Nikola Tesla - Born 10 July 1856

Take a moment to read about a remarkable man whose goal in life was to make yours easier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Yep...I live in Colorado Springs, CO. and one of the old timers up the road talks about his dad saying how people in the area would walk around with their hair standing on end! Ha!
A truly remarkable, under understood, and prolific 'man ahead of his time'...Imagine what he would do with a home computer!

At the Maker Faire a couple of months ago, they had two 9-foot-tall Tesla coil towers.

The towers were about 25 feet apart and they would fire them off for 10 minutes every hour.

They were quite spectacular!

Since I don't have my photos of that handy, I'll just attach an "oldie but a goodie".

Also, did you see the movie "The Prestige"?
Tesla played a pivotal role in that... Interesting movie.

They've got a pair of tesla coils in the dispay at the Peronas towers in Kuala Lumpur that fire every few minutes to show how good a faraday cage the building is.

There's a Tesla coil on display at the Fry's Electronics store in Fremont, CA. It fires off automatically every hour on the half-hour.
Quite impressive.
All the show of lightning effects sort of distract one from the true contributions of Nikola Tesla, however.

Quote:
All the show of lightning effects sort of distract one from the true contributions of Nikola Tesla, however.

Well, 30 foot man-made lightning is pretty cool....

But you're right: Alternating Current, induction motors, one of the first power plants (Niagara Falls), circuit breakers, radio(!) (debatable, but he deserves a fair bit of credit), noting the danger of X-Rays, as well as inventing various fluid pumps and turbines.

That's a pretty impressive invention list for someone who is surprisingly often thought of as a footnote or a crackpot or "that lightning dude."

Shows the lasting power of Edison's PR machine, I guess.

Anyway, someone else was thinking of him and blogged this today.