"The Oatmeal" is building a Tesla Museum

[Andrew Wiggin]

Do people think Tesla achieved enough to warrant a museum dedicated to him?

Absolutely. Without any doubt. Just like Edison and Ford. (I'm not an Edison basher; he just had a different approach, and one that actually led to a more profitable but less exciting business model)

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Great.

Thanks for reminding me that The Oatmeal exists. There goes two hours of my life, but at least I'll finally figure out how many baboons I could fight off if I was armed with a giant dildo.

Thanks a lot, Orphia.

That's a very handy thing to know, in certain circumstances. (Not speculating on the circumstances you find yourself in... Not going there. Not going to visualize that. Oh damn. BRAINBLEACH!)

 

[dudalb]

Do people think Tesla achieved enough to warrant a museum dedicated to him?

Of Course. I just don't think the cause is best served by over the top articles like Oatmeal.

 

[dudalb]

This is one of the hallmarks of a genius. If you wait around to have the perfect idea, you wait a long time. If you're willing to pursue any idea and you have lots of ideas then some of them will be worthwhile. I've seen the same thing in lots of fields. I've known artists who would get blocked because they were afraid that their drawing wouldn't look good enough, and seen the difference between how a student jeweler approaches a bar of copper and a bar of silver. If you can forge a bar of copper into beautiful shapes, you should be able to do the same thing with a bar of silver, right? Turns out if you keep reminding yourself that it's expensive and you can't afford to screw up, then you really can't. You've got to be willing to give yourself permission to fail (or permission to spend time entertaining ideas that might turn out to be total ********) and be willing to try anyway.

Agreed, but there are limits,and Tesla had more then his fair share of crackpot ideas.
And I think that the rules for craziness tolerated in a scientest are a bit more stringent then those in an Artist.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Agreed, but there are limits,and Tesla had more then his fair share of crackpot ideas.
And I think that the rules for craziness tolerated in a scientest are a bit more stringent then those in an Artist.

I don't think there should be a limit on crazy in science. I think science is made to survive crazy, and works OK with crazy. I look at this as a case where the scientific method and engineering won out. The things Tesla came up with that worked are (or were) in use. The things that didn't work, the parts that were speculative or would have turned out to be dead ends or false leads were speculated on till they dead-ended and entered the history books. A few folks still speculate a bit and putter around in some of his dead ends, where maybe they'll find something and more likely they won't.

I think the major difference between 'crazy' science and stringently non-crazy science is that Tesla kept good notes and was flamboyant about his invention and his genius, so we get to see all the dead ends. Every scientist, every engineer, every inventor has dead ends and stupid ideas, but most of them show only the good stuff. Tesla showed us everything he did, in nice press releases heavy on the hype and light on details, usually with some pronouncement about how it would change EVERYTHING. Sort of reminds me of Dean Kamen and the Segway scooter. Remember his press releases about how everything was going to change, and how long it took for him to release any actual details, how overwhelmingly mundane and semi-useless it turned out to be?

Oh, and SMBC!

URL="http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2698"]

[/URL]

 

[Orphia Nay]

Of Course. I just don't think the cause is best served by over the top articles like Oatmeal.

I politely disagree.

His "over the top" attitude is fun, enthusiastic and sweet. That's the beauty of The Oatmeal.

I kindly suggest that you're blaming a comedian for being a comedian.

He didn't try to make a serious biography of Tesla. Look elsewhere for that.


Speaking of which, what is a good biography of Tesla?

 

[svenax]

Do people think Tesla achieved enough to warrant a museum dedicated to him?

Sure. Not only that, he already has a museum in Belgrade, Serbia. But that is far from the USA, so I suppose it doesn't count. Anyhow, here it is: http://www.tesla-museum.org/meni_en.htm.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Sure. Not only that, he already has a museum in Belgrade, Serbia. But that is far from the USA, so I suppose it doesn't count. Anyhow, here it is: http://www.tesla-museum.org/meni_en.htm.

Great! Thanks, svenax.

 

[Tanja]

There's also a small museum/ memorial centre in the village of Smiljan in Croatia where Tesla was born. The house where he was born and grew up is open to the public.

Link: http://www.mcnikolatesla.hr/english.html

(The link did not work from my iPad, only from my regular laptop)

 

[Orphia Nay]

There's also a small museum/ memorial centre in the village of Smiljan in Croatia where Tesla was born. The house where he was born and grew up is open to the public.

Link: http://www.mcnikolatesla.hr/english.html

(The link did not work from my iPad, only from my regular laptop)

Thank you!

 

[Orphia Nay]

$1,069,212.

Moar!!!

$1,076,642 now.

 

[George]

Half way down the second link in the op, http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
this caught my attention:

"Who built an earthquake machine that nearly demolished an entire neighborhood in New York City when it was turned on?"

I'm guessing that's merely the oatmeal taking a few liberties when describing the actual event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator

 

[catsmate]

Do people think Tesla achieved enough to warrant a museum dedicated to him?

Oh yes.

 

[Checkmite]

"Who built an earthquake machine that nearly demolished an entire neighborhood in New York City when it was turned on?"

I'm guessing that's merely the oatmeal taking a few liberties when describing the actual event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator

Guessing?

 

[ellindsey]

Half way down the second link in the op, http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
this caught my attention:

"Who built an earthquake machine that nearly demolished an entire neighborhood in New York City when it was turned on?"

I'm guessing that's merely the oatmeal taking a few liberties when describing the actual event.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_oscillator

There actually isn't any good evidence that the event even happened at all. The only witness to describe it was Tesla himself, years after it allegedly happened.

 

[fuelair]

Absolutely. Without any doubt. Just like Edison and Ford. (I'm not an Edison basher; he just had a different approach, and one that actually led to a more profitable but less exciting business model)

There are (unfortunately reasonable) people who are pretty sure that he had a film projection competitor "disappeared" and may have done similar to some others who bettered him in that and other fields.

 

[fuelair]

There are (unfortunately reasonable) people who are pretty sure that he had a film projection competitor "disappeared" and may have done similar to some others who bettered him in that and other fields.

If you go a-hunting, the most recent thing on this is not real, thought it is fun - read the details after the description of the find. The "find" is a fiction and the reasons were evident before the bottom reached.

BUT: this is very real and the things stated as fact are such based on much more available data: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=147314&sectioncode=26

 

[fuelair]

There actually isn't any good evidence that the event even happened at all. The only witness to describe it was Tesla himself, years after it allegedly happened.

But, the Oatmeal did not make it up, they just used one or more of the several later written versions (doubtless based on Tesla's story).


And, I hope part of the new money is from the NPR listeners who heard it yesterday morning.....

 

[xtifr]

Tesla would have a brilliant idea one day, and then put forward pure crackpottery the next.

This is one of the hallmarks of a genius.

No it's not. That's a popular, Hollywood image of genius, but lots of geniuses never put forward their crackpot ideas. They may explore them, but there's a difference between exploring an unconventional notion and becoming (and remaining) convinced of crackpot ideas. Tesla had a tendency to do the latter.

If you wait around to have the perfect idea, you wait a long time. If you're willing to pursue any idea and you have lots of ideas then some of them will be worthwhile.

Maybe. Again, that's the Hollywood version of genius. People differ, and some work better if they focus on a particular issue, while others work better if they let their minds wander. But in Tesla's case, the problem wasn't the wandering mind; it was latching onto incorrect notions and refusing to give them up.

I would say that Tesla was a better scientist than Edison, but neither of them was really a scientist. They were both closer to being engineers. Extraordinary engineers, true, but more engineers than scientists. In fact Tesla rejected a lot of modern physics even as it was being proven true. He was a genius when it came to electricity, but for the big-picture stuff, he was too latched on to his own preconcieved notions. Almost the opposite of what you were suggesting.

Of course, this makes him a folk hero among the type of crackpots who hope to overturn all of modern physics without understanding it. (A category we regularly see here on JREF.) Unfortunately, it's his crackpot notions that make him a hero to the crackpots, not the rest of his work, which is what makes him a hero to the rest of us. Which is why he remains a controversial figure.

(His crippling social disorders did him no favor either--and again, those are not the marks of a genius. Those are the marks of a Hollywood "genius".)

 

[mike3]

Without question. One doesn't need to inflate Tesla's contributions - it's his actual contributions that place him in the pantheon.

So would you support The Oatmeal's museum project?