Talk:Nikola Tesla

Edit request from 211.30.172.34, 17 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} Why stressing so much "ethnic Serb", he was born in Croatia as his parents were. Please update. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.9.221 (talk) 19:00, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I suggest changing "Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan..." to "Tesla was an ethnic Serb born in the village of Smiljan..." as it reads more naturally.

211.30.172.34 (talk) 03:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree. This line is fine the way it is and is actually an example of how the article should be cleaned up to eliminate over usage of "Tesla" instead of "he" or other equally useful alternatives.Daffydavid (talk) 06:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

If the request was due to it not being a full sentence, I fixed that. If it was a style issue, I agree with Daffydavid, it's fine as is. Thank you for the catch anon. — Bility (talk) 20:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The funeral

The funeral Tesla's ashes [1] is performed in October 2011 at the Temple of Saint Sava in Belgrade.[2]--Свифт (talk) 16:06, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The later Years

in that section it says "In 1917, the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies" but yet it fails to mention this was eventually seized for a debt from the original land owner and thus his property then the govt blew it up. I knew something fishy was wrong with that sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChesterTheWorm (talk • contribs) 21:35, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Personal Life POV/wording issue

"Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight.[94] He was quick to criticize others' clothing as well, on several occasions directing a subordinate to go home and change her dress.[21]"

The word "cruel" doesn't really belong anywhere in there because what is cruel is subjective, and thus shouldn't really be applied to social issues...especially since what is socially acceptable changes over time. Having a disgust for overweight people isn't cruel, nor is firing someone for being fat or dressing poorly necessarily cruel(depends heavily on the circumstances and what you consider acceptable). The sentence is too openly condemning.

"Tesla could be harsh at times" is perhaps a better wording, or replacing cruel with harsh. "Cruel" implies an intent to inflict suffering, or take joy in the suffering of others. I get the impression that Tesla didn't literally enjoy causing fat people distress, just that he had disdain for them and took proper dressing attire seriously. I'll go ahead and change it for now, but if someone can improve the wording further, feel free to. BeardedScholar (talk) 20:48, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Literary works by Tesla?

Maybe we should add a section about the books and articles that he wrote? Anyway, here is a link to an article he wrote which was published in v.60 (1900 May-Oct) of The Century Magazine, starting at p. 175: The Problem of Increasing Human Energy. I have added this link to the external links section too. --Kri (talk) 02:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes agreed, I am surprised that it is not here already for someone of such importance and such a mature article. Much better to have a section on his works than bury it in external links. Does anybody have a list? SpinningSpark 05:42, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Good. But someone will have to help me here; I don't know much at all about the works Tesla has written; I only know of three of them, but he has probably written much more than that. I can start a small new section but someone will have to fill it out more. --Kri (talk) 14:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I have now added a short section about his literary works, although I have no idea if the few examples I have given is a good representative set of all the works he has written or not, or if they should be reordered in order for the most important work to come first. In fact, I haven't read anything written by him. --Kri (talk) 16:11, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The "large number" claim is not justified if you have not actually found a large number, or have a source that says there is a large number. SpinningSpark 19:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

So, now it's just a number. --Kri (talk) 02:08, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

There is a category, but this is a significant thing. Shouldn't it be added to the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.110.243.120 (talk) 11:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Unprotect , expand

"Tesla knew, from Lord Kelvin's discoveries, that more heat is absorbed by liquefied air when it is re-gasified and used to drive something, than is required by theory; in other words, that the liquefaction process is somewhat anomalous or 'over unity'"

This isn't actually overunity though. What is the correct explanation, then? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.167.72.228 (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It means "was" required by theory at the time (1902 by the ref). See Enthalpy of vaporization for more info on why you have to dump "extra" energy into a liquid to make gas.214.4.238.180 (talk) 15:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

A question re Teslas Wireless power station

Heard varying "stoi]ries" Re the Wardencyllfe Long Island Wireless Power transmitting station(and radio even phototype I understand?!) His fincial backer J.P.Morgan withdrew funds from Teslas project because (so the "story" goes!) would have destrpyed J.P. Morgans meteretd electrcal power profits.I also hear that Marconis radio systems worked better then Teslas. Thats the reason this project was a failure or was it Teslas Utopian ideas that destroyed this wireless transmission etc project.Anyone know the REAL story?!SYLVESTERVIERIECKMOI (talk) 01:03, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

No, it was basically because the idea could not work. An electric potential sufficient to reach the ionosphere hundreds of miles above the transmitting terminal would much more easily reach the ground a hundred feet below the terminal. It's like lighting a bulb floating at the far end of the pool by dipping two electrodes in the near end; most of the energy pumped in is short-circuited and never gets to the intended load. --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

But it is possible to light a fluorescent tube by aiming a microwave at it. It's just impossible by physics known at the time. There is still a large loss of energy even with microwave transmission due to atmospheric scattering and difficulty in tuning receptors to match sympathetic frequencies, but it's plausible to have transmission across distance without a conduit. 67.169.49.52 (talk) 08:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Tesla Generator?

Do we have an actual source for the claim that Tesla invented an overunity generator? I am, as you might imagine, skeptical, and the citation is of an article about Lord Kelvin that doesn't really support the overunity bit: "The mechanical principle by which we obtain liquid air - that a compressed gas expanding freely, without doing work, cools slightly more than the theory demands - is a discovery Kelvin made in conjunction with his friend Joule." This doesn't imply that you can get infinite free energy from the process.

Also, Lord Kelvin was famous for helping to develop the idea of conservation of energy, so he definitely didn't believe you could get free energy, either.

One other thing: THIS is not a reliable source. Just saying. 71.184.246.254 (talk) 02:02, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the bizarre section about how Edison scammed Tesla out of payment for project

I'm referring to the section that talks about how Edison promised Tesla $50,000 (over $1million after inflation for 2007) to work on a project, and then later told him he was lying, and all the other bizarre things similar or related on this page. Their sources point to humor centered books that focus on 'fun facts', and those books do not have sources on their information as well. When I tried Googling to see if I could find any other mention of this information, nothing even similar was found. This is probably some BS information? this is the first time I've done anything on wiki except lurking, so I am not that experienced with the required standards of sources, but check them out yourself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.2.46 (talk) 08:36, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

There does not seem to be any shortage of book sources to verify this. Try this search. SpinningSpark 11:36, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

edit: also, I noticed if you search for "tesla" it redirects to the disambiguation page (which it should), but when you serach for "telsa", it redirects to Nikola Tesla. Inconsistent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.2.46 (talk) 08:41, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Smiljan is not part of Gospić

"Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić)"

Smiljan is 6 kilometers out of Gospić. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.129.75.36 (talk) 18:55, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Administratively Smiljan is one of a number of villages which belong to the City of Gospić even though it is 6 km away from Gospić proper. [3] Timbouctou (talk) 05:56, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

A question about Teslas REAL birthdate?

I once coressponded with the late great promoter of Tesla. Dr.leland Anderson He told me that Nikola Teslas REAL birthdate(because of the Calender in use in that area of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire Smiljan,Croatia. Was 7 to 10 day AFTER July 10th 1856! The Julian Calender was in use in that area at the time. Anyone know about this? Thanks!JOHNSONCLEMENSVIREICKEDSON (talk) 05:51, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Tesla's native language

The article incorrectly refers to Tesla's native language as Serbian. Moreover the cited reference does not contain this term but rather "Serbo-Croat," more commonly known as "Serbo-Croatian." For example on page 11 O'Neill writes that Tesla "spoke, read and wrote Serbo-Croat..." while on page 23 he mentions Tesla's "native Serbo-Croat language." While most linguists continue to use the term "Serbo-Croatian" in linguistic nomenclature, even if this were not the case, the Serbian language can hardly be considered the successor language to this standard, and more importantly, can not be used to refer to the language Tesla spoke.

Without going into the issue of Tesla's origins, there is no evidence that his purported Serbian ethnicity should be a prescribing condition to speak the Serbian language. If anything, there is reason to ascertain his written and spoken language was Croatian. Tesla, having been born and raised in what is now modern day Croatia, spoke the local ijekavian dialect (as is evidenced by the telegram). There is no evidence for, nor should we expect that Tesla spoke the ekavian dialect (Serbian standard). Furthermore, the article mentions Tesla's reflection of his childhood cat The Magnificent Mačak. The word "mačak" is Croatian whereas the Serbian equivalent is "mačor."

It is also necessary to point out the procedural irrelevance of including in the introduction a transcription of Tesla's name into Serbian Cyrillic. This would be appropriate in the case that the modern state of Serbia (where this script is used) claims citizenship over a man who was not born there, and whose documented family history for hundreds of years lived in Croatia albeit under Austro-Hungary. It should also be pointed out that the Serbo-Croatian standard script was Latin, and exclusively Latin in Croatia. The linking of Tesla to cyrillic in this way is improper.Tommy1441 (talk) 16:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

It is not important which language is the successor of Serbo-Croatian, but which languages existed back then... Serbo-Croatian language didn´t existed as such all the way until 1945, so it becomes impossible for him to be a native speaker of a language that didn´t existed at that time. I disagree with this change despite some sources evidently using the posterior common name of the language. Serbo-Croatian really replaced Serbian and Croatian languages in 1945 when it become the official language, so it is actually wrong to say that he was fluent in S-C as he died in 1943, so he never got to speak the language named as such. Before 1945 the language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovene", however all three languages existed as separate in fact.

PS: With regard of your "mačak theory", you are also wrong as in Serbian you can also say mačak instead of mačor... For instance, when I speak Serbian I allways say mačak instead of mačor, so that is wrong as well. FkpCascais (talk) 05:17, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Tesla [...] spoke the local ijekavian dialect (as is evidenced by the telegram). There is no evidence for, nor should we expect that Tesla spoke the ekavian dialect (Serbian standard). First, ekavian and ijekavian are not dialects, but variants. Standard Serbian has two variants of equal status in every respect: ekavian and ijekavian. The ijekavian variant of Serbian is used by around 2,000,000 Serbs living in or hailing from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and parts of western Serbia. Modern Serbian was first standardized as ijekavian (by Vuk Karadžić, in the 19th century). Vladimir (talk) 17:14, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

After my recent revert, FkpCascais asked me to provide some comments, so here they are:

1. The term "Serbo-Croatian language" was introduced by the Vienna Literary Agreement in 1850, before Tesla was born.
2. The fact that it may have become the official language in 1945 is irrelevant. It is perfectly possible to speak a language that is not official anywhere.
3. If asked about it, Tesla would probably have described his mother tongue as "Serbian", like probably most other Serbs living in Croatia at that time.
4. However, most present-day Serbs living in Croatia certainly wouldn't describe their mother tongue as Serbian, but rather as Croatian. Whether that's relevant here is another matter.
5. Tesla's language was in all likelihood barely if all distinguishable from the language of Lika Croats. That is, if one heard two people from the Lika area speaking "Croatian" and "Serbian" respectively, one could not reliably distinguish between the two.
6. The fact that many Serbs speak ijekavian while many Croats speak ekavian makes the ekavian/ijekavian difference of little use for purposes of this discussion.

That's about it. Saying that Tesla spoke Serbian is correct in one sense and perhaps incorrect (or at least imprecise) in another. Ditto for saying he spoke Croatian. Serbo-Croatian seems like a middle ground here, and is also something Tesla himself probably wouldn't mind at all. GregorB (talk) 09:27, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

It is somewhat funny that the quasi-Serb Emir Kusturica should choose for his film the title, "Crna mačka, beli mačor." It is also rather comical that some of the people above involved in editing the article for an English wikipedia article are not fully versed in the English language. That should tell us something. Now in light of the Serbo-Croatian standard being established in the joint Vienna Literary Agreement of 1850, and considering Tesla was born in 1856, this really is a no-brainer. Also, Vuk Karadžić standardised the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, which we know Tesla did not use. Starting to make some correlations? No biographer has referred to his language as Serbian, hence the falsified reference, but what would surprise me would be if these sloppy and unscrupulous breaches of wikipedia's standards were left unchecked by the unbiased moderators.Tommy1441 (talk) 13:55, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, many thanks Gregor for your kind response, and apologies for making you loose time with this, but I supose we could just check a new edit in which some doubts may exist.

I don´t opose using S-C if it will make the article stable. However, I am not sure if it is right to use a language which may have been agreed by some academics but which was only accepted officially a century later. That would somehow mean that S-C language existed simultaneously together with Serbian (official in K. of Serbia) and Croatian (official in Croatia-Slavonia). That was my doubt. It is not trouth that there are no sources claiming otherwise. Without having the necessary time to spend on this, simply by a quick look I already find one source claiming differently: [4]...

Tommy, please don´t use expressions like "quasi-Serb" cause after all we are not here to count anyones chromosomes and proclaim this person quasi-this, or quasi-that... After all, you even acused other users of being biased and phalsifiying things when in fact this issue is a bit complex, so someone oposing your edit is not necessarily "evil" by itself... FkpCascais (talk) 17:47, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

The word mačak (мачак) can be found in Karadžić's Serbian Dictionary published in 1818 (column 389). The claim that Tesla never used Cyrillic doesn't look very probable, but in any case Serbian can be written in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and it's not uncommon that some Serbian speakers use mostly Latin. And warning: personal attacks and disparaging terms, such as "quasi-Serb", are not allowed on wikipedia. Vladimir (talk) 16:49, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, the renown Vuk Karadžić, who, in order to define the Serbian language and publish his Serbian dictionaries, travelled near and far picking up words as he saw fit. Serbian can be written in the Latin script? Really? So can Chinese, Kurdish, and Croatian, and I know which of these languages Nikola Tesla spoke and wrote in. The very argument being used here against the term "Serbo-Croatian" is actually supporting the side that the language Tesla spoke was Croatian, and not Serbian. Even if Tesla's deep origins were Serbian (debatable), the idea that you can migrate to another land and continue to speak your language for hundreds of years is ludicrous. Furthermore, Serbian claim to ijekavian is nonsense. The minority of ijekavian speakers in Serbia is pretty much due to Bosniaks. Why do these so called Serbs outside Serbia all speak a different variant to Serbs in Serbia? Those in doubt about ijekavian should note that Montenegrins, who exclusively speak ijekavian, in the 19th century in Constantinople referred to their language not as Serbian, but rather Croatian, something documented by the newspaper "Srbobran." Tommy1441 (talk) 09:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

• Karadžić recorded his native East-Herzegovinian dialect, though he also included a number of words he collected in Serbia, always specifying the source in these cases, for example in this entry: Алка, f. гвоздени колут (у Србији по селима говоре бијочуг). East-Herzegovinian dialect was at that time spoken predominantly by Serbs.
• So can Chinese, Kurdish, and Croatian,... - now this specific nonsense can go without comment.
• In western Serbia, there are more ijekavian-speaking Serbs than Bosniaks. Besides the Sandžak region (around 50% Serbs), ijekavian is also spoken by Serbs in the areas of Užice and Čačak.
• The most prominent people from 19th-century Montenegro, such as Njegoš, called their language Serbian. It's ridiculous to give as an argument something that someone wrote about what some unnamed people said "in the 19th century in Constantinople". Vladimir (talk) 13:35, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I neither support nor oppose the inclusion of Serbo-Croatian in the article, I just responded to false claims by User:Tommy1441. Vladimir (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Come on Tommy, I understand that no one can know everything, but seems to me that you have some quate strong preconceptions that you use negatively and arrogantly. You have all the knollkedge on the distance of one click, so it is up to you to use it and inform yourself, or to keep on the missconceptions... Anyway, whatever you choose it is not nice neither productive to bring it here. We were just talking of the languages that Tesla spoke, I added Croatian language just after Serbian together with the source I´ve found, so I really hope we can close the chapter and move on to more important issues. Best regards to all. FkpCascais (talk) 17:59, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

This edit by FkpCascais inserted a poor quality online reference as published by non-notable engineer Randy Blair. It also separated Serbian and Croatian into two spoken languages when they are virtually indistinguishable as spoken. Of course he spoke both; the added skill is that he could read and write in both Latin and Cyrillic characters. Biographer James O'Neill says Tesla's father "spoke, read and wrote Serbo-Croat, German and Italian." The definitive and exhaustive biography Wizard says Tesla could speak "about nine" languages by college age, but only one of those nine could be called Serbo-Croatian; it is not the case that Serbian was counted once and Croatian was counted again. Biographer Marc J. Seifer discusses various events in Tesla's boyhood when he was shown to be able to read both Serbian and Croatian forms of the language, usually Serbian books at home and Croatian texts of various sorts in public, at school and at the library. Binksternet (talk) 18:41, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Binksternet, I used that source because it was the one having Croatian language as a separate one, but I did not removed the already existing source, just added this one. Nikola Tesla was born in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (sub division within Austro-Hungary) and as you can check the official language there was NOT Serbo-Croatian, but Croatian and Serbian (as separate languages), and this situation was kept all the way until 1918. Unrelated, but of interess, during this period the official language in Kingdom of Serbia was Serbian, so as you can see, despite the fact that a number of writers agreed in the Vienna Literary Agreement in 1850 to unite the language into one named Serbo-Croatian, that joint language never existed as official anywhere as such all the way until 1945 (2 years after Tesla´s death) when it was made the official language by the new socialist/communist authorities lead by Tito. Don´t forget that between 1918 and 1943 the country was Kingdom of Yugoslavia who´s official language had some strange naming of "Serbo-Croato-Slovene" but in practice the 3 languages existed as separate. The reason why so many scholars use Serbo-Croatian as language spoken by Tesla is probably because that was the name attributed to the language in more recent period and because that was a diplomatic polite way to avoid controversy between Serbian and Croatian and also as way not to overcount similar languages such as this two are as separate. The fact is that most Serbs from Croatia (Tesla´s case) name its language Serbian in oposition to Croatian, but in practice it is easy to say that most people in his case speak both. Anyway, after analising all this, I am still having some trouble understanding the inclusion of a language that didn´t existed as such officially anywhere during his life time period... FkpCascais (talk) 21:04, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

This is an English language encyclopedia. Speakers of English were calling both Serbian and Croatian languages the same name—Serbo-Croat—from the beginning, certainly before Tesla was born. For instance, the 1829 Encyclopedia Americana gave two names for the language: Croato-Serbian or Serbo-Croatian. Going back even earlier, the American Bible Society reported in 1816 that they were seeking people with language skills in a wide variety of global languages including Serbo-Croatian. They discussed Croatian separately as a written language which uses Cyrillic characters unlike English which uses Latin ones. However, the skill of speaking it was called Serbo-Croatian.

So... the Serbian and Croatian languages are only different languages as written, not as spoken. If you say Tesla spoke x languages, you would also say he read and wrote x+1, adding the second written version of Serbo-Croatian. Binksternet (talk) 16:55, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, Croatian language uses only latin scrypt, while Serbian originally used Cyrillic, but is one of the few world languages which can use Cyrillic and Latin scrypts. As the two alphabets are formed of same 30 letters, there is no problem for any Serb to use one or another when talking his language, and basically every Serb knows both alphabets from young age, as both are teached in primary schools. You just can´t mix the two in same text (althought rarely even those cases are found, where some part of some document are written in Cyrillic, other in Latin). In fact, when speaking Serbian it is a personal choice which of them you prefer, and most use one or another depending of the ocasion (sounds strange, I know). The difference between Serbian and Croatian beside the fact that Croatian uses exclusively Latin, while Serbian both, is indeed linguistical, meaning, you have numerous words that are different in one language from another. The two languages are similar, but they are different (something like Czezh and Slovak, or Spanish and Galician...). With regard to your edit, I am perfectly fine with it. Thank you for input and best regards. FkpCascais (talk) 17:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)