Tag: renewable energy

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Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time – Book Cover

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It’s almost Nikola Tesla’s birthday, and that means it’s almost time for the release of my new e-book on Tesla and his interest in renewable energy. I received an amazing number of suggestions for the title of the book, and now I’m looking for feedback on the preliminary book cover design.

Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts. After much consideration, I’ve narrowed the book title down to two options, both of which are amalgams of several of 30 or so ideas received. They capture both the name Nikola Tesla and the idea that he was ahead of his time envisioning how to harness “the power of nature.” The title options are:

1 – Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time

2- Nikola Tesla: New Perspectives on Renewable Energy

While I’m trying to decide on a final title I’m also working on the cover design. I wanted the cover to be bright and appealing, plus reflect in some way Tesla’s legacy of his first foray into what today we call renewable energy. What do you all think of this designs?

Tesla Renewable Energy book cover 2

Tesla Renewable Energy book cover 2b

The photo is of the Tesla statue on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where Tesla’s alternating current designs enabled development of electrical power from the falling waters. I like the perspective of the shot…looking up his outstretched cane as he gazes out upon the power and energy of Horseshoe Falls.

So the dual question remains: which title, and what do you think of the cover design? Let me know in the comments or on my Facebook author’s page. If you haven’t already, “Like” my page so you can keep up to date on progress of the e-book and how to get a free download when it is released.

I’m looking forward to the feedback. Thanks everyone for all your support and assistance in renewing interest in Nikola Tesla. And don’t forget to check out all the other Tesla birthday events coming up in the next two weeks.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity. You can order a signed copy directly from me, download the ebook at barnesandnoble.com, and find hard copies at Barnes and Noble bookstores, as well as online at B&N.com and Amazon.com.

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Countdown to Tesla and Renewable Energy has Begun!

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David J. KentThe clock is ticking.The finishing touches are being made. And the countdown has begun. Coming in late June is my new ebook on Nikola Tesla’s interest and advocacy of renewable energy. As I wrote in September of 2012:

How many people knew that Nikola Tesla was a proponent of renewable energy? More than 100 years ago Tesla was pushing the idea that fossil fuels – most coal and oil at that time – were not sustainable resources.

Tesla’s first foray into renewable energy, what he called “harnessing the energy of nature,” was his contribution to hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls.

But Tesla didn’t stop there. He looked at other natural sources of energy too, including the sun (solar power), the wind (windmills), and water (tides, ocean waves, even power from the rain).  He believed we could harness the power of cosmic rays. He developed a system for geothermal energy. And he believed the energy of the earth could be unlimited.

All of this and more will be discussed in an new ebook to be available in June 2014. But before that happens I need a good title, and I’m asking for your help. Tesla and Renewable Energy is my working title, but perhaps you all can come up with something that has a bit more pop, a bit more excitement, a bit more, well, natural energy.

So if you have an idea for a title that captures the idea of Tesla and Renewable Energy, feel free to write it in the comments to this post. Or you can add it on my Facebook authors page. For everyone that leaves a title idea in the comments below I’ll tell you how you can download the ebook for free! If you “Like” my Facebook authors page you can also get the ebook for free when it comes out.

Watch this page in the future because I’ll also be asking for your help in choosing the final cover for the book. More on that shortly.

If the new Tesla ebook isn’t exciting enough, the second printing of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity will be in Barnes and Noble stores in July. It should also be available for order on the Barnes and Noble website (maybe even on Amazon). Or you can buy a signed and inscribed copy directly from me.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity. Follow me by subscribing by email on the home page.  And feel free to “Like” my Facebook author’s page and connect on LinkedIn.  Share with your friends using the buttons below.

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Nikola Tesla and Niagara Falls

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Niagara Falls. For decades it has been a favored place honeymooners, sightseers, and anyone interested in the immense beauty of nature. It was even the inspiration for a Three Stooges skit. And it’s where Nikola Tesla became famous.

Tesla at Niagara Falls

In his autobiography, Tesla reminisces about the first time he heard of Niagara Falls. It was in the Normal School during his youth. Here “there were a few mechanical models which interested me and turned my attention to water turbines.” After hearing a description of the great Niagara Falls, Tesla “pictured in my imagination a big wheel run by the Falls.” He proclaimed to his uncle that one day he would “go to America and carry out this scheme.”

Niagara Falls

Tesla now had that opportunity. After their successful collaboration at the Chicago World’s Fair, George Westinghouse set his sights on using the Tesla system to harness Niagara Falls for electricity generation. Up to this point the only use of the falls had been to build small canals to provide hydropower for mills and a tannery. But many saw the opportunity of channeling the awesome power of the falls to generate electricity. A former Edison board member, Edward Dean Adams, was picked to lead the newly formed Cataract Construction Company and determine the best way to obtain and then distribute electricity from the falls. Despite Thomas Edison’s assertions that he could transmit electricity as far as Buffalo, direct current systems were limited to running the machinery of local mills and lighting up some of the local village streets. The limitations of direct current were far too restrictive for any significant distribution.

Tesla’s alternating current system was just the answer the Cataract Construction Company was looking for, although they did not know that in the beginning. Adams first headed off to Europe where others were working to exploit alternating current for lighting and power generation. Eventually the Cataract Construction Company offered a contest of sorts, with cash prizes totaling $20,000 for the best plan for harnessing the falls. With more than a few parties claiming the rights to various parts of the alternating current system, there was backstabbing and counter claims and more than a little industrial theft of ideas. But in the end it was Tesla’s patents that won the day. The Westinghouse Company was chosen to provide the powerhouse and alternating current system, while the General Electric Company was awarded construction of the transmission lines.

Courtesy of NMAH Smithsonian Institution

Westinghouse, relying on a dozen Tesla patents, completed the powerhouse in 1895. Its enormous polyphase generator could produce an unprecedented 15,000 horsepower. Within the next year General Electric completed the transmission and distribution system and sufficient electricity to power industries “through the Falls and Buffalo areas.” Westinghouse went on to add another seven generating units, raising the power output to 50,000 horsepower. Tesla’s patented alternating current system was to change the lives of all Americans as the Niagara project showed investors that alternating current could transmit power over long distances.

Nikola Tesla went on to win the “war of the currents” against Thomas Edison, in large part because of his success with Westinghouse in Chicago and Niagara Falls. He dreamed of harnessing the power of nature to provide inexpensive, sustainable, electricity to everyone. How much power? Check out these two very brief videos, first from above, then down in the mist.

Tesla was on his way. He even got two statues, not just one, for his accomplishments at Niagara. And then disaster struck. More on that later.

David J. Kent has been a scientist for thirty-five years, is an avid science traveler, and an independent Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (now in its 5th printing) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His book on Thomas Edison is due in Barnes and Noble stores in spring 2016.

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Nikola Tesla Seeks to Harness the Power of Nature

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Nikola Tesla was for renewable energy before it was cool to be for renewable energy.

“It seems that I have always been ahead of my time.”

From a young age he sought to harness the power of nature. He used the natural energy of June bugs to power his stick windmill. As a child he designed his first water wheel, then as an adult he fulfilled his dream by harnessing the hydroelectric power of Niagara Falls with his alternating current motors and transformers. Today he stands overlooking one of his greatest achievements.

Tesla statue overlooking Niagara Falls

Nikola Tesla overlooking Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side. Photo by David J. Kent

Tesla often spoke of harnessing the energy of the sun, stating that fossil fuels were wasteful. As far back as 1891 he argued that “nature has stored up in the universe infinite energy.” To Tesla, “the eternal recipient and transmitter of this infinite energy is the ether.” That particular idea did not hold up to scrutiny, but he continued to look to nature.

One of the most thought-provoking documents of Tesla’s numerous writings was an article he wrote for The Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900, which was edited by Robert Underwood Johnson. In a long and sometimes mystical treatise called “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (with special references to the harnessing of the sun’s energy),” Tesla leaped ahead a hundred years by anticipating the need for renewable sources of energy to power our planet. He noted that “besides fuel, there is abundant material from which we might eventually derive power” and suggested that “an immense amount of energy is locked up in limestone, for instance, and machines can be driven by liberating the carbonic acid through sulfuric acid or otherwise.” He even claimed to have constructed such an engine and that “it operated satisfactorily.”

Terrestrial power

Tesla was so far ahead of his time that, while others at the turn of the twentieth century were busy exploiting coal, iron, aluminum, and drilling for oil, he was already recognizing the limits of those endeavors. He was into conservation. “Whatever our resources of primary energy may be in the future,” Tesla wrote, “we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material.” He believed that natural sources of energy could “eliminate the need of coal, oil, gas or any other of the common fuels.” One way was to harness the power of the wind.

“It is difficult to believe, but it is, nevertheless, a fact, that since time immemorial man has had at his disposal a fairly good machine which has enabled him to utilize the energy of the ambient medium. This machine is the windmill.“

[The above is adapted from Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity. I explored more of Tesla’s adventures in renewable energy in my 2014 e-book noted below.]

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His next book is on Abraham Lincoln, due out in 2017.

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Nikola Tesla and Renewable Energy

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Nikola TeslaHow many people knew that Nikola Tesla was a proponent of renewable energy? More than 100 years ago Tesla was pushing the idea that fossil fuels – most coal and oil at that time – were not sustainable resources. In an article he wrote in 1905 he offered:

“Long before this consummation, coal and oil must cease to be important factors in the sustenance of human life on this planet.  It should be borne in mind that electrical energy obtained by harnessing a waterfall is probably fifty times more effective than fuel energy.  Since this is the most perfect way of rendering the sun’s energy available, the direction of the future material development of man is clearly indicated.”

Yes, Tesla was into solar power even before it became fashionable.

He saw two ways in which this could be achieved – “either to turn to use the energy of the sun stored in the ambient medium, or to transmit, through the medium, the sun’s energy to distant places from some locality where it was obtainable without consumption of material.”

Of course, there were tremendous technological challenges in the year 1900 to accomplish this vision, but Tesla believed the best option “to obtain power would be to avail ourselves of the sun’s rays, which beat the earth incessantly and supply energy at a maximum rate of over four million horsepower per square mile.” He believed that “an inexhaustible source of power would be opened up by the discovery of some efficient method of utilizing the energy of the rays.”

The capture and storage technologies for exploiting solar energy would take another 100 years to reach a level of commercial feasibility, but the man who could envision an entire alternating current transformer in his head also envisioned both the need and potential of tapping the energy of the sun.

I have used the renewable energy quote in my new Facebook author’s page cover photo.

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