The Tesla Exhibit

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, the Tesla Museum in Belgrade embarked on a travelling exhibit to recognize Tesla and raise awareness. In the Vancouver, BC area, there was a symposium at Simon Fraser University, and also an exhibit down at the BC Hydro headquarters. Hydro was nice enough to lend out their entire lobby to house the numerous panels detailing the history of his life and inventions.

They also had a few working models of a Tesla Coil and I think a bladeless turbine. A lot of the publicity was through the Croatian Cultural Center and all the writing was bilingual. I think one of the Hydro guys commented that they really owe Tesla for their entire business model, which kind of stuck with me because I realized yeah, they do. Tesla of course was the pioneer of hydroelectricity. It was the waterwheel he built when he was 9 that later matured into his turbine, that later turned into the whole Niagra Falls power generation system.

A few lesser-known Tesla inventions were in model form, like his vertical-takeoff flying machine that looks pretty sophisticated compared to the rickety Wright brothers. I'll need to double check the dates but I wouldn't be all that surprised if he had the whole thing out before them.

I meant to catch The Prestige afterwards, the movie with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman that also features David Bowie as Tesla. He has some sort of teleportation machine that the other guys are interested because they're trying to out-illusion each other... never got around to it but I will post a full review here when I do.