If you know the name Thomas Edison but not Nikola Tesla, then you need to school yourself homeboy! If you don’t know either name, uhh… click here, or even here.
Tesla was the shiznit when it came to being a genius. Unlike Edison who toiled away in warehouses with sometimes hundreds of drone “inventors” doing trial and error run after trial and error run, Tesla was a man who really understood things. He was able to think of things, sketch things out, run calculations, then actually build what he wanted to invent. He usually had a successful working prototype on the very first build.
Some of the things Tesla thought up scared him so much he never built them. One such device was a doomsday device that worked through the principle of resonance. Basically, he calculated the resonant frequency of the Earth itself, and surmised that a machine about the size of a typical office building could be built that would pound the ground with a weight at a very specific rate. That action would induce a shockwave that would grow with each properly timed strike of the weight against the ground. He calculated that the Earth could probably be cracked in two halves in less than 48 hours.
His life, and death, are filled with mystery. His inventions were usually seen by the public as “black magic”, but they were nothing aside from pure technological innovation. Even to this day, people are trying to separate fact from fiction when it comes to things Tesla invented. His notebooks were all lost or confiscated upon his death, so most of the records what survive today are due to the US patent office.
Google is commemorating his birthday with their traditional custom logo mod. I like the fact they chose Tesla’s “Death Ray” machine the US government tried to get him to build. Good on ya Google.
