Rocket man Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, had a great week. His electric car company reported $11 million in profit for the latest quarter (first time it’s in the black, or is that in the green?), and the company’s stock is up 38%. The Tesla Roadster uses a three-phase Alternating Current (AC) induction motor. The AC induction motor was first patented by Nikola Tesla in 1888, is about the size of a watermelon, and can run at up to 14,000 rpm .. but instant torque is available at any rpm (Whoah). I’m reading all of this here on the Tesla Motors website http://www.teslamotors.com/roadster/technology/motor.
Nikola Tesla (born 1856, died 1943) was a Serbian-American, an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, an inventor that worked for Thomas Edison for some time, but then struck out on his own – and how. He would build fantastic inventions and show them off, was capable of speaking eight languages, could memorize entire books, and visualize his machines and contraptions in his head. In 1960 the unit of measure for magnetic field strength was named a ‘tesla’ in his honor.