Greg Leyh's Tesla Coil Featured in National Geographic's "Future Shocked"

Arcing from a Tesla coil, 1.8 million volts shoots through a Christmas tree, down a cage holding physicist Austin Richards, and into the floor of artist Christian Ristow’s San Francisco warehouse. Later in this performance a claw destroyed the tree. “There’s a certain thrill in viewing raw power unleashed,” Ristow says. “There’s something shocking about a machine that appears alive.”

Some futurists speculate that robots may one day replace humans as Earth’s dominant creatures. Nikola Tesla, who invented radio-controlled machines as well as the coil, foresaw the impact in 1919. “Teleautomata will be ultimately produced,” he wrote. “Their advent will create a revolution.”