Nikola Tesla

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and his role in the development of electrical systems towards the end of the nineteenth century. He made his name in New York in the contest over which current should flow into homes and factories in America. Some such as Edison backed direct current or DC while others such as Westinghouse backed alternating current or AC and Nikola Tesla’s invention of a motor that worked on AC swung it for the alternating system that went on to power the modern age. He ensured his reputation and ideas burnt brightly for the next decades, making him synonymous with the lone, genius inventor of the new science fiction.

With

Simon Schaffer Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge

Jill Jonnes Historian and author of “Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World”

And

Iwan Morus Professor of History at Aberystwyth University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press, 2013)

Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth, Tesla: Master of Lightning (Barnes & Noble Books, 1999)

Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983)

Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New (Open University Press, 1988)

Iwan Rhys Morus, Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon Books, 2019)

Iwan Rhys Morus, How The Victorians Took Us To The Moon (Icon, 2022)

David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, 1991)

John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (first published 1944; Cosimo Classics, 2006)

Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius (first published 1996; Citadel Press, 2016)

Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla (first published 1919; Martino Fine Books, 2011)

Nikola Tesla, My Inventions and other Writings (Penguin, 2012)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:05.0	This is in our time from BBC Radio 4,
0:07.4	and this is one of more than a thousand episodes
0:10.0	you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this
0:14.6	edition you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:20.3	Hello Nikola Tesla 1856 to
0:23.0	1943 is inseparable from the story of the electrification of America,
0:27.8	if not the world.
0:29.6	When Tesla arrived there from Europe in 1884, Edison was trying to light up New York with D.C. direct
0:36.2	current for his filament light bulbs, while Westinghouse was promoting the rival
0:40.8	AC alternating current. And when Tesla invented a powerful motor that used
0:45.9	AC he teamed up with Westinghouse so ensuring the supremacy of that system down to
0:51.9	today. We're to discuss Nikola Tesla are Ewen
0:55.4	Morris, Professor of History at Abberiswith University. Jill Jones historian and
1:00.8	author of Empires of Light Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the race to electrify the world
1:07.0	and Simon Shaffer, a Maritus fellow of Darwin College University of Cambridge.
1:12.0	Simon Shaffer,
1:14.0	Nikola Tesla's life began in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1:18.0	Can you take us there and tell us about his education?
1:21.0	He was born in a of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on a
1:22.6	small town in what is now Croatia but then in 1856 was a military
1:29.8	province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the border with Ottoman Turkey.
	...

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