io9
When you hear the name Nikola Tesla, chances are you think of the Tesla coil or the 80s metal hair band. Tesla was the first real mad scientist of the twentieth century: Not only did he invent that coil and alternating-current electricity (which you're probably using right now to read this), but he also researched death rays, time-travel, and peering at memories stored inside the human brain. Studio 360 explored the history of Tesla over the weekend, and we've got the highlights, along with some other tidbits about the madman who ate only foods whose volume he could measure precisely, and who tried to build an electrical superweapon.
- He worked for Thomas Edison and was promised a huge bonus if he redesigned his electric motors and generators. He did so, and gave Edison several patents as an employee, but Edison never paid out. Tesla quit and developed the more efficient "alternating current" that opposed Edison's "direct current" and eventually became the standard electrical current that we still use today.
- He was one of the first people to work with x-rays, and he invented an "X-Ray Gun" that you could use to fire x-ray beams at someone with, and it would develop on unexposed film hung behind the subject. A favorite target of this gun? Mark Twain.
- He thought that memories and thoughts were recorded on the brain and could be watched, like a movie, through the retina.
- He thought he could control the weather, and attempted to develop this technology. Eventually he was able to produce spectacular artificial lightning bolts.
- He developed the first radar system.
- He built his own wireless radio transmission tower in New York in conjunction with a German company named Telefunken, but the government tore it down in 1917 for fears that the Germans would use it to spy on the U.S.
- He transmitted radio waves before Marconi, but was never seen as the "father of radio," even though the Supreme Court decided to uphold his radio patent over Marconi in 1943. He died before the case was heard.
- He tried to develop anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel after becoming fascinated with idea of light as both a wave and a particle. He put a lot of theoretical work into Tesla's Flying Machine, which would have been an ion-propelled airplane.
- There is a crater on the moon named after him.
- He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future, and that they would rule over mankind like "Queen Bees."
- He was developing a way to harness energy from space, and said that one day all of man's inventions would run on this energy.
- He had plans to illuminate the world's oceans and build a massive ring around the Earth that would allow people to travel around the world in a single day.
- He developed something late in life called Nikola Tesla's Death Ray, and had a press conference to publicize it, stating it could "send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks." It later became the basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" satellite defense system that is still being developed today.
- He died alone and in massive debt in his New York hotel room in 1943 at the age of 86. Upon his death, the FBI declared all of his papers and research to be "top secret" and seized them. Eventually, some were returned to his family. Some have never been found. Cue conspiracy theories.
- Visitors frequently request his room at The New Yorker Hotel, room 3327. Supposedly they hope for a "spark" of inspiration.
- He was portrayed by David Bowie in the film The Prestige, although he sadly never invented the machine shown in the film, which we won't spoil for you here. Although you can check out a clip here featuring Bowie as Tesla, which we hope will inspire you to rent this excellent "science meets magic" film.
Comments
Rumor has it that he never really died, but was "regressed" into an infant body.
the Prestige was also an excellent book, though I was naturally well-disposed towards it ahead of time.
I am in favor of any book whose essential premise is, "Nikola Tesla can do anything."
His awesomeness is underlined by the mere fact of Bowie playing him.
Is Telefunken the best company name ever?
@VivianDarkbloom: Yes, and Yes.
Why doesn't someone request the documents of Tesla's under the freedom of information act? There are some really good Tesla biographies out there - a pretty fascinating guy...
A wild innovative thinker who got screwed by the money guys. And in many ways the engineer's engineer because he didn't make a dime from his inventions.
@the memorexe: If you're referring to the kind of things that Al Bielek was "selling," well ... let's just say I have my doubts. Bielek supposedly is a survivor of the Philadelphia Experiment, tied Tesla and Einstein to the story, and claims that in an effort to keep his knowledge of this silent, he was age-reqressed to a one-year old, was transported from 1953 to 1927, and had his memory erased, to boot.
(You know, a bullet to the brain would probably be cheaper, unless there was too much red tape involved.)
I gotta say Bowie did a hell of job in that clip.
@VivianDarkbloom: They sold Telefunk, which is totally a way of getting down with it at long distances.
@braak: I was thinking it sounds kind of like a great lost Kraftwerk album. You know, and Telefunken would be the title track?
Ich möchte töten der Punk,
Ich möchte töten der Punk,
Und bei Nacht kommt,
Ich habe zu...telefunk.
(I want to kill the punk, I want to kill the punk, and when the night comes, I have to...*pause* TELEFUNK.)
@VivianDarkbloom:
Sounds like something Das Ich would do.
Tesla = awesome.
whenever i hear the name nikola tesla it makes me sad to think how much more advanced we would be right now if more people had been willing to listen to him while he was alive. it still amazes me that he actually failed at convincing people to use AC for power transmission for a considerable amount of time given the obvious benifits over DC transmission.
@PVIII: They were destroyed.:paranoid:
I've read that Tesla also had something of a St. Francis vibe, at least as far as pigeons were concerned - he'd feed them, and take injured ones home to nurse them back to health.
Fun conspiracy theory: he died, the government seized his papers, and a few months later the Philadelphia Experiment supposedly happened. If anyone could render invisible (or teleport) a destroyer, it was Tesla.
Just the mere thought that if Edison and his cronies weren't so focused on charging people for electricity we probably would all have free, wireless power, kills me. But wow, what a shock, a handful of people in power look out for themselves and their wallet instead of society.
@tetracycloide: It makes me extremely depressed, as well. He was predicting television--and calling in television, in 1910. Wireless power transmission, electric cars.
Fucking EDISON!
@VivianDarkbloom: I'm down. Mix it.
@braak: Yes -- fucking Edison.
Let this be a lesson to all of us, boys and girls. If you're a genius, get on top first, and stay there.
Queen bees notwithstanding, Tesla is the telefunkiest scientist of them all!
if we ever get a time machine working i think the first thing we should do is go back in time and retrieve tesla and faraday so they can team up to form a time traveling duo of ingenuity and experimentation. they can then travel throughout space time and zap the edisons of history with ray guns until they stop beng pricks.
@MarlboroTestMonkey7: It's an adjective now?
We SOOOOOOOO need a Tesla Movie!
@Bento: Watch The Prestige! You will not be disappointed!
@DanielBrenton: "fucking Edison"
Hear, hear. The older I get and the more I hear about that guy, the deeper my hatred for him goes.
@braak: "I am in favor of any book whose essential premise is, "Nikola Tesla can do anything.""
Agreed! More books need to feature a realistic (able to do anything) Tesla!
@viviandarkbloom: I know I'm probably the least cool person in this thread right now but correct (but awkward) German would be
Ich möchte töten den Punk
Ich möchte töten den Punk
und wenn die Nacht kommt
muß ich...Telefunk!
And the "funken" part means "spark" and is pronounced 'foonken'. (god, first Marxism and now German. I'm sorry. I'm not always that uncool)
But Telefunk (rhymes with opunk) sound much cooler.
I propose this Version:
Ich werde ihn töten den Punk
Ich werde ihn töten den Punk
und wenn die Nacht hereinbricht
bin ich besessen....vom Telefunk!
Yeah the Tesla inspired forces of Nod in Red Alert 2 always have me joinin the bad guys :)
Oh and I love the Tesla passages in Against The Day.
I have been studying Tesla for 50 some years.
Much rot has been writ about him.
Yes. He was brilliant.
The human race has learnt much since then:
Tesla was wrong about some things,
right about others.
(Relatively common for brilliant minds.)
I gently suggest it does a Great man little credit to
assign him credit for the undoable.
(Hint:
The pic at top of page is a TRICK PHOTO, staged
by Tesla. Tesla says so in his Colorado Springs
Notes)
best
There's a brand new novel by Samantha Hunt about Tesla that just came out a couple weeks ago, The Invention Of Everything Else. I'm in the middle of it right now. It's got all the above-mentioned stuff in there and then some: the New Yorker Hotel, the pigeons, the death ray, a jackass Thomas Edison electrocuting kitties for fun...it turns out the weirdest, most outlandish parts of the story are all true.
@tetracycloide: Sounds like the premise for a new TV series. (I'd watch that!)
@oddjob1947: Manifestly false. How are future generations living in a post-apocaylptic dystopian wasteland supposed to worship Tesla as the God of Electricity if we don't now start propagating myths regarding his capacity for achieving the impossible?
The highest credit a great man can be given is to be worshipped as a god in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future.
Tesla remains one of my favorite historical figures. He had a combination of genius, innovation and outright lunacy that made him the penultimate mad scientist. As a side note, Edison attempted to make him and his competing AC technology look bad by zapping small animals to death with it and then claiming that it was much more dangerous than DC.
@VivianDarkbloom: haha I though the same thing! that name is awesome
The prestige is a kickass movie after watching it i learned edison wasnt as great of a guy as i orignally thought....he was very paranoid with a lot of money and power (never a good combination)
@tetracycloide: Who says that hasn't already happened? He "died" in that hotel room. That's how they're covering up the time travel.
@braak: This is an amazing idea. I've been looking for some ideas for writing a short story (probably I won't finish it, and if I do, no-one will be allowed to read it, because I'll invariably think it sucks :P).
Regardless, would you terribly mind if I used it?
First: The picture was a time-delay. He was photographed as seen in the pic with the machine off. He than removed himself from the area and the coil was turned on and photoed. The pics were then merged.
Second: Spoke to a guy from Hawaii in the late '80's and he had a friend that saw Tesla during the Philadelphia Experiment-after his allegated death.
I have alot of tape of Tesla places of interest in the old Yugoslavia-from 1980's. Place of birth, schools, Tesla Museum. He was quite a man. Those items where he was "wrong" are probibly so because we still have not caught up with him yet....
If you want to see the Tesla / Mark Twain connection in comic book form check out Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders (Amazon US or Amazon UK). It features the brave duo facing off against the scheming Edison and downright evil J.P. Morgan. It is well worth reading up on Morgan's links to Edison and Tesla. As to wireless power I believe Tesla envisioned a 'world system' akin to the internet only that it would carry both power AND data... oh, what could have been.
And don't you think he deserved a much, much cooler band to be named after him?
It looks just like a Telefunken U-47. With Leather.
-Frank Zappa
@905: A much cooler band?
What, you've heard one song and decided this on your own?
Please borrow "Psychotic Supper" to peruse the song "Edison's Medicine"
Imagine what Tesla could accomplish with today's technology. Superconducting magnets, particle acceleartors, super-computers, the iPhone... it boggles the mind.
not to be too much of a pedant, but Tesla did not invent AC power. he figured out how to make electric motors that would run on AC. the guy did do a lot of amazing things (including shutting down the entire power grid here in CO Springs), but creating AC was not one of them
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