Today is Nikola Tesla's birthday! A boy from a far away Serbian village who made his fortune in the United States, a genius, sufferer of intense synaesthesia, inventor of countless patents and technologies that lead to the development of electricity that we use today. His visionary work involved anything from wireless transfer, to television and radio, free power for all, harnessing of geothermal energy, monitoring space for signals of alien intelligence, and much, much more. He'll be forever remembered as 'the mad scientist' due to his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. When Tesla heard that the atom was split in Europe, he cried. He was baffled why anyone wanted to introduce such destruction, when power can easily be harnessed from the Earth itself. He saw things in his minds eye that took the world generations to realise. Tesla's great rivalry with Thomas Edison is immortalised in many movies and now in this hilarious videoclip. I hope you enjoy!
I'm not surprised. I often think of Nikola because he represents, for me, a moment in time encapsulated in a person. He is a point of divergence. Had we followed him in his path of technology, instead of the paths of others, what a fantastically different world we would have. Like in futuristic anime where the technologies you see are recognizable, but clearly stem from very different traditions.
I'd never heard of this guy - after reading his wiki page I need to go find out more about him - thanks for introducing us [MENTION=35110]jazzabel[/MENTION]
[MENTION=52161]erebh[/MENTION] here is a good docu on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzA4W-1oPxc
As I was looking for that image, I happened to discover that, at some point, Tesla was proclaimed "Badass of the week." An amusing read. http://www.badassoftheweek.com/tesla.html
Tesla was a genius that doesn't get the recognition he deserves. The only way for him to be more epic is if he were a vampire.
[MENTION=38553]chicagoliz[/MENTION]: thank you so much, I lmfao'd through both of those I think though, the article is more influenced by this 'Tesla cult' that arose in America after his death. It potentiated this 'mad scientist' aspect and there were loads of B-grade sci fi featuring Tesla, but they had little to do with actual Tesla. Tesla was devoted to planet Earth. He was literally connected to it through his synaesthesia, and as far as the 'earthquake' he supposedly caused, I heard it was broken into by the FBI and subsequently blew up. But they couldn't make sense of it because most of the plans were in his head, most of the rest was coded. He was a pacifist and completely disinterested in money. When he was offered $1 for every kilowatt of energy, he refused, saying it would bankrupt America. However, when he wanted the Congress to finance his project that would make electricity free, his funding was terminated. He suffered a breakdown because he saw that nobody can stand in the way of greed, and he foresaw what that greed will do to society. He spoke about it often. [MENTION=52161]erebh[/MENTION]: it's my pleasure! [MENTION=55095]jmhoffer[/MENTION]: hahaha Brilliant.
But it does speak to the effect his life had on the cultural zeitgeist. It's not everyone who gets mythologized.
Is it just me, or were to update Tesla's look to a modern aesthetic, lose that pornstache and do something with that hair, would Nikola not be a stone fox!
[MENTION=3885]Wreybies[/MENTION]: He is an archetype, you are right Tesla looks very much like my cousin Duško and my uncle Dobrica. Very tall and extremely skinny, with pointy chin and big forehead. Not my cup of tea. But I'd have him for a gay friend any day
He does appear that he was a very nice looking young man. Apparently Christian Bale is going to play Tesla in a movie. There's a side by side comparison here: http://www.uproxx.com/gammasquad/2012/07/crazy-actors-christian-bale-nicholas-cage-to-play-crazy-inventors-nikola-tesla-and-thomas-edison/ Hummm. I might say Tesla is better looking than Christian Bale, although I do like him very much. (Despite his reported tantrums.)
I wouldn't mythologize Tesla too much. He did invent a successful version of the AC induction motor, and the generators at Niagara Falls. He did pioneer fluorescent light. He pioneered radio as well, but didn't seem to understand what he was doing with it, or how it should be implemented. And he pioneered remote control. That's a pretty darn strong legacy for any inventor. But he deliberately defrauded his investors. He took at least $100,000 from John Jacob Astor specifically to perfect the fluorescent light, and instead went to Colorado Springs to work on his wireless technology with that money. Astor was angry and stopped associating with Tesla after that. Tesla also took a great deal of money from JP Morgan, mostly to work on wireless communications, and used the money to build his Wardenclyffe tower for his "free power" project. Morgan was furious with him and refused to give him another dime, though Tesla begged him constantly, making all sorts of ridiculous claims for his Wardenclyffe project: "It's a radio! AND it's a free power broadcast system! And it's a superweapon capable of defeating whole foreign navies!" (All this is, of course, paraphrasing.) This was mostly BS, of course - Wardenclyffe came to nought, and Tesla's claims for it seem sillier and sillier with each passing year. He was certainly a genius, though he didn't actually DO a lot of the stuff he claimed he did. He was a master showman and self-promoter, and managed to mythologize himself quite enough. I got most of this information from a biography of Tesla I read years ago called Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer. My roommate is fascinated by Tesla, and he has read a TON of books on him and also has copies of many of Tesla's own papers. My roommate and I are both electrical engineers, so Tesla's work is interesting to both of us. Unfortunately, he wasn't quite everything his fans say he was.
[MENTION=19031]minstrel[/MENTION]: But isn't that why it's called mythologizing? No real person could/would ever live up to a myth that grows up around them. I had the good fortune to meet Meave Leaky while I was at U.F. I was an anthro major, so this was akin to meeting Galadriel. She turned out to be a rude bitch with breath that could kill a granite boulder. *shrug*
Intelligence is highly attractive to a great many people. This is one of my favorite tributes to Tesla by The Oatmeal a comedic and sometimes educational cartoonist.
