Original poster: "Gary Peterson" <gary@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Original poster: Steve Conner <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
. . . It would have been interesting to know what Tesla's contemporaries, like Maxwell and Thompson, thought of his work. . . . Did they respect Tesla or did they think he was nuts?
This is one of most beautiful things ever produced in the way of apparatus: I take a generator of any kind. With the generator I charge a condenser. Then I discharge the condenser under conditions which result in the production of vibrations. Now, it was known since Lord Kelvin that the condenser discharge would give this vibration, but I perfected my apparatus to such a degree that it became an instrument utilizable in the arts, in a much broader way than Lord Kelvin had contemplated as possible. In fact, years afterwards when Lord Kelvin honored me by presenting to the British Association one of my oscillators of a perfected form, he said that it was "a wonderful development and destined to be of great importance." -- Nikola Tesla, 1916