News Notes

Clothing Optional

“It was the middle of nowhere, and under a frigid Nevada sky, about 75 men and women wearing nothing but body paint and their own bravado were cavorting on the barren lake bed here in temperatures that would make your average coyote flinch.” We've all heard of the Lost City of Atlantis. Well, we now have the Lost Desert of Nevada. That's where the Burning Man Festival takes place each year. The festival gets its name from an earlier event in San Francisco when someone cremated an eight-foot-tall effigy of a man. Just about anything goes during the festival, some of it not all that bad because that is where a recreational vehicle outfitted with a pair of 15-foot Tesla coils shot tendrils of lightning into the air. (tip from R.G. Kent)

Scientific Visionary

TCBA subscribers may want to obtain the July/August 2000 issue of UFO magazine. Do not confuse this publication with UFO MAGAZINE. UFO featured several articles devoted to Nikola Tesla and his scientific legacy. One of the articles features an interview with a young (vivacious) woman claiming to be Tesla's grandniece. I found this issue to be of great interest but I didn't buy everything stated about Tesla. (tip from John Hunt)

'Scenes from the Past'

An article by Dr. Robert Hurwitz covering “Nikola Tesla's Legacy to Modern Imaging” appeared in RADIOGRAPHICS (Volume 20, #4). The essay briefly reflected upon Tesla's work with “shadowgraphs” prior to the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen of Germany. (tip from Doc Taylor)

Power to the People

The September 2000 issue of MECHANICAL ENGINEERING featured an article on the contributions of mechanical engineering to the electrification of the industrial world. Page 79 discusses the part played by Nikola Tesla. Tesla is also featured on the magazine's cover as well as on page 80 where an illustration shows Tesla seated near the magnifying transmitter with cascading electrical discharges hurling over a distance of 20 feet. (tip from Tim Flood)

Tesla's Purple Free Energy Plates?

There was a time when I looked forward to seeing Nikola Tesla receive recognition for his many contributions to science. But these days, with the internet and all that, I'm not so sure. Take, for instance, those Tesla Purple Free Energy Plates being auctioned over eBay. According to the claims, the plates will nourish plant life, heal wounds, change human behavior, and protect one from electromagnetic radiations.

According to the information accompanying the sale, a Ralph Bergstresser was able to discover the secret of altering the aluminum in the Positive Energy Plates after reading Tesla's notes. Apparently, those are the notes that all other researchers must have overlooked. Next thing you know, some seedy journalist will pick up on this drivel and use it to debase Tesla.

Incidentally, have you noticed how vendors on eBay are attaching the words “Tesla coil” to just about any electrical component being sold? I saw one adv. for “Tesla Coil Capacitors.” The only thing wrong is that the caps were larger than those Tesla used at Colorado. By the way, I have a “Tesla Coil Snow Thrower” for sale. Anyone interested?