Quote:
Originally Posted by BigElCat
Maybe PIO1980 can correct me if I'm wrong, but here goes my understanding.
Marconi used Nicola Tesla's circuitry to patent the crystal radio. Tesla was convinced that he could transmit high voltage DC electric potential just like (and along with) radio waves.
Tesla's goal was to electrify the entire world for free, or at least in manner that the electricity couldn't be meter with a direct charge to the the consumer.
Perhaps this is conspiracy theory nonsense, but I've heard that Westinghouse suppressed Tesla's research.
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Of Course there were predecessors for Tesla to follow-up, notably Maxwell, Hertz, and many others.
The RD summary:
Tesla had, like Edison, a very productive early career. He made some advances in wireless transmission and reception that showed practical and commercial promise, as well as other areas of physics, notably AC power. Aside from refinements in the tech, he solved the problem for a practical AC motor, a significant development.
His experiments with wireless control systems showed a potential for wireless communication, which led him to research to develop wireless power transmission.
There was interest in wireless communication and potential for development, which curiously didn't interest him in itself, he thought he could eventually encorporate it with wireless power when it was perfected and ready, an ultimately unworkable concept.
Meanwhile, those anticipating wireless communication were ready for more immediate development, and others stepped up to develop it to practicality.
Young G. Marconi was one with energy, resources, and prominent family connections in England who actively experimented with encouraging results while Tesla concentrated on his other projects. Marconi could see the potential for beyond horizon communications for overland, land-to-land, continent-to-continent, shore-to-ship, ship-to-shore, and ship-to-ship, a vital advance for navigation. Marconi became arguably the most successful in the early days, but it took Edwin Armstrong to make Marconi's ambitious long distance and continent-to-continent communications practical and reliable with regenerative amplifying receiving detectors using deForest audions, the first triode vacuum electron valves. Tesla chose to literally miss out by inattention.
Also, he sold his part of the Westinghouse power system with the perpetual royalty payments outright to Westinghouse to pay for his wireless power research, and to build the experimental wireless power station at Wardenclyffe with equipment loaned by Westinghouse when the money ran short. J.P. Morgan was a major investor until himself and Westinghouse eventually grew weary and wary of the Wardenclyffe project money pit ever producing the promised result and cut off further support, with Westinghouse reclaiming physical assets.
Without the Westinghouse royalties and his resources running dry, he later subsisted in relative poverty, occasionally changing hotel room residences for nonpayment, with rumours of a mystery trunk containing purported assets of questionable value he apparently couldn't cash.