has been called the “father of thermodynamics” for his contributions. He noticed that, in a thermodynamic system, like an engine, heat is always created (and lost) in the process. That heat represents the energy that transitioned from a higher state of order (when it was trapped as fuel) to a lower state (the heat). He found the process to be irreversible and formalized it into writings that lead to our more refined understanding of the second law of thermodynamics today.

GPS
The Global Positioning System, better known as GPS, is made up of a network of satellites sitting in geosynchronous orbit around the earth and allows users to accurately pinpoint their location using compatible devices. GPS has become an indispensable cog in the complex system that is our modern world. Airlines rely on it to orchestrate their routes, shipping companies use it to track and manage their cargo, and I used it last week to find my way to a friend’s wedding.

GPS was built by the U.S. military upon a technological backbone that included systems they developed during World War 2. The military was experimenting and using satellites for navigation since the 60s. In 1994, the 24th satellite of the first GPS system available to civilians was launched and we’ve been using it to find our way around the world ever since.

Synthetic Rubber
The world’s cars ride on a sea of synthetic rubber. Every tire in the world is made using one form of synthetic rubber or another, a technology that developed by Allied scientists during World War 2. By 1944, twice as much synthetic rubber was being made in U.S. factories as all of the world’s pre-war production of natural rubber (made by processing sap from the rubber tree). By the end of the war, synthetic rubber was the go-to material for tires.

The use of synthetic rubber permeates our lives today and can be seen in the nose pads of eye glasses and in the and hinges of medical equipment. We use it to make wet suits and spatulas, playgrounds and sporting equipment.

Main photo credit: Steven Depolo/Flickr; popcorn photo credit: Howard Cheng; thermodynamics graphic credit: アリオト; GPS photo credit: Guyver8400; rubber photo credit: The Car Spy

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Things started to perk up a bit around Europe after a few chaotic centuries. The High Middle Ages, which began around 1000 AD, was a time marked by population growth and advances made in the worlds of art, science, business and technology. Stone castles sprung up across the land and engineers were hired to build clever machines of war for wealthy lords and leaders. The nobility expanded their financial support of scholarly and artistic work while the growing commercial sector helped drive many technological jumps in their pursuit of a better bottom line.

It’s easy to forget the debt we owe to early society for the work they did in advancing human knowledge. We wouldn’t have computers if we hadn’t figured out how to measure the passage of time. We couldn’t have sent a man to the moon if we never invented glasses. Take a little time now and read over six really important inventions of the Middle Ages.

The Heavy Plough
The plough was a major breakthrough in the history of humankind and allowed people to greatly expand their fields and grow crops in soils too hard for hand digging. Early ploughs were, more or less, a pointy stick dragged behind a draft animal, cutting lightly through the soil. A farmer would walk along with the plough and lift the plough blade so that it didn’t get caught on rocks or roots. These ploughs were fine for lighter soils but had trouble in harder soils.

Enter the heavy plough, which uses wheels to support a heavier blade. The exact place and time of the first use of the heavy plough are not known, but it’s safe to peg its introduction to somewhere in Asia around 200 AD. The Romans were rocking the heavy plough not too long after that, and by roughly 600 AD, the rest of Europe was on board. Farmers were able to open up extensive new fields thanks to the heavy plough, boosting crop yields and population numbers (aka all of our distant relatives).

Water Mills
Water mills use a turning wheel spoked with water-catching paddles to generate power for operating machines like grinders and saws. These mills were developed by the Greeks before being used throughout the Roman empire. Though they were invented hundreds of years before the Middle Ages, their numbers exploded during this time. By around 1000 AD there were tens of thousands of mills harnessing river and tidal power throughout England, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The technology invented by the Greeks was further refined during the Middle Ages and was used to power tanneries, blast furnaces, forge mills and paper mills which evolved into the machinery used in today’s factories and facilities.

The Hourglass
The exact origins of the hourglass aren’t clear, but it’s generally accepted that it was widely adopted in Europe by the end of the High Middle Ages (~1500 AD). The hourglass was a popular choice for sailors who used it to mark the passage of time which allowed them to determine their longitude (location east to west). The hourglass was preferred over earlier water clocks because their sands were unaffected by the rocking motion of an ocean-bound ship. They were used on shore to measure time for church services, cooking, and work tasks.

Mechanical clocks supplanted the hourglass, though it wasn’t until the 18th century that a suitable marine replacement was found.

Liquor
Distillation describes the separation of different liquids within a mixture, usually through the application of heat. It’s an important technique used in science and industry (oil refineries distill crude oil into a large number of components like gasoline, kerosine, paraffin wax and plastic-base) but has also given the world the gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it) of liquor. Whiskey, brandy, gin, rum and vodka are all produced by distilling mashed grains, potatoes, molasses, wine or fruits.

Distillation was first worked out by the Greeks and Egyptians but wasn’t used to produce distilled spirits until 1200 AD or so with the invention of liquors like Irish whiskey and German brandy. We had a pretty solid handle on distilling liquors by the end of the Middle Ages. Although modern distilleries are obviously more advanced than the ones used in the Middle Ages, the basic techniques haven’t changed much from “heat up the liquid and separate its components when they boil at different temperatures.”

Eyeglasses
As someone born with relatively bad eye sight, I am particularly thankful to 13th century Italians for coming up with the eyeglasses. They were first documented in the early 1300s with early models made to be held up by hand or pinched on the nose. It wasn’t until the 1700s that designs featuring arms that bent around the nose became widely used. Life for billions of people around the world (including the author) would be a dismal, blurry affair if not for the humble eyeglasses.

The Printing Press
Unlike the other items on this list, the origins of the modern printing press can easily be tracked to one man and one place: Johannes Gutenberg from Mainz, Germany. Around 1440 Mr. Gutenberg developed his now famous press which allowed, for the first time, industrial scale printing. It’s hard to emphasize how important the invention of the Gutenberg press was to the development of the modern world. The press meant ideas could be spread through books and pamphlets, newspapers and journals. Science, technology and history all saw great leaps as institutional knowledge began to accrue around the world. Without Gutenberg, there would be no internet. And without the internet you wouldn’t be reading this article right now. Also, no pictures of funny cats and bacon.

Main image credit: Bbadgett; heavy plough credit: Wien/Vienna pd-us; water mill credit: Andreas Trepte; hourglass credit: Brian Jackson/Shutterstock; liquor credit: Ziko; eyeglasses credit: Brenda Gottsabend/Flickr; printing press credit: artnet.com

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