Saturday, July 10, 2010

Nikola Tesla's Renewable Energy Vision

By Lisa Pease
July 10, 2010

We should have listened to Nikola Tesla when we had the chance.

Read on.
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12 comments:

rosemerry said...

Very entertaining piece, with lots of great info. I think the anti-semitic bit is gratuitous; in those times most people tended to be racist in a thoughtless way, but of course only anti-semitism is important to mention.

Sat Jul 10, 05:10:00 PM 2010
Lisa Pease said...

I wonder if you'd feel differently if you were Jewish, Rosemerry, but you are right that a lot of people were very prejudiced, in all directions, during that time. I pointed it out to show he has flaws, like everyone else. He was also brilliant, like few else.

Sat Jul 10, 05:45:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

Wonderful story on Tesla.
Thank you so much.

Sat Jul 10, 08:04:00 PM 2010
Tom Dark said...

Whoa. Hang on. It was Charles P. Steinmetz who made Tesla's alternating current feasible. Another forgotten genius.

Sat Jul 10, 09:17:00 PM 2010
Lisa Pease said...

I think that overstates it a bit, Tom. Steinmetz's work was very valuable, but Steinmetz helped design an electrical distribution system. Tesla figured out how to generate the electricity to be distributed. Both are valuable, of course.

Sun Jul 11, 12:03:00 AM 2010
Tesla's Ghost said...

Please everyone of decent mind please see:

www.energystate.org

Please join this public movement - educate your politicians and push for this definitive solution to our energy needs. Wind, Solar, .etc...these are all capitalist distractions from what can be done by simply harnessing the power of the ionosphere....just as Tesla knew.

www.energystate.org

Sun Jul 11, 11:30:00 AM 2010
Unknown said...

Hi, Lisa, we met via Team Tesla. I've lectured about Tesla, the man, his spirit and his technology on the East Coast.

While your blog was entertaining and informative, certain statements like "(Tesla) was a - - anti-Semite," need to be backed up: His era was a time where people like Margaret Sanger and Tesla spoke in favor of "eugenics," but not the "eugenics" born in Nazi Germany. Today's early screening for Down's syndrome is considered a type of eugenics.

Many of Tesla's champions were Jewish. His best friend, Mark Twain, would not have tolerated racism, anti-Semitism, nor hatred for women. Tesla was interviewed in Liberty Magazine, about life in the next 100 years, where some wild statements appeared. I did further investigation and saw that the interviewer, himself, was a proclaimed anti-Semite.

I need do more research because i am a proud Jewess. I'm not trying to reconstruct history, here, for a flawed genius- but others did: In 1943 the patents for radio were awarded back to Mr. Nikola Tesla. And while he shied away from any overt religiousness, he remained allies with Swami Vivekananda (who brought yoga to the West); he also sent Lord Kelvin books on Buddhism and esoteric philosophy.

Maybe, there's no space for hocus-pocus. But there's certainly room for better understanding of the mystery, the mystique - and the science of Mr. Nikola Tesla.

Thank you for your piece.
Best wishes.

Tue Jul 13, 10:43:00 AM 2010
Anonymous said...

Dee,

Mark Twain was also reported to have been a bit of an anti-Semite! Sorry to disappoint you on that matter! It was by far the default position of the time, I'm sad to report. But it's well documented in the Tesla literature (the historical, as opposed to fantastical literature, which is the only Tesla lliterature that interests me).

I've also reviewed the Supreme Court's ruling re Tesla. It's been misreported that they said he invented radio. That's not true. What they said is that four people, one of which is Telsa, invented the components that made up Marconi's system. But not one of the four had put it all together.

Hey, I'm a huge Tesla fan. That's why I'm working on a screenplay about him. But I'm also a huge stickler for accuracy, and I haven't found a book yet that hasn't been in error in one place or another.

Tue Jul 13, 11:27:00 AM 2010
Lisa Pease said...

P.S. And while Mark Twain was a friend, he was far from his "best" friend! That's how some of the online writings have portrayed him, but again, the facts do not bear that out. I encourage anyone interested in Tesla NOT to read all the online nonsense about him, which is pretty far from the mark in many cases.

Tue Jul 13, 11:28:00 AM 2010
Lisa Pease said...

And my above comment on radio may be misleading - what I really meant is, four people contributed to the development of radio, one of which was Tesla. Marconi's application was unique in some ways, but not unique enough for the Supreme Court to grant him the status of father of radio.

Wed Jul 14, 06:48:00 PM 2010
Anonymous said...

I am searching for the truth about Tesla's possible anti-semitism. The only somewhat valid source, which I found to be very accepting of overly pro-Serbian sources, while other sources point to Tesla being a man of the world, admiring for example the Croat authors (Rudjer Boskovic), is "Wizard" by Marc Seifer. All this "Serb"/"Croat" junk is always questionable, due to the uproar among the nationalist there today. They all seem to want a piece of him, to make their nation seem more "heavenly". Also, count on Tesla's blood relatives to be Serbs, and possibly involved in such ways, which is regrettable. Serbs have big campaigns in the above mentioned. Their admiration is not true to the science, but true to their nationalism to the extent of willingness to lie. What I got from his words directly was a normal relation to his origin, positive to positive experiences (mother, father's dislike of war), and negative to the negative ones (his father's insistence that he must become a priest, when he even stated later that he is not religious in such ways, but accepts religions for the positive impact on humans, or primitivism on forbidding him to read at night, and possibly problems father unloaded on him with his brother's accidental death).

I would like to see more facts, especially more then a single line inn that book, where Tesla lists "other social tribolites... plebians, drummers, grocerymen, (and) Jews." However, if you turn to footnotes, you will see that the source is TK (used repeatedly as an abbreviation, it does not therefore look like a mistake, though it is possible) to KJ (Katharine Johnson), where Tesla's abbreviation is, obviously and listed as, NT.
Hence, I'd like to see the source before making claims.
In that sense, I would like to see clear references as to Lisa Pease's suggestion that he was an anti-semite. Not because I care to criticize Lisa Pease (if I though she was not credible at all, I would not bother at all to waste my time on this), but because I do care to know the truth.

Also, Wikipedia lists him saying: "Alas, never trust a Jew" in Margaret Cheney book. I have looked at the alleged page (around 160) and the rest, and found no such quote. Look for yourself, and correct me if I am wrong. It seems like a fabrication.

Some of his expressions were disturbing to me, as is this entire anti-semitism possibility (it pains me to the core, all the racism and nationalism), and could be seen as his loosing the touch with reality. In his early days, it could have been a foolish comment too, due to his upbringing (orthodox priests are not known today either as exactly friendly to Jews). Either way, it's very disappointing.

But on the other hand, he was very concerned with Hitler and fascism, and tried hard to assist allies in WW2, which in essence makes him a likely candidate for anti-fascism, which further makes him less likely to be an anti-semite. Racial hatred is almost exclusive to religious and nationalist extremists.

Wed Feb 01, 04:17:00 AM 2012
Anonymous said...

Also, there are some claims to anti-semitism due to his view of Einstein's work. I find that his comments on Einsteins work were at least in good part correct: he said soon after those discoveries, and very rightly so (Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved it), that releasing the energy of atoms could bring a disaster to human kind rather than glory (criticizing it as too unwise, too foolish, perhaps too esoteric), and secondly, as in where the actual energy is, which also seems to prove right according to latest studies. I think it had to do with scientific truths more than with Eistein being Jewish. After all, Tesla reportedly said that Marconi was a donkey after he won a Nobel price largely based on Tesla's patents, and spoke very ironically and harshly of Edison too. It seems to be in his nature: he was altruistic, but annoyed with human fallibility.
He himself was not perfect by any means either. But then again, who is.

I really would like to know the truth and will go on until I know it. And I will expose him gladly for what he is if he made such outrageous comments and claims on an entire people.

Wed Feb 01, 04:20:00 AM 2012

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