[manwiththehands]

Nikola Tesla is one of the most fascinating inventors who has ever lived. When you stick with the factual account of his life (like the time he caused the Colorado Springs power plant to explode while he was creating lightning in his lab) and inventions (his "death ray") at worst he would appear to be an eccentric genius. I was hoping someone would make a movie about him. This "Tesla Conspiracy" might make him look like a nut. Too bad.

[evets]

I always enjoyed Tesla's "death ray".

[ncountylee]

http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/energy.htm#ENERGY

[American Quilter]

...he caused the Colorado Springs power plant to explode while he was creating lightning in his lab...

There's still a small street named after him here. I guess the citizens didn't hold that accident against him!

[netmilsmom]

I LOVE to go to Goat Island on the US side of Niagra Falls and see the big statue of Tesla.

Is it still there?

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Nikola Tesla is one of the most fascinating inventors who has ever lived.

I went to the Milwaukee School of Engineering back in the '60s. Their buildings were a rather odd collections of intercity architecture, some of which dated back to Victorian times. The "B" building was the former German Academy dating from the late 1800's and was used for classroom space and the student lounge. One grand hallway featured an oil portrait of Nikola Tesla that was at least 15 feet tall. (It was really a GRAND hallway!). It turns out that in it's early days MSOE only had an electrical engineering program and one of it's patrons was George Westinghouse. Westinghouse was also an early backer of Tesla and saw the benefits of alternating current early on. He fought a major battle with T.A. Edison's direct current and won which set the direction for the electrification of the country. Westinghouse was not an idea man, all of the technology came from Tesla. He could be called the man who invented the twentieth century.

I worked for the school one summer and helped clean an attic in the "B" building. While working up there we found parts for a mammoth Tesla coil in storage since the '20s or '30s. The primary stood about eight feet high and was about ten feet in diameter. The secondary was made in sections that could be stacked up and assembled to produce an astonishing six foot diameter coil, thirty feet tall. This monster had been built by the EE frat to celebrate a school anniversary and was used in a tableau with a hapless volunteer standing on the apex on the secondary, holding aloft a tennis racket that had been wrapped with tin foil streamers. The effect had to have been awesome. No pictures of the actual tableau have survived.

Regards,
GtG

PS Someday I may tell all about the time Tesla's portrait was "borrowed" for a trip down Wisconsin Avenue during the annual St. Patrick's Day festivities! (St. Pat WAS an engineer)