The Genius of Nikola Tesla

[mikegg]

Following up to this article: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=27628

Here's a really awesome presentation on Nikola Tesla from Ted.com told in a really creative way.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_the_electric_rise_and_fall_of_nikola_tesla.html

 

[Printer Bandit]

shine on you crazy diamond

 

[Northern Lawn]

Tesla was one of the greatest inventors ever, I was just watching a documentary on him to. He invented alternating current (Edison had direct current) AC/DC. Tesla joined up with Westinghouse owner and out maneuvered Edison by outbidding him to power all the electric bulb and the world fair in Chicago.. still in the 1800's i believe.

 

[Crono]

Tesla was a great mind, but there's more interest right now than I think is warranted.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Tesla was awesome. Apparently there are still some of his works that are classified due to the fact it could be a threat to the oil industry. He was ahead of his time, even ours. Though there are some talks that some of these were released at one point, so could be they're not classified anymore. They probably turned out to be things that arn't really feasible, like ways to capture lighting, or anti gravity (which requires lot of energy). Still incredible nonetheless though.

I want to build a tesla coil one day, that would be awesome.

 

[pontifex]

am i the only one that didn't find that presentation all that interesting?

I mean, I had seen a documentary about tesla before so I knew most of those things the guy mentioned, but the little book with video projected on it wasn't that impressive.

 

[MontyAC]

Tesla had alien DNA. :hmm:

 

[rockyct]

Tesla was one of the greatest inventors ever, I was just watching a documentary on him to. He invented alternating current (Edison had direct current) AC/DC. Tesla joined up with Westinghouse owner and out maneuvered Edison by outbidding him to power all the electric bulb and the world fair in Chicago.. still in the 1800's i believe.

There's a great book about the Chicago world's fair called "Devil in the White City." ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Devil-Whit...7346410&sr=1-2 )It's fascinating book about how the fair came to be despite soooo many challenges and it does talk about how it basically made AC the electricity standard. It also weaves in the story of America's first major serial killer who was hard at work down the street.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

In July 1888 Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with George Westinghouse for Tesla's polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor.

LOL what is tesla's contract worth in 2012? zillions!

 

[MrColin]

theoatmeal has a pretty fun cartoon about tesla too. There is an effort underway to build a Tesla Museum http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_museum
I would like to see this happen.

 

[ringtail]

``

 

[ringtail]

``

 

[rudeguy]

Tesla was awesome. Apparently there are still some of his works that are classified due to the fact it could be a threat to the oil industry. He was ahead of his time, even ours. Though there are some talks that some of these were released at one point, so could be they're not classified anymore. They probably turned out to be things that arn't really feasible, like ways to capture lighting, or anti gravity (which requires lot of energy). Still incredible nonetheless though.

I want to build a tesla coil one day, that would be awesome.

You really are nuts

 

[manimal]

I think tesla found a way to cross dimentional tresholds and discovered the mantids.


I said too much!

 

[Greenman]

So we have AC power and coils, what else did he do?

 

[pelov]

So we have AC power and coils, what else did he do?

The radio, lots of advancements and discoveries in magnetism including the notion of wireless charging of devices, the remote control and the death ray

Stuff like that.

 

[SlowSpyder]

So we have AC power and coils, what else did he do?

Radio, wireless/remote control. He never had the funding, but I believe he had ideas to power entire cities wirelessly, also. He was big with the electric motor, and had a hand in some of Thomas Edison's inventions.

 

[Kev]

Tesla was definitely among the very top few, like
Confucius,
Plato (& his bent student Aristotle who, when you read him, is not to be trusted),
maybe Isaac Newton although there's reasonable doubt since Newton probably stole Calculus from Leibniz although Newton claimed it was other way round (but Stigler’s Law applies to that and after researching this a while I believe Newton stole it from Leibniz),
Thomas Aquinas,
Leonardo Da Vinci (was Tesla a reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci?)
Galileo Galilei
etc.

and standing above the 2nd rank down of others like
Albert Einstein (acclaimed as the supreme guy but, but maybe unjustly?),
Richard Feynman,
Carver Meade,
Thomas Jefferson,
etc....everybody has a different pet list...

Tesla was exactly on the razor edge frontier dithering back & forth between superhuman genius and insanity. IMHO, in "our era" Nikola Tesla was W A Y smarter, more insightful, and productive of genuine results than Albert E.

-but the pop media glommed onto Albert and popularized him as the top man. Maybe that was just a sell-job. Maybe Albert stole e=mc2 from Jules Henri Poincaré, since Poincaré published e=mc2 before Albert Einstein was even born. So WHY does the world credit Albert for e=mc2? Stigler’s Law !

Similar to how pop science STILL pushes Charles Darwin as publishing something special when he did not...(READ THAT) but that's still pushed pushed pushed! Stigler’s Law !

Practical results Nikola Tesla brought DURING THE HORSE & BUGGY ERA of DIRT STREETS, outhouses, incredible social prejudices, etc:

Radio
X Rays
Modern electric motors
Top secret stuff
lots of things that are still in the wings, not yet industrialized because they'd threaten entrenched interests, like the c;ran power turbine/pump, etc.
you know the rest...(or at least, the popular world is belatedly starting to catch a small glimpse of the titanic super-genius that was Nikola Tesla)

My God!

Must've been so very difficult for Tesla in the early 1900'senvironment to communicate, what with his mind intuitively streaming a flood of visions from the year 2500 or beyond.

*slowly steps backwards*

 

[pelov]

He's got a point regarding Einstein. Hendrik Lorentz established the foundation for Einstein's principles of special relativity before Einstein did, though Lorentz wasn't able to sew the seams together quite as well as Einstein's theory did.

I'd also rank Feynman with Da Vinci and Tesla as far as being ahead of their time.

 

[pontifex]

Everyone knows Tesla turned into a vampire after injecting himself with the Source Blood.

 

[Fritzo]

Tesla was one of the greatest inventors ever, I was just watching a documentary on him to. He invented alternating current (Edison had direct current) AC/DC. Tesla joined up with Westinghouse owner and out maneuvered Edison by outbidding him to power all the electric bulb and the world fair in Chicago.. still in the 1800's i believe.

Edison was the Microsoft of his time. He didn't invent much, but he did buy/steal other ideas and then claim them as his own.

 

[Gibsons]

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

 

[Gibsons]

He's got a point regarding Einstein. Hendrik Lorentz established the foundation for Einstein's principles of special relativity before Einstein did, though Lorentz wasn't able to sew the seams together quite as well as Einstein's theory did.

I'd also rank Feynman with Da Vinci and Tesla as far as being ahead of their time.

He didn't even win the Nobel for relativity though he probably should have. Could/should have for Brownian motion as well.

 

[pelov]

He didn't even win the Nobel for relativity though he probably should have. Could/should have for Brownian motion as well.

Yea, the committee really dun goofed on that one.

That whole era, late 19th century and early 20th, of physics and other scientific inquiry is really amazing. Advancements in chemistry and physics were spurred on like a horse with a chili pepper up its ass. And if you think about it, a whole lot of that is attributed to Tesla's AC current.