27 February 2009, mkrause
Tesla Blue Portrait is back!
At NordseeMuseum Husum, a unique oil-painting from New York City, thought to be lost for 85 years, has been rediscovered in our archives. The treasure found might correctly be called a sensation, as the canvas shows the only portrait of the famous inventor of Alternating Current and the radio, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Tesla has been called a „Master of lightning“, „the genius, who lit the world“; or: „He invented the future.“ No superlative seems too big to characterize this brilliant inventor, whom the world owes not only radio and ‘electricity from the grid, i.e. A.C.-generators, -transformers, and –motors, but remote control and fluorescent lamps as well. The first power station on an industrial scale at Niagara-Falls was equipped with generators based on Tesla’s Polyphase System, the power grid still feeding the world with electrical energy. Maybe the work of Nikola Tesla can be summarized best in the words of physics-Nobel-prizewinner Arthur Holly Compton (1892-1962, Nobel prize 1927): „Tesla is entitled to the enduring gratitude of mankind.”
Hard to believe but Nikola Tesla only once in his lifetime sat for a portrait, and he did this only for the painter-princess Vilma Princess Lwoff-Parlaghy. The blue light for illuminating the setting was installed by the inventor himself at her atelier. When on March 1st 1916 the public could examine the portrait for the first time, it made a blue impression, an effect created by blue filters placed in front of specially designed lamps. This is how the oil-painting got its name as the ‚blue portrait‘.
The NordseeMuseum will present this unique treasure on March 2nd 2009, 11 o’clock at a public press presentation - first time ever in EUROPE - first time after 85 years!!! The follow-up exhibition will be „Mythos, Strom und eine Malerfürstin. Das „blue portrait“ von Nikola Tesla, dem Mann, der die Welt erleuchtete“. (Myth, electricity and the painter-princess. The „blue portrait“ of Nikola Tesla, the „man who lit he world“).
, mkrause
Tesla, Marconi, Slaby, Hertz, Lodge, Pupin, deForest … all these gentlemen were the fathers of radio! But the first public demonstration of the wireless transmission of intelligence was undoubtfully performed by Nikola Tesla in Philadelphia (the “Philadelphia lecture”) in February 1893. But his divergent thinking led him soon into the research of other areas, like phosphorescent lighting, remote control, electrotherapeutics. And he didn’t think of patenting his radio set-up until, well … Marconi was a clever man, he used inventions made by others (not only Tesla) … and then Marconi Ltd. was held first, for a long time, until today to be precise. But Marconi isn’t, Tesla is the father of radio.
19 February 2009, mkrause
Now, what did Tesla do in the 1890’s? Often, he did hang out with his friend Stanford White, going sailing, drinking or partying! In his lab, Tesla tried to perfect his high-frequency system, producing longer and longer streamers to create artificial lightning. And then John Jacob Astor IV comes in, with fresh investment. The result is Tesla’s experimental laboratory in Colorado Springs, to produce even more powerful artificial lightning! Now Teslas idea of a World System emerges, with a first tower in the States, a second in Paris, to transmit signals to the upcoming world exhibition there … financing of such an enterprise takes time, and the exhibitio was already over, when JP Morgan jumps in with 150.000 $, a somehow considerable sum, but not for Tesla and his dream of worldwide wireless power transmission ….
17 February 2009, mkrause
Where did Tesla get his strength from? Increasing human energy? After desaster hit in March 1895 (verything he did until then was destroyed by fire), he needed some weeks do recover and go on with his research. Is wireless energy feasable on a big scale? Has somebody contact to MIT (Stoljacic)?
16 February 2009, mkrause
Starting the day with a fine quote: “When we look at the world around us, on Nature, we are impressed with its beauty and grandeur. Each thing we perceive, though it may be vanishingly small, is in itself a world, that is, like the whole of the universe …..” (Philadelphia lecture, 1893)
