Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla!

[CaptainQuintero]

In honour of Nikola Tesla's birthday today, I figured I'd share one of my favourite websites dedicated to him. Make sure you have a read through this if you haven't already. The world would be VASTLY different than it is today if his work hadn't been stonewalled, buried or stolen by greedy bankers and corporate leeches. If they hadn't destroyed the Free Energy tower he built in 1917 citing 'national security concerns', our GRANDPARENTS would have been the last people in existence that paid an energy bill or for things like gasoline. Can you imagine that? Not only would he have ended our dependence on fossil fuels, but he maybe would have given us technology like wireless electricity, worldwide wifi, anti-gravity and even teleportation. (If you think I'm just kidding or exaggerating, then RESEARCH because I'm not)

As JP Morgan once said ''If everyone can draw on the power, then where do we put the meter?'' All they cared about was corporate profits back then, just like they still do today.

Nikola Tesla- Why he was the greatest geek that ever lived:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

So Happy Birthday Nicola

[CaptainQuintero]

..and a very wet and lingering fart in the general direction of Thomas "charlatan scumbag" Edison and the others who ripped him off and tried (and succeeded) to ruin Tesla reputation and gifts to humanity in return for money and fame.

The story of Nikola Tesla is one of the great personal tragedies of modern history. Arguably one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time, Tesla faced poverty, slander and persecution during his lifetime. His numerous inventions and discoveries offered the potential to revolutionize the world, and when and where they were implemented, they did so. But Telsa came into conflict with Thomas Edison, America’s foremost inventor at the time, and Edison’s superior sense of business and advertising destroyed Tesla’s reputation and left him and many of his ideas frustrated and unfulfilled. Thankfully, with the rise of steampunk and a renewed interest in nineteenth century science, Tesla has come back into the public eye and, one hopes, will finally get the recognition he deserves.

Tesla was born in 1856 into a Serbian family living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From an early age, Tesla was fascinated with science and endeavored to become an engineer. When he immigrated to the United States in the 1880s, he brought with him an idea for a new and more efficient method of power generation known as Alternating Current (AC). He was introduced to Thomas Edison, then one of America’s most prestigious inventors and the man responsible for the incandescent light bulb being used increasingly throughout the United States. But Edison was not interested in helping Tesla develop Alternating Current, which would have represented a direct challenge to the Direct Current (DC) system of generation already in use by Edison. Instead, Edison hired Tesla to make improvements to the DC generation plants, allegedly offering $50,000 if the seemingly impossible task could be accomplished. When, far from failing, Tesla made an impressive overhaul of the generator design, Edison claimed that the offer of $50,000 had been a joke. Tesla promptly resigned.

Faced with financial hardship, Tesla was eventually reduced to digging ditches for the Edison company. In 1887, Tesla filed patents for his AC power generation technology. Soon after, he joined with industrialist George Westinghouse to try and realize the dream of AC power. Because of AC’s superior qualities, this represented a direct attack on Edison’s DC power. What followed was a competition known as the “War of the Currents.” Edison, already extremely adept at advertising and self-promotion, launched into a vicious propaganda campaign as he tried to brand AC power as inherently dangerous. In addition to his slander, Edison had a man named Professor Harold Brown travel around giving demonstrations of animals being electrocuted with Alternating Current on stage in front of audiences. (He even killed an elephant with it once)

In 1890, Brown conducted the first electric chair execution, using an AC generator. Efforts were then made to have the technique of electrocution named “Westinghousing.”

In spite of Edison’s horrendous propaganda, in 1893, the Columbian Exhibition (a World’s Fair held in Chicago) was lit by a hundred thousand lamps powered by AC generators. In the end, Tesla and Westinghouse persevered, but the monetary damages imposed by the War of Currents robbed Tesla of his financial security.

The radical development of Alternating Current that set him so at odds with Edison was but one of Tesla’s many scientific accomplishments. Others included the discovery of wireless energy transmission, experiments with long-distance radio, x-ray photography, radio-based remote control, proto-robotics, radar, and even a death ray (which he invented with hope of ending war by making the invasion of a country impossible).

The tragedy of Tesla is profound. He was truly a genius and a visionary, and his death, alone and penniless, is both heartbreaking and unworthy of a man of his accomplishments and life-long altruism.

To learn more: Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison: How The Course Of History Was Changed -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iU7tOLGDa0

Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison -

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

and for a quick nosy at Edison, using the old 'judge someone by the company he keeps' adage, he holidayed with Henry 'nazi' Ford and Harvey Firestone, those who were responsibile (In addition to Standard Oil) for the little known but shocking Great American Streetcar Conspiracy, where 90% of the electric streetcars in the US (nearly every major city at the time had a network as only 1 in 10 people owned a car) were bought up by the above people, turned into scrap and forced towns to buy buses and cars, made by Ford, tyres on Firestone tyres and powered by Standard Oil's gas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

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Tesla was embroiled in other problems at the time, but when Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1911 for the radio, Tesla was furious. He sued the Marconi Company for infringement in 1915, but was in no financial condition to litigate a case against a major corporation. It wasn't until 1943—a few months after Tesla's death— that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio patent number 645,576.

http://www.pbs.org/t...l_whoradio.html

[Puros Y Vino]

Awesome post! Tesla is indeed a fascinating subject. Now as for that "death ray". I read that he didn't destroy the plans altogether. He distributed the plans plans piecemeal to nations that weren't friendly at the time thinking that each one hated the other so much they'd never share their part of the plan to build this terrible weapon.

[MontrealRon]

Every word above is true!

Many thanks, Capt'n, for bringing this most amazing genius to our collective attention.

The inventor of alternating current, pioneer of radio and telephone,

and this was just for starters!

While both a brilliant scientist and theoretician,

It was really as an engineer that he made his mark.

Had he been free to pursue his discoveries freely,

this world would indeed be a very different place.

[CaptainQuintero]

Awesome post! Tesla is indeed a fascinating subject. Now as for that "death ray". I read that he didn't destroy the plans altogether. He distributed the plans plans piecemeal to nations that weren't friendly at the time thinking that each one hated the other so much they'd never share their part of the plan to build this terrible weapon.

The death ray supposedly caused the Tunguska event. He apparently had promised an arctic expedition leader (Who was in the arctic at the time) to send them a special message via a new transmitter he had built. the message never got to the team but at the same time that he was supposed to have sent the message, the Tunguska event happened :S :S :S :S

http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/qt/Tunguska.htm

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tunguska+event+tesla&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=WijxUv33AcjPhAegrIDADw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1600&bih=771

[Squarehead]

I knew it all along that I have something in common with great people

[paulF]

Thanks very much for this thread! Most brilliant scientist in modern history!

[Jeremy Festa]

Is it the 10th of July already?

[backslide]

Living in Colorado Springs, I get to drive by his old house quite a bit. He was a very interesting guy.

Sent from my Nexus 4

[ramon_cojones]

great post, had no idea will do further reading on him

[nikonNUT]

Tesla is a hero to me I supposedly have copies of all his lectures, patents, and drawings (but who knows what was redacted). Just a brilliant man! Thanks for posting this, Captain

[Guest rob]

What a lot of people don't know is that inferior and less efficient systems of power generation (and distribution) were sold to the citizens of the US.

Tesla's business sense and savvy were so poor that the other competing systems basically shut down his ideas by using brilliant marketing. They demonstrated Tesla's AC to be dangerous.... and we all know that scaremongering and fear are the best way to convince people!!

[NJP]

Good form Captain. Great read.

[markmurase]

Fantastic post. Nicholas Tesla was a great man.

So many remarkable people died penniless. Mozart is one other that comes to mind.

Whilst humankind in their time did not recognise their brilliance, we have the opportunity to remember and honour them.

And to all those faceless men who made their lives miserable