Posted on 07/06/2006 7:02:41 PM PDT by eleni121
The Nikola Tesla Monument within Queen Victoria Park, Niagara Falls (Canadian Side) will be unveiled on July 9, 2006 at 12 noon celebrating the 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla.
(Excerpt) Read more at teslasociety.com ...
From what I have learned about this guy, he was pretty much scr*wed over by everyone he worked with/for. (Does the word Westinghouse ring a bell?)
Who knows what he could have done....
They did the same thing to Ted Kaczynski when he changed abodes from his one room place.
I dont know about US seizures, but Tesla and Edison battled about electricity delivery, with Tesla winning.
There is a huge Tesla spark generator in the Boston Museum of Science. Bzzt! Zzzzap! Pow!
Some information on the Tesla - Westinghouse connection:
http://www.ee.umd.edu/~taylor/frame7.htm
Er, I am not sure that Ted K. had the same type of *enlightenment* to offer us, lol....
And I understand that Ted K. was in some fairly grisly things in his 1 room, too.
In wonder and awe to such a mind. Happy birthday Mr. Tesla.
I agree. He was fearless in pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.
It is a real shame that Tesla did not receive more recognition for his achievements. We will never know how much he advanced science.
P.S. As for your tagline, *You aint getting no D*mn white toast....*, hehe
"We're on a mission from G*d."
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.
'My tux didnt come back from the cleaners.....It was locusts....It WASNT MY FAUUUULTTTT!!!!'
"It's got a cop motor, cop shocks..."
I wonder if this isn't a oxymoron. Usually, if a guy is brilliant, he's right, therefore not a kook. Little of his work has seen light of day since his death.
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
"He was a staggering genius" Yep, a man born to early. imagine what he could do now if he were alive.
'Do you want out of this mall? Ill get us out of this mall...'
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