α Nikolas Tesla, inventor of the radio and a thousand other things ω

^{Nikolas Tesla experimenting with neon tubes.}

150 years ago was born one of the most influential individual in our lives: Nikolas Tesla.
Born in the Balkans in 1856, he grew up in a family where the father was an orthodox priest, a writer and a poet. His mother was inventing devices to help families on the farms and in the houses. His mother would have a great influence on him.
We owe to Tesla so many concepts and devices that are part of our lives without our knowledge. After inventing alternative current, Tesla went on conceiving and constructing the Niagara Fall hydro-electrical power plant for George Westinghouse.
He is also the father of television, radar, MRI concepts to name a few. Over the years he filed for 112 patents at the US Patent Office. He is also the inventor of radio. Such is the conclusion of the Supreme Court thus conceding that Tesla filed his patent before Marconi.
I started to be interested by Tesla in 1973, after I read about him somewhere and realizing that one of his closest friend and assistant was living not far from my home, near Lac Beauport, Quebec.
Thus very often in the winter 1973-1974, I would go on my snowshoes from my place to Arthur H. Matthews' house, next to Le Ralai ski center. Matthews, then 80, was working for the government on a scheme to build a tidal generated power plant linking Beauport and Ile d'Orleans at Quebec City.
Tesla and Matthews had known each other since the beginning of the century at a time when Matthews was still a youngster living on St. Joachim street in Quebec City, just behind what is now the Congress Centre.
Matthews followed Tesla around 1910 for some long distance radio experiment between Tadoussac on the north shore of the St.Lawrence river and Riviere du Loup, on the south shore.
Throughout the years Tesla became a central figure and many of his concepts and inventions are still studied nowadays.
One of the most intriguing et enigmatic concept and experiment deals with the wireless transmission of electricity. It is one of the topic on which I would like to study and experiment with in the coming years.
Among the other ideas of Tesla, there is the one dealing with lightning. He had this idea that if we would link all parts of the planet with lightning rod and extracting the electricity to be distributed in a world grid, we would have a powerful and constant source of energy, for at any time it is said there are over 30 000 thunder storms going on.
I am not to write a biography of Tesla here. Others have already done so. Many aspects of Tesla's life still remain enigmatic. For those of you wishing to know more about this man and his achievement, just type his name on any search engine. ;)

^{Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, 35 South Fifth Avenue, New York, 1895.}