As a follow up to this post, here’s a bit of Saturday morning listening as we build our own machines, courtesy of Studio 360. They cover some interesting lesser known aspects of Tesla’s life, his life in New York and more. Direct download link is here: direct download link. Enjoy!
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
http://beatonna.livejournal.com/28117.html
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:12 pm
That direct link is broken, try
http://audio.wnyc.org/studio/studio012508pod.mp3
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Hmmm, that didn’t work so well, your site outsmarted me.
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:36 pm
If you like Tesla, and things electricity related, you should see this t-shirt on Etsy.
A picture of it here
(Seller is named eruditewit if you’re interested in buying one…)
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Woo!
Tesla is so totally the Jimi Hendrix to Edison’s Lenny Kravitz.
*throws knickers at the screen*
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Mer, I laughed so hard just now.
Olivia, that is a fine shirt indeed!
Amp, thank you for that link, fixing now.
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Man, I wouldn’t say Edison was like Lenny Kravitz - Kravitz is a soulless prettyboy ripoff artists, whereas Edison was more of a grimy curmudgeon
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Admittedly, my primary goal in making that comment was Epic Lulz. Still, the comparison is sound. Edison was basically a soulless ripoff artist.
Actually, he was more than that. He was a money-grubbing thug whose only true invention was the phonograph.
Funny, I always use curmudgeon as a backhanded term of endearment. There’s very little to endear me to Edison.
February 2nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
MAXIMUMROCKNROLLTESSSSSLAAAAAAAUUGHHH:
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
Tesla: Always wonderful.
February 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 am
Mer: Except for starting the first industrial R&D lab in the world, serializing telegraphs so that separate telegraphs could be sent over the same wire, the microphone used in almost all telephones through the 1970s, the first x-ray bulb that was cheap and simple enough to mass produce..
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 am
Time to bust out the robo-suits!
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 am
“…Edison was basically a soulless ripoff artist.
Actually, he was more than that. He was a money-grubbing thug…”
He wasn’t a saint by any means but at the same time he isn’t that easily classified. He was conducting business as it had always been and while it lacks the romanticism of Tesla’s life and struggle…it’s unfortunately the reality of the world. Innovation and genius are worthless without the influence to back it up…Edison knew that. Unfortunately Edison took that to the extreme like the other “fat cats” of the era. He wanted a monopoly…the only real way to be influential on a national level at the time outside of politics. I’m not trying to justify his actions by any means but the guy seems to get a raw deal these days for the sake of romanticizing Tesla…though I’ll admit Edison got an overly folksy image thanks to whitewashed history books. The guy was a world class prick…but given the era…it was sharks among sharks…sadly men like Tesla got eaten alive. It continues to this day really…
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:53 am
It’s refreshing to drop in on all this Tesla love!
@Katie Cowden…cool comic and idea. Tesla sex appeal never gets enough play!
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 am
and
def lolz Mer…How about a spectral Frank Zappa/Tesla show? Mustache fight!!!
Didn’t Edison end up losing credit for a lot of those inventions because of the excessive amount of asshole points he racked up? ;) I heard ten more and he could’ve gotten the Vespa.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 am
D-Dawg, aren’t those all ideas that Edison developed, more than true inventions? He was a very shrewd innovator/businessman, I’ll give him that. And sure, he invented/extrapolated on new versions of pre-existing technology.
Some more noteworthy attributes of Edison: monopolizing the fuck out of everything he could get his hands on, relying on hired thugs to rough up anyone who didn’t “pay up” for various things he purported to have invented (but hadn’t), behaving like a right bastard to his workers, competition, even his own FAMILY members, buying/stealing hundreds of patents, electrocuting stray dogs and cats as part of his campaign against Westinghouse, and smelling like a rancid slice of jellied ham. (Okay, I made that last one up. But I bet he did.)
Granted, Tesla swindled his investors. But hey, anyone who has the balls to bilk JP Morgan just so he can play with artificial lightning is pretty rad in my book.
Oh, I’m not giving Edison credit for that sucky voting machine that didn’t work very well. And I’m sure some other things. I think my main point (other than wanting to make a panty-throwing joke about teh hawtness of Tesla) is really that he was not the genius inventor history has heralded him as. He was one of the Great Appropriators of the modern age.
Yep. Totally the Salieri to Tesla’s Mozart. (The Wal-Mart to his Mom n’ Pop? The RIAA to his Amen Break? The Splenda to his Sugar? Bah, I’m goin’ to bed.)
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 am
He wasn’t a saint by any means but at the same time he isn’t that easily classified.
Now, T, I ain’t sayin’ he wasn’t a Very Important Person. Or multi-faceted.
But I actually WOULD go so far as to say that judging by multiple biographies on the man, he can be classified as a ripoff artist, a thug, and a money-grubber.
A prat, a jerk, a wienie-wagger. A five alarm, fuzz nuzzling twat waffler. And any raw deal he might get now is irrelevant, innit? Despite the eventual triumph of AC over DV in the War of Currents, he died smugly and filthily stinking rich and lionized by the American public. Tesla was so wackypants lonely and impoverished by the end of his life, he’d taken to talking to pigeons he coaxed into his open hotel window.
Way I see it, the least I can do is romanticize the muhfuh. And with those bedroom eyes, he just makes it so EASY.
*flings more panties at the Tesla coil shrine set up in the corner of the room*
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:26 am
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 am
@Way I see it, the least I can do is romanticize the muhfuh. And with those bedroom eyes, he just makes it so EASY.
Tesla’s become the next Che Guevara in some circles so the mythology is well on it’s way. Edison has has been portrayed in so many ways the reality and myth are lost on the majority. They’re quickly becoming our next popular mythology…nuts to em both though Houdini is cooler :P
Mustache Rides 5 cents…pssshhh…I’ve a far more competitive deal.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:38 am
I’d buy THAT for a nickel!
February 6th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
As I have been a teenager i tried to build a tesla coil the remains of that should be still at my parents house.
The only thing missing is s transformer coil that could be found in a photocopier, x-ray machine or radar sender.
The book i used seems to be pretty popular i looked it up and it is now printet in its 4th edition.
http://www.amazon.de/Tesla-Energie-G%C3%BCnter-Wahl/dp/3772354963/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1202363819&sr=8-10