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LAN_403

Conundrum

Wed Sept 28 2011, 05:29AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

Hi all.

Just thought you'd find this interesting.

1) Tesla was a lifelong celibate, claiming that women were "a distraction". (!)

2) Tesla had an obsession with the number three, demanding three napkins to
be placed on his table before eating, etc.

3) Tesla had an irrational fear of germs (mysophobia)

4) Tesla was a supporter of the "theory" of eugenics, although it is unclear if
this was later in life or not.

5) Tesla never actually met Einstein, referring to his relativity theories as
"mathematical garb" and often claimed his own theories to be superior.

6) Tesla was not actually fired by Edison, he walked out after Edison reneged
on the bet making some comment about "American sense of humour"...

7) Tesla once claimed to have detected signals from Mars, now widely believed
to be radio energy from Jupiter's magnetic field so he in fact unknowingly founded
radio astronomy.

8) Tesla's original patent for the fluorescent tube mentioned powering it wirelessly,
the electrodes were only added because it made powering the tubes simpler.

9) Tesla invented the plasma globe

10) Tesla patented a device which made use of the improved conductivity of metals
at low temperatures. Rumour has it that he may have discovered superconductivity
but the research was lost in a lab fire.

Feel free to add to this.

-A

Turkey9

Wed Sept 28 2011, 06:46AM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

I believe he also invented a turbine that didn't use any fins. It consisted of completely flat disks.

He also invented an RC boat that was also completely powered through radio waves.

Download

Wed Sept 28 2011, 07:26AM

Registered Member #561 Joined: Sat Mar 03 2007, 02:46AM
Location: Adelaide Australia
Posts: 230

He sounds batshit insane, but oh well, still a genius

Sulaiman

Wed Sept 28 2011, 12:08PM

Registered Member #162 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140

Don't forget polyphase alternating current generators and motors which it is reported he thought of whilst staring into the sun.
He got a lot of cash for the patent from Mr. J.P.Morgan (enabling New York city to be powered from Niagara Falls) and blew it all on his world wide power distribution (by Tesla Coil) system and died a lonely poor man in a hotel room..

pauleddy

Sat Oct 01 2011, 12:28PM

Registered Member #2909 Joined: Wed Jun 09 2010, 12:31AM
Location: fort belvoir, Va USA ( south of DC)
Posts: 145

I have been read a vary good biogragphy of him called, "Wizard" by Mark J. Seifer, Seifer per posed that the signals from mars as quoted by tesla as " three fairy taps, tap tap tap" where probably marconi demistating his herzian/tesla's designs pirated to the royal navy in the English channel sending the morse code letter "s". From Colorado to the English channel in the 1890's that's impressive

And his rc boat was Not completely powered by wireless, it had batteries.

Killa-X

Sat Oct 01 2011, 04:40PM

Registered Member #1643 Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039

Turkey9 wrote ...

I believe he also invented a turbine that didn't use any fins. It consisted of completely flat disks.

He also invented an RC boat that was also completely powered through radio waves.

Otherwise known as the Tesla Turbine? =) Those are fun to make.

Proud Mary

Sat Oct 01 2011, 10:15PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Tesla's life (1856 - 1943) overlaps with the lives of so many truly great scientists, it is hard to see him as much more than a fringe figure in a backwater seldom visited.

Here are just a few of Tesla's notable contemporaries:

Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
Marie Curie 1867 - 1934
Lise Meitner 1878 â€“ 1968
Lord Kelvin 1824 - 1907
JJ Thomson 1856 - 1940
Max Planck 1858 - 1947
Hendrik Lorentz 1853 - 1928
Ernest Rutherford 1871 - 1937
Ludwig Boltzmann 1844 â€“ 1906

Patrick

Sat Oct 01 2011, 10:46PM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

Proud Mary wrote ...

Tesla's life (1856 - 1943) overlaps with the lives of so many truly great scientists, it is hard to see him as much more than a fringe figure in a backwater seldom visited.

Here are just a few of Tesla's notable contemporaries:

Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
Marie Curie 1867 - 1934
Lise Meitner 1878 â€“ 1968
Lord Kelvin 1824 - 1907
JJ Thomson 1856 - 1940
Max Planck 1858 - 1947
Hendrik Lorentz 1853 - 1928
Ernest Rutherford 1871 - 1937
Ludwig Boltzmann 1844 â€“ 1906

I have to agree with Proud Mary's point here, hes still a great man though.

Turkey9

Sun Oct 02 2011, 12:43AM

Registered Member #1451 Joined: Wed Apr 23 2008, 03:48AM
Location: Boulder, Co
Posts: 661

But of all those great people, I feel that the work of Tesla is encountered more often in day to day life. Of course I'm talking about the AC transmition of power that everyone in the world uses. I'm not sure if he was solely responsible for the modern system we use now, but he was at least the largest contributor.

Also, I feel Tesla is more of an inventor than a scientist.

Proud Mary

Sun Oct 02 2011, 08:41AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Turkey9 wrote ...

But of all those great people, I feel that the work of Tesla is encountered more often in day to day life. Of course I'm talking about the AC transmition of power that everyone in the world uses. I'm not sure if he was solely responsible for the modern system we use now, but he was at least the largest contributor.

Also, I feel Tesla is more of an inventor than a scientist.

Yes, these are very fair points, Turkey.

As for "Fact No 4" in the Top Ten List above, which says that "Tesla was a supporter of the "theory" of eugenics, although it is unclear if this was later in life or not" - it is perfectly clear that he supported eugenics in later life, and was closely associated with Nazi sympathisers in the USA.

As a person, as a human being, Tesla seems to have lost his moral compass somewhere along the way, and openly advocated and praised Nazi theories of 'racial hygiene' that would see millions murdered in Europe:

"The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct, Several European countries and a number of states of the American Union sterilize the criminal and the insane. This is not sufficient. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal."

Source: Tesla N, Vierek GS,* A Machine to End War, Liberty, February 1937

This may well be irrelevant to his work on AC power, but it is just as well he never achieved more influence than he did.

* Tesla's close friend George Sylvester Vierek (1884 - 1962) was imprisoned in the US as a Nazi agent from 1942 till 1947. Vierek thought that the persecution of Jews and other minorities was an inevitable and minor injustice in an "imperfect world." (New York Times, May 18, 1934)

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