tesla, thanks monte davis / the baileys

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

>In his youth and in his prime, Nicola Tesla grasped electromagnetic theory
>and practice far better than I ever will, and accomplished things that
>changed the world. But gradually, along the way, "change the world" took
>priority -- and increasingly in his last decades, whatever bending of the
>science might be necessary to make that possible, so be it. 

coupla addendoddities leap to mind,

a) Spider Robinson uses the Tunguska incident for a revisioning of the Tesla story, a lot of fun if you like that sort of thing.  And the "no wine before it's time" guy (big fella, also made a radio show about Martians I think) made a film about Tesla, black and white though (bummer)

b) my friend's grandpa used to deliver something to Wardenclyffe, and he saw Tesla's guys using cordless power tools - he said the people pointed to some kind of generator as the source.  Obviously if true, it was very close range (and one wonders if anybody did epidemiological followups with the employees) - this isn't an attempted refutation or even a counterfact, just something I thought was interesting

c) there's a Tesla group on Yahoo groups, mixed bag but some gems.  I don't follow it as closely as I follow the p-list, but every so often somebody brings out a technical refutation of the "free power" idea, and every so often somebody else tries to defend it or offers a forthcoming implementation (none of which yet has come to aught that I'm aware of) but fun to watch

Dave, John Bailey and I aren't related as far as I know - John, please correct me if I'm wrong here...