Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia

Tesladownunder, Sat Jun 17 2006, 06:46PM

I have just heard about the Tesla forum here in Western Australia.

Events planned for the 150th include
One day Tesla conference on 7 July
Unveiling a bust of Tesla 10 July
A one man play on Tesla with Frank Tabbita performed at the local Uni (the same one I made a TC for earlier this year)
Celebratory Function

I find it really strange that I hadn't heard of them before. They seem to have a scientific rather than alternative basis and award some uni physics/computing prizes. I can only guess that Tesla coils don't figure highly with them confused

Anyone seen the play? Previosly performed in the USA in WA and CA. It is performed on a nearly bare stage and there are no electrical props.

Peter



1150569975 10 FT0 Teslaplayfrankposter La
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Desmogod, Mon Jun 19 2006, 04:19AM

See you at the conference peter!
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Coronafix, Mon Jun 19 2006, 04:32AM

Well I might as well be in a different country!!
I've been your way before, but it took a week of driving!
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Desmogod, Mon Jun 19 2006, 05:21AM

So fly!
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Coronafix, Mon Jun 19 2006, 05:46AM

mmmm.....might just have to wait until something happens over here.
let us know how it goes though.
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Tesladownunder, Mon Jun 19 2006, 03:20PM

Well the web site is up and running. I was able to talk to one of the members and organisers (who in fact is a colleague of mine). He was as surprised as me to find our respective aliases. They are into the history and achievements of Tesla but have not had much to do with the Tesla coils themselves. I hope to change that. At this late stage I hope to have a small Tesla display at the conference.

Interesting the level of enthusiasm for Tesla here but we do have a significant Eastern European population here from post war migration.

I will keep you posted about the progress and will give a conference report.

Peter
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Tesladownunder, Mon Jul 10 2006, 07:20PM

A Report of the 150th Celebrations:
The play was a superb acting performance. How anyone remembers a whole performance I find hard to conceive (I have trouble remembering phone numbers). I took some photos with permission from Jeff, the technical manager who was keen for ideas to incorporate HV into the performance. Audience was about 500.
I had a static Tesla display there with my 4 inch coil and a powerpoint slideshow on the computer. Unfortunately I couldn't get reasonable public liability insurance so could not run the coil. Best quote for insurance of $10,000,000 was AUD$1500 for 6 performances in a year, so not really feasible for me to have a running coil.

The conference the following day covered a variety of Tesla related and leading edge physics topics. More details on the individual talks are here.

Attendance was around 100 and I did the same static display which was well received.

I was not able to attend the formal dinner nor the unveiling of the Tesla bust.

Also caught up with Desmogod and a few other people I rarely see. (I don't get out much) I met Dr Chandrasekar who gave an excellent talk on the "Speculations on the mind of Tesla". I recalled lending him a calculator for his final engineering exam in college. He recalled that it was 1975 and it was a HP 35!

The only downpoint was that my camera electrically died during the conference. It has been such a come down to use an ordinary digital camera since then. I am hoping it can be repaired but since it did not even respond to a hard reset I doubt it.

Peter
1152559242 10 FT11592 Teslaplaychair

1152559242 10 FT11592 Teslaplaydemo

1152559242 10 FT11592 Teslaconfaudiencefull
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Marko, Mon Jul 10 2006, 07:57PM

Yeah, there was divertingly here in croatia too.
A big statue of Tesla was placed in Zagreb Link2 regarding his 150th anniversary.

(sorry for croatian language but you can see pics at laeast wink )


Anyway it stll somehow looks that he is more popular in australia than here... neutral
Re: Tesla 150th Celebrations in Australia
Desmogod, Tue Jul 11 2006, 01:56AM

It was good to meet peter, and find a lot more people that where interested in Tesla as a whole. It was just a shame that they wouldn't let Peter fire up his TC....
Spoke to one guy who, like me, had taken a day off work for the hell of it to come and see what it was all about. We now have another coiler in Perth :)
The talk by Dr Chandrasekar was absolutely outstanding, really interesting stuff. And I found Igor Brays talk equally interesting.
I'm trying to get copies of all the papers from the day, and will post them here when I get them.