HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ Luyt

There exist great myths around Tesla:

"Hardly anything written about Nikola Tesla fails to exaggerate his inventions and deify the man. Factually wrong descriptions of his accomplishments are found all over the place. His name is broadly smeared by association with virtually every crank conspiracy theory on the planet. They want magically easy answers to complicated problems, and when they hear that Tesla invented such answers and that the government and industry suppressed them, they trumpet his name to the world. This group has become little more than a cult, an insult to the man and his accomplishments."

"Tesla is not known to have ever mentioned ball lightning in any of his writing or speaking, and no record from his time is known to exist stating that he created, demonstrated, or knew about anything that could reasonably be called ball lightning — despite intense rumormongering to the contrary"

"Tesla posed for a famous publicity photograph, that you've seen many times, of himself sitting in a chair inside his lab taking notes while the air all around him is filled with such streamers from his giant coil."

"During the final decade of his life, Tesla was essentially penniless and living in a New York hotel, consumed by what we think today was probably obsessive compulsive disorder. It was during this period — and not earlier during his productive laboratory years — that he openly spoke of having built and tested a Death Ray."

Source: 'The Cult of Nikola Tesla', http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4345

⬐ glurgh

The internet Tesla mythology is indeed unfortunate ('unknown genius' - for a man familiar to every physics student and with an SI unit named after him) and he was certainly an eccentric, self-promoter and not free of obviously misplaced ideas (he railed against the theory of relativity, for instance).

Beside his genuine scientific inventions and the crazy talk of death rays, though, he seems to have been among the first to give some thought to the implications and possibility of global communications.

"it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place." He didn't actually invent any of that but the vision is broad and striking, for the first decade of the 20th century.

⬐ swah

Some people identify with him because he is the litle guy against the The Man (Edison).

⬐ Luyt

Oh, and about the wireless power, which the video clip is about:

"Did Tesla plan to transmit power world-wide through the sky?

It was his ultimate plan, but the farthest he ever got was the partial construction of his famous tower at Wardenclyffe which was intended for wireless communication across the Atlantic. His worldwide wireless power system was theoretical only, employing the Schumann-Tesla resonance to charge the Earth's ionosphere such that a simple handheld coil could receive electrical power for free anywhere, and everywhere, in the world. Tesla's idea was innovative, but innovative idea it remained, as debts mounted and the tower was dismantled before it ever got to be used. Now that the nature of the ionosphere is much better understood, physicists now consider Tesla's concept unworkable, and no attempts to test it have ever worked.

All sorts of conspiracy theories exist, for example that the HAARP research facility in Alaska is secretly a test of Tesla's worldwide power grid, or some sort of superweapon based on it. The profound differences between these systems become clear upon doing even the most basic of research."

⬐ sp332

I'd forgotten about the "charging the ionosphere" part, but there is a wireless (well, effectively wireless) transmission system that only requires a common ground. Even just plugging a wire into the earth works. http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3696.en.h... Note the video linked at the bottom includes a demo.

⬐ officialjunk

hmm... i believe that for long distances, tesla planned to use the conductivity of the earth itself, because of it's low impedance, to send AC current to any point on the plannet's surface (http://www.google.com/patents/US1119732?printsec=abstract).

for short distances, air transmission was possible, but there is strong drop-off in efficiency because of air being an insulator (https://www.google.com/patents/US645576?printsec=abstract).

also, people do consider his work "workable:" http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/wireless-power-0409 the rumor is that tesla intentionally left out key details in his patents to keep from dangerous tech being in the wrong hands, while maintaining the rights to the tech. so, we aren't even able to reproduce tesla's levels of efficiency or distance without re-discovering certain aspects... but to say that physicists consider his concepts unworkable is false.

edit: typo

⬐ greatguns

You are focusing on the negative. Without Tesla's innovations, we'd probably be at least decades behind what we currently use.

If he hadn't invented the AC motor, it is certainly possible that it would have taken much longer to develop and most likely DC would be much more prevalent today, which could have significantly increased costs of energy.

Without the Tesla coil, radio would not have developed as quickly, so technology around communication (amongst other things) would probably not be as well-developed as it is today.

He came up with the tiltrotor/tilt-wing concept used in helicopters as well as the earliest proposal for the use of turbine engines in rotor aircraft. So aviation would probably be set decades back without him.

If he hadn't invented a radio-controlled boat and have shown it of to others, technology related to remote-control may not have developed as quickly.

He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future. I also think he is right about this.

The man had hundreds of patents and was able to drive Edison almost into the ground, Edison's company basically having been the Google of its day.

I for one am fascinated by Tesla. Without him, the world would have been much less interesting.

⬐ joonix

What does this have to do with the video? Or did you not watch it?

⬐ wissler

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

⬐ simonsquiff

It saddens me that this is the current top comment (to me it's a good example of what PG was complaining about) - this video is a comment on VCs, not on Tesla. Tesla is just the straight man. But the top comment is nit picking on how Tesla isn't really like this pastiche. I'm much more interested in how this does or doesn't reflect the reality of VCs.

⬐ larrys

"I'm much more interested in how this does or doesn't reflect the reality of VCs."

There is a good documentary film called "Tales of the Script" (relates to a similar things in Hollywood)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045642/

...that deals with the issue of screen writers vs. who they are trying to get to accept their ideas. Forgetting that this is a cartoon and that is an actual documentary (with quotes from screen writers) the common theme (it's a really good watch btw) is that those in charge simply "don't get it" and are somehow oppressive and total dicks to the screenwriters and have martini lunches everyday.

As if the people in charge, "Hollywood", don't have their ass on the line and were somehow chosen by lottery to decide who succeeds and who fails. And that they have absolutely no clue at all about what they are doing in their jobs.

Yet, people have managed to get beyond that in Hollywood and succeed in that business. Why is that? Perhaps because they are able to work harder and work within the system (no matter how they personally feel about it) or perhaps because their ideas really are better. (Or maybe they slept with the right person?) Who cares? That's the way the world works. You only need one VC (or angel) to get you funded (if that is what you want that is). Very simple system out there which is the golden rule. "he who has the gold rules". Stop complaining (not saying you) about VC's. That's the system and they have the power if what you want is what they have.

⬐ JDGM

Hysterical. I especially liked the way one or more of the VCs said "uh-huh", "right", or "yeah" every two seconds when Tesla was talking. Reminded me of Harry Shearer in Wayne's World 2.

I didn't quite understand the ending though. "You haven't really seen any of the inventions yet. Would you like to?", "Sure", Tesla points finger -> I don't get what just happened.

⬐ arunoda

Here is the kickstarter project related to this video: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-of-niko...

⬐ smalldaddy

Created to support this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dorrian/a-statue-of-niko...

⬐ dmk23

The funny thing - this video is not too far off in describing Tesla's actual interactions with financiers of his time.

If you are going to make financial players a dependency in your business plan you'll have to jump through similar kind of hoops.

On the other hand Thomas Edison figured out how to bootstrap his enterprises, maintain control and avoid dealing with this kind of nonsense.

⬐ pcrh

It's not too far off my dealings with Angels and VCs in the UK, either. It took more than one meeting for me to realize that a "deck" was a powerpoint presentation...

⬐ rabarbers

I too did not knew what is deck and as I am not native English speaker, it sounded like Tesla VCs want too start with seeing a dick :D.

⬐ ValentineC

I've created an 'Ask HN' about words like these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5732882

If there were any other things you were unsure about before, could you please share them? I'm hoping something constructive comes out of this.

⬐ JanezStupar

The moral of this story is "Do not try to be like Nikola Tesla, because it will not help you in any way."

⬐ greatguns

I don't think so. It's just a bad parody of VC's.

Someone with the intellect and having developed disruptive technologies similar to some of what Tesla patented could still easily score investors. I think whoever did this was partially right-on but mostly just pissed at the way things are. The fact is, money doesn't grow on trees. There has to be a filter, and that filter isn't perfect.

⬐ pcrh

I think many people such as myself (biotech scientist) fail to see how far we have to move away from the "cutting edge" in order to attract interest. A basic researcher thinks nothing of investing 3 years of labor into something that might work, because if you look at it this way and also that way, then it means the other, etc, etc.

The time horizon for VCs is much shorter than that. If your idea is not working now, then you have very little chance of getting investment.

⬐ Hitchhiker

Paradox is once you pull an Edison , financiers wish to have interactions with you.

This goes from the very top end of town to oblivion. Because, at the root of it is that gotcha.. money for nothing.. many know how the rest of that song goes.