Tesla Returns

I first learned about Tesla through an unlikely source: a five-piece metal band from Sacramento, California, by the same name, who burst into the public spotlight in 1987 with their first album (and still their best), Mechanical Resonance. We saw them open up for Def Leppard that spring, and then much later in May 2004 when they reunited after a long break. Sure enough, the band was very much into the Serbian-American inventor; he figures in album names (The Great Radio Controversy, Psychotic Supper), and has center stage, so to speak, in their song "Edison’s Medicine".

 Nikola Tesla was born in July 1856 in Croatia, at the time part of Austria-Hungary. He moved to the US in 1884, became naturalized in 1891, and lived in the US ever since, dying destitute and alone in New York City in 1942. He started out working for Thomas Edison, but quickly broke apart from him and developed an intense rivalry with the American inventor. The main point of this was Tesla’s adherence to alternating current (AC), which he and Westinghouse supported, vs. direct current (DC), which Edison championed. The electric chair was developed by Edison as a publicity stunt to show how dangerous AC was. In addition to a wide variety of inventions and work in electrical engineering, Tesla is the de facto (and, by US Supreme Court decision in 1943, de jure) father of radio. He was somewhat of a maverick and fell out of public attention and favor for much of the rest of his life; he was written off as a "mad scientist", working on a "death ray" and various other revolutionary inventions, some of which may have been nothing more than dead ends, others being too far ahead of their time. Tesla is certainly one of the more intriguing scientists of the modern era.

 A more recent spotlight on Tesla comes from the new film, "The Prestige", featuring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as competing magicians, Michael Caine as their mentor, Scarlett Johanssen as their mutual love interest, and David Bowie as Tesla himself. Jackman’s character ventures to Colorado Springs, and discovers that Tesla has managed to electrify not only the local hotel, but also the entire town. His assistant demonstrates wireless transmission of electricity, and Tesla ultimately builds an extraordinary machine for Jackman to use in his magic show.