- Interface
- Posts
- Insights from Nikola Tesla
Read time: 3.6 minutes
Welcome to 🧠Insight🧠!
A 4-min newsletter where I dive into how inventors turnđź’ˇideas into reality.
The Story:
It’s the 1870s.
The war for a monopoly over America’s PowerGrid rages with Edison and DC (direct current) taking the lead. But there’s a downside to DC. It loses power over long distances requiring a plant every few miles.
Inventors knew where DC fails and explored AC including Nikola Tesla.
Tesla is a Serbian born electrical engineer who designed an AC motor in 1887. It was more robust and efficient compared to DC motors. But Tesla’s investors weren’t convinced it was a good idea to investigate further.
At the time, AC wasn’t gaining traction because it was too expensive.
The AC plants to generate power were expensive to create. People worried about dying from high voltage. The power sent from the plant and the customer usage were difficult to measure. Using AC wasn’t a technical problem, but an economic one. Edison summed up problems with AC by saying it was “not worth the attention of practical men.”
Tesla thought different.
But he needed to convince his investors to give him funding to pursue it.
The Insight:
đź’ˇHe earned funding through metaphors, stories, & themes mixed with showmanship to show others how his invention will impact them.
In 1887, Tesla brought his investors for a demonstration of his AC motor.
He asked them if they knew the legend of the Egg of Columbus.
—
The legend goes like this.
Christopher Columbus needed funding to go in search of the New World. But he had his critics including Queen Isabella.
Columbus challenged them to balance an egg on its end. After the critics couldn’t balance the egg, Columbus made it stand upright lightly cracking one end.
Queen Isabella was impressed and gave her support for the voyage.
—
Tesla told his investors he could make an egg stand on end without cracking its shell.
He setup his four-coil magnet to the underside of a wooden table and secured a copper-plated egg & several balls…….Tesla placed the copper egg on the tabletop and applied two out-of-phase currents to the magnet…the egg stood on end….and spun
His investors were so impressed they became champions of Tesla’s AC motors.
The Application:
An idea is never enough.
Not even a prototype. You must convince others how your idea will impact them. As Andrew Stanton from Pixar would say, “Make me Care.”
Tesla learned he would need to be a showman to bridge the gap between his invention & his audience’s imagination.
He needed to show them the impact of it. Grab their attention. Once he drew them in, then Tesla could get his investors and audience to think about the commercial potential.
But Tesla wasn’t the only inventor to struggle with this.
Edison faced the same challenges with his inventions including Electric Light.
That’s all folks!
See you next time.
—Mohammad Khan
PS: If you’re ready for more insights, here are other ways I can help:
Reply