Nikola Tesla
oracknows | June 7, 2017Orac Note: While Orac is on vacation, he's reprinting some of his "classics" (if you can call them that). He's also trying (but not always succeeding) to pick posts that have never been "rerun" before. (Orac has his favorites, and every few years when he's on vacation he can't resist rerunning them.) In any case, I used to run a feature called "Your Friday Dose of Woo." Basically, it was designed to feature the most spectacularly ridiculous pseudoscience and quackery I could find. It ran for two or three years, pretty much every Friday, until I got tired of being boxed in having to find…
carlyo | October 25, 2013Nikola Tesla -- Electrical and Mechanical Engineer, Inventor
One of science's most amazing visionaries of all time, Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla
was considered a mathematical phenomenon since childhood, being able as a high school
student to perform integral calculus in his head, which initially prompted his teachers to believe that he was cheating!
This famous engineer and inventor was known for developing the alternating-current (AC) electrical system widely used today and the discovery of the rotating magnetic field. Tesla also proved that the Earth can be used as an…
clock | April 17, 2010
I wonder how much more (and more accurate) detail this guy would get when sober. And how much less most other people would be able to say when sober....
clock | January 12, 2008Guru alerts me to a sweet article about Nikola Tesla and how he is inspiring writers and artists - Tesla Slept Here by Mark Singer in the latest New Yorker :
The Tesla saga has provided fodder for an opera, a play, and several biographies. Standing in the lobby the other day, Kinney mentioned that he had been contacted not long ago by a woman named Natasa Drakula (from that family), who was interested in making a film about artists who were inspired by Tesla. Among the most recent is Samantha Hunt, whose novel "The Invention of Everything Else" will be published next month. Its plot, not…
clock | July 10, 2007This day, Tesla's birthday, is proposed to become the Global Energy Independence Day. Let's make it happen!
If you don't know much about Tesla, my last years' post about him may be of some help....
clock | January 10, 2007For a blogger - by definition on the cutting edge of technology - I am quite a Luddite. Perhaps that is too strong a term and I should rather call myself a "patient techno-skeptic".
I watch the development of new technologies with interest, but I almost never get any kind of visceral excitement "I Have To Have This! Now!"
There is always a lot of experimenting going on and the Darwinian forces of the market ruthlessly destroy almost every new gizmo and gadget within a year or two. After a while, the dust settles, and one particular system or gadget becomes the universal standard - it…
clock | December 13, 2006It came to me so naturally - no big thinking involved, no tweaking the results, this is who I am:
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
clock | October 22, 2006I've been waiting for this movie to come out since April. Now, it is not playing in the theater up the street. Perhaps I'll have to go elsewhere, driving, finding parking...but see it I will!
clock | September 26, 2006Everything you ever wanted to know about Tesla, you can find here - an amazing collection of links.
scientificactivist | July 10, 2006As you may have seen, the web is all abuzz today with news and commentary on the 150th birthday of the scientists and inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla is probably best known as the inventor of the modern radio, but he had his hands in almost every area of electronics and magnetism research in his day. Because of his many inventions in the area, he is often called "the man who invented the Twentieth Century", a title that is surely well-deserved. His presence has seemed to only grow stronger with time, and even today his memory is allowing Serbia and Croatia to look past their uneasy past and…
clock | July 10, 2006
Today is the 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla. Here is an attempt to put in one place as much as can be found about the celebrations of his birthday and birth-year, the information about Tesla, the mentions in the media and on blogs, etc. I will keep updating this post throughout the day so, please, if you know of something I missed, or if you have seen (or written yourself) a blogpost related to Tesla, please let me know by e-mail or in the comments so I can check it out and perhaps include it in this post.
Tesla's birthday in the media
A good article in Globe and Mail: "Lighting up the…
clock | July 10, 2006Today's Quotes of the Day:
Nikola Tesla was born at Smiljan in the Lika region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an area now in Croatia. After studying electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic at Graz, Austria he became the chief electrician at the phone company in Budapest, then worked for Continental Edison at Paris. His supervisor there gave him a letter of recommendation which Tesla presented to Thomas Edison in 1884, the letter said only "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." When Edison failed to honor a promised incentive award, Tesla left…
clock | July 9, 2006Dont' forget to write something about Tesla tomorrow for his 150th birthday. If you do, please send me the URL so I can include it in a kind of a carnival-like linkfest for this occasion.
clock | July 7, 2006As I have noted before, there is an opera about Tesla, called Violet Fire in preperation for the grand opening in the Belgrade's National Theater on July 9th, on the eve of 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla. I have since received a little bit more information about it. Here I translated some snippets from Belgrade press:
Violet Fire ("Ljubicasta Vatra") is a multi-media opera composed by John Gibson. It was co-produced by by Belgrade's summer festival BELEF and American non-profit organization Violet Fire. Director is Terry O'Reilly.
The conductor, Ana Zorana Brajovic told reporters that…
clock | July 6, 2006"Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity."
"Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine."
"Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside."
On Invention: "It is the most important product of man's creative brain.…
clock | July 5, 2006"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more."
"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane." (Modern Mechanics and Inventions. July, 1934)
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of a planter -- for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way."
"Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort…
clock | July 4, 2006"The last 29 days of the month [are] the hardest."
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." (Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July, 1934)
"The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power."
"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to…