Thursday, December 3, 2020

End of Tesla Era

Much effort is being done nowadays to cover the name of Nikola Tesla, greatest inventor of all times, father of all electrical and electronic devices as we know them. One of those efforts is the brand Tesla, a startup manufacturer for electric cars only. Why should they have designed and built a car from scratch just to make it electrical? There was so much expertise at traditional manufacturers, all they have to do is replace engine and fuel tank with an electric engine and a battery. But maybe they didn't want to and Tesla is kinda of forcing them.

Nikola Tesla. Could one single person with the education and technology existing at the end of 19th century have done what he did? 700 patents? For those who don't know, a patent is some sort of juridical protection over the design of a new device or component. If you get a patent on an idea, you can make money out of it because nobody else can use your idea without your approval. It is one way to stimulate inventors and research. But in order to do so, after you "get the idea" you have to write down a complete description in such a way it would stand in court as proof it was your idea so you would discourage eventual attempts to infringe and then file that description with the authority in your country.

Anybody knows how much time it takes to write and file a patent? I'd say from one week to one month/inventor and/or attorney, depending on complexity, novelty, previously existing similar ones. Today's filing fees are more than 5000 dollars and you cannot be sure if you have it approved and especially if you will get anything in return. Smallest mistake could lead to failure to protect. Easiest way to go around a patent is to file another one and improve enough on the original idea (so you have to cover also in your description all possible improvements).

Thinking about how much money Musk's Tesla had to pay in royalties over existing patents or to lawyers to file new ones to go around those to build a car from scratch and he how gave them all away in 2014.

There are sites that made calculation on how much money Tesla have made out of his inventions and they say he should have been one of the richest people on planet at that time but he died bankrupt and senile in hotel room he wasn't paying for. That is the reason why i highly doubt Nikola did all those by himself but they were done by whole teams. Guys like Austro-Hungarian born Nikola Tesla, all the way to Intels' co-founder Hungarian born Andrew Grove, where/are just fronts, while the source of their knowledge and technology where most likely documents found in the Great Pyramid during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. So they first had to invent Tesla.

"Tesla" did study in Austria and worked first at Budapest Telephone Company. Telephone was the ultimate thing done with wired technology, before Tesla invented wireless. Which was first attributed to the Italian Marconi. The radio.

Which what this post is all about. Radio made possible instant spread of information to the masses. If it was used for our good or for our doom. It all depends on the source of the invention, if it was from a genuine genius or from a past civilization possibly of alien origin destroyed after a global conflict with locals.

I'm writing all these trying to coerce everybody into thinking. All of a sudden, at the beginning of the 19th century we get this out of this world technology which would allow those who control it to control the minds of all people.

One example which again, nowadays they make big efforts trying to cover. Like most anything.

The infamous live transmission of Orson Welles that "was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode at 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network".

«The program's format was a simulated live newscast of developing events. The first two-thirds of the hour-long play is a contemporary retelling of events of the novel, presented as news bulletins interrupting programs of dance music. "I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening," Welles later said, "and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.»

There was a warning at the beginning but who listened to that?

«The illusion of realism was furthered because the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining program without commercial interruptions; the first break in the drama was about 35 minutes after the introduction, right after Martian war machines were described devastating New York City. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction indicating that the show was a drama. However, «contemporary research suggests that this happened only in rare instances».

I think it is safe to assume that out of boredom people back then were browsing radio stations pretty much like we do today with TV channels. So what i think it happened is most people stumbled upon that transmission after it began, obviously without hearing the warning, could not ignore it and as they continue to listen until they went crazy, ran away, started to prepare, etc..

I first read about this on the early days of the internet, probably before that "contemporary research". They were talking about people listening to other broadcasts, then tuned later into this one. Hundreds of suicides and chaos all around the country.

But this was just a test. Done in 1938. They wanted to know exactly how people reacted to prepare the recipe with the right ingredients for psychological preparation for the future planned war. Or maybe it was the first mass media scale use of reverse psychology, a failed alien invasion, as many people kept asking themselves, where all this technology is coming for? Both?

But before that. Think about how radio changed the world. Some people could communicate faster than others, from unknown location to unknown location. For about 50 years very few had the technology to scan the whole spectrum. You could schedule a rendezvous with someone and transmit with a code during a very brief period, before they could find the frequencies.

But the idea behind this post is other. I've been intrigued lately, actually since i came to US about how smart people i talk to are. Like a whole bunch of experts in everything where whispering in their ears what to say.

Now we all know it is possible with the help of micro headphones. During that era Tesla was going around the country with his electricity promoting shows. Imagine him or others, like Einstein, awing other people in conversations with their genius.

Usually nowadays micro headphones are associated with much electronics, many components, blue tooth maybe which is a short waves short range type of radio communication.

I remember something since i was a kid. There is something called unpowered crystal radio. It is based on the fact that actual radio transmitters are broadcasting with unusually high power signals. In the US power for radio stations is limited to to 50kW or about twice the power needed for a car to cruise, or maybe to power 5 homes. A few miles away from the station, that power is still enough to move the membrane of a headphone, if hooked to a circuit tuned on that frequency. The "crystal" is a form of an early diode which was capable of rectifying (back then it was called "detecting") the high (radio) frequency of a tuned circuit made of a capacitor and a coil and turn it into a signal that could move (vibrate) a headphone's membrane enough for someone with good hearing, like a kid, to hear the broadcast. So it was also possible with the technology of those times to make a sound heard with a small power over a short distance. But i bet you don't even need a crystal for that. You can have stuck in someone's year a tiny coil that would vibrate a membrane if the transmitter is within a few meters. To greatly enhance the appearance of personalities in public. I imagine on the other side of the curtain or wall or inside a van all the experts relaxed in armchairs next to a transmitter saying (whispering) the next line. Lucky those who were convinced cause i assume only the ignorant survived Tesla Era which is being brought to an end nowadays as we speak by the new technology, the Internet, which finally gives all the people the freedom to exchange information. Though very late.

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