Thread: Serious question for people smarter than me.

Originally Posted by Grizzley1

Hey Big, I just rewatched the documentary about Tesla on Amazon prime, yes he did invent a/c that we are using today. Give it a watch. I was wrong about the feds coming the next day, it took them two...

Bum dope. I stand with what I said. They were experimenting with it a decade earlier in Europe. He made it practical and invented the generators to produce it.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

During his final years he started at the Woolworth Bldg and couldn't pay the rent and moved from place to place owing considerable sums of money. He wound up at the Hotel New Yorker and died there in debt.

Probably the only reason the FBI took his things is because of his claims about a "Death Ray" and some other "Military" applications. Trump reviewed everything and said it was harmless stuff. Tesla's nephew Sava Kosanović shipped everything to Belgrade where the Museum is. The idea his inventions were salted away by the Govt borders on conspiracy theories. If his secret inventions were so great they would have been perfected over the years and they haven't. As I recall one invention was used in Auto Speedometers years after his death.

Morgan refused to finance his "Free Electricity" because it was a bogus concept and would never work plus Morgan was dead and his family was calling the shots.

I'm not saying Tesla wasn't a genius. He certainly was and was a rare individual however he was very eccentric bordering on crazy. Many of his inventions were impractical and just wouldn't work. He had a gripe with Physics and wouldn't accept the existence of the atom. He sued many over "his" inventions like Marconi and lost every lawsuit.

His main interest at the end was talking to Pigeons like they were people.

Yeah I'm bringing up an old chestnut, but Tesla was recently recognized as the creator of broadcast radio and it was taken away from Marconi as it was found out that he used many of his patients. As a matter of fact there are scientists who think the Mars rovers that were supposed to last six months have been working for the last twelve years.

Originally Posted by Grizzley1

I recently got an email trying to sell me the plans for a Tesla generator, they called it an infinity coil, but I have been wondering for a long time now, why can't a generator be built with permanent magnets, and the attraction and repulsion of the poles. I have seen some on YouTube and they look like they should work, however if they did, then everyone would have one. I have a better than average handle on physics and understand that friction and other forces are at play. Can anyone who is a scientist, and uses a straight razor, explain whether any such contraption can work? In plain English. This particular one says it's using technology from Tesla, and, as we know, he was able to draw electricity from the atmosphere when no one else has been able, at least from what I have read about his time out west. It has been reported that he successfully transmitted current as far as ten miles. I don't know, I wasn't there. I know we have them, so a few answers from some smart people, please.

You can't get energy out, without putting energy in. You will have to put a little extra, actually, because no energy conversion is 100% efficient. And to get energy out, you actually have to have better than 100% efficiency, or "unity". It's not gonna happen.

Most "perpetual motion" or "free energy generators" simply harvest energy in some form or another that is not readily apparent, if there is any actual output at all. Regard the Crooke's Radiometer, for instance. Or a low differential Stirling Engine that runs off the heat of the palm of your hand, or a cup of coffee, or sunshine. With either device you would have to build it REALLY BIG, to provide any significant amount of energy. Or how about the "drinking bird" thingie? A simple heat/evaporation engine that would have to be probably a hundred feet tall to give you more than a few watts that you could harvest and use.

Any time somebody tries to sell you some sort of magical gadget that defies the laws of physics, ask the seller where you can see it running in a commercial application. In other words, being used to make profits for the owner instead of just for the seller. You will hear all sorts of crackpot excuses like Big Oil bought up all the patents, or the government silences anybody who tries to go mainstream with it because it will destroy the economy or bring about socialism because nobody will have to work anymore, and so on. Well, where there is profit, trust me, somebody will be making it, and not just to sell to the gullible, take the money, and run.

Of course electrical energy can be transmitted wirelessly. Your wireless phone charger does that. A radio does that. Radio is electrical energy. We have now transmitted energy from beyond the orbit of Pluto. But enough energy to detect, and demodulate into communication, not enough to power household appliances. How does a crystal radio work? It's power is the radio signal itself. And this is so weak that even switching to modern low impedence earphone will make it stop working.

Generators are indeed made with magnets. But some force is still required to spin it. No generator will run forever with no energy input. If you could make such a perpetual motion machine, everyone would have one. I would be delighted if you could prove me wrong, because suddenly everyone would be prosperous and living a life of ease and I would enjoy that very much.

If you want "free" energy, harvest some that is otherwise going to waste. Solar. Wind. Geothermal. A neighbor's pecan tree fell and demolished my garage roof a couple years ago. Free firewood! I still have a good cord of it left, too. Well, free after a new $6k roof on the garage, and lots of sweat equity in bucking and splitting wood. A lot of energy literally goes up in smoke, in the form of heat in engine or machinery exhaust or cooling water. Put it to work, if you can do it without it costing more than what you get out of it. But your magic coil thingie, I would give it a miss. Anything that was invented over 100 years ago that is actually a terrific thing would already be universally owned and used.

Originally Posted by Grizzley1

Yeah I'm bringing up an old chestnut, but Tesla was recently recognized as the creator of broadcast radio and it was taken away from Marconi as it was found out that he used many of his patients. As a matter of fact there are scientists who think the Mars rovers that were supposed to last six months have been working for the last twelve years.

I'm curious, who recognised Tesla as the creator of broadcast radio and took it away from Marconi?

Geek

Originally Posted by TheGeek

I'm curious, who recognised Tesla as the creator of broadcast radio and took it away from Marconi?

Geek

The same folks who decided Pluto wasn't a planet anymore. Or is it back to planethood this week? I don't follow it.

Tesla was indubitably a genius and did a lot of groundbreaking work. But he as not a magician. "Tesla's Lost Secrets" is not really a thing. Marconi is the guy who truly made radio happen. For making a kajillion volts at a fraction of a femto-ampere, Tesla is the man. He apparently had an unlimited budget for very fine copper wire. I don't and I can't think of any need I might have, for multi gigavolts running through a micro-watt device. I use radio 24/7 in the form of cellular, bluetooth, WiFi, etc, even if I don't sit and watch vacuum tubes warming up anymore. Marconi did all the famous and industry-moving experiments in Radio. He was able to talk to corporate suits and sound like a scientist and not an alchemist. Did Tesla create and detect a radio signal before Marconi? Did anyone else? Probably, on both counts. But Marconi put his face on it and did the real work with it.

I notice even with our city council in a flurry of street renaming these days here in New Orleans, nobody has raised the idea of changing Marconi Street to Tesla Street.

In the popular view and in the practical world, Marconi invented radio. I has spoken.

Originally Posted by CrescentCityRazors

The same folks who decided Pluto wasn't a planet anymore. Or is it back to planethood this week? I don't follow it.

Tesla was indubitably a genius and did a lot of groundbreaking work. But he as not a magician. "Tesla's Lost Secrets" is not really a thing. Marconi is the guy who truly made radio happen. For making a kajillion volts at a fraction of a femto-ampere, Tesla is the man. He apparently had an unlimited budget for very fine copper wire. I don't and I can't think of any need I might have, for multi gigavolts running through a micro-watt device. I use radio 24/7 in the form of cellular, bluetooth, WiFi, etc, even if I don't sit and watch vacuum tubes warming up anymore. Marconi did all the famous and industry-moving experiments in Radio. He was able to talk to corporate suits and sound like a scientist and not an alchemist. Did Tesla create and detect a radio signal before Marconi? Did anyone else? Probably, on both counts. But Marconi put his face on it and did the real work with it.

I notice even with our city council in a flurry of street renaming these days here in New Orleans, nobody has raised the idea of changing Marconi Street to Tesla Street.

In the popular view and in the practical world, Marconi invented radio. I has spoken.

I'm pretty much in agreement with what you say there. Hence why I'm curious as to who took away Marconis accolade and gave it to Tesla.

I'm still sore about the whole pluto thing ��

Geek

My father used to say, "Wish in one hand, $#!+ in the other and see which gets full first." I have a pretty unpopular viewpoint, these days at least with all the bleeding hearts in the world. If Tesla didn't get to the patent office on time then that's his loss. A few similar quotes come to mind: "fortune favors the bold/luck favors the prepared." Roman proverb; "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take," Wayne Gretzky; "well it's dog eat dog..." Bonn Scott.

The world does not owe anyone anything and if you are unfortunate enough to have someone beat you to the punch, unless they have broken any laws then, that's on you. I never did understand why people cried so much for Tesla. If he had it ready for patent then why didn't he?

I've never heard a satisfactory answer to that.

As I recall Tesla at one time or another was suing everybody like another contemporary character. At any rate he had this law suit pending when he died over Radio and it was decided after he died by the U.S Supreme Court. It was a patent case so Tesla won the patent for radio but general thought still says Marconi.

Tesla was brilliant but he wasn't a people person and most of his work was theoretical that never came to fruition. A/C was the big exception and that was because Westinghouse was shoveling piles of money to him.