Richard Munson (Author)
Tesla’s inventions transformed our world, and his visions have continued to inspire great minds for generations.Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.When his first breakthrough―alternating current, the basis of the electric grid―pitted him against Thomas Edison’s direct-current empire, Tesla’s superior technology prevailed. Unfortunately, he had little business sense and could not capitalize on this success. His most advanced ideas went unrecognized for decades: forty years in the case of the radio patent, longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Although penniless during his later years, he never stopped imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communications. His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy.Who was this genius? Drawing on letters, technical notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor. Born during a lightning storm at midnight, Tesla died alone in a New York City hotel. He was an acute germaphobe who never shook hands and required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner. Strikingly handsome and impeccably dressed, he spoke eight languages and could recite entire books from memory. Yet Tesla’s most famous inventions were not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought but of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences: he conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe’s Faust.Tesla worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to introduce automatons that would reduce life’s drudgery, and to develop machines that might one day abolish war. His story is a reminder that technology can transcend the marketplace and that profit is not the only motivation for invention. This clear, authoritative, and highly readable biography takes account of all phases of Tesla’s remarkable life. 8 pages of illustrations
...MoreReview Peter Reed (Summer 2020) Review of "Tesla: Inventor of the Modern". International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology (pp. 231-234).
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Carlson, W. B.;
(2007)
Harnessing the Earth: Nikola Tesla and the Idea of Broadcasting Electric Power, 1890--1905
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Book
Carlson, W. Bernard;
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Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
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Cheney, Margaret;
Uth, Robert;
Glenn, Jim;
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Tesla: Master of Lightning
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Thesis
Kendall Milar Thompson;
(2015)
I, Robot: Nikola Tesla's Telautomaton
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Jennifer L. Lieberman;
Ronald R. Kline;
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Dream of an Unfettered Electrical Future: Nikola Tesla, the Electrical Utopian Novel, and an Alternative American Sociotechnical Imaginary
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2008 IEEE History of Telecommunications Conference: Paris, France, 11--12 September 2008
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Tomislav Petković;
(2013)
The Achievement, Legacy, Intuition, and Cosmopolitanism of Nikola Tesla
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Shurkin, Joel N.;
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Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age
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Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis;
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Encouraging a “Romantic Understanding” of Science: The Effect of the Nikola Tesla Story
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Pete Schmidt;
(2017)
Grassroots Technological Resistance: The People’s Power Project and the Impossible Dream of Wireless Transmission of Energy
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Anne J. Kox;
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Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, natuurkundige 1853-1928. 'Een levend kunstwerk' [Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, physicist 1853-1928: 'A living work of art']
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Jonnes, Jill;
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Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World
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Daniel French;
(2017)
When They Hid the Fire: A History of Electricity and Invisible Energy in America
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Dalzell, Frederick;
(2010)
Engineering Invention: Frank J. Sprague and the U.S. Electrical Industry
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Mahon, Basil;
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Oliver Heaviside: Maverick Mastermind of Electricity
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Suay, Juan Miguel;
Teira, David;
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Kites
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Davis, L. J.;
(2012)
Fleet Fire: Thomas Edison and the Pioneers of the Electric Revolution
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Halliday, Sam;
(2007)
Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James:Thinking and Writing Electricity
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Howard D. Dewald;
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Wilbur Morris Stine: Pioneer Scientist
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Basil Mahon;
(2017)
The Forgotten Genius of Oliver Heaviside: A Maverick of Electrical Science
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