Zots to Mr Tesla and his legacy.
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Happy birthday Nikola!!
I always enjoyed reading about his quest for free energy, and his attempts to beam electricity through the air instead of wires. He was a staggering genius, and we take his advances in science for granted everyday.
Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla!
Nancy Reagan (6 July 1921)
George W. Bush (6 July 1946)
BTTT
In wonder and awe to such a mind. Happy birthday Mr. Tesla.
HAARP... Tesla LIVES!!!Happy Birthday Nick
I built a Tesla Coil for a high school science project from an old Popular Science article.
I think he was in his 30s then.
There is already a statue of Tesla on Goat Island (between the American and Horseshoe Falls).
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
My son did his graduation project on Tesla a few years ago (after I read a thread here at FR and suggested the project) and I was absolutely floored at the genius of this man.
For those who don't know, it is Tesla who is responsible for those electric outlets on the walls of every home in the country. Edison had taken the "DC" track with the idea that electricity could be wired into large manufacturing facilities. He toured the country electrocuting elephants to show the power of DC electricity.
Tesla took the "AC" track figuring that electricity could be provided to every home and business.
bttt
Tesla BTTT
Ha! Had to go back many many pages on google images to find this! I'd all but forgotten about them lol.