The solution to Tesla’s alternating current motor problem came to him as a ‘eureka’ moment during a walk in the park in 1882: the rotating magnetic field, and the induction motor. The applications of this innovation would literally change the world.
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If Tesla’s life were a movie, these would be the “montage years”–five years edited down into a few minutes (probably with melancholy music playing underneath) showing us that things didn’t work out for our hero for a long time until his big break came at the end of Act 1.
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Tesla goes on the lamb not once but twice, with a bit of schooling and a bit of gambling and at least one brush with death keeping him busy in between.
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This week, we’ll cover Tesla’s schooling from the time he first enrolled in primary school, right up until he heads off for engineering school in the late 1870s. It’s a major turning point in Tesla’s life, and it makes sense to break there until next time.
Nikola Tesla was born at the stroke of midnight between July 9 and 10, 1856. In this episode, we’ll learn about Tesla’s childhood years on the rural frontier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and how early tragedy and a contentious relationship with his father would shape the rest of his life and give him the abilities he needed to make later breakthrough innovations in electricity.
This is a story of America in the late 19th Century—the Gilded Age. It’s a story of New York City before the automobile. It’s a story of robber barons, of industry, and of inventions that would change the world. And it’s the story of one man—one inventor—in particular: Nikola Tesla.
In this 000 episode, I’ll introduce myself, my plans for the podcast, and just what you can expect from this on-going look at the life, inventions, and legacy of Nikola Tesla. And we’ll do our best over the course of this series to separate the man and his incredible real life from the myths that have sprung up about him.
Thanks to my co-author Tony Pi for the head’s-up about the first review of our story “The Waxing Disquiet,” which appeared last month in Deep Magic.
The Waxing Quiet, by Tony Pi & Stephen Kotowych in Deep Magic. “He retreated to the calculation antechamber, where the tallylooms worked unceasingly. Click-clack went the wooden hooks, tying knots in the coarse hemp twine, the knot-history of their answers.” Fate and faith are at the center of this story, set in a society where a complex loom is used to determine which decisions are the right ones: for the society as a whole, and for individuals. The loom itself is a breathtaking piece of imagined technology, and I love the way the organization of the society uses concepts and terminology from bees and bee-keeping. A uniquely imagined world, and I’ll be thinking about that loom for a while…
Thanks to Maria Haskins for the shout-out–we’re glad she liked the story!
– S.
The June 2017 issue of Deep Magic–which includes “The Waxing Disquiet” by Tony Pi and me–is available now! Here’s the epic table of contents for Deep Magic’s 1-year anniversary issue!
– Short story “The Black Irix” by the legendary Terry Brooks
– Short story “Metamorphistry” by Wall Street Journal Bestselling author Jeff Wheeler
– Short story “The Waxing Disquiet” by Tony Pi & Stephen Kotowych
– Short story “Bad Dog” by Patrice Sarath (Gordath Wood)
– Short story “Dreams of a Radiant Sentry” by Christen Anne Kelley
– Article “Rock Your World in 5 Easy Steps”, by Sara B. Larson, Author
– Article “The Problems with Publishing Contracts”, by David Vandagriff, lawyer specializing in the literary industry
– Interview with Matthew Bialer, agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates
– Book Excerpt by Wall Street Journal Bestselling author, Charlie N. Holmberg, “The Fifth Doll”
– Book Excerpt by bestselling author Carrie Anne Noble, “The Gold-Son”
Order Deep Magic June Issue TODAY:
US: http://amzn.to/2pJl7sg
UK: http://amzn.to/2pV5H3Y
CAN: http://amzn.to/2qxitXI
AUS: http://amzn.to/2qxfzlw
Very pleased to announce that “The Waxing Disquiet”, a collaboration with Tony Pi, has sold to Deep Magic. It should appear in that magazine’s June issue.
This is the first collaboration for Tony and I, though we’ve known each other for more than ten years, including belonging to The Stop-Watch Gang writer’s group.
“The Waxing Disquiet” is set in a low-metal civilization built around hive-pyramids, bee-keeping, and the candle-and-waterworks-powered tallyloom computers that direct and order the society.
It was a lot of fun writing collaboratively with Tony. We both really loved this world, and I hope its one we can return to again soon.
And as it happens, Tony was able to arrange for a class of University of Toronto mechanical engineers to use the tallyloom idea as the basis for their year-end projects. Several teams actually built tallying machines that used only wood, water, wax, and weights to operate. It was very cool to see something you wrote about come to life like that!
– S.
Usually when you hear about unintended consequences they’re bad ones–here’s a good one for a change!
A pair of NASA space probes have detected an artificial bubble around Earth that forms when radio communications from the ground interact with high-energy radiation particles in space, the agency announced this week. The bubble forms a protective barrier around Earth, shielding the planet from potentially dangerous space weather, like solar flares and other ejections from the sun.
This bubble is caused by human use of very-low frequency (VLF) radio waves. The observations suggest that the VLF waves can push radiation particles away, since the Van Allen belts (naturally occurring bands of charged particles that surround the Earth) are much further from Earth now than in the 1960s, when we sent fewer VLF transmissions.
Mankind: mucking up the cosmos since 1957! ™