property of Nikola Tesla purchased to build a museum

[phonophan79]

A crowd-sourcing campaign and years of negotiation has finally successful at purchasing the property where Nikola Tesla's laboratory was located. You can read the details at The Oatmeal.

They have some ideas for the museum. This will be a long process as there are "new" old buildings filled w/ asbestos that must be torn down, and the building that housed his old lab is in very poor condition. I do think that science and history of science museums are fantastic tools for kids to get them interested in the field. They are also nice for those adults who enjoy learning.

To note : they may have a fun event this summer w/ guided tours of the property.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

http://www.latimes.com/business/technol ... 6501.story

[Edisone]

I wish them only swift failure. Inman's disgusting anti-Edison libel & outright lies make me ill.

ps - Inman is so fantastically ignorant that he was SURPRISED to find India is desperately poor, filthy, and hot. http://0at.org/blog/india_vacation

[clevelander]

I wish everyone luck in their setting up of a museum for Nicola Tesla.It is overdue. He is the forgotten hero of the nineteenth century.
As far as Edison is concerned, he was indisputably the inventor of the modern way of invention, but I can not think of a single thing that he actually "invented". He either improved on previous work, or in a great many occasions, took, and that is being "kind", other's work and patented them as his own.

[Damfino59]

Where would Tesla be without George Westinghouse....?

Just more revisionist history courtesy of someone who can use Google and consider it "research".

[gregbogantz]

That Oatmeal article is a perfect example of ideology run amok. People like Inman are so bent on championing their own cause that they don't hesitate to tear down anything and everything that is counter to their self-delusion. People like this aren't geeks, they are self-obsessed dim bulbs (pun perfectly intended) who can't see the truth for their self-delusion.

Edison invented plenty of things, by any definition of the word, including the LEGAL definition as witnessed by his multiple patents which were granted for his inventions. He INVENTED the SPEAKING phonograph. Other people had recorded sound, but they never were successful at reproducing those recorded sounds. Edison actually did both things. Ergo, he INVENTED the practical, functioning phonograph. True, he mostly improved on the incandescent lamp concept, but most importantly he made the lamp PRACTICAL, fully functional, and manufacturable. Before Edison, others had tried to make an incandescent lamp, but they could not make a practical, workable, durable product. In other words, they had NO product - just an imperfect idea. By Inman's arguments, are we to suppose that Jules Verne "invented" space-traveling rocket ships just because he had the idea? I don't think so. He couldn't make a functioning product. Ergo, no invention - merely a dream and a fantasy.

Nikola Tesla was truly a genius. He had a fundamental understanding of alternating current and resonant electrical and magnetic circuits LONG before anybody else even imagined such things. AND he reduced his designs to actual, funtioning machines. Yes, he invented the alternating current induction motor. Among many other things. The US Congress eventually settled a long-standing dispute by granted Tesla (not Marconi) the honor of inventing radio as we now know it because he was the first to understand the necessity of tuned circuitry in the development of radio. Marconi's first equipment was impractical as it blasted its signal all over the RF spectrum. Such a system could never have been practical. It required the tuned circuits of Tesla to make radio practical. Tesla should be honored for these and other accomplishments. But that does not diminish the things that Edison also contributed to the betterment of mankind. It's stupid, ignorant, and illogical to champion one man at the expense of the other. Both men are important historical inventors, experimenters, chemists, and theoreticians, and they both should be given their due.

[VintageTechnologies]

I welcome the creation of museums and memorials, but --

I explored The Oatmeal website a while back in depth and concluded the site creator is a weirdo. What is it about Nicola Tesla that attracts anti-establishment types like a magnet draws steel filings? Tesla was an errant genius with a few great ideas, some practical [A/C power] and some not [wireless power distribution], but in my opinion he has been elevated in public estimation far above what he deserved. He died crazed and broke.

Another overrated daydreamer -- Charles Cros. He built on Leon Scott's prior ideas and then theorised the possibility of creating a phonograph. So perhaps he independently beat Edison on concept by a few months. That's as far as he went. Too much Absinthe, Charles?

Lots of men dream, but fewer bring their dreams to reality. As Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. While others merely dreamed, Edison worked hard to realise his dreams.

[Chuck]

Nikola Tesla is one of the least understood
of the great men who helped shape our present
world.

I have been exposed to the endless Edison vs Tesla debate, over a long period of years.

My conclusion is that they were both great men.
They each had their own individual strengths
and weaknesses. Tesla was a much better theorist and mathematician than Edison was. Edison was far more practical and down to earth than Tesla was. Tesla reportedly worked for Edison for a spell, and supposedly Edison failed to pay him the agreed upon amount for his work.

Later in his life, Tesla loved the pigeons and
he fed them all the time. He even thought one
of them had special spiritual powers.

Tesla's main contribution to society was
in his work with alternating current. He is
one of the first men to visualize how a transformer works, and how the rotating magnetic field works in an alternating current
motor. All of this was going on while Edison
insisted that direct current is better.

DC is fine, it's great, electric railroads
still use 600 volts DC to run streetcars.
But it's a real problem to step DC up and down
in voltage without wasting bunches of it.

Tesla solved all of that easily and cheaply
with transformers.

Tesla also invented his famous Tesla Coil.

I have built Tesla coils. I made one once that
could throw an arc out the top about 18 inches
on a cold dry winter day. That same coil
would light a fluorescent tube held in one's
hand, clear through a wall in the next room
some 4 feet away from the coil. Tesla thought
that up by himself!

Edison/Tesla. Two different guys who had vastly different ideas about how the universe
works. They both deserve our undivided attention now. We can learn so much from both
of these guys! Edison already has a museum
(several in fact). Tesla deserves the same.

Chuck

[ImperialGuardsman]

I've visited The Oatmeal a few time sin the past and while I find some of the things there funny, I have also noticed the wierd anti-Edison slant. Tesla deserves a museum, but particularly one that is run by a group of level headed people and not some anti-Edison nut.

[Lucius1958]

Tesla deserves a museum, but particularly one that is run by a group of level headed people and not some anti-Edison nut.

Indeed.

It may be something in the air, but the subject became a pretext for a vicious political dogfight on another (unnamed) site….

Bill

[bbphonoguy]

Here's just one more person saying that Tesla is overrated, and personally I'm tired of having him pushed up in my face. He thought a pigeon had special spiritual powers? That ranks down there with wearing tinfoil hats to keep the gov't from controlling your mind.