Nikola Tesla Inventions and his Inspiration, the Cat Macak

Nikola Tesla and the Cat Behind his Inventions

Nikola Tesla was Serbian-American inventor whose inventions totally changed our lives. No one can deny his monumental contributions and eminence in electrical science. A lesser-known fact is there is a cat named Macak behind his inventions.

The Man Who Changed the Way We Live Today

It was Tesla’s breakthrough discoveries in AC power transmission and radio communication that caused the meteoric explosion of progress commencing in 1896 and continuing today at an ever expanding rate. Without Nikola Tesla inventions, our world would be totally different.

What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment…

Nikola Tesla > Quotes (goodreads)

The Fountain of Enjoyment – Macak the Black Cat

Tesla had a black cat called Macak when he was a boy. He described his kitty as the finest of all cats in the world. Macak followed wherever Tesla went. He wrote it’s because of their mutual love and the Macak’s desire to protect Tesla. They lived for one another.

They ran around, played around, had a ton of fascinating and lovely moments together. Macak’s favorite was to roll on the grass with Tesla, while they were doing that, Macak bit and clawed and purred in rapturous pleasure, so did Tesla.

Macak was the inspiration of Nikola Tesla Inventions.

What Is Electricity?

Here’s the moment described by Tesla, the experience with his cat Macak, which made him realize the existence and wonder of electricity.

In the dusk of the evening, as I stroked Macak’s back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.

A Story of Youth Told by Age Dedicated to Miss Pola Fotitch By its author—Nikola Tesla (pbs.org)

His father answered him this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in a storm. Tesla was thinking abstractedly even he was only three at the time. And he came up with the question Is nature a gigantic cat? He concluded, if nature is a gigantic cat, only God can be stroking her back.

There was Macak, the cat behind understanding electricity which would lead numerous Nikola Tesla Inventions later.

Nikola Tesla Inventions

While there are many Tesla’s inventions, here we will look at a few, but significant ones of all. Let’s start with Alternating Current.

Alternating current is the system we use today. It provides power generation and distribution, which makes the modern world living possible. While Direct Current developed by Thomas Edison was costly and dangerous, Tesla demonstrated that AC was perfectly safe by famously shooting current through his own body to produce light.

Tesla Coil
He had a concept the Earth itself is a magnet that can generate electricity (electromagnetism) utilizing frequencies as a transmitter. Tesla developed the coil in 1891 before conventional iron-core transformers were used to power things like lighting systems and telephone circuits.

The principle behind the Tesla coil is to achieve a phenomenon called resonance by making use of electromagnetic force. Radios and televisions still use variations of the Tesla coil today.

Radio
Although Guglielmo Marconi was initially credited as the inventor of radio to this day, the Super Supreme overturned Marconi’s Patent in 1943, it was proven that Tesla invented the radio years previous to Marconi[1].

Radio is the technology of using radio waves to carry information, such as sound. Radio signals are just another frequency that needs a transmitter and receiver.

Tesla gave the first public demonstration of radio in 1893 presenting the fundamentals of radio. Afterward, the principle of radio communication, sending signals through space to receivers, was widely publicized from Tesla’s experiments and demonstrations.

Electric Motor
Tesla’s invention has fundamentally changed the landscape of what we now take for granted; industrial fans, household appliances, water pumps, machine tools, power tools, disk drives, electric wristwatches, and compressors. Car maker Tesla Motor has contributed for popularizing its name of the inventor.

Above are a few example of Nikola Tesla Inventions, there are a lot more inventions he’d made which would change the way we see and live the world once they are available for us…

Natural Born Inventor

He was single all his life and that might be inevitable for his incredible inventions. Being alone is the secret of the invention, so he revealed.

He knew his work was that of a planter who laid the foundation for the those who are to come. Nothing thrilled him more than inventing itself and Macak was the one who made Tesla realize it.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine

Nikola Tesla > Quotes (goodreads)

Reference

Nikola Tesla (ntesla.org)
The 10 Inventions Of Nikola Tesla That Changed The World (ACTIVIST POST)
A Story of Youth Told by Age (PBS.org)
Nikola Tesla (Wikipedia)

[1]Misreading the Supreme Court – Tesla Books (tfcbooks.com)

Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works (LIVESCIENCE)

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Also published on Medium.