Today marks the 158th anniversary of Nikola Tesla’s birth.  GorT has a bit of a bias and feels that Tesla is probably the greatest inventor in the modern age.  Aside from being most famous for developing the modern Alternating Current (AC) system for electrical power, he also holds 112 lifetime U.S. patents.  Sadly, he died poor and in relative obscurity – or at least viewed as extremely eccentric.

There are plenty of books about the inventor that walk through his various ideas and his odd behavior.  GorT thought he would share a few of each here today.

Tesla was a font of innovative ideas that ranged from highly practical (AC electricity) to way-out there (particle guns and death rays).

• While living in the Hotel New Yorker, he had the hotel chef prepare a special mix of seed for injured pigeons that he would find in the city’s parks so he could feed them as he nursed them back to health.
• He literally created lightning in his Colorado Springs laboratory.
• It is most likely that he is the true “father of the radio” beating Guglielmo Marconi to the punch.
• He developed radar 18 years before the English scientist Robert Watson-Watt did.

Some people think he was an alien…others just think he was extremely gifted in conceptual ideas and had no business savvy.  For a humorous and interesting retrospective on the man, I offer you the poster/infographic that The Oatmeal ran a few years ago (some strong language).

So while people still revere Thomas Edison to some degree – including showing, quoting and referencing him in TV commercials, the person behind many technologies was really Nikola Tesla.  Check out more here.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.