Weekly photo of Nikola Tesla

[CheeseBadger]

Everyone's favourite Serbian inventor. Let's start with a classic.

[CheeseBadger]

Tesla recalled later in life that as a boy, he had seen a picture of the Niagara Falls and said "Some day, I'll harness that power". In 1985 Westinghouse and Tesla opened the world's first large hydroelectric power plant at Niagara.

This week's image is an unusually moustache portrait taken in 1933.

[CheeseBadger]

^ ...moustache free...

[jobrum]

I'm not sure about the lack if moustache. Do I like it? Don't I?

[CheeseBadger]

Awfully nice of you all not to point out last week's typo. The Niagara hydroelectric station of course opened in 1895, not 1985.

Nikola Tesla detested pearls. He refused to speak to women wearing them, and would send his secretary home if she came to work with them on.

This week's picture shows Tesla peeping around the door of his Colorado Springs laboratory in 1899. The sign the the left of the door reads "Great danger - Keep out".

[Nightofthetentacle]

This is a great thread. Round of applause from me, and doesn't he photograph well, the lucky thing.

[Televisiontelevision]

Love this thread. I didn't know that this was a thing.

[CheeseBadger]

The tesla is the SI unit of magnetic flux density. It is defined as exactly one weber per square metre.

The weber is the magnetic flux that, linking a circuit of one turn, would produce in it an electromotive force of 1 volt if it were reduced to zero at a uniform rate in 1 second.

This week's photo shows Nikola Tesla in 1916 pointing to a photograph of Nikola Tesla taken in 1899 at his Colorado Springs laboratory.

[CheeseBadger]

In 1912 Nikola Tesla came up with "a plan to make dull students bright by saturating them unconsciously with electricity". It involved wiring up the walls of a classroom and "saturating" the room with high frequency electromagnetic waves. The plan was approved by the New York schools superintendent.

I have absolutely no idea what is happening in this week's photograph. Only that it was taken in 1899 and probably involves high frequencies, high voltage, and a level of personal risk which has not been permitted since the 1950s.

[TiggyD]

Can we get him on for a web chat?

[jobrum]

Ah Tesla. It looks like he's spinning a galaxy around in his lab.

[AuntieStella]

Yesterday (Freeview 19) right now!!!

Forbidden History: The Genius of Nikola Tesla

[AuntieStella]

They've just mentioned this event, held annually in Nottingham. Next one is in March 2017

www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/nottingham-gaussfest/

Should we send a MN delegation?

[HalloToJasonIsaacs]

Damn, found this thread for the first time but not quite in time to catch the documentary on Yesterday.

Looking forward to the week you run out of actual photos of Tesla and have to sub in David Bowie from the Prestige.

Older Tesla with no moustache looks like Nightingale from The Rivers of London series in the 1970s before he started getting younger (v. niche reference I realise).

[CheeseBadger]

Although he had once said that he considered women to be superior to men in every way, Tesla's opinion changed - as women did during his lifetime.

"In place of the soft voiced, gentle woman of my reverent worship, has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me". Galveston Daily News - 1924.

This week's photograph shows Nikola Tesla with (among others) King Peter II of Yugoslavia at the Hotel New Yorker in 1942. This was the year before his death, which is why Tiggy may be waiting some time for a web chat.

[TiggyD]

Web seance?

[jobrum]

I bet Tesla would be totally up for a web seance.

[AuntieStella]

That would have been a good Hallowe'en treat

[CheeseBadger]

Normal service will be resumed around Christmas. Work and home are mad enough until then that I'll be taking a break. Feel free to take over for a bit Tiggy, or anyone else.

This week's photo shows Nikola Tesla appearing on the cover of "Electrical Experimeter" magazine in February 1919.

[CheeseBadger]

And the image. I'd forget my head if it weren't for these bolts through my neck...

[jobrum]

Wireless electric: my dream. I am blamed at home for every clump of tangled wires. They are so tangly!

[TiggyD]

He possibly wasn't a feminist.

"The world has experienced many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry....This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilisation."

[TiggyD]

There is a crater on the far side of the moon named Tesla. 38.5°N 124.7°E if you're thinking of visiting. It's 43km wide so it should be easy to find.

[TiggyD]

A few quick tattoos of Tesla, showing he's still as popular as ever.

[TiggyD]

And again.