Help Kathy Write a Book on Electricity & Tesla: What's Missing?

[phinds]

... Nobody was keeping secrets.

Exactly. I've never understood how people come up with these wacko conspiracy theories about how the government (or just "THEY") not wanting us to know stuff. Anyone who thinks the government can keep that kind of secret just isn't paying attention.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Tesla and Edison were magicians; prestidigitators, who both discovered that actual working inventions, if sufficiently amazing, were vastly more effective for advancing their careers than mere illusions of the Houdini type. You won't really understand them unless you see them both in terms of their showmanship and their rivalry as competitors for center stage as the most amazing inventor/showman.

Tesla courted the press and spent an inordinate amount of time giving interviews. He had an effective and persuasive way of talking about himself in such a manner that he cast himself as a genius without ever seeming to have done so. Most of the legends about Tesla circulating today can be traced back to Tesla, himself.

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed for Moderation...

 

[berkeman]

Thread re-opened after some pruning. Please remember to post mainstream references for any claims that you are making about these people. Thank you.

 

[jim hardy]

Tesla and Edison were magicians; prestidigitators, who both discovered that actual working inventions, if sufficiently amazing, were vastly more effective for advancing their careers than mere illusions of the Houdini type.

Tesla was Westinghouse's resident genius.

Hi I am writing a book on the history of electricity and I mention Tesla a bit but not a lot. I am worried that Tesla fans will be super angry with me because of it. So, I thought I would ask you nice folks what I should include.

Don't forget about GE's Steinmetz. He made Tesla's motor and transformer practical by figuring out the iron parts. Curiously, i went through an EE curriculum in 1960's without hearing of Steinmetz.. My mentor's pre WW2 books were full of references to him but he wasn't even in my 60's textbook indexes.
So we ordered his biography, "Modern Jupiter" which was for some reason published by ASME not IEEE.
That book described Steinmetz's politics as a 'devout socialist' ,
which made me wonder if he was written out of postwar texts in the postwar anti-communist frenzy . That time period sparked Orwell's "1984". If you remember that book, protagonist's job was rewriting historical records to reflect politics du jour.
The McCarthy hearings and Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" were also products of the period.
I guess we'd have to find a textbook editor of the day to know for sure ?

What were Tesla's political leanings? I have no idea.
I'd think you would want to read a good biography about him and find whatever of his letters you can.
I saw a TV documentary about him that suggested he became so erratic Westinghouse fired him, and when he'd declined into poverty they sustained him as a matter of corporate conscience.
Can you bring his character to life with anecdotes ?
He might have been the archetypal "Doc Brown".

Might be interesting to compare their personalities. Both were "different " .

old jim

 

[Mark44]

Don't forget about GE's Steinmetz.

I remember reading about Steinmetz for a book report in about 9th grade or so (about 1959). The book I read was surely published after WW II, so I don't believe Steinmetz was "written out of history."

 

[jim mcnamara]

Heck, in ~4th grade, about 1953, I remember reading a story about Steinmetz reassembling a shattered mirror.
From http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/ :

One Friday afternoon in 1921, Steinmetz hopped in his electric car and headed off for a weekend at Camp Mohawk, where he’d built a small house overlooking Viele Creek. When he arrived he’d discovered that lightning had damaged the building and shattered a large silver glass mirror. He spent the entire weekend painstakingly reconstructing the mirror, placing the slivers between two panes of glass. Once assembled, he studied the pattern and was convinced that the shattered mirror revealed the lightning’s path of electrical discharge. Back at General Electric, he brought in a gigantic apparatus, then another. There were thunderous crashes at odd hours of the night. The city was abuzz with speculation. What exactly was the Wizard of Schenectady doing in Building 28?

In March of 1922, reporters were invited to General Electric and gathered before a model village that Steinmetz had constructed. In a noisy and explosive demonstration witnessed by Edison himself, Steinmetz unveiled a 120,000-volt lightning generator. With a showman’s flourish, he flipped a switch and produced lighting bolts that splintered large blocks of wood, decimated the steeple on a white chapel and split a miniature tree. Reporters were awestruck. The following day, a headline in the New York Times proclaimed, “http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40717FD34541B7A93C1A91788D85F468285F9.” Steinmetz’s work led to the measures used to protect power equipment from lightning strikes.

If I read this in the early 50's in The Weekly Reader there must have been no information vacuum about the man.

 

[jim hardy]

Thanks guys for the Steinmetz references. I must've been just unlucky to miss him.

Those experiments jim mcnamara described inspired the title of his biography "Modern Jupiter".

old jim

 

[zoobyshoe]

Tesla as Prestidigitator:

http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Tesla-Time.pdf

Just read chapter 1, The Modern Prometheus

An invitation to his lab was an invitation to a magic show. He gave many public "lectures" during his career that were essentially the same kind of show.

 

[Teslascience]

You might want to rethink Tesla,

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...t-eliminating-undesirables-by-2100-130299355/

Hi,
Yes Tesla was for eugenics. But to understand this you need to know Tesla himself and his time too.
Tesla was the perfect scientist, the living thinking machine. Please read NT: My Inventions and pick up his philosophy how the human thinking and action works through subliminal messages.
In his time eugenics was an advanced scientific theory which tryed to determine how the world need to progress in the future. Of course his followers doesn't understand the working of this world. :)

 

[Charles Link]

Instead of trying to pick up on past scientists and things they might have done or didn't do that may have been ahead of their time, what really matters is what we are able to do in the present. Whether that is the arithmetic that a second grader does, or more advanced mathematics and physics, in many ways, it is a very similar process. Even basic arithmetic, and advancing to fractions and division and multiplication, can be quite fascinating. I once had a professor in college tell us that he "does not worship gods", referring to other mathematicians and physicists, some of whom were semi-famous, and who had something of a following. It's more important what we as individuals are able to do. Hopefully this wasn't too far off topic, but it is how I feel about whether it's Newton, or Tesla, or anybody else.

 

[DennisN]

Tesla is seriously overrated.

I second that.

When did the whole "Tesla is the unsung hero of science" thing get so big? Seems to have resulted from a few internet memes and a webcomic iirc

This is something I've wondered about too. And there is something about Tesla and some of his admirers that give me the feelings of cult and cult followers (which makes me cringe and shiver ).
And hearing about Tesla makes me reach for... (link)

 

[Averagesupernova]

I think the fascination with Tesla started way before the internet. I first noticed it 25 years ago. I have a number of books on Tesla and his work and what I have noticed is a general tendency towards a "poor us/poor me" attitude.
-
I have ALWAYS thought he was pretty much a nut. Numerous times I have referred to "Tesla worshipping fools". Surprisingly, when I google that phrase with quotes, there is only one hit.
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Edit: My bad, two hits.
-
https://www.google.com/search?ei=WqKQWpm2N8nNjwT1go7gCA&q="tesla+worshipping+fools"&oq="tesla+worshipping+fools"&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160k1.7648.8480.0.8742.2.2.0.0.0.0.99.191.2.2.0...0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.1.91...0.-FO1_aFN4pQ

 

[Bandersnatch]

I once had a professor in college tell us that he "does not worship gods", referring to other mathematicians and physicists, some of whom were semi-famous, and who had something of a following. It's more important what we as individuals are able to do. Hopefully this wasn't too far off topic, but it is how I feel about whether it's Newton, or Tesla, or anybody else.

But there's literally a Tesla in the sky! Born of immaculate design in a plant here on Earth, it lived among the people before ascending to on high, carried by three burning angels.
Praise be.

 

[RonL]

If one looks at the number of patents filed by N Tesla, it might be possible Einstein had to work on a good number of them, hard for anyone not to be impressed in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

 

[Teslascience]

Instead of trying to pick up on past scientists and things they might have done or didn't do that may have been ahead of their time, what really matters is what we are able to do in the present. Whether that is the arithmetic that a second grader does, or more advanced mathematics and physics, in many ways, it is a very similar process. Even basic arithmetic, and advancing to fractions and division and multiplication, can be quite fascinating. I once had a professor in college tell us that he "does not worship gods", referring to other mathematicians and physicists, some of whom were semi-famous, and who had something of a following. It's more important what we as individuals are able to do. Hopefully this wasn't too far off topic, but it is how I feel about whether it's Newton, or Tesla, or anybody else.

Human knowledge generally but especially scientific knowledge developing itself through the cooperation of the individual followers. It’s a team game of centuries. My favorite metaphor in this line was used by Newton:
” If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Befor we can do anything in science we must know the history of the field of investigation. So the very first thing we shall do is learning the works of scientists befor us. But this is just a little part of our tasks. We shall know also why and how a theory was developed what was the philosophy, the logic behind it, to be able as individuals continue that work or starting an another one. And befor we starting to think consciously about something we shall know also our own capabilities fg. how our mind works through subliminal messages, how our mind solves problems etc. but this to discuss would be off this topic.
I agree, we shall not worship anybody but we shall know the works of men of science especially if they had done great work and had brilliant ideas and minds. :)

 

[scott mcfee]

Hmm. Here is my 2 cents. I think we must look at Tesla in his time. Not ours. Look at his patents. Look at the people who cannot duplicate what he did. Look at what HE DID IN HIS TIME.Look at the people who lie about him.Look at the people who stole from him. Look at who profited from his expertise. I am not sure what the truth about him is. I am sure NO ONE has told the truth about him.So sad.

 

[russ_watters]

Hmm. Here is my 2 cents. I think we must look at Tesla in his time. Not ours. Look at his patents. Look at the people who cannot duplicate what he did.

Well, you said we should judge him in his time and then almost immediately judged him against today. So here's both, separately:

1. There is little doubt that in his time he was a cutting-edge genius inventor.
2. What he did then is not cutting-edge today.

Don't mistake the fact that people can't duplicate his efforts to mean he was ahead of where we are today. Even Tesla fans know that he was secretive, disorganized and a terrible communicator. We can't duplicate what he did simply because he didn't tell us!

 

[jim hardy]

Being gifted is no guarantee against getting obsessive and going 'off the deep end' . Westinghouse surely didn't fire him without a reason. .

 

[phinds]

... I am not sure what the truth about him is. I am sure NO ONE has told the truth about him.So sad.

Scott, a ridiculous set of conspiracy theories have grown up around Tesla and that statement by you seems to indicate that you have been sucked in by them. I suggest you read this entire thread and check out some of the links, particularly the degugging link posted by Evo in post #17

 

[russ_watters]

FYI, one of the sortascience channels did a series on trying to build Tesla's Death Ray. I watched a few episodes and while it was kinda interesting to start, it got old fast.

They had two teams working simultaneously:
1. Team 1 was engineers who were building the Death Ray.
2. Team 2 was historians researching Tesla lore and looking for clues about how the Death Ray might have been constructed/worked.

Obviously we have a problem here: how can the engineers build it until the historians find the documentation first? Clearly, they can't. So what did they do?
a. Build a tesla coil that doesn't qualify as a Death Ray the way lore suggests.
b. Fry things with arcs and somehow manage not to kill themselves.

And the historians? Well, they spent most of one episode looking down a well. Seriously. In other episodes they interviewed relatives of guys who knew people who once met Tesla. Walked around property where experiments were performed. Dug holes looking for tunnels that GPR told them didn't exist or were collapsed. Looked at documents in libraries. Ok, that last one was useful. What they found is what we already know: Tesla was a terrible documentor/communicator.

All-in-all, too much drivel to hold my attention.

 

[phinds]

FYI, one of the sortascience channels did a series on trying to build Tesla's Death Ray. I watched a few episodes and while it was kinda interesting to start, it got old fast.

Yeah, I watched a few minutes of one episode and gave up quickly.

 

[jim hardy]

Many inventions come out of playfulness
Too bad contemporaries Tesla and Grieg didn't get to see their handiwork brought together.