Quote:
Originally Posted by TimSJ
Jan 7 1943
Nikola Tesla dead. The inventor of alternating current, Tesla was driven mad by Edison and spent his final days trying to invent a death ray.
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that's funny, i swear that in every book i've read on the subject tesla died penniless in a chicago hotel feeding pigeons in his room.
his death ray papers were confiscated by the FBI who raided his storage lockers. i'm really not convinced he was doing much research at that point, he was writing ideas down but the major tesla-style build-it-and-turn-the-#####er-on style of invention was not in practice.
alternating current, the hydroelectric dam, 3-phase AC (still in wide use today), tesla has the reputation of being screwed out of all his best ideas but that's not totally true.
when asked aboot marconi and his cross-atlantic radio transmission, tesla wished him luck as he was using 17 of nikola's patents.
in the very early 1900s tesla invented radio to control small boats remotely that he figured could mount explosives to allow guided torpedos, when demonstrated publicly tesla was such an odd duck that he would put the control in his pocket and claim that he was controlling the robots with the power of his mind - things like this gave him a cult-like status with the gullible and a charlatan reputation with the learned.
tesla in new york when he became wealthy would throw huge ornate dinner parties, don shoes with huge rubber soles, and have lightning dance from his fingertips like a god in demonstrations. some of these parties literally cost over a million dollars each.
even jp morgan, who got even richer with westinghouse all based on tesla's work and is reputed for robbing him blind (not far from the truth), would occasionally sneak him a lot of money out here and there - probably to steal more of his work!
it's true that much of tesla's research was lost in suspicious circumstances, he had a long-running feud with edison. he'd worked for edison when he first came over from paris and regarded the man as a complete and total moron and made no secret of that opinion. he described edison's research methods as (paraphrasing) 'looking for a needle in a haystack by picking up each needle and carefully studying it for minutes before placing it back on the stack and trying again', point of fact thomas actually lost a patent case while defending his claim on the lightbulb when he could not demonstrate in court that he knew ohm's law - as in his only invention was total blind luck and his other 'inventions' were business acquisitions for the most part.
edison sold DC power stations and he wanted to see them on every block as their range was atrocious, AC was a major threat to that inefficient and expensive dream. with westinghouse he eventually made a lot of money off AC however...
tesla would put huge crowds to sleep with his long and dull speeches, he'd go into gigantic descriptions of things like a brush with death he had as a small boy in croatia escaping death by waterfall and what it taught him aboot turbines for water generating electricity.
interesting fellow, i recommend to everyone to read as much as they can find on the man, there are many interpretations and no shortage of documentation and research notes. there's even some pretty funny anecdotes here and there, one of his friends was sam clemons (mark twain) and they would do wacky stuff like try out this huge vibrating platform that tesla used to test things (he and his overworked assistant used it to occasionally cure constipation), they both crapped their pants messing around with the contraption.
tesla is a man worth reading aboot.