I rarely ceased to be amazed at the visual (and unfortunately the loud sound) of every new Tesla Coil that John builds. He has been fascinated for decades with Nikola Tesla, the contemporary of Thomas Edison who, unlike Edison, wanted to make electricity free for the entire world.
After reviewing the Wikipedia page online (linked above), I found these quotes that interest me at the moment :
“There is no thing endowed with life—from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature—in all this world that does not sway in its turn. Whenever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results.”
Tesla also argued:
“ I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.”
I also greatly enjoyed the section describing Tesla’s personality. He also liked the power of three!
Every time that John starts up one of his Tesla Coils for visitors, he firsts asks if anyone has a Pacemaker. [So far, its been a “no.”] And his other favorite thing to do is to move people into a line, with their hands almost holding the person’s next to them. Then the person closest to the Tesla Coil will hold a fluorescent light bulb near the coil and pass the voltage through the chain of people, purple flashes visible between close but separate hands.
