Saturday 27 May 2006

What am I?


Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.


War cannot be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of a planter -- for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way.

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.

All quotes by Nikola Tesla
All photos by Doris



Original Comments:

Cheryl said...
I like this Mr Tesla fella!

I love that you made the pictures work as spiritual interludes between thoughts, similar to how Bart uses them, then got to the bottom to turn what seemed to be a paragraph of continuous thought into snippets (separate quotes) yet to finally give the pictures their other meaning and bring it all together.

Very well done!
Saturday, May 27, 2006 6:32:00 PM
Orikinla Osinachi. said...
That was a perfect post for everyone. Even the Pope would have loved it.

The atheists should find it quite enlightening.

The abstract surrealism was very appropriate for the illustrations.

God bless.
Saturday, May 27, 2006 8:58:00 PM
Britmum said...
A really lovely post Doris.
Sunday, May 28, 2006 12:19:00 AM
Badaunt said...
Tesla was a fascinating person. I read a biography of him years ago and remember thinking he was ahead of his time. Why is he not more famous, I wonder?

(Also, he liked pigeons. :-)
Sunday, May 28, 2006 4:11:00 AM
doris said...
Cheryl What an amazing and lovely and sensitive comment Cheryl. You bring real thought and analysis to what were a bunch of pictures I took yesterday thrown together with some quotes. I do not deserve your response - however, I really like the way the photos landed with each quote (almost by accident) and yet mean so much.

About Mr Tesla - he could be quite a revolting man and difficult. On the other hand, he was pretty amazing and sidelined out of history.

Orikinla Osinachi Gosh.

Britmum Thanks!

Badaunt From the biog of him that I read he seems to have been extremely famous in his time even though bit by bit he was robbed or diddled out of his "inventions". Since then, well you know how "we" like to re-write history and I suppose those that had the "power" didn't want their conniving to be known and so better to re-write history and minimise his role.

LOL I forgot about his like of pigeons! Seems there are a few of us around! ;-)
Sunday, May 28, 2006 8:01:00 AM
Jo said...
Ok catch me up...Tesla was the real discoverer of electricity etc, right? Not Faraday et al? Romanian? (Jo scratches head for any other buried 'Tesla knowledge'...er...no, that's it!)

Beautiful pictures Doris. How did you do them?

And the words...

"Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride"

This is a decsription of the net. With it's capacity to connect, to elevate, to break barriers and to make us all greater than ourselves and more than the sum of our parts.
Sunday, May 28, 2006 12:42:00 PM
doris said...
Jo Depends on politcal geography - two biographies say Croatia.

As for the photos. We had a nerdy day out yesterday and I just took pics (with a tripod). A room full of tesla coils and plasma flashing all over the place. Very scary. Wonderful. Loud. Exciting and inspiring. All home-made instruments in a potentially lethal hobby. Some of those pics are a portion of a flash up to six foot in length. We just had to stand back and hope for the best! I'm sure though that "they" knew what they were doing. At least I hoped so!

And I too couldn't help thinking the parralel to the internet in that quote.
Sunday, May 28, 2006 1:00:00 PM
Anonymous said...
Jo, I believe that electricity was discovered long before Tesla, see for example the overview on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity

But Tesla did indeed invent certain pieces of electrical equipment that are responsible for homes carrying alternating current (AC) rather than direct current (DC).
Sunday, May 28, 2006 11:35:00 PM
zandperl said...
Here in the US, we usually credit Ben Franklin (1706-1790) as the discoverer of electricity via his kite and key experiment. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) studied capacitors and some electromagnetism (how electricity and magnetism interact). And Nikolai Tesla (1856-1943) came up with the AC system, which is the basis of modern home electricity delivery. Tesla also did a lot of work on electromagnetism, and this work has been the target of various alternate history sci-fi works.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 12:32:00 AM
jane said...
That was beautiful, both in words & graphics. I especially liked this sentence, "Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment." So very true.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11:43:00 PM
Gerald Ford said...
and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife... Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment...

Tesla sounds like a Buddhist. :) I always said he was a smart man. Ha ha ha.

Really cool pictures by the way.

I read somewhere how Tesla managed to create an electrical arc 30ft high, and managed to sink so much electricy in the ground that it blew out the city generator miles away.

Pretty revolutionary he was.
Friday, June 02, 2006 5:39:00 AM
rashbre said...
You have an amazing hobby, if thats what it is. I was awestruck with your Tesla flashes. The versions I've seen involve fishbowls and argon gas, not 2 meter arcs across a room.

I happened to be refilling the washers on my car a few days ago and noticed the headlamps had a little sticker about danger 25000 volts, so maybe there's a further source for this type of high frequency madness.

Excellent.
Saturday, June 10, 2006 6:16:00 PM

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