What is Digg?11 Comments
- wbeaty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2
Plasma ball links collection:
[url]http://amasci.com/tesla/plasplan.html[/url]
Especially see the one about plasma balls without glass.
If you fill a bowl with argon gas and poke a tesla coil
terminal into it, you've got a plasma ball. If instead
you connect the tesla coil to a piece of foil under the
bowl of argon, then stick your hand into the bowl, your
hand becomes the terminal, and plasma filaments shoot out
of your fingertips. Stings a bit.
> Interesting, until he starts talking about Tesla. Then you
> realize that this guy is just another conspiracy nut.
Which conspiracy specifically? Tesla certainly was "suppressed"
by business partners who ripped him off and trashed his reputation.
But anyone who automatically equates suppression with conspiracy
is not a terribly sharp thinker.
And yes, Tesla did invent the modern AC power grid (he sold the
patents to Westinghouse Inc.,) invented the 4-tuned radio circuit
which is the basis of modern radio (so said the US Supreme Court
in the 1943 Tesla/Marconi decision that rejected Marconi's patents
and essentially awarded the invention of radio to Tesla.)
Tesla also invented the high power grounded-antenna radio transmitter
used without acknowledgment by all the early radio inventors,
including Marconi. Today we call these "Tesla Coils." Radio was a
cutthroat business back then, and Tesla the innocent minister's son
was ripped off and essentially silenced since he had no funding to
pay lawyers to fight back. The truth only came out in the courts
decades later, after Tesla and Marconi were both dead. But this info
is relatively new, only since 1943, so it hasn't made its way into
all the history books. The fact that Marconi was awarded the Nobel
for radio, even though he used Tesla's patented inventions to do it,
keeps most historians from facing the fact that Tesla's absense in
radio history books is a mark of historians' incompetence, rather
than evidence that Tesla's discoveries had no influence. - pinc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2http://www.denistn.mine.nu/pdf2html.php?url=http://www.mnsi.net/~boucher/PlasmaDisplays.pdf&ID=86760
- pinc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this link i posted is for people that don't want to load acrobat. it converts the document to a html file for your viewing.
- wbeaty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1> "Which conspiracy specifically?"
>
> When he starts talking that Tesla invented a "death ray"
> and other nonsensical ***** like that.
Heh. That's a "conspiracy?" No, that's one of Tesla's
well known but perhaps crackpot inventions.
Very interesting: the author is supposedly a "conspiracy
nut," yet nobody can state which conspiracy is involved?
Or doesn't anyone even know what the word "conspiracy"
means?
> Tesla was a freakin' genius of the highest caliber,
> but you don't need to inflate the man's accomplishments
> with silly rumors like that.
Which rumors are those? The death ray is no rumor, it's
in the Tesla books. The death ray and its history was
even described in the recent Nikola Tesla special "Master
of lightning" which was on PBS. Go buy the videotape on
amazon.com. I suggest reviewing that show before deciding
which parts of Tesla history are nonsensical.
Tesla described inventing a death ray sometime before
the 1940s, and he was busy offering it to various
national governments during WWII when he died. He even
was scheduled for a meeting in Washington, but his ill
health interfered.
Tesla's death ray remained a rumor until his papers taken
by the FBI and later transferred to the Tesla Museum in
Belgrade Yugoslavia were finally studied. His death ray
was essentially a water-jet cutter which used microscopic
droplets of liquid mercury or tungsten. The droplets
were electrically charged and accelerated in a vacuum tube
which was powered by a VandeGraaff electrostatic generator
the size of a tower. (A similar invention won the 1993
Nobel Prize in chemistry; electrically accelerated micro-
droplets, today called "electrospray mass spectrometry."
In known dinner conversations with Tesla, when people
said that such a device was impossible in theory, Tesla
corrected them and said that it was no theory, that he
had build and operated such devices. (But we have no
evidence.) Tesla claimed that his device could shoot
down airplanes over a span of many tens of kilometers
(we REALLY have no proof of that!) Tesla was trying
to sell a "national defense system" made from death-ray
towers spaced along a country's borders every 50 miles
or so, which supposedly would prevent military invasion
by air. FBI memos released under FOIA show that it was
this invention that moved the Feds to invade Tesla's
rooms following his death, and to take all the documents
they could lay hands on. They feared that foriegn spys
might get hold of plans for the weapon, if it existed.
Decades later Tesla's relatives won the release of the
seized documents, and took them to the Tesla museum in
Soviet controlled land, so the story remained unknown
until the 1980s after the USSR collapsed.
Would the Death Ray have worked? Nobody has tried building
one. The power supply is pretty large. The US military
concentrated on proton beam weapons, not charged mercury
droplets. Water-jet cutters certainly would make a
serious weapon, but air-turbulence causes them to putter
out after only a few feet. The "gas focussing" effect in
ion beams would make a stream of electrically charged
droplets go farther in air. But we only have Tesla's
word that his device could span tens of KM, or could
shoot down an aircraft. - Albertpacino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I need to make this :P
- Darth_tater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0well this is cool... if it wasn't a pain in the ass 2 find the special tube and build all the circuitry and everything...
so i will go online and spend $10 for the same thing i can spend a lot more for the parts 2 make the same thing...
but then you cant add the customizable features you can add and you wont get the sense of satisfaction that you get from building something your self! - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Which conspiracy specifically?"
When he starts talking that Tesla invented a "death ray" and other nonsensical ***** like that.
Tesla was a freakin' genius of the highest caliber, but you don't need to inflate the man's accomplishments with silly rumors like that. The realities are enough. - tidu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Gotta love that disclaimer near the bottom.
- Draconiko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Interesting stuff
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Interesting, until he starts talking about Tesla. Then you realize that this guy is just another conspiracy nut.
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is