The Electric Age?

How might the many inventions of Nikola Tesla changed society and the way the 20th Century played out?
Let's say, for example, that Tesla is hired by the US government upon him leaving Edison. Say he develops all of his inventions (provided they were practical) and imagine that market forces allow them to be applied. What does the world look like, and how did it get that way?
EDIT: Having Tesla live and work in another country to make this more feasible would also be interesting.
 

Flubber

Banned
...(provided they were practical)...


That's the rub.

As Matt correctly pointed out, all of Tesla's practical ideas are already in widespread use. His impractical ideas, those ideas which excite the imaginations of clueless fan-boys, don't actually work, have no practical purpose, have limited applications, or some combination of all three.

You want to know what living in a plausible, Tesla-inspired, Electric Age would be like? Try looking out your window because you're already living in it.
 
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amphibulous

Banned
You mean like how he invented radio?

If you want an example of fan boyism, yes. Tesla wasn't the first person to show that radio signals existed and send them - that was David Edward Hughes - and he didn't create a practical radio transmitter (ie one that could send morse or voice a decent range either.)
 
The problem is that if (for absurd) the free wireless eletric energy transmission from ether was possible,would have been for sure carcinogenic. :(
 
That's the rub.

As Matt correctly pointed out, all of Tesla's practical ideas are already in widespread use. His impractical ideas, those ideas which excite the imaginations of clueless fan-boys, don't actually work, have no practical purpose, have limited applications, or some combination of all three.

You want to know what living in a plausible, Tesla-inspired, Electric Age would be like? Try looking out your window because you're already living in it.

Tesla invented Radar. It was practical, but due to Edison's influence in the government it was disregarded. Radar could have been implemented by the start of WWI.

He had other ideas that were feasible, but not applied due to circumstance that we can butterfly away. For example, Tesla invented electric motors. He also invented long-range wireless energy transfer, but that was abandoned at the time because there was no way to charge people accurately for how much energy they used. He invented remote control; in WWII, the Germans began experimenting with remote-controlled tanks; the allies on occasion tried to use remote-controlled aircraft. These are all technologies that he got working, and had practical application, but never got used.
To the person who said he never built a functioning transmitter, look up the Wardenclyff tower.

Nobody's saying he builds a giant death ray, an earthquake machine, or robots at the dawn of the 20th century. So there's no need to try and shut down this line of thought. A lot of people overrate Tesla but just because something has fanboys doesn't mean it's inherently implausible. If that was the case about 80% of timelines on this site would have to be dismissed.
 
You mean like how he invented radio?
Well that would have had a bigger influence in the US than anywhere else, Marconi was working in Britain just a few years later.

Tesla invented Radar. It was practical, but due to Edison's influence in the government it was disregarded. Radar could have been implemented by the start of WWI.
Actually, that was Christian Hülsmeyer back in 1904, more than a decade before Tesla took hold of the idea, and he wasn't even the first, back in 1886 Heinrich Hertz demonstrated that it could be done back in 1886.

For example, Tesla invented electric motors.
No, he improved the ones Edison was producing.

He also invented long-range wireless energy transfer, but that was abandoned at the time because there was no way to charge people accurately for how much energy they used.
And it caused cancer.

He invented remote control; in WWII, the Germans began experimenting with remote-controlled tanks; the allies on occasion tried to use remote-controlled aircraft. These are all technologies that he got working, and had practical application, but never got used.
Not back before WW1, back then the best he could come up with was controllable torpedoes, though that's not to be sniffed at I suppose.

Nevertheless, all of Tesla's ideas that could be really useful at the time did get used.
 
How does Edison's "influence" over the US government prevent other nations from inventing/implimenting radar?

I'm fairly sure that although the radio signal echo issue was well known, it also required the cathode ray tube to make any real sense of the signals that came back.
 
Well that would have had a bigger influence in the US than anywhere else, Marconi was working in Britain just a few years later.


No, he improved the ones Edison was producing.

Marconi's radio only worked because he used Tesla parts. The actual claim to invention was a matter of litigation. Tesla was into inventing and Marconi was into getting rich, like Edison and Westinghouse.

Edison made DC motors and Tesla invented AC motors of a gazillion varieties before he worked for Edison.
 

mowque

Banned
For example, Tesla invented electric motors. He also invented long-range wireless energy transfer, but that was abandoned at the time because there was no way to charge people accurately for how much energy they used.

You honestly think that a technology as mindblowingly useful as wireless energy transfer would be ignored?
 
Marconi's radio only worked because he used Tesla parts. The actual claim to invention was a matter of litigation. Tesla was into inventing and Marconi was into getting rich, like Edison and Westinghouse.

Edison made DC motors and Tesla invented AC motors of a gazillion varieties before he worked for Edison.

Here's a little bit of Tesla trivia that surprised me: there was a very prominent but largely forgotten Italian electrical engineer named Galileo Ferraris who simultaneously created an AC induction motor. In fact, Ferraris had built such a motor and presented it to the academy in in Italy two months before Tesla unveiled and patented his in 1888. Apparently, when Tesla found this out he claimed that he was still the first to invent it because he had supposedly built an AC motor prototype in 1885.

According to an article on the Engineering hall of Fame (on edisontechcenter.org), Tesla was given the credit in a court decision when he presented the older prototype from 1885. This prototype was the only one he had and its age could not be verified save for the testimony of three of his colleagues/workers that claimed they were witness to him making it back in 1885. Ferraris couldn't defend himself at the 1905 trial because he had died in 1897 but supposedly Westinghouse's chief engineer William Stanley (who more or less developed the modern AC transformer) later claimed that after looking at Ferraris's writings and drawings from 1884 and 1885 and after talking with his colleagues in Europe, he was strongly of the opinion that Ferraris was the first. Interestingly, the author of that article claims that Westinghouse would have lost a great deal of money if Ferraris had been officially credited with the invention in the 1905 trial because it could have undermined the patents made by Tesla who of course, worked for Westinghouse. Regardless of who was first, neither really seems to have "stolen" rather both came up up with the revolutionary deisgn in entirely independent of one another.
 
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You honestly think that a technology as mindblowingly useful as wireless energy transfer would be ignored?
Yeah, because it happened. Look it up.
They couldn't measure how much each individual household used under the system, meaning they couldn't charge for it accurately. So it wasn't economic.
Also, as others have mentioned, it probably gave people cancer. They didn't know it at the time, but beaming radiation around isn't the healthiest of things.
 
And it caused cancer.

Do you know that for a fact or are you just speculating because it seems like a device which puts energy into the air should be expected to cause cancer? I had heard that Tesla used something called magnetic resonant induction to transmit power wirelessly, a technique which produces high frequency alternating magnetic fields but which does not produce any ionizing radiation. Magnetic fields, especially high frequency ones, might possibly cause cancer but it is certainly not the sort of link that you would see with something like high energy X-rays.

Then again, perhaps this is not the technique he used for all of his methods so tell me if there is another one. I mean, there is a picture of that giant tower with lightning bolts coming out of it and that looks more like electrostatic induction. Whether this would cause cancer I don't know but I cannot think of any particular reason why it would.

Not back before WW1, back then the best he could come up with was controllable torpedoes, though that's not to be sniffed at I suppose.
Yes, but as early as the Russo Japanese war there was radio jamming and it really came into use in WWI. Besides, the radio signal blows the submarine's stealth, which is after all its main advantage.
 
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Yes, but as early as the Russo Japanese war there was radio jamming and it really came into use in WWI. Besides, the radio signal blows the submarine's stealth, which is after all its main advantage.

Which Tesla took in consideration with his "Art of Individualization" when he designed his remote controlled boat. Very fascinating stuff. Basically he build an AND logic circuit so that you needed three different signals coming in an the same time to control it.

As for the wireless energy transfer. Yes it is true that Morgan was afraid of the possibility of such an invention, however while it worked even on a village scale, the system had two major problems. First it would be a giant radio jammer in it's own right and second Tesla based his theories on false assumptions about the "Ionosphere". The system he envisioned was never practical even if some rich donor had given him all the money in the world.
He had however some other very good fascinating ideas that went nowhere thanks to his obsession with "free" energy.
 
Which Tesla took in consideration with his "Art of Individualization" when he designed his remote controlled boat. Very fascinating stuff. Basically he build an AND logic circuit so that you needed three different signals coming in an the same time to control it.

As for the wireless energy transfer. Yes it is true that Morgan was afraid of the possibility of such an invention, however while it worked even on a village scale, the system had two major problems. First it would be a giant radio jammer in it's own right and second Tesla based his theories on false assumptions about the "Ionosphere". The system he envisioned was never practical even if some rich donor had given him all the money in the world.
He had however some other very good fascinating ideas that went nowhere thanks to his obsession with "free" energy.

You talking about the supposed ground-based Electrodynamic tether he envisioned?
 
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