![edison 5 facts edison 5 facts](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,h_1248,w_2220/v1555278911/shape/mentalfloss/s-l1600_13.jpg)
![edison 5 facts edison 5 facts](https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTY2NDcwODg2Mzc3OTIzODky/thomasedison_facts_desktop.jpg)
“He lived in the Waldorf Astoria, at the height of the gilded age,” Seifer said, adding that his fame later in life lessened. It runs on waterfalls, which Tesla referred to as “running on the wheelwork of nature.” Also among his friends: financiers Henry Clay Frick and Thomas Fortune Ryan. Muir, one of the founders of the Sierra Club, loved that Tesla’s hydroelectric power system was a clean energy system. People aren’t aware that he was close friends with conservationist John Muir, Seifer said. After about 90 seconds, Twain jumped off the platform and ran for the facilities. He instructed Twain to stand on the platform while he flipped on the oscillator. It didn’t bring the block to ruins, Carlson said, but it did “shake the poop out of Mark Twain.” Twain was known for having digestive problems, so Tesla, who knew Twain through their gentlemen’s club, invited him over. A piston set underneath a platform in the laboratory shook violently as it moved, another experiment in more efficient electricity. Tesla’s device wasn’t actually an earthquake machine, Carlson said, but a high frequency oscillator. One famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that he had an earthquake machine in his Manhattan laboratory that shook his building and nearly brought down the neighborhood during experiments. He also conceived of, but never developed technology for radar, X-rays, a particle beam “death ray” and radio astronomy. “He was the first to be thinking about the information revolution in the sense of delivering information for each individual user,” Carlson said. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines via Wikimedia Commons. This tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo was taken. In other words, Tesla had envisioned the smart phone and wireless internet, Carlson said, adding that of all of his ideas, that was the one that stopped him in his tracks. That frequency would be broadcast to a device that would fit in your hand, he explained. Morgan, a new means of instant communication that involved gathering stock quotes and telegram messages, funneling them to his laboratory, where he would encode them and assign them each a new frequency. In the race to develop transatlantic radio, Tesla described to his funder and business partner, J.P. Tesla may have had a brilliant mind, but he was not as good at reducing his ideas to practice, Carlson said. HE DEVELOPED THE IDEA FOR SMARTPHONE TECHNOLOGY IN 1901 “When there were fires at Tesla’s laboratory, Edison provided him a lab, so clearly there was some mutual respect,” Seifer saidĤ. At first Edison dismissed Tesla, but came to eventually respect him, he said. Seifer qualifies it more, saying the two had a love/hate relationship. But Tesla spotted Edison in the crowd, called attention to him and led the audience in giving him a standing ovation. Edison, hard of hearing and not wanting to be spotted, slipped into the back of the auditorium to listen to the lecture. On a rare occasion, Edison attended a conference where Tesla was speaking. But Carlson considers them the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of their time: one the brilliant marketer and businessman and the other a visionary and “tech guy.”
![edison 5 facts edison 5 facts](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5da8ead8a0b73200081a668f/master/pass/191028_r35208.jpg)
Sure, they were on different sides of the so-called “Current Wars,” with Edison pushing for direct current and Tesla for alternating current. Early in his career, Tesla worked for Edison, designing direct current generators, but famously quit to pursue his own project: the alternating current induction motor. Many have characterized Tesla and inventor Thomas Edison as enemies (see this and this,) but Carlson says this relationship has been misrepresented. HE AND EDISON WERE RIVALS, BUT NOT SWORN ENEMIES What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and cockroaches in the soup.ģ.
![edison 5 facts edison 5 facts](https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/4/2016/07/GettyImages-5383490532-33078cd.jpg)
For example, after dining with writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, he wrote this in a correspondence to a close friend: Most people don’t know that Tesla had a terrific sense of humor, Seifer said. This child will be a child of darkness, she said, to which his mother replied: “No. According to family legend, midway through the birth, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the lightning a bad omen. Nikola Tesla was born around midnight, between July 9 and Jduring a fierce lightning storm. Bernard Carlson, author of “Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age,” and Marc Seifer, author of “Wizard: Life and Times of Nicola Tesla.” The information below comes from interviews with W. In honor of inventor Nikola Tesla‘s 157th birthday, we’ve turned to two Tesla experts and historians to help us compile a list of interesting facts you probably never knew about the guy.