The Visionary, 100 years ago..
Nikola Tesla paved the way for robotics, radio, radar, the remote control and the wireless transmission of messages and images. He dreamed of taming the energy of the wind and the sun, in order to produce free electricity for all.
When we talk about electricity, we usually think of Edison. But, of the two, the most American was Tesla. He had many strange manias and phobias, but the truth is that that did not stop himbe extremely popular and loved.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Tesla is an acclaimed man. Millions of Americans know his name. However, just a few decades later he was almost forgotten. Nicknamed the electric wizard, he died at the age of 86 alone and broke.
He did not have a disciplined imagination, but a fertile one.
WHAT IS A GENIUS?
«I think that term is abused a bit, but Tesla fits like a glove because his was not a single invention in a specific field. He worked in many different fields, so he can be considered that way.»
LIGHTER DAYS
His incandescent bulb, which he had patented five years earlier, had caused a worldwide sensation.
Light had always been associated with fire.
With the invention of the light bulb, Thomas Edison had ended natural gas and gas lighting, and ushered in the age of electricity. Electric light had reached every home, and that for the people was something … amazing.
It was a miracle.
«Nikola Tesla had an overwhelming sense of the future, but technology had to go a long way before many of his ideas could materialize. Innovation has many fathers, and Tesla was certainly one of them..«
It was a miracle: electricity was something very mysterious back then.
«His overflowing imagination made him a genius and precipitated his fall from grace».
By the time Tesla turned 17, he had already forged a portentous visual imagination.
He wrote: ‘When I come up with an idea, I don’t get down to work right away, but start building it in my head. I change the design, make the necessary improvements and operate the device, all inside my head. ‘
He quickly developed an incredible ability to visualize material objects. Thus, when it came time to build them, he already had them almost fully formed.
He had an infallible photographic memory; all he had to do was see or hear something once to always remember it.
He was obsessive. If he was willing to read Voltaire, he had to read every last line he had ever written in his life. He immersed himself in the study of science and mathematics at a time when the mysteries of electricity were waiting to be unraveled.
One of his teachers once said in class that it was impossible to build a motor that would run on alternating current. He disagreed. ‘One day Mr. Tesla may do great things,’ the professor told the class, but he can never do that. ‘
Tesla disagreed. He took what the teacher said as a challenge. He had had a vision and said to himself:» I can do it. «At first, he didn’t see the solution, but he saw the problem. That is, that DC motors are a waste of energy.
There are a series of metallic surfaces that do this against each other: there are sparks, they give off a certain smell, they break, they wear out.
It’s a cumbersome and inelegant method, and Tesla is sure the solution goes through alternating current, and he’s going to go out of his way to make it work.
Later, he would write: «Day and night and year after year, I worked without ceasing.» I could visualize the motors and generators. «The images in my head seemed perfectly real and tangible.» “For me, solving the AC problem was a matter of life or die.”
He knew he would die if he failed. In the grip of obsession, he stopped studying, lost his scholarship, dropped out of school and was adrift.
He plunged into a hallucinatory space, disjointed. And he suffered, in his own words, a total nervous breakdown.
For four years, Tesla was haunted by his imagination, until one day it saved him. In 1882, he was strolling through a park in Budapest at sunset, when the solution, as he put it, appeared to him like lightning. I cannot describe my emotions. «I would have given 1000 secrets of nature in exchange for that one, which I had tried to take from me at all costs, endangering my own existence.» I think I saw a kind of intrinsic beauty … in the AC motor.
«Tesla was an extraordinary inventor and scientist. Tesla gave us alternating current, the one that distributes electricity around the world. Electric motors, generators … Ideas around free energy.«
TESLA’S CHILDREN | THE LEGACY
Innovation has many fathers, and Tesla was certainly one of them.
Tesla had a particular passion for creating things non-stop, no matter how crazy they seemed.
What is a genius? I think that term is being abused a bit, but Tesla finds it a perfect fit because his was not a single invention in a specific field. He worked in many different fields, so he can be considered that way. He knew that many of his ideas would develop in the future.
He sacrificed much of his personal life: he did not marry; He had no children, but, somehow, there are many people who can be spoken of as his descendants, the «sons of Tesla.»
They have the same conviction and the same motivation and intellectual curiosity that he had. They are willing to pursue their goals and dreams, even though many tell them it is impossible.
Watch this video About Tesla’s «Children»
Tesla’s Children.
ABOUT GEMSTONES ARCHITECTURE
Passion. Everything human nature starts with it.
Visionary, combining disciplines such as art, architecture, fashion as one integrative processes.
Anticipatory, this factor in critical future trends and needs as well as the projected impacts of a project’s implementation in the short and long term.
INES J PEDRAS
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