Category Archives: …and other stuff

miscellaneous postings by Lawrence R. Spencer

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GREATEST GEEK

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THIS IS THE FIRST PAGE OF A VERY EXCELLENT ON-LINE “COMIC BOOK”  ABOUT NIKOLA TESLA.  READ THE ENTIRE THING HERE:  Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal

Additional notes from the author:

  • If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time
  • Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben’s also got a book out which is packed full of awesome.
  • There’s an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It’s corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
  • The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.
  • X-rays: just to clarify, Tesla did not discover x-rays, but he was one of the early pioneers in its research.
  • Cryogenic engineering: I’m referring to the cryogenic engineering that has to do with using liquified air to cool a coil and reduce its electrical resistance (Patent No. 11,865), not freezing people and waking them up in the future so they can fight Wesley Snipes.
  • Transistor: Tesla’s influence on the modern transistor can be found in patents 723,188 and 725,605. (a better explanation here)
  • Radio: Tesla was the nicest geek ever until he decided to sue Marconi a few years later. 8 months after Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patents on the invention of radio. So Tesla eventually won that battle, although he was dead by then.
  • Tesla VS Edison: I could write a novel on the differences between Tesla and Edison, but seeing as how this comic is already huge I decided to leave many things out. For instance, Edison killed cats and dogs, but Tesla loved animals and had a cat as a child. Originally Tesla wanted to be a poet, but after getting zapped by static electricity from his kitty he was inspired to study the effects of electricity. One could vaguely construe that Tesla’s cat was responsible for the second industrial revolution, which arguably makes it the most awesome cat who ever lived.
    Edison believed that fossil fuels were the future and that there were enough resources in South America to provide for the next 50,000 years. Tesla believed that renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, solar, and wind power were the future. This is remarkable because in the 1890s there was no such thing as “going green,” so Tesla’s ideas on conservation were very forward-thinking at the time.  (From OATMEAL)
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THE CORE

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TESLA BRAIN

Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7, 1943) was a physicist, inventor, mechanical and electrical engineer of unusual intellectual brilliance and practical achievement. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Tesla is most famous for conceiving the rotating magnetic field principle (1882) and then using it to invent the induction motor together with the accompanying alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system (1888). His patents and theoretical work still form the basis for modern alternating current electric power systems. He also developed numerous other electrical and mechanical devices including the fundamental principles and machinery of wireless technology, including the high frequency alternator, the Tesla coil, the blameless turbine, the spark plug, and numerous other inventions.

In addition to his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar, and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics.

He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla’s fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices as early as 1893, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project (1901-1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, located in Long Island, New York.

Tesla was fluent in eight languages – Serbian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

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WOULD YOU RATHER KILL A COW OR A CARROT?

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Would you kill a chicken, a lamb, a sheep, a goat, a pig or a cow with you bare hands?  Probably not.  So why do you think it’s OK for someone else to kill animals for you?  Just so you can have another hot dog or cheeseburger?  Killing a carrot is a lot easier.  And carrots are easier to butcher because there don’t have nearly as much blood and guts and shit and skin and eyeballs and brains and all the nasty, bad-smelling parts that you have to clean up when you kill animals.