Posted on 07/06/2015 1:32:17 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
It would be very difficult to argue that Nikola Tesla was not a genius. The famous 20th-century Serbian-American is known most for his design of the alternating (AC) electricity system.
But a single feat of engineering would not necessarily be enough to consider this man a genius. Indeed, he could also speak 8 languages and had a completely eidetic memory. Over his life he held 300 patents; and all of these things combined is probably the reason Elon Musk named his technology company after the great Nikola Tesla.
But looking at statements he made in his lifetime, Tesla seemed to also be some kind of prophet. After all, he predicted smartphones in 1926. In an interview with John B. Kennedy, he said, “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
Additionally, he also seemed to predict the female sexual revolution that is also happening right now.
“This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior. It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.”
got it.....like most geniuses, he was an odd duck.
The savant who designed the code breaking equipment for the German Enigma machine was gay.....which I thought of as a way of analogy.
And I’m damned glad that guy was on our side in WW2.
“Psychic” is the wrong word. Very intelligent business people I’ve known have an ability to think ahead. They are creative, can imagine how things might be. Ask themselves “what if” 90 times a day. Intuitive, can read people very well.
Psychic is something different.
“When wireless is perfectly applied...”
One thing to note, Tesla wasn’t just speaking of wireless transmission, as they already had the basics of radio pretty well understood in his day. What he really was referring to was wireless transmission of electricity, which was a pet project of his. Basically, he imagined the kind of world we have today, but with devices that would never need to be recharged, as they would charge themselves from the surroundings with an antenna.
It was a joke. I take it back. It was more of an accusation on what the author suggested. I’m sure Tesla was a kind gentleman who loved dogs.
indeed, which is what I think he meant......
Nikolai Tesla ping
..and local was pretty tuff as late as Andy, Barney and Sarah days...:)
“In fact, given what psychologists claim, that about 4-6% of the adult population is asexual...”
Probably a lot higher as you go up the IQ scale.
Yeah, it was a good idea but not financially viable. Can’t run a meter and send people a bill when you just send the electricity out into space for people to grab as needed.
Bkmrk.
Our internet has been down for severeral days and we only get local network channels. I think my IQ has dropped 100 points.
It's also quite difficult to tax energy usage as well
That is one show that was cancelled too soon.
Yeah the changes were staggering. My dad was a 45 year Ma Bell employee. In 1948 when he hired on the rural communities still had magnetic crank phones and the customer used it to ring the switchboard operator. He spent his first several years changing out those to four or eight party lines.
The cites faired better with two party lines and businesses had single party. He saw the changeover from human switching to electromechanical switching offices and had to take about a year and half special training to maintain it. He went into what was called a 4A office which was the forerunner to Computerized Electronic Switching. 4A was a large room several thousand square feet per floor of bays and bays of relays of which each one had 50-100 contacts. 4A handled the long distance switching system. 4A's weere found in mid sized to large cities and acted as the long distance switching HUB for a region. The main multi state HUB in the south was in or very near Birmingham, Alabama I think for a long time. I remember that real well. When I was a kid he'd take me in to work with him sometimes. He also trained me to troubleshoot :>}
ESS the electronic switching system showed up in some places in the 1970's. Our rural phone exchange {owned at the time by Ma Bell before the split} was the first office in Tennessee to get it. By 1981 his office went to ESS. The equipment that had taken up two floors of a large five story building meaning the electromechanical switching system was replaced with two computers {one was a back up} that would fit in a typical living room. That was even before Cell Phones as we know them today were marketed. That forerunner was Mobile Phone and it was for people who had LOTS of money.
AT&T {The parent company of all Bells, Western Electric {the installers of the offices switching centers}, Bell Labs {the research part}, etc for decades also handled all national TV Networking. It was done via microwave tower grid and then later communication satellites when they were developed. Most people never knew that part. To show a live show say from NYC it was networked to the locals TV stations by Ma Bell's system. I got to see that equipment also.
When 4A went ESS my dad didn't want to learn computers. Had he stayed with that part he would have lost his job by being forced to retire at about his 35th yr of service. Instead he went outside. That was also the time frame the split was done. AT&T got the ESS and South Central Bell as it was called then got the local exchanges. He wisely chose South Central Bell and went back outside and ironically was maintaining data circuits till his retirement in 1993 LOL. Lots of changes happened even in his time with Bell. His old office equipment was dismantled, crated up, and shipped to the Middle East.
You mean
Alan Turing, and one wonders how many allied lives his (homosexual) mind saved?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park#Personnel
In the late 1970's when I did two Med Sea deployments if we needed to call home to the states we had two choices. One was go to the ships HAM Radio operator {limited usually to emergencies only} and get a minute or two call through HAM Operators Patching it. The other was to either go to a USO or the port cities phone company office and sit and wait up to 8 plus hours. Been there done that LOL.
Now one thing I did manage to do in 1979 in Venice, Italy I could not do anywhere else was walk into a phone booth on the street and immediately get an overseas operator.
My cousin's son was on the USS George Washington in the second Iraq War. While in the Indian Ocean or anywhere at sea he could walk into the crews lounge on ship and call home on satellite phone. It cost a good sum per minute but the ability was there.
sigh. they’ve confused the word “psychic” with “prescient”.
“Preferring the company of pigeons to humans is normal...”
Yeah, but the pigeons talking back isn’t. ;-)
Back in high school, late 70’s, I worked in a restaurant that had phones on the tables. Candlestick rotary dial. Up stairs in a stockroom was the switch. Mechanical relays. It was funny going up there an listening to all the relays clicking while people talked to each other across the restaurant.
The only ESS’s I every heard about when I worked for Ma (90’s), were the 4ESS and the 5ESS. Local and long distance respectively.
If your dad was there during the divestiture, I bet he got some nice stock out of it. Those old timers made out pretty good.
I worked with a guy who was sent out to ships to install Ma Bell’s sat com phone systems for the Navy. That had to have been a Hell of a gig.
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