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Television Media Science

Tesla Special on PBS 77

Posted by michael from the zzzap dept.
Halvy writes "Nicola Tesla was one of those men involved with experiments with electricity and radio waves that the goverment 'feared' so much that they still keep much of his work and ideas from the public. PBS is to broadcast a show on him this April. Goto pbs.org/tesla/ for local times and listing. It should be interesting to see what kind of tid-bits PBS came up with, considering that there is so little available about him, which just adds to his cult-like admiration in the scientific and tech fields."
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Tesla Special on PBS More

Tesla Special on PBS

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  • Can anyone else just sense the other slashdotters trying to come up with a joke involving these guys [teslatheband.com]?

    • Re:Radio song... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by pjl5602 ( 150416 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:58PM (#8782133) Homepage
      Not me... I'm too busy listening to their new album [amazon.com] to come up with anything...

      On a serious note, year ago I read Margaret Cheney's book [amazon.com] about Nikola Tesla and it was an interesting read. The man was talented, but he sure was a kook. I'll have my TiVo record this program for sure.

    • I guess I must be getting old, I was thinking of these guys [uk.com]
    • ...appear to be much better at predicting what jokes other slashdotters will post than they are at actually coming up with jokes.

      I'm curious what the ratio is of actual jokes to people who post "I can just see the xxxxxx jokes coming in now!" Or, "Here come the underpants gnome jokes." or "I wonder how long before someone corrects them on their usage of 'begs the question'?"

      Slashdot should open up a psychic hotline with all the soothsayers around here.

  • Timely Information (Score:3, Funny)

    by WyerByter ( 727074 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:49PM (#8781987) Journal
    Thanks for the info. It is showing on my local station on April 6 at 4am. I am going to make every effort to -- wait -- crap!
  • When I saw "Tesla" I thought of the band. Damnit. Anyway, they won't pass it here in Bumblefuck. However, I did notice the website does have enough information about him, but not enough to be the first link in google [google.com].

  • bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:51PM (#8782016)
    The government is not keeping anything invented by Tesla secret.

    I suppose next you are going to tell me that some guy in the midwest invented a 100 mpg drip-feed carburetor and was kidnapped by oil companies, and that Texas A&M bought Nazi technology for making synthetic gasoline from grass after WWII and has it locked up somewhere gaurded by the Corp.

    These kinds of stupid psuedo-science mythologies are bad because they allow people to sit around and blame others instead of getting to work solving problems. They also obscur and distract from the real techno-conspiracies out there, such as chips in ink carts, region encoding, the Clipper Chip, a variety of schemes involving RFIDs, etc.
    • That's the way it goes.

    • Re:bullshit (Score:5, Funny)

      by cpu_fusion ( 705735 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @02:33PM (#8782681)
      These kinds of stupid psuedo-science mythologies are bad [..] distract from the real techno-conspiracies out there, [..] the Clipper Chip, [..]

      Yeah but have you heard about the Clippy Chip? Word is that Bill Gates has millions of them stashed away in his Mt. Reinier bunker, just waiting for the first commerical human-brain interfaces...

      Clippy Chip: "I see your trying to go Offtopic. Would you like a corrective jolt? A distracting thought? A mental image of Natalie Portman?"

    • Re:bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)

      by aminorex ( 141494 )
      Your title describes your comment well. I suppose next you are going to tell me that sneering and hyperbole prove your point.

    • Re:bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rot26 ( 240034 ) *
      The government is not keeping anything invented by Tesla secret.

      How do you know? How COULD you know anything about that? I'm not saying that they are, only that it's absurd of you to make such a ridiculous unprovable statement.

    • Re:bullshit (Score:3, Informative)

      by a whoabot ( 706122 )
      As the post above me has pointed out: how do you know?

      You seem to have automatically disregarded zero-point energy systems as "pseudo-science". That goes completely against the scientific spirit. Keep an open mind. You don't believe big oil could keep something like it secret? That's naive. They have more money than you can dream of. Yes, don't automatically assume there's a conspiracy just because there's a couple webpages made by some engineer who put some schematics up. But don't assume there can't
      • "That goes completely against the scientific spirit. Keep an open mind."

        Yes, but not so open your brains fall out.

        Zero-point energy systems are not considered feasible simply because in order for them to work they need to upset a good deal of what we know about how the universe works. If someone can show us how to do that, then they can line up and claim their Nobel Prize. (The presence of virtual particles is one thing. Tapping into something like that in a way that is remotely efficient or feasible is
        • It would hardly undue it. Just like relatively doesn't undo Newtonian mechanics; it just shows that it doesn't apply to everything: it limits it's scope.

          I'm not a physicist so, I can't really help you. But one little search finds this:

          http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Final%20Secre t% 209%20Feb%201993/indexold.html

          I don't know, try it. That guy seems educated. He's got a MS and PhD in nuclear engineering.
        • How any years of others work was undone when we discovered that the world was round or that the Earth was not the center of the universe?

          Sure, the current laws of physics today allows me to have things that seem impossible years ago like the computer I'm typing on right now. But those laws are based on only our current understanding of our little corner of the universe.

          Who is to say down the road, our decendants won't be laughing at us and our "primative" science as we laugh at our ancessors that thought

          • Re:bullshit (Score:1, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            If you postmodern relativists could even follow a rational thread in your own arguments, it might be worth a discussion, but this "there are no right answers" and "every point of view is just as valid" crap is killing math and science education.

            So are you suggesting a Wile E. Coyote universe where gravity doesn't kick in until after you realize you've stepped off the cliff? Is your computer going to suddenly stop working when some other laws of physics are discovered?

            The point the parent was making is

        • "Zero-point energy systems are not considered feasible simply because in order for them to work they need to upset a good deal of what we know about how the universe works."

          Come on now, all you need is a blackhole or something like it and just skim the energy off the top. It may not be practical, but it might be possible.

    • but pretty close, with lots of power, no emissions controls but surpassed the emissions requirements of the day. Run a google search on smokey yunick, and adiabatic engine. If you have access to a magazine microfiche, check out the cover story, april 1983 issue of popular science. He was the automotive editor at the time. Built an engine that was a v-2 config, 150 horse, 50-60 MPG and pretty fast. He had a few patents with it, but the combination itself of his adaptions (which is why it worked as well as it

  • Old News (Score:5, Informative)

    by profet ( 263203 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @01:59PM (#8782146)
    So Slashdot is going to start posting when reruns air?

    This special was already shown four years ago and is simply a rerun.

  • Watched most of it last night.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aquatic-TN ( 736821 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @02:09PM (#8782290)
    ...and it was informative, to say the least. For instance, Tesla had the first patent for Radio, not Marconi. I was stunned by this information. Sadly, Tesla didn't receive as much compensation as he should have for the radio patent or his AC (alternating current) related patents, all of which were worth *trillions* of dollars. Interestingly, Tesla became *really* driven after Edison screwed him. Edison promised Tesla $50K if he solved a particular problem. Tesla managed to solve the problem, and then Edison refused to pay up. I highly recommend watching the show - it's a great history lesson regarding the technology we all are using to view /. right now (electricity and it's economical transmission/use).

  • Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chasuk ( 62477 ) <chasuk@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @02:24PM (#8782523)
    Can you substantiate even a portion of this ridiculous statement?

    Nicola Tesla was... involved with experiments...that the goverment 'feared' so much that they still keep much of his work and ideas from the public.

    I didn't think so.

    Jesus, does even Slashdot need to cater to conspiracy nuts?

    • Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Funny)

      by JohnLi ( 85427 ) *
      You must be new here. Welcome.

    • I know this is late, but I have copies of FOIA information related to Tesla - two large PDF files, in fact. I can't remember where I obtained them from (heck, maybe from the FOIA site?), but it definitely shows that the US government was very interested in his ideas (specifically his ideas on "death rays", which seem to be a method of using UV light to ionize the air, as a conductive path for electricity), and even with the FOIA release, there is still a lot more that our gov't hasn't released (as shown by
      • ray guns... you mean like this [bbc.co.uk]?
        • Yeah - something like that.

          If you ever see reproductions of period articles (or the real articles if you can find copies!), you always notice a few things when the article is about Tesla:

          1. Pictures of airships
          2. Large searchlights

          Invariably, these searchlights are "trained" on the airships - leading to a couple of possible conclusions, given the technology level of Tesla's day:

          1. The airships are somehow being powered by the "searchlights", or
          2. The airships are being "disabled" by the "searchlights"

          In rea

  • ..to his cult-like admiration in the scientifiction fan and angry underachiving technician fields."

    Face it. The first place I encountered books about Tesla was on the remainder tables at the bookstore. With the new-age drivel and public-domain editions of Shakespeare and Poe. (actually, not even the remainder tables, they were over on the next table with other junk-books self-published by Barnes and Noble)

    Tesla is more likely to be revered by the most loose crackpots at a Science Fiction convention than

    • Re:"...which just adds (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rot26 ( 240034 ) * on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @04:12PM (#8784023) Homepage Journal
      Face it. The first place I encountered books about Tesla was on the remainder tables at the bookstore

      Aha!!! Absolute proof that the man was a quack!! You're a genius, man.

      You obviously don't know a thing about the history of electrical distribution in the US.
      • I know that Tesla was instrumental in the development of Alternating Current power generation and distribution. And that his life sloped severely downhill after that.

        There's even an 'evil antagonist' we can all hiss at: Thomas Edison. He also held a lot of patents! Boo hiss hiss!

        Oh, what a melodrama it all is!

      • I think Charles Steinmetz had at least as much influence. His development of alternating current theory and the law of electromagnetic hysteresis were crucial underpinnings of AC power distribution engnineering. Tesla may have been an inspired inventor, but as a theoretician he was a lightweight compared to Steinmetz. For example, Tesla may have invented the induction motor, but it was Steinmetz's theories which showed how to make it efficient.

        -Ed
    • Long live direct current!

    • OK, I'll bite. Are you saying that Tesla is overrated? Or that the Barnes and Noble thing is proof of how thoroughly his contributions to modern society are discounted by mainstream history?

      Do you think his contributions were minor and meaningless, or seminal and suppressed?

  • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:his inventions (Score:5, Informative)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday April 06, 2004 @04:02PM (#8783862) Homepage Journal
      Tesla was both a brilliant inventor and a nut case.
      His AC system is still used today.
      His electric motor is still used today.
      These two inventions make him the equal of Bell and or Edison. The difference is that he did not start his how company he worked for someone else. That company was called Westinghouse.

      Tesla's disk turbine is extermly inefficent compaired to axial or inpulse turbins or centrifical compressors. It is pretty much usless except for some pumps.
      His wireless power distribution system also does not work. But it is nice science fiction.
      • I recall an article some time ago on /. regarding a plan to transmit power remotely to several Pacific Islands - in my failed attempt to locate more info on that one, i came across several references to an experimental project on Reunion Island to send power wirelessly across a mountain gorge to an isolated village (see, for example, http://www.house.gov/science/maryniak_10-24.htm). . .don't know what the results were, or whether the project is still on the drawing board...
        • ...mnicrowave transmission of power is what's being discussed in that paper. Quite possible, probably not a good idea, but it is a dandy stealth way to build impressive weapons platforms in space. Nothing like dual use and multi tasking! :)
    • Part of my daily commute takes me past the site of Tesla's broadcast power experiment. Today, the only visible trace is the street sign 'Tesla St' conecting NY Rt 25a and North Country road.

      [about 3 miles from the LILCO/Shoreham nuke reactor site, and about 8 miles from Brookhaven National Lab]
    • The device wasn't made by Tesla.
      It is thought to have been in use in early Egypt B.C. There are many descriptions of the device. From the descriptions it is obvious what the device was. It was a capacitor, that charged itself by sitting in one spot.
      Thats right the earths magnetic field charged it. I have also read articles on the subject and some speculated that the Ark of the Covenant was such a device. Given drawings and also descriptions of the Ark it could be possible.
      TLC story on it. [discovery.com]
      Another site [blossomingrose.org]
    • You can make a device to pull electricity through the air from an existing powerline. I belive its called an inductor or something like that. Unfortunately, power companys can detect this and hit you with a nasty lawsuit if they can nail it to you.
  • here [slashdot.org]
  • neither of my two local PBS stations will be airing it...(according to the web site...)

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