Travis Rutledge ENGR 1202 SID: 800815426 4/27/2014 Final Paper Nikolai Tesla Nickola Tesla was a Serbian

n American electrical engineer who is best known for the modern design of alternating current. Along with his work on alternating current, his work in Radio technology was the foundation of the cell phone we have today. His work on the radio began in the late 1890s and early 1900s with a large amount of patents and later being fought over them being used or not in the Guglielmo Marconi trials in 1903. In mid-1899, Tesla had then moved to Colorado Springs where he began his high-voltage experiments which led to designs and patents for what we know today as the tesla coil. Nickola Tesla was a renound electrical engineer, and electrical engineering would not be the same today if were not for him. Starting out in April 1887, Tesla started a company known as the Tesla Electric Company in which he set up his laboratory in Manhattan to work on his alternating current motor and other devices for power distribution. This was where Tesla had constructed his notorious brushless alternating current induction motor in. He based it on a rotating magnetic field principle he claimed to have created in 1882. This principal states there is a magnetic field that has moving polarities in which its opposite poles rotate about a central point or axis. (Rotating magnetic field, Wikipedia) Below is an image of the U.S. Patent that illustrated the principle of his alternating current motor.

In 1888, Thomas Commerford Martin, who was the editor of Electrical World magazine arranged for him to demonstrate his AC system, including his motor, at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers also known as IEEE. Along with his work on alternating current, Tesla also worked on theories of transmissions made by radio waves. About a decade after his debut of his AC induction motor, Tesla demonstrated a radiocontrolled boat to the public at Madison Square Garden during an electrical showcase.

The spectators of the event claimed the demonstration to be the works of magic, telepathy, and the craziest claim, being piloted by a trained monkey hidden inside. Tesla aimed to have his invention used by military in the form of radio controlled torpedos however his invention was shown little interest until World War 1 when a number of countries used it in military programs. To his benefit though, Tesla was granted patents for a system of transmitting electrical energy and an electrical transmitter in 1900. (Nikola Tesla, Wikipedia) When the first ever transatlantic radio transmission was made in 1901 by Guglielmo Marconi, Tesla claimed that it was done with an astounding 17 of his patents. This spawned the beginning of years of patent battles over radio. The thing most people know when they hear the name Nikola Tesla is the giant Tesla Coil. Shortly after moving to Colorado Spring in mid-1899, Tesla set up shop in near Foote Ave. and Kiowa St to work on his high-voltage and high-frequency experiments. This location was chosen by him because his alternating current power distribution system had already been introduced there and he had associates there that would give him the power he needed without charging him for it. Tesla used these coils which were basically an electrical resonant transformer circuit.

These tesla coils can produce much higher voltages than other machines. This proved desirable for him for his high-voltage experiments of the 1890s. If you ask a random person on the street if they could name a famous electrical engineer, they would name Nikola Tesla, for good reason. Tesla is known as the inventor of the basic radio, whose concepts are used in todays devices such as the cell phone. Along with the cell phone, many devices today would not be possible without the work done by Nikola Tesla in the late 1800s.

References http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

To date, my collegiate experience has been very different than any other academic experience, especially high school. Goals I hope to achieve for the following semesters of my collegiate life, include academic, professional, and personal goals. I have set out strategies to help me accomplish these goals, along with various support networks on and off campus. One academic goal that I deem the most important that I want to accomplish throughout my college carrier is to improve my study habits. Coming in college, I had a very poor study and work ethic. I would always wait till the last minute to do assignments, and I rarely studied for tests or exams. I have been warned that this type of behavior will prove to be a downfall in college. I have experienced that first hand in my previous semester. This semester however, and those in the future, I have used strategies that help me to not procrastinate and forces to me review and study the material discussed in class. This past semester, I have gone to tutors for the subject I am struggling in as well as the SI sessions. I do my homework assignment with the tutor or SI leaders, in case I have questions and to get a better grasp on the content. This prevents me from waiting till the due date to complete the assignment and also greatly improves the score I receive. I have many support groups on and off campus, many of which include my friends and family. If I am struggling in a topic, I go to one of my friends who excel in that area for guidance. For physics, I have a hard time understanding the concepts, luckily my grandfather was a physics professor at the Naval Academy, so I go to him when I need help. My grades are my responsibility so I have to be proactive and seek help before I need it. A goal I have set for myself during my college career is my professional attitude and work ethic. As an engineer these are a must, because no one will want to higher some ol shmuck, they want a person who can present themselves and get the work done on time and done right. Strageties that I have implemented to help me with this are to go to engineering seminars and see how those professional engineers present themselves. I look at how they act, dress, and how they present the information. Some support networks I have on campus are the engineering professors I have. I can go to their office during office hours and ask them questions about various things engineering related if I am unsure. I can also go to my friends who are juniors and seniors and ask them for tips because they have more experience than I do. Much like my grades, I take it upon myself to improve my professional appearance and ethic, so if I dont work at it, it wont improve. A personal goal I have for myself is to be more outgoing and go after what I want. Naturally being a shy person when it comes to the unknown and uncertain, I usually dont go after what I want. For example, I always say I want a better job, but Im scared to find a new job because I wont know how to do it as well as I can do the job I have now. I have used the strategy of forcing myself to go to job fairs both on and off campus with a good friend of mine and make myself talk to employers . My support network is my good friend as well as my parents at home. My parents can help me find things like job fairs as well as being a support system if I get lost or uncertain. I take this personal growth as a big responsibility because I know in the future if I act as timid as I do now, I wont be able to get the job I want over the next guy. The inquiry process I followed to explore Electrical and Computer Engineering for homework 3 and 4 was a very simple one. To choose my topic I googled a list of famous electrical and computer

engineers, and looked through the list until I saw a person I wanted to learn more about. I chose Nikola Tesla, because I had always been interested in him, but I didnt really know too much about him. I conducted my inquiry by broadly googling Nikola Tesla. I ended up using Wikipedia, because it had all the information I was looking for with the information properly cited. I adapted my topic to three different invention/areas of research that I felt had the biggest impact on electrical engineering by reading over the Wikipedia page and that was what stood out to me. I assembled information in order to craft a conclusion by researching the three areas of research/inventions of Nikola Tesla and then summarized how those things benefited electrical engineering. By doing this, I learned Tesla was one the largest inventors when it came to the radio with respect to the cell phone. This also deepened my insight on how much of an impact Tesla had on the world of engineering, and how different it would be today without him. For the future I could take these skills I have learned and apply them to research other topics. For example, later in life if I go in to research these skills will benefit me greatly. As I move on from this inquiry the only question I have is what motivated Tesla to be an electrical engineer and what motivated him to experiment in the magnitude he did. My profession as a computer engineer impacts the global society in the way that what I will do in the future will help shape the world. Being an engineer of the future my role is crucial. I hope to work in the future to improve memory storage in computers. My personal point of view as a laid back timid person affects my interpretation by making it more relaxed and not forced. My judgment is based off of various experiences and facts acquired over a period of time rather than on the spot as others do. This also applies to my action, I prefer to wait and watch rather than jump in first. I intend to utilize and navigate these differences by using them to the benefit of a group. With having the unique approach to problems as I do, it will prove beneficial to the teams diversity in the long run. From goals I have set for myself as I go further in to my collegiate experience, learning useful skills like inquiry, and to analyzing how my profession and my point of view will work and impact a global society I can now move in the right direction.