Unbelievable: Tesla coils were built long before Tesla?

[gauschor]

Edit:
Ok, I had a look around. It seems it is really just a neat story, without any correspondance to truth.

Sorry to have bothered your time.

I find it interesting, especially because there are technical descriptions in it worth to investigate. So I say thanks for informing us

[Farmhand]

The letter is dated 1856 but Nitro express rounds for the .577 caliber were not produced until 1898, that's 42 years early, I stand
corrected that they were not available in Victorian times as they were in fact available right near the end of the Victorian era.
But it was 42 years after the date of the letter.

I find it difficult to believe anyone would refer to a person they were writing to by their last name only as well in those times,
especially when that person was Mr Faraday.

Regardless it brings nothing new technically to the table.

...

[raburgeson]

This post has a merit of type. It brings up the question why aren't Tesla era components available today? Why not some with a modern twist of advancement of cutting edge materials we have today. IE, better brushes and other things like dumbbells and laden jars. Back in the early days a laden jar could store up to 600 Kilo volts. What could we do with modern materials. How about a dumbbell that can respond to a Giga hertz pulsating DC current? We have modern day transmission antennas that can do this. Why aren't dumbbells being made from these type of materials.

Little note about these transmission antennas. They have to be perfectly flat and square at the end of the cylinder. Used for transmitting credit card crap at stores. They send a focused transmission. Hey, every hacker already knows!

[Nixim]

Tesla inspired by this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

[thx1138]

Tesla inspired by this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar

No, Tesla wasn't inspired by the Leyden jar. They were around long before Tesla was born.

Actually, I think AC electricity was around before Tesla used it. Tesla's breakthrough was the concept of the rotating magnetic field which enabled him to built generators and motors that had no brushes or commutators like previous devices. That was what made AC electricity more usable in industry since there were no brushes and commutators to wear out. The thing that made him famous though was his teaming up with Westinghouse to use AC electricity instead of the DC electricity systems of Edison. Edison had patents on a lot of the DC technology while Tesla had the patents on the AC motors and generators and later developments.

His high frequency and high voltage work came later.

It's good you saw that article, though. There is a lot of garbage out there about what people think Tesla did so beware. If you want to learn Tesla you have to go straight to the source - Tesla himself. And he was prolific. There's a lot of it. You also need to understand the times he lived in and what was know at the time, and just as importantly, what was not known at the time. To get a grip on that, study the first and second industrial revolutions.

Look at some photos of New York City during the mid to late 1800's and the first thing you notice is the horses and wagons in the streets. There was no subway, cars, or trucks. The second thing I noticed was that all of the buildings were only 4 or 5 stories tall. That's because masonry construction at the time could only be built that high and remain stable and the Bessemer process initially had problems and high capacity production of quality steel didn't occur until around 1875.