6 April 2009, mkrause
Countess Vilma Parlaghy-Lwow knew who she was portraying, they had met some 10 years ago. The two persons in the room talked in German; they had learnt the harsh language in school “over there”, in Europe. Also known as the language of poets, it was this language that the two best-agers had some story to tell in. She could tell that he sat in the same chair where the German emperor Wilhelm II once sat in. Now, the countess had another emperor in front of her, an emperor of the technological age. Nikola Tesla had ordered that the room should be lit by his oscillators, producing a somewhat bluish gleam on his face. It was this color he liked most, it is the color of dreams. Not long ago, he had been the most respected electrician of his age, quite on the same level as Thomas Alva Edison. Now, Tesla was living on credit. His WorldWideWireless system in Wardenclyffe didn’t succeed; his turbine was a commercial failure, too. And the luxury cars his Waltham speedometer was built into were rare high-class product, no Ford Model-T. If you look at the painting, Tesla fixes his gaze on something very distant, out of sight. The painting can be seen in Northern Germany (Husum), where the sea has washed ashore the so-called Blue Portrait of Nikola Tesla. It’s well worth a visit.
Inzwischen lebte Tesla ausschließlich von Kredit. Sein geplantes weltweites Drahtlos-System war kein Erfolg, auch seine Turbine nicht, und die Autos, in die sein von der Firma Waltham produzierter Tachometer eingebaut wurde, waren seltene Luxusautos. Schauen Sie sich das Porträt an; Tesla fixiert etwas weit abgelegenes, außerhalb des Bildes Gelegenes. Sie könne sich das Bild in Norddeutschland anschauen, wo die Sie das so genannte „Blue Portrait“ von Nikola Tesla an Land gespült hat. Schauen Sie sich das Bild an, es lohnt sich.
27 March 2009, mkrause
Facing the retreat of his sole financial backer John Pierpont Morgan, Tesla went desintegrated into other worlds. Before, he thought he had a silent agreement with Saint Sava (St. George), his patron saint. They would always stick together, Tesla thought. And now, with “Morgan the Gorgon” denying any further funding, Tesla felt that the saint has turned his back on him. But Tesla also had to keep his self-esteem, on a level quite high: Tesla reckoned his work immortal; he saw that he had brought in the greatest inventions of all times, and also that his name was linked to even more inventions than Archimedes or Galileo. Wardenclyffe destroyed not only implied that a huge edifice was shattered, or a dream was all over. The failure of Wardenclyffe shattered Tesla’s mind, and it took a long way to recover.
13 March 2009, mkrause
The House of Morgan: the mighty John Pierpont and his commanding daughter Anne were Tesla’s new target at the end of the first year of the new century (1901). It could have been a match made in heaven, a marriage of the ‘wizard of electricity’ and the foundress of suffragette city. However, Tesla, as always, went for the work, not for his love or personal relationships. And it worked, Pierpont Morgan gave him a lot of money, but for a price: 51% of all of Tesla’s patents were in the hands of the Wall Street Mogul now. And then Marconi sent three dots across the Atlantic, making Tesla’s most ambitious project obsolete. Teslas”WorldWideWireless system” was not needed any more, and it was much too expensive. Unfinished as it was Wardenclyffe had to be abandoned.
8 March 2009, mkrause
Sailing under the warm vent of financier John Jacob Astor’s investment Tesla started his Colorado Springs experiments. Knob Hill, the location of his experimental barn, is a nice neighbourhood today. The view up to Pike’s Peak is enormous; and one can imagine the time then, when heavy weatherfronts went about the plateau, Tesla and his colleagues Kalman Czito and Fritz Lowenstein watching the lightning storms, trying to make use of them (and finding Schumann cavities) ….
3 March 2009, mkrause
In 1898, the 1. Electrical Exhibition was opened in Chicago on May 2nd, by a telegram from U.S.-President William McKinley. The “War Fair” presented new weaponery for warfare, water bombs, submarine missiles and the like. Tesla’s robot boat - the first-ever radio-controlled vehicle - was designed to carry 6 torpedoes behind the front lines of the enemy, launch the missiles and return back safely. Today, we all have an understanding of this tactical weapon, in 1898 Tesla was laughed at and dismissed. Here the Tesla proverb “he was too far ahead of his time” is definitely true. Others cashed in on Tesla’s invention, in this case the otherwise well-known inventor John Hays Hammond Jr.; to call Mr. Hammond “father of radio-control” is not exactly true, but worth a definite laughter.
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“).
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)?
