Tag Archives: Nikola Tesla

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek EVER

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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)

TRIBUTE TO TESLA

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N.Tesla

“Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called ‘the greatest evil in the world.’ The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.”

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943)

In recent years it has become widely recognized that Nikola Tesla conceived the fundamental inventions that caused Mankind to leap from darkness into the light.  Alternating current electricity, radio, remote control, wireless communication, television, and hundreds of electric and electronic conveniences that make global travel and communication possible.  I recently read the most comprehensive book about the details of his life, inventions and struggles to be of service to Humanity.

During his life he was fought, opposed and ridiculed.  His original ideas and inventions were uniformly stolen by others who made personal fortunes from his work.  His “partner”, J.P. Morgan — the financial king of the age — personally prevented Teslas greatest invention from be constructed and put into use:  the GLOBAL transmission of FREE ELECTRIC ENERGY and COMMUNICATION.  At the time of his death the FBI confiscated all of his personal property and “secret” inventions.  Tesla died alone and impoverished after having created the pivotal inventions that have proven to be a greater practical value to Humankind that ANY other inventor in history.

A Few Facts about Nikola Tesla:

Tesla read many works, memorizing complete books, and supposedly possessed a photographic memory.

He was a polyglot, speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by visions. Often, the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; at other times they would provide the solution to a particular problem he had encountered. Just by hearing the name of an item, he would be able to envision it in realistic detail. Tesla would visualize an invention in his mind with extreme precision, including all dimensions, before moving to the construction stage. He typically did not make drawings by hand but worked from memory. Beginning in his childhood, Tesla had frequent flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life.

Tesla claimed to never sleep more than two hours.

For exercise, Tesla walked 8 to 10 miles per day. He squished his toes one hundred times for each foot every night, claiming that it stimulated his brain cells.

Although Tesla opposed war and believed that war could not be avoided until its cause was removed, he concluded that some wars might be justifiable.

Later in life, Tesla made claims concerning a “teleforce” weapon.The press called it a “peace ray” or death ray.Tesla described the weapon as being able to be used against ground-based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes.  Tesla gives the following description concerning the particle gun’s operation: “[The nozzle would] 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.”

Tesla worked every day from 9 A.M. until 6 P.M. or later, with dinner from exactly 8 to 10 pm.  Tesla would then resume his work, often until 3 am.

Tesla became a vegetarian in his later years, living on only milk, bread, honey, and vegetable juices.

Tesla never married, claiming that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.

Opinion on the Theory of Relativity:  “I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing.”

pigeonTesla had many pigeons he fed and cared for, but one, he was particularly fond of.  “I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”

He described it as being a beautiful female bird, pure white with light gray tips on its wings. One night the bird flew into Tesla’s room at Hotel St. Regis, and he perceived that she was attempting to tell him she was dying. Tesla said a light came from her eyes more intense than he had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in his laboratory. The bird then died and Tesla said that at that same moment, something went out of his life and he knew his life’s work was finished.

Learn more about Tesla: 

www.teslauniverse.com

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius by Marc Seifer (Feb 1, 2001)

TESLA KNEW

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 “If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.” – Nikola Tesla