About the title...
It's a working title. So far, I don't know how I'll tie it in with the story I have in mind. Nonetheless, I've long wanted to use it for a story, and since I needed a title to register for the NaNoBlogMo list, it seemed as good as any. Here's to hoping it will relate by November 30.
Nikola Tesla was the Croatian-born inventor whom all movie mad scientists are modeled after, though he was more fastidious about his appearance than the Einstein lookalikes of the movies. The doohickies in the mad scientists' labs that shoot sparks around are Tesla coils, a type of transformer invented by Mr. Tesla. Tesla also invented things like alternating current, the radio, the electric turbine, and the radio-controlled boat. He laid out the principles for the fluorescent light bulb and a few other things we still use every day. Encyclopedia tend to say those were invented by other people, but those people either out-and-out stole Tesla's inventions, or invented them on their own many years after Tesla came up with the ideas and did not file patents on them (he did hold 700 patents at the time of his death). Not bad for a guy who really didn't understand what electricity was.
In addition to those and a few other inventions that made the 20th and 21st centuries possible, Tesla came up with some things that were so far out there that people thought he was nuts, and they're only about half wrong. Tesla may have proven that you can be both a raving lunatic and right. Now, of course, we know that the Earth has a resonant frequency (though lately no one has proposed splitting the earth in two with it) and that distant cosmic objects emit radio waves. Tesla is also said to have had designs for a death ray, a method of transmitting power through the atmosphere for free, and global wi-fi. The particulars of how those last three work, or even if they work at all, are a bit sketchy. Tesla didn't write down a whole lot.
So, much of Tesla's life was spent in the kiddie pool of eccentricity. Toward the end, he went off the deep end. He holed up in a New York hotel room, had some serious obsessive-compulsive issues, and was unusually attached to pigeons. He is said to have ordered in special birdseed for his pigeons, and became particularly attached to one white female pigeon who is variously described as his muse, best friend, or the object of a platonic love affair. He was devastated when that pigeon died.
The pigeons intrigued me. From their perspective, they were well taken care of--primo seed, most likely a regular feeding schedule, and a caretaker that genuinely liked them. They lived on pigeon Easy Street. Pigeons are ignorant creatures, and had no way of knowing that their high life was a manifestation of their caretaker's mental illness. They were well taken care of, but only because the person taking care of them was crazy. The possibilities for metaphor are mind-boggling, particularly when you factor in that the day Tesla died, the birdseed suddenly stopped coming.
Nikola Tesla was the Croatian-born inventor whom all movie mad scientists are modeled after, though he was more fastidious about his appearance than the Einstein lookalikes of the movies. The doohickies in the mad scientists' labs that shoot sparks around are Tesla coils, a type of transformer invented by Mr. Tesla. Tesla also invented things like alternating current, the radio, the electric turbine, and the radio-controlled boat. He laid out the principles for the fluorescent light bulb and a few other things we still use every day. Encyclopedia tend to say those were invented by other people, but those people either out-and-out stole Tesla's inventions, or invented them on their own many years after Tesla came up with the ideas and did not file patents on them (he did hold 700 patents at the time of his death). Not bad for a guy who really didn't understand what electricity was.
In addition to those and a few other inventions that made the 20th and 21st centuries possible, Tesla came up with some things that were so far out there that people thought he was nuts, and they're only about half wrong. Tesla may have proven that you can be both a raving lunatic and right. Now, of course, we know that the Earth has a resonant frequency (though lately no one has proposed splitting the earth in two with it) and that distant cosmic objects emit radio waves. Tesla is also said to have had designs for a death ray, a method of transmitting power through the atmosphere for free, and global wi-fi. The particulars of how those last three work, or even if they work at all, are a bit sketchy. Tesla didn't write down a whole lot.
So, much of Tesla's life was spent in the kiddie pool of eccentricity. Toward the end, he went off the deep end. He holed up in a New York hotel room, had some serious obsessive-compulsive issues, and was unusually attached to pigeons. He is said to have ordered in special birdseed for his pigeons, and became particularly attached to one white female pigeon who is variously described as his muse, best friend, or the object of a platonic love affair. He was devastated when that pigeon died.
The pigeons intrigued me. From their perspective, they were well taken care of--primo seed, most likely a regular feeding schedule, and a caretaker that genuinely liked them. They lived on pigeon Easy Street. Pigeons are ignorant creatures, and had no way of knowing that their high life was a manifestation of their caretaker's mental illness. They were well taken care of, but only because the person taking care of them was crazy. The possibilities for metaphor are mind-boggling, particularly when you factor in that the day Tesla died, the birdseed suddenly stopped coming.
posted by Janet | 11:15 AM
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