page_title: Nikola Tesla
section_title: Other ideas, awards, and patents
hierarchical_section_title: Nikola Tesla / Later years / Other ideas, awards, and patents
caption_attribution_description: English: Second banquet meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers (now part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) at Luchow's in New York City, April 24, 1915. Many prominent figures in the development of radio attended. Nikola Tesla is standing at back, seventh from the right.
context_page_description: Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system.
  Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, and gained practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed.
context_section_description: Tesla won numerous medals and awards over this time. They include:
  Grand Officer of the Order of St. Sava (Serbia, 1892)
  Elliott Cresson Medal (Franklin Institute, USA, 1894)
  Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Danilo I (Montenegro, 1895)
  AIEE Edison Medal (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA, 1917)
  Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sava (Yugoslavia, 1926)
  Cross Cross of the Order of the Yugoslav Crown (Yugoslavia, 1931)
  John Scott Medal (Franklin Institute & Philadelphia City Council, USA, 1934)
  Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia, 1937)
  Medal of the University of Paris (Paris, France, 1937)
  The Medal of the University St. Clement of Ochrida (Sofia, Bulgaria, 1939)
  Tesla attempted to market several devices based on the production of ozone. These included his 1900 Tesla Ozone Company selling an 1896 patented device based on his Tesla Coil, used to bubble ozone through different types of oils to make a therapeutic gel. He also tried to develop a variation of this a few years later as a room sanitizer for hospitals.
  Tesla theorized that the application of electricity to the brain enhanced intelligence. In 1912, he crafted "a plan to make dull students bright by saturating them unconsciously with electricity," wiring the walls of a schoolroom and, "saturating [the schoolroom] with infinitesimal electric waves vibrating at high frequency. The whole room will thus, Mr. Tesla claims, be converted into a health-giving and stimulating electromagnetic field or 'bath.'" The plan was, at least provisionally, approved by then superintendent of New York City schools, William H. Maxwell.
  Before World War I, Tesla sought overseas investors. After the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in European countries.
  In the August 1917 edition of the magazine Electrical Experimenter, Tesla postulated that electricity could be used to locate submarines via using the reflection of an "electric ray" of "tremendous frequency," with the signal being viewed on a fluorescent screen (a system that has been noted to have a superficial resemblance to modern radar). Tesla was incorrect in his assumption that high frequency radio waves would penetrate water. Émile Girardeau, who helped develop France's first radar system in the 1930s, noted in 1953 that Tesla's general speculation that a very strong high-frequency signal would be needed was correct. Girardeau said, "(Tesla) was prophesying or dreaming, since he had at his disposal no means of carrying them out, but one must add that if he was dreaming, at least he was dreaming correctly".
  In 1928, Tesla received U.S. Patent 1,655,114, for a biplane capable of taking off vertically (VTOL aircraft) and then of being "gradually tilted through manipulation of the elevator devices" in flight until it was flying like a conventional plane. Tesla thought the plane would sell for less than $1,000, although the aircraft has been described as impractical, although it has early resemblances to the V-22 Osprey used by the US military. This was his last patent and at this time Tesla closed his last office at 350 Madison Ave., which he had moved into two years earlier.
caption: Second banquet meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 23 April 1915. Tesla is seen standing in the center.
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