Tesla Master of Lightening – Eric B

The documentary Tesla Master of Lightening was a very interesting and informative movie. It explained how Tesla grew up with the dream of going to a good school to study electricity and how he wanted to eventually harness the power of the Niagra Falls and use it to generate electricity. His dreams would eventually turn to reality as grew into one of the most famous inventors of all time.

Tesla came to America to work for the great Thomas Edison in hopes that they would be able to accomplish great things together. He eventually came up with the AC motor and knew that it would be much more efficient than DC. But, Edison was convinced that DC was much better; this dispute between the two great inventors led to Tesla’s departure from Edison Electric and he went on to open his own labs so he could perfect his AC motor. Once his AC motor was complete, the advantages of AC over DC became apparent to many people. One them was George Westinghouse who decided to buy all of Tesla’s patents and use them for his company.

Tesla went on to complete many more great inventions. One of them was the first radio/remote controlled device, which he tried to sell to the US Navy. This would not be the only device he tried to sell to the government. In his later years he continued experimenting with transferring electricity wirelessly and developed a device that would lead to the first the radio. He soon began developing more theories of the wireless tranfer of electricity, but he was unable to make any of them work. Then Tesla began developing a something that he thought would end wars by allowing all countries, weak and strong, to defend themselves; a “death ray”. This was another vision of Tesla’s that was never fufilled. He began to look like just another crazy old man in the eye of the public and eventually died in poverty.