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[Vicomt]

Which is possibly because Tesla was a freaking lunatic.

Not to say that he didn't manage to invent a number of interesting items, but his thoughts on cosmology (the solar system hardly counts now, but it did back then) were completely, and utterly, wrong.

There is no conspiracy trying to keep him down. It's just that he was mistaken.

I never intended to bring up conspiracy theories, but just ask yourself, why was he crushed, who did it, and what was their legacy?
follow the money.

*IF* what he said is true (and due to my sometimes limited understanding I cannot say yea or nay), it *could* explain a whole lot of things we don't currently understand, but still trot out to the masses as though they do - just look at the equation ric=0 and ask how they got black holes out of that?.

Treat the earth as a leaky capacitor with a variable/graded dielectric and people tell me you can model lightning, volcanoes *AND* earthquakes in one handy package. Of course I needn't say that as with every theory, they need to be both constructively and DEstructively tested, the destructive testing is something that is sorely lacking in modern science, just look at the Hadley CRU data fiasco.

Going to stop de-railing now. We'll take it to general discussion if there's a need.

[Noble Digger]

Did you just end your post with "voltage rape"?

^_____________^

[Armok]

Voltage ****! ^_^

[Noble Digger]

For the sake of some other folks in this thread, I'll say a bit about Tesla. I did my senior graduation project on his life and works and built a Tesla Coil for the final project. For starters, if you aren't already blatantly aware, in a capitalist society, the worth of a good or service is entirely determined by the money that other people are willing to pay for it. If that amount is zero, you aren't making money, and unless you somehow start making money again you will starve and die. Money is used for everything: it can buy food, water, clothing, medical help, even be used as bribes to protect yourself from bad people. If you don't have any YOU ARE IN DEEP SHIT. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that when Nikola Tesla's alternating current threatened to completely obsolete Edison's direct current transmission, Edison and his friends set out to kill AC electricity before it changed them from rich men to has-beens.

In short, capitalism ascribes a monetary value to everything and thus makes the pursuit of money a primary goal for everyone at all times even if they want to claim altruistic motives for a time. This often means that in order to combat the fear of starvation, dispossession, etc. people do counterproductive, dishonest, BAD things in order to preserve their own necessity to society and continue making money. In this case, he set out on a campaign to convince Americans that AC electricity was a deadly, unsafe technology that would kill them in their homes if they dared flirt with its use, and they leveraged appropriate politicians. If you didn't already know T. Edison was a huge shit-bag, didn't invent the light bulb or the phonograph or the motion picture camera or the radio; he was a businessman, a perfect example of the modern American businessman whose priority is to receive the benefit for other peoples' work. Stuck his hand in other peoples' pockets his whole life, even if he did invent a lot of things. He became the first bootlegger when he bribed a theatre owner into selling him a copy of To the Moon and Back and then charging admission at his own theater and not paying royalties.

Suppose you own a shit-load of stock in a company that is rich because it sells product_or_service_x to america. Another company has just risen, selling a better, safer, cheaper product or one that otherwise obsoletes yours. Their idea is flatly superior, and your company is about to go down in flames and will not get 1 dime for the work of the newer company. In our society, the answer is to tell the people of company A "too bad, better go back to school". The answer of company A's executives and stockholders is to try and prevent this, even if it means making things worse for everyone else on the planet by suppressing a competitive new technology via obfuscation of the truth.

Someone said it earlier, follow the money and all of human history makes black-and-white sense. For example, both the allies and axis purchesed petroleum products from the SAME CONGLOMERATE. What the fuck? We should have just attacked this conglomerate and then laughed when the nazis had no gas for their tanks. "Free market" my ass ... D:

[Baughn]

I'm well aware of that particular sad story. The fact that Edison is often mentioned as the epitome of an inventor.. it makes me laugh.

This has no bearing on Tesla's more.. unlikely ideas, though, except as a kind of explanation for why he got that bad in the first place.

[Armok]

Wise anti-capitalism words.

Viva la revulution!

[Noble Digger]

Yeah, some of tesla's ideas were disastrous in practice (namely the Magnifying Transmitter in colorado, the failure of which got him kicked out of his town and forced him to move to Lake Eden, NM). This was basically a large broadcast tower which, viewing the earth's negative electrical potential as an enormous standing wave, sought to generate or transmit power by using constructive interference to build a massive swell in this "wave". The result was that the hardware at the local power station was melted to slag and utterly destroyed :O

Many of Tesla's experiments related to transmission of electricity. In one experiment he successfully lit a flourescent tube placed on board a ship in the Hudson River using a high-frequency transmitter some miles away. I'm not sure exactly how this technology threatens The Rich Man but it must have. Tesla also reportedly was researching death-rays and other strange things. Many of his experiments were locked away or destroyed by the crooked Truman administration so we may never know :X

[Baughn]

To be fair, they may have locked them away because they'd be insanely dangerous to be nearby. xD

Tesla had a positive genius for finding interesting electrical effects, even if he didn't usually understand why they worked. We know how they work today, though, and probably all of them have been rediscovered.

The high-frequency induction, for example. We've one-upped that, creating keyed devices that let the power-source turn off when there isn't actually anything legit around to receive power. So wireless power transmission is finally getting somewhere.

Even so, it's only about 80% efficient. And Tesla's version was a lot worse than that; going by descriptions, probably somewhere around 5%.

The main problem with his concept is that he missed the fact that there are a lot of natural sinks for induction. It's possible to minimize power transfer to those, but it requires computer-speed reaction time and phased-array transmitters, neither of which were remotely possible at the time. It also requires deep theoretical understanding of the principles, which Tesla lacked.

[zwei]

...

In short, capitalism ascribes a monetary value to everything and thus makes the pursuit of money a primary goal for everyone at all times even if they want to claim altruistic motives for a time. This often means that in order to combat the fear of starvation, dispossession, etc. people do counterproductive, dishonest, BAD things in order to preserve their own necessity to society and continue making money. ... "Free market" my ass ... D:

With all seriousness, this is offbat-shit.

 * People with destructive potential are never in fear of starvation or anything similar. People who have reasons to be afraid of starving are hardly in position to threaten any upcomming idea. Read on "triange of needs". Most of people are at least two levels above "starvation". In fact, we are at edge of switching to 4-day work week.

 * Superior technology is not better product, it never was. Why? Because it tends to cost more and to provide marginally better performance. Noone is going to pay for it, hences all those cool toys fail. This is one of worst mistake any technically minded person can do: to start business based on having superior technology. It. Will. Not. Work. If you are making something people are not willing to pay for, chances are, it is worthless.

 * Actually superior product wins. Always has won. Already estabilished Businesses are happy to jump on bangwagon once someone proves it is viable. It can require substantial investment, but they can afford it. History is more filled with big bad businesses taking over rather than stomping over startups that come with new ideas.

 * And with stonefaced seriousness, if you want disaster, try centrally planned economy. You thought it is tough in free economy? You have seen nothing...

Sigh, so much for nice thread, sorry, OP!

[Noble Digger]

To be fair, they may have locked them away because they'd be insanely dangerous to be nearby. xD

Tesla had a positive genius for finding interesting electrical effects, even if he didn't usually understand why they worked. We know how they work today, though, and probably all of them have been rediscovered.

The high-frequency induction, for example. We've one-upped that, creating keyed devices that let the power-source turn off when there isn't actually anything legit around to receive power. So wireless power transmission is finally getting somewhere.

Even so, it's only about 80% efficient. And Tesla's version was a lot worse than that; going by descriptions, probably somewhere around 5%.

The main problem with his concept is that he missed the fact that there are a lot of natural sinks for induction. It's possible to minimize power transfer to those, but it requires computer-speed reaction time and phased-array transmitters, neither of which were remotely possible at the time. It also requires deep theoretical understanding of the principles, which Tesla lacked.

My understanding of remote induction is that materials--transmitters and receivers--respond to a certain natural frequency and that using tuned crystals you can find an induction frequency that won't interfere with too much else. But then, if someone transmits electrical power at a frequency designed to interact with something that it shouldn't (e.g. pacemakers) for malicious purposes, who can stop them? Tesla's work starts to cross over into territory that your common ignorant man probably ought not to. He could seriously hurt people, let alone himself.

Natural or unintended artifical sinks for induction can indeed by avoided by altering this frequency in real-time as the system perceives a draw from outside the system, and must be done by both the transmitter and receiver and yeah, Tesla died alone and penniless which really makes me sad, with a dedicated lab staff he could have put us five decades ahead in technology. But then, maybe that is not a bad thing. I feel that peoples' understanding and compassion need to progress faster than technology, or else we could quickly end up in a world where automated devices perform all menial labor and the rich decide that the proletariat population are "unnecessary"