• Heroes
Nickola Tessla !!!!!!!!!! The Mystique of Tesla Well, Tesla is an endlessly fascinating personality. He seemed to think that anything people could conceive they would be able to achieve. So I think that what his story gives us is a sense of endless possibilities—especially with electricity. — Tesla's Early Years — .................................... Nikola Tesla was born a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856 in a mountainous area of the Balkan Peninsula known as Lika. His father Milutin, and his mother Djuka, were both Serbian by origin. Tesla's father was a stern but loving Orthodox priest, who was also a gifted writer and poet. At a young age, Tesla immersed himself in his father's library. Tesla's mother was a hard working woman of many talents who created appliances to help with home and farm responsibilities. One of these was a mechanical eggbeater. Tesla attributed all of his inventive instincts to his mother........................ Tesla began his education at home and later attended gymnasium in Carlstadt, Croatia excelling in his studies along the way. An early sign of his genius, he was able to perform integral calculus in his mind, prompting his teachers to think he was cheating. During this period young "Niko" saw a steel engraving of Niagara Falls. In his imagination there appeared a huge water wheel being turned by the powerful cataract. He said to an uncle that he would go to America one day and capture energy in this way. Thirty years later he did exactly that. Despite his early creativity, Tesla did not begin to think of himself as an inventor until he was a young adult............................. Passionate about mathematics and sciences, Tesla had his heart set on becoming an engineer but was "constantly oppressed" by his father's insistence that he enter the priesthood. At age seventeen, Tesla contracted cholera and craftily exacted an important concession from his father: the older Tesla promised his son that if he survived, he would be allowed to attend the renowned Austrian Polytechnic School at Graz to study engineering. Tesla's wish became a reality............................... At the Polytechnic school Tesla began his studies in mechanical and electrical engineering. One day a physics teacher showed Tesla's class a new Gramme dynamo that—by employing direct current—could be used as both a motor and a generator. After watching it for a time, Tesla suggested it might be possible to do away with a set of inefficient sparking connections known as commutators. This, his amused professor said, would be like building a perpetual motion machine! Not even Tesla could hope to achieve such a feat. For the next several years the challenge obsessed Tesla, who instinctively knew that the solution lay in electric currents that alternated. ........................ It wasn't until age twenty-four, when Tesla was living in Budapest and working for the Central Telephone Exchange, that the answer came to him:........................ One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage: The glow retreats, done is the day of toil; It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring; Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil Upon its track to follow, follow soaring! As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was the invention of the induction motor, a technological advance that would soon change the world. — Coming to America — ....................... Following his discovery in Budapest, Tesla was hired by electric power companies in Strasbourg and Paris to improve their DC generation facilities. In Germany and France, he attempted to interest investors in his concept for an AC motor, but had no success. It was clear that in order to realize his idea, he would have to meet the greatest electrical engineer in the world—Thomas Alva Edison. ....................... At age 28, Nikola Tesla arrived in New York City and was shocked by what he discovered. "What I had left was beautiful, artistic and fascinating in every way; what I saw here was machined, rough and unattractive. It [America] is a century behind Europe in civilization." The Serbian immigrant had four cents in his pocket, some mathematical computations, a drawing of an idea for a flying machine, and a letter of introduction from Charles Batchelor, one of Edison's business associates in Europe......................................... Electricity was first introduced to New York in the late 1870s. Edison's incandescent lamp had created an astonishing demand for electric power. And his DC power station on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan was quickly becoming a monopoly. On the streets, single poles carried dozens of crooked crossbeams supporting sagging wires, and the exposed electrical wiring was a constant danger. Unsuspecting children would scale the poles only to meet an untimely electrical demise. The residents of Brooklyn became so accustomed to dodging shocks from electric trolley tracks that their baseball team was called the Brooklyn Dodgers. In spite of the perils, wealthy New Yorkers rushed to have their homes wired, the most important being the banker, J.P. Morgan, who had invested heavily in Edison. .............................. It was into this state of affairs that the 6'4" immigrant from Eastern Europe entered Edison's office. Thrilled and terrified to meet his hero, Tesla handed Edison his letter of recommendation: It read: "My Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!" Tesla proceeded to describe the engineering work he had done, and his plans for an alternating current motor....................................... Edison knew little of alternating current and did not care to learn more about it. In short, AC power sounded like competition to Edison. But there was something different about Tesla, and Edison immediately hired him to make improvements in his DC generation plants. Tesla claimed that Edison promised him $50,000 if he succeeded, perhaps thinking it an impossible undertaking. But the potential of so much money appealed mightily to the impoverished immigrant. ............................................ Both Tesla and Edison shared a common trait of genius in that neither of them seemed to need much sleep. Edison could go for days, taking occasional catnaps on a sofa in his office. Tesla claimed that his working hours at the Edison Machine Works were 10:30 a.m. till 5 a.m. the next day. Even into old age Tesla said he only slept two or three hours a night. .......................... That's where the similarity ended. Tesla relied on moments of inspiration, perceiving the invention in his brain in precise detail before moving to the construction stage. Edison was a trial and error man who described invention as five percent inspiration and 95 percent perspiration. Edison was self-taught. Tesla had a formal European education............................... It was only a matter of time until their differences would lead to conflict. ................................. Several months after Edison employed him, Tesla announced that his work was successfully completed. When Tesla asked to be paid, however, Edison seemed astonished. He explained that the offer of $50,000 had been made in jest. "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke," Edison said. Shocked and disgusted, Tesla immediately resigned................... Word began to spread that a foreigner of unusual talent was digging ditches to stay alive. Investors approached Tesla and asked him to develop an improved method for arc lighting. Although this was not the opportunity he had hoped for, the group was willing to finance the Tesla Electric Light Company. The proud new owner set to work and invented a unique arc lamp of beautiful design and efficiency. Unfortunately, all of the money earned went to the investors and all Tesla got was a stack of worthless stock certificates.......... But his luck was about to change. Mr. A.K. Brown of the Western Union Company, agreed to invest in Tesla's idea for an AC motor. In a small laboratory just a short distance from Edison's office, Tesla quickly developed all the components for the system of AC power generation and transmission that is used universally throughout the world today. "The motors I build there," said Tesla, "were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision and the operation was always as I expected." The battle to produce his motor was over. But the struggle to introduce it commercially was only just beginning. -----------------------------ARCHIMEDES Born About 287 BC in Syracuse, Sicily. At the time Syracuse was an independent Greek city-state with a 500-year history. Died 212 or 211 BC in Syracuse when it was being sacked by a Roman army. He was killed by a Roman soldier who did not know who he was. Education Probably studied in Alexandria, Egypt, under the followers of Euclid. Family His father was an astronomer named Phidias and he was probably related to Hieron II, the king of Syracuse. It is not known whether he was married or had any children. Inventions Many war machines used in the defense of Syracuse, compound pulley systems, planetarium, water screw (possibly), water organ (possibly), burning mirrors (very unlikely). Fields of Science Initiated Hydrostatics, static mechanics, pycnometry (the measurement of the volume or density of an object). He is called the "father of integral calculus" and also the "father of mathematical physics". Major Writings On plane equilibriums, Quadrature of the parabola, On the sphere and cylinder, On spirals, On conoids and spheroids, On floating bodies, Measurement of a circle, The Sandreckoner, On the method of mechanical problems. Place in History Generally regarded as the greatest mathematician and scientist of antiquity and one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time (together with Isaac Newton (English 1643-1727) and Carl Friedrich Gauss (German 1777-1855)).

ONE OF MY FAVORITE POEMS ( I dont know who wrote it ) I heard it spoken in a movie called POWDER. -------
Where lies the final harbor from whence we unmorn no more? In what wraps either sales the world of which the weariest will never weary? Where has the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans who’s unwed mothers die in baring them. And the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, … and we must there to learn it.

Well,Pre 80's I was really into LedZepplen & the police.No,not as in running from the police,the band The Police the band.The other police.After that I morphed into a total MetalHead during the early 80's (THAT'S WHEN I STARTED RUNNING FROM THE POLICE lol, While listening to (,IronMaiden,Dio,Rush,DeepPurple,BlackSabbath,OzzyOzborne,Anthrax,MotorHead,Metalica"before Cliff Burton died",Aniallator,Slayer...)Then around the mid to late 80's I got into punk(CircleJerks,DeadKennedies,GBH,SexPisotls,SurfPunks,NOFX...) Then in the 90's I got into music like (Stone Temple Pilots,PennyWise,SoundGuarden,AliceInChains,JanesAddiction...)After 2000 I got into my own shit which means that as a musician I started (in my own way!) reflecting a mixture of my influances and there ya have it.