Category Archives: History of Science

As I have noted before, there is an opera about Tesla, called Violet Fire in preperation for the grand opening in the Belgrade’s National Theater on July 9th, on the eve of 150th birthday of Nikola Tesla. I have since received a little bit more information about it. Here I translated some snippets from Belgrade press:

Violet Fire (“Ljubicasta Vatra”) is a multi-media opera composed by John Gibson. It was co-produced by by Belgrade’s summer festival BELEF and American non-profit organization Violet Fire. Director is Terry O’Reilly.
The conductor, Ana Zorana Brajovic told reporters that there is no classical operatic singing in this minimalistic opera and that the text – libreto written by Miriam Zeidel – is of a much greater importance.
The opera is happening in Bryant Park in New York City, close to Tesla’s end of life. Through communication between Tesla and his favourite white dove, the libreto showcases Tesla’s free imagination and intuitive connection to the mysteries of nature.
The cast includes Scott Murphy (guest from the USA) and Belgrade soloists Darko Đorđevic, Dragana Tomic, Mirjana Jovanovic, Nenad Nenic, Predrag Milanovic, Dragana Stankovic, Nataša Jovic Trivic, Ivan Tomasev, Miodrag Mika Jovanovic and others.
Violet Fire will also be on stage on July 13, 14 and 15th.
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I am in Belgrade because this is the country of Nikola Tesla and I am very happy that the world premiere of Violet Fire will be held here, said the director Terry O’Reilly, ina short exclusive interview with Belgrade’s BLIC magazine.
Asked who was Nikola Tesla, he said: Tesla was a person like you or me. But Tesla as a scientist was spiritiually and intelectually without limits. His life went beyond a totoal accomplishment of an individual – he created something useful for all the people.
What is it you particulalry insist on an why?
It is very important that he was an Orthodox Serb. Tesla was a very spiritual and religious man just like all his ancestors – his father was an Orthodox priest. That is why he lived his life not to become famous but to make the world better. During my stay in Belgrade, these things became clearer to me than while I was in the States.
What is it that you are trying to convey to teh audience with this show?
The message is what I just said. I have spent almost a year in Belgrade and during that time understood what it is – Tesla’s spirituality, his background, his connection to the ancestors and the whole Universe. I often say that we woudl need many lives just in order to understand his unusual and unique life.
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I would so like to be there and see it. Unfortunately, this is impossible. So, if anyone in Belgrade goes and watches the opera, please let me know – I’ll post your review here! If not, the opera will be seen again on October 18, 20 and 21 at the Brooklyn Academy Music Festival in NYC.

“Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.”
“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”
“Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside.”
On Invention: “It is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.”
“Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.”
“Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.”
“George Westinghouse was a man with tremendous potential energy of which only part had taken kinetic form. Like a lion in the forest, he breathed deep and with delight the smoky air of his Pittsburgh factories. Always affable and polite, he stood in marked contrast to the small-minded financiers I had been trying to negotiate with before I met him. Yet, no fiercer adversary could have been found when aroused. Westinghouse welcomed the struggle and never lost confidence. When others would give up in despair, he triumphed.”
On Voltaire: “I had a veritable mania for finishing whatever I began, which often got me into difficulties. On one occasion I started to read the works of Voltaire when I learned, to my dismay, that there were close on one hundred large volumes in small print which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem. It had to be done, but when I laid aside the last book I was very glad, and said, “Never more!” (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)
“In our dynamo machines, it is well known, we generate alternate currents which we direct by means of a commutator, a complicated device and, it may be justly said, the source of most of the troubles experienced in the operation of the machines. Now, the currents, so directed cannot be utilized in the motor, but must – again by means of a similar unreliable device – be reconverted into their original state of alternate currents. The function of the commutator is entirely external, and in no way does it affect the internal workings of the machines. In reality, therefore, all machines are alternate current machines, the currents appearing as continuous only in the external circuit during the transfer from generator to motor. In view simply of this fact, alternate currents would commend themselves as a more direct application of electrical energy, and the employment of continuous currents would only be justified if we had dynamos which would primarily generate, and motors which would be directly actuated by, such currents.” (Adopted from T.C. Martin, “The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla,” New Work: Electrical Engineer, 1894, pp. 9-11.)
Sources:
Frank Germano
Quote of the Day
ThinkExist

“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”
“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” (Modern Mechanics and Inventions. July, 1934)
“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of a planter — for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way.”
“Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort through centuries past might come into existence quickly — not unlike a crystal that suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared.”
“The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost.”
“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”
On Marconi: “The greatest men of science have told me [the Tesla coil] was my best achievement. . . . For instance, a man fills this space with hydrogen; he employs all my instrumentalities, everything that is necessary, but calls it a new wireless system–I cannot stop it. Another man puts in here a kind of gap. He gets a Nobel prize for it. . . . The inventive effort involved is about the same as that of which a 30-year old mule is capable.”
On George Westinghouse: “George Westinghouse was, in my opinion, the only man on this globe who could take my alternating-current system under the circumstances then existing and win the battle against prejudice and money power. He was a pioneer of imposing stature, one of the world’s true nobleman of whom America may well be proud and to whom humanity owes an immense debt of gratitude.” (Speech, Institute of Immigrant Welfare, Hotel Baltimore, New York, May 12, 1938, read in absentia.)
“We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of the atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind… The greatest good will come from the technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such. By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun’s energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land…” (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)
Sources:
Frank Germano
Quote of the Day
ThinkExist

“The last 29 days of the month [are] the hardest.”
“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” (Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July, 1934)
“The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.”
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”
“Of all the frictional resistance, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called “the greatest evil in the world.” The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.”
“No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.”
On Edison: “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.” (New York Times, October 19, 1931.)
On Mark Twain: “I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears.” (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)
“War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment…” (Nikola Tesla, “My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla”, Hart Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter magazine in 1919.)
Sources:
Frank Germano
Quote of the Day
ThinkExist

Apparently, there is yet another movie made about Tesla this year.
Violet Fire Opera is an opera about Tesla. It will open in National Theater in Belgrade on July 10th.
There is some stuff about the history of radio and moving pictures. Both essays mention Tesla’s contributions.
Tesla Roadster is creating quite a buzz. I wish I could afford it. Perhaps the Model II will be a little cheaper.
A new livejournal takes it’s name after Tesla’s tower – Wardenclyffe Tower.
The best source on everything Tesla is the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
And here is another fan.
Check the links to previous posts about Tesla here, here and here.

The big day – 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla – is approaching fast – July 10th.

I am sure that I will remind you of this a couple of more times until then – I have a couple of posts about him in the making – but first look at the older posts in which I have mentioned him so far….[more under the fold]

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Can it get any better than this! The Five Fists of Science, starring Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla in a race to save the world from Thomas Edison and J.P Morgan! I immediatelly pre-ordered the book and can’t wait to read it.
Update: I just got an e-mail from Amazon that the book is finally out and that my copy has been shipped. I’ll be able to read it just in time for the celebration of Tesla’s 150th birthday on July 10th.
(Hat-tip: Science Librarian, via Boing Boing)