[SunkenCiv]

Nice topic, eleni121. That pose shown -- Tesla writing with a walking stick -- recalls his "eureka" moment, when the method of making alternating current motors came to him in a flash of insight while walking in a park (I think in Vienna) and he started to draw an illustration for his companion.

Tesla was told (correctly) by Westinghouse that if the original royalties agreement were to be honored, Westinghouse would be ousted by his financial backers, so Tesla took out his copy and tore it up. Renegotiation would have made more sense, but that didn't happen.

Tesla wound up doing all right now and then, but some of his pure research was dead-end, and the Wardenclyffe tower electrical power transmission prototype would have (at best) resulted in no income (no way to monitor who does and doesn't receive the electricity).

Margaret Cheney's (sp?) book on Tesla is excellent, and there's an earlier bio of him if memory serves, plus Tesla's own memoirs.

He was brilliant, but troubled, and it's probably lucky he had somewhere to live at the end. Among other things, he invented the three types of alternating current motors we use today; he was one of the pre-discovery discoverers of X-Rays; he invented fluorescent lamps, but never patented them; and of course, most interestingly, he invented and patented radio, and eventually prevailed against Marconi in court (but it was a Pyrrhic victory).

My favorite quote from Tesla:

"Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic? If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic - and this we know it is, for certain - then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature." -- Tesla, American Institute of Electrical Engineers address, 1891

[Old Professer]

The very air is a giant capacitor, the earth an armature and the heavens a charged field...

[Chances Are]

I've always felt that, like daVinci, he was a man born out of time.

Perhaps one of these days we'll get it right with one of these guys, and the true benefits to mankind will finally manifest.

CA....

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks eleni121. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. Note: this topic is from July 6, 2006. Tesla's 156th b-day is upcoming. Blast from the Past. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.