Solar and wind energy, along with hydroelectric power, may seem like recent ideas, but Nikola Tesla had them in his sights a long, long time ago. As this post goes up on Science Traveler, the new Tesla Magazine goes to the printer. Joining the list of great authors for this issue is an article of mine called “Nikola Tesla Advocated Renewable Energy 100 Years Ago.” It’s an adaptation from my recent e-book, Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time, available on Amazon.
Tesla was right when he said “It seems that I have always been ahead of my time.” While everyone else was rushing to exploit new ways of mining coal – one of the dirtiest forms of fuel on our planet – and drilling for oil and gas, Tesla had already recognized that they were wasteful and finite. Only later did we learn that our burning of fossil fuels is also causing the planet to warm. Had we known then what we know now, perhaps more people would have listened to Tesla’s ideas at the time.
The article in Tesla Magazine will be on news stands soon, so look for it among other science-related magazines on the shelves. The photo below shows the July 2014 issue; the new issue features a graphic somewhat reminiscent of da Vinci’s Vitruvian man and highlights Tesla’s “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.” As always, publisher Nenad Stankovic has done a wonderful job pulling together some great articles.
This is my second article in Tesla Magazine. I was fortunate enough to join other noted Tesla authors and leaders in the premier issue of July 2013. You can subscribe to the magazine here, and check out their Facebook page here.
It’s been a good week for my writing. I just had my article “Lincoln and the Rule of Three” published in The Lincolnian, a publication of the Abraham Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia. This week will also see publication of another article of mine in the newsletter of the Chesapeake-Potomac Regional Chapter of SETAC. Along with some editing of others publications and some works-in-progress – including a grant request involving filmmaker Ken Burns – I’m keeping busy.
Now, on to the book proposal!
David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and an e-book Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time.
The title comes from the controversy (assuming you knew there was a controversy) over whether Edwin Stanton, upon Lincoln taking his last breath, said “Now he belongs to the ages” or “Now he belongs to the angels.” With this contrivance as a starting point Gopnik presents what amounts to six essays.
Nikola Tesla believed that the thermo-dynamic process, i.e., the burning of fossil fuels, was “wasteful and barbarous.” He foresaw the limitations on supply and the inherent dangers to man and the environment (though even Tesla couldn’t anticipate the impacts of fossil fuels on climate change). “Whatever our resources of primary energy may be in the future,” Tesla argued, “we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material.” He believed that natural, renewable, sources of energy could “eliminate the need of coal, oil, gas or any other of the common fuels.” Two of the renewable energy sources that he investigated were hydrothermal and geothermal energy.
There are temperature differentials in the earth as well. In 1900 Tesla was already contemplating what today we call geothermal energy. In a somewhat long-winded and metaphysical treatise called “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” Tesla wrote that “it is a well-known fact that the interior portions of the globe are very hot, the temperature rising, as observations show, with the approach to the center at the rate of approximately 1 degree C. for every hundred feet of depth.”
Abraham Lincoln is the only president to ever get a patent, an ingenious, though impractical, method for lifting boats over shoals. This interest in technology served him well during the Civil War as battles increasingly relied on mechanization for transportation, communication, and weaponry.
Abraham Lincoln’s Air Force – Balloons in the Civil War
Abraham Lincoln and the Technology of War
One year ago today I left behind the first half of my life. After more than 30 years as a working scientist I had decided to give up a comfortable salary for a life of (essentially) no income. I would become a poor starving writer.
Way back in May I was contacted by a producer for a TV series for the History Channel called “10 Things You Don’t Know About,” hosted by Henry Rollins. They were interested in doing a program on the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. I spoke with the producer and provided my thoughts on what interesting facts they could include, and although I didn’t make it into the final program, it aired on September 7, 2014.
I went to Hanoi before going to Hanoi became cool. Long after the Vietnam War but before the United States normalized relations with the unified communist nation, my first major trip out of the country was to a place that remains very much foreign to most Americans.
