Nikola Tesla's Most Important Inventions

Nikola Tesla was a great man and his inventions were outstanding. The invention that started it all was his alternating current discovery. When Tesla unveiled this at the World Expo in Chicago in 1893 it caused a real buzz. At the time there was a war of sorts between Thomas Edison and Nikola over alternating current and DC current. Edison made demonstrations as to how alternating current was more dangerous than DC current but the inverse was the truth and alternating current won out in the end. Today alternating current is used to power our cities all around developed countries.

The next interesting invention that he devised was x-rays. Tesla took the first x-ray image in the US when he tried to x-ray Mark Twain with the vacuum tube. He then later took more images of the human body which he called shadowgraphs. The general reason why more attribution to the inventor isn’t given is because his laboratory burnt down in 1895.

Something we all use today is light, and Nikola was an inventor that played a huge role in the development of the technology to produce light. Tesla did not invent light itself, but he did produce ways to harness light and ways to distribute light. He used fluorescent light bulbs more than forty years before they were invented and produced by mainstream society. His light discovery that is most well known is his Tesla coil. His coil produced sparks and when in use it looked a lot like lightning, and many people called it a lightning machine. The coil he invented was basically a form of induction for producing high-frequency alternating currents. His coils have inspired inventors for years and building them is a joy for science enthusiasts. We learned a lot from his famous coils, we learned that the Earth is one big magnet that can generate electricity.

The next device that he invented was radio, even though many attribute the discovery to Marconi, Tesla was the true inventor of radio. In fact he invented radio many years before Marconi told the public about his radio discovery. It is believed that the reason Marconi obtained the patent for radio is due to his financial backing from Thomas Edison. Radio is basically the transmission and reception of electromagnetic waves of radio frequency, especially those carrying sound messages.

The next device on our list is remote control which was derived from his inventing of radio. The inventor is accredited with producing the first remote controlled model boat which he patented. Tesla’s discovery of remote control was later used in World war 2 by the Germans to create radio controlled tanks.

A discovery that is just now being mass produced by many companies is his electric motor. The Tesla Motor Company is now using his electric motor technology to create cars. It is believed that the world could be a much better place had we adopted his motor technology earlier on to create electric vehicles. Instead we built gas-powered cars which have in turn polluted the Earth to such a point where the Earth is warming more and more each year. His AC induction motor is cited as being one of the ten best inventions of all time by many. This invention has produced many spin off devices which include household appliances, watches, electric tools, and many more.

Nikola is also accredited with the discovery of the laser. Lasers have become widely used today in medicine where surgical instruments are used. He is well known for his death ray device, which was never really put into practice, but was rather a theory. In July 1934 the headline on the front page of the New York Times read, "TESLA, at 78, BARES NEW 'DEATH BEAM.'"

These are his most well known inventions, however he had many patents, more patents than this page can fill. He had 278 patents for various different devices, many of which still fascinate science enthusiasts to this day.