Nikola Tesla would have been 156 today. You should celebrate by reading The Oatmeal’s comic on why Tesla was the greatest geek ever and his response to Forbes’ criticisms of that comic.
(Yes, I’m using the term “comic” very loosely here, it’s mostly text)
ArcAttack, previously covered here use Tesla Coils to make music. Gizmodo interviews them about their work:
Gizmodo: What does your setup consist of?
Joe: It would be two DRSSTC (Dual Resident Solid State Tesla Coil) units which are MIDI controlled. There’s a fiber optic cable running to some digital logic boards that are in the Tesla coils.
John: The Open Labs MiKO MIDI console hosts the PC Software (Fruity Loops) that we use to actually sequence the music.
The MiKO is just a Windows machine with a bunch of nice MIDI interfaces, cased in metal—which is nice because we have a lot of EMF emitted from the coils. I actually used to run it off my laptop, but it would crash all the time.
Patrick: The drum machine has a solenoid for every drum, and they’re MIDI controlled also…from the MiKO.
Gizmodo: ArcAttack: Lightning-Proof Musicians Share Their Tesla Coil Secrets
Via What a Wonderful Place to Be, who has a nice round-up of videos.
We told you about singing tesla coils about a year ago. Now the inventors have a web site including several videos, performance dates, and more.
ArcAttack! Singing Tesla Coils
(via Make)
Someone, for some reason, wanted Tesla’s work suppressed…
At the top of the suspected conspirator list is Thomas Edison. Edison despised his former employee’s success with AC, and it is known that he set out on a campaign to smear Tesla’s name. He held demonstrations at which animals were lethally electrocuted with AC-powered devices, in a deceptive and inhumane effort to warn the public of the danger posed by Tesla and Westinghouse’s “unsafe” new electrical system. Edison also sat on the War Department advisory board that rejected Tesla’s proposals of the death ray and his radar-like device.
J. P. Morgan is also implicated in the anti-Tesla cover-up. Morgan counted on increasing his already monumental wealth by exploiting Tesla’s ideas, until he learned that Tesla was considering the free distribution of energy — a terrifying idea to any self-respecting capitalist. He ended his funding of Tesla’s experiments at once, and some think he used his considerable clout to ensure that no one else would bankroll Tesla’s threatening schemes[Source]
Tesla’s (web archived) life story: index, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6 (originally hosted at parascope.com)
There was a PBS documentary, and there’s some interesting (albeit derivative) information at viewzone.com on modern uses ov Tesla’s inventions and research, from radio transmitters to weather control to transcranial magnetic stimulation through electromagnetic fields (God Helmets – DIY)
(and that’s without mentioning Project Rainbow, the Montauk Project, or the whole Ong’s Hat mess)
Another do-it-yourself project: Building a Tesla Coil
personally, I think Tesla rocked
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