Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lightning On Demand

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you-don't-see-that-everyday dept.

Effugas writes "The technology isn't new--Tesla coils have been around for a century. However, I doubt very many of us have seen much like the pictures located at Lightning On Demand--consider that, for most of these displays of extreme electrical discharge, there's a guy sitting *inside* the main electrode. I'm trying to imagine sitting in a metal ball while thirty foot electrical streamers erupt around me. Got Drool? "

2 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Tesla is to Torvalds, as Edison is to Gates. by javac · · Score: 3

    After reading the excellent book Tesla last year I feel that Nicola Tesla was the Linus Torvald of the 19th Century.

    Direct Current power was king. Thomas Edison's company was lighting much of the country with his D.C. lightbulbs. A young eastern european came to work with him. Nikola Tesla. Tesla was an EE genious. Tesla told edison about his Alternating Current power and how it would change the world, edison brushed him off and cheated him out of money.

    Tesla had a renewed vigor to use his AC current so he went around looking for someone to support him. Finnally he found someone in Mr. Westinghouse. Tesla worked night and day for years perfecting his A.C. power, until it was ready for primetime.

    He had an exibit at the World Fair in about 1892 I think. His amazing projects were the highlight of the world's fair. People wanted his A.C. power. However, this is when the smear campaign began. Edison knew that A.C. was better than his D.C. for general use, but he was ready to anything to stop it.

    Edison, and people from his company would go to cities that were thinking about adopting A.C. power and electrocute a couple of animals with high voltages, to show them how dangerous this, A.C. power was. They were probably the first FUD masters.

    In the end the better technology won out. But it was long and hard. People don't know about Nikola Tesla, even though he is responsible for almost every thing related to electricity in our lives. Everyone knows about Thomas Edison. But look who won

    geach

  2. Appropriate use of technology by plopez · · Score: 3

    I wonder how long it would take that thing to
    cook a frozen convienence store burrito.

    Just a thought.

    :)

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+