Photos from the Tesla Exhibit

Here are my photos from the aforementioned Tesla Museum of Belgrade's visit to Vancouver, BC. 2006 marks 150 years since Tesla's birth, and I had seen the ad for the exhibit in the Georgia Straight (great local newspaper) nearly a month ahead of time, so I was definitely looking forward to it. There was also a symposium at Simon Fraser University, but it was on a work day and some of it sounded way over my head.

The exhibit though was excellent, BC Hydro kindly lent the space in the lobby of their HQ downtown. I think one of the Hydro spokespeople joked it was the least they could do, seeing as how they practically owe their entire business model to him. Tesla, who had been experimenting with bladeless waterwheels and turbines since he was a boy, eventually conceived and devised the Niagra Falls power system, singlehandedly starting a hydroelectric revolution.


There was a working Tesla Coil that every few minutes would let off a loud zap as it discharged into a flourescent tube, another Tesla invention. He equipped his labratory with tubes that would light up if they were installed on the wall overhead, or even while being carried by hand from room to room.

Here is the full apparatus, it was about four feet tall. There were some other working models there but this was by far the most impressive. The real meat of the exhibit though were more than a hundred panels with a complete biography of Tesla with his major inventions and contributions along the way. A companion book was available for $7 and it was worth it as most of the exhibit's rare photos and tidbits are packaged in a light volume.

Some of that content includes honorary degrees awarded to Tesla, letters of his to family and friends, and newspaper articles about the inventor and his life. While underappreciated in his own time, he was a celebrity in New York City, and enjoyed the company of folks like Mark Twain, JP Morgan, George Westinghouse, John Jacob Astor, and several members of various royal families. While there were wealthy women after him all the time, he never married.

Tesla's "Apparatus for Aerial Transportation," or verticle take-off flying machine, was modeled in detail. Kind of a combination helicopter-plane, Tesla patented this in 1928. There was also a miniature model of his lab at Wardenclyffe. The plane though I think is a perfect example for one of the many inventions of his that went on to become succesful products for someone else. X-Rays also come to mind, Tesla having announced his discovery of "Special Rays" a couple of years before Roentgen.