Well, only a little bit. That photograph yesterday of Nikola
Tesla apparently calmly sitting and reading a book while a spectacular
artificial lightning display zapped about him was in fact a double exposure.
But I have seen some genuine photographs of him standing with one hand on the
top of one of his large ‘Tesla Coils’ (a sort of high-frequency transformer)
and allowing absurdly long arcs, sparks, ionized electrical discharges,
whatever you want to call them to pass over, under, and even through him with
no apparent ill effect.
Tesla had an endearing taste for the spectacular and showy,
and an imagination guaranteed to cause the people he talked to, especially
Patent Office officials and potential business partners, to think ‘We’ve got a
right one ’ere’ but this could be misleading: he had a knowledge and
understanding of complex electrical matters such as the behaviour of
multi-phase alternating currents in inductive and capacitive circuitry that
would put the most advanced physicists to shame, and many of his ingenious
inventions became essential to modern technology.
No picture today; I drank too much a couple of evenings ago
before I was well enough to do so and am very tired.
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