Today is the last day to contribute to saving Nikola Tesla’s last laboratory – the Wardenclyffe facility at Shoreham, Long Island. Check out the campaign through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo at http://www.indiegogo.com/teslamuseum.
I did a long post on the efforts of the Tesla Science Center to secure the property and how Matthew Inman – creator of The Oatmeal – used the power of his huge social networking presence to raise cash. The response was simply amazing.
But the clock is ticking down to the last few hours. Go to the IndieGoGo site for details and how to donate to the cause. Once the site can be purchased, the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe plans to renovate it into a museum and science center.
More information on my book “Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star” can be found on my Tesla page. Don’t forget to subscribe to the posts by email on the home page. And feel free to “Like” my Facebook author’s page and connect on LinkedIn. Share with your friends with the buttons below.
Ah, Venice. Italy. One of my favorite stops on my world tour. I have added another image to my header, joining the five other images that rotate from page to page. The photo was taken near Piazza San Marco – St. Mark’s Plaza – in Venice during a beautiful late summer day.
The vagaries of the cover photo requires some cropping to fit the space, so here is the full photo.
In the background you can see the 16th Century Benedictine Church of San Giorgio Maggiore located on a small island called, not surprisingly, Giorgio Maggiore.
I’ll have more photos of Venice in a future post. In case you missed it, check here for a photo of the Campanile, the bell tower in the Piazza San Marco.
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As Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star makes its way through the pre-publication process, I thought I would put together a potential cover for the book. What do you think?
This likely won’t be the real cover that Sterling Publishing will produce. In fact, the title might not even be the same. They like “The Wizard of Electricity,” and that might be what it actually says on the cover when it hits the bookstores.
But hey, I’m having a little fun. I worked the above up in MS Paint, which is about as good an advertisement for buying Adobe Photoshop as could be imagined. The photograph is one I took at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. Tesla’s eyes gaze out over Horseshoe Falls a stone’s throw from the statue. Come to think about it, I really like this photo.
So, does it work?
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How many people knew that Nikola Tesla was a proponent of renewable energy? More than 100 years ago Tesla was pushing the idea that fossil fuels – most coal and oil at that time – were not sustainable resources. In an article he wrote in 1905 he offered:
“Long before this consummation, coal and oil must cease to be important factors in the sustenance of human life on this planet. It should be borne in mind that electrical energy obtained by harnessing a waterfall is probably fifty times more effective than fuel energy. Since this is the most perfect way of rendering the sun’s energy available, the direction of the future material development of man is clearly indicated.”
Yes, Tesla was into solar power even before it became fashionable.
He saw two ways in which this could be achieved – “either to turn to use the energy of the sun stored in the ambient medium, or to transmit, through the medium, the sun’s energy to distant places from some locality where it was obtainable without consumption of material.”
Of course, there were tremendous technological challenges in the year 1900 to accomplish this vision, but Tesla believed the best option “to obtain power would be to avail ourselves of the sun’s rays, which beat the earth incessantly and supply energy at a maximum rate of over four million horsepower per square mile.” He believed that “an inexhaustible source of power would be opened up by the discovery of some efficient method of utilizing the energy of the rays.”
The capture and storage technologies for exploiting solar energy would take another 100 years to reach a level of commercial feasibility, but the man who could envision an entire alternating current transformer in his head also envisioned both the need and potential of tapping the energy of the sun.
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The trailer for the long-awaited film on Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg is now out and it portends an excellent movie to follow. Based on the best-selling book by Doris Kearns Goodwin called “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” the movie captures the tensions between the many strong wills – and many former rivals – sitting in Lincoln’s cabinet.
Goodwin’s book, which I will unequivocally state is one of the best books ever written on our 16th President, is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the dynamics between Lincoln, his cabinet, and the various factions in Congress that he fought as much as he fought the states in secession. Because of the book’s length (over 900 pages including notes), Spielberg’s Lincoln focuses on the final four months of the war, and as it turns out, of Lincoln’s life.
Lincoln is played by the amazing Daniel Day-Lewis, a two-time best actor Oscar winner for My Left Foot and There Will Be Blood. As a method actor that lives in character for the duration of filming, Lewis is expected to bring to life the inner Lincoln. Sally Field, another two-time Oscar winner, plays Mary Todd Lincoln. The rest of the cast is just as stellar, with sharp viewers also noting the presence of Hal Holbrook, who won an Emmy portraying Abraham Lincoln in a 1970s mini-series.
Given the presence of such distinguished actors, the directorial history of Steven Spielberg, and the truly magnificent book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, there are high expectations for the movie.
Fast Fact: Goodwin’s book was published in 2005, but Spielberg had already bought the film rights to it back in 2001 after Goodwin, who had been consulting on another Spielberg project, had told him of her intent to write the book. Goodwin had already won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her earlier book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
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I must admit – the experience of becoming an author is a bit surreal.
The next step in this experience is creating a Facebook “Author’s Page.” I still have my personal Facebook page, but now I also have a separate page devoted solely to my writing.
If you want to follow the process, and my progress, of becoming an author and read about my upcoming books, please “Like” my new page. I promise not to sell you to advertisers (like I could even figure out how to do that anyway). If you “Like” the page Facebook will make sure you get my occasional updates, upcoming appearances, tips and critically important facts, and even free stuff. Seriously, what could be cooler than that?
Needless to say the new author page is a work in progress, which reflects both the development of my writing career and the pace at which I can figure out how to work all the cool stuff that author’s pages let you do. Or at least the cool stuff that I think author’s pages let you do. As soon as I figure out how to do it.
Thanks in advance for being on the ground floor of a work in progress that could rival the new Freedom Tower in New York City. Yes, it is that cool.
My book Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star is in its final stages prior to sending to the publisher. It’s the main reason why I haven’t posted anything new here in the last week. All that is left to do is organize the photos that I’ve picked out for the book, do the same for the sidebars, and do one (or two or three) last editing runs through the manuscript.
Gee, that still sounds like a lot.
In any case, the manuscript is due to the publisher by Monday. And it will be delivered. I already have the non-Tesla fiction book ready to read as a reward for getting it in. Actually, since only 1 or 2 of the 50 books I read a year is fiction, it’s less of a reward and more of a way to distract myself from the inevitable anxiety of waiting for the manuscript to be accepted. That and recalibrating my brain for my next book proposal.
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Today is the last day to contribute to saving Nikola Tesla’s last laboratory – the Wardenclyffe facility at Shoreham, Long Island. Check out the campaign through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo at http://www.indiegogo.com/teslamuseum.
