Tesla Musings

I am continually amazed with the man Nikola Tesla. His mind was a fertile soil for constructive imagination that had root in our reality. One of the harder things to discern is that his dreams were not like ours, fleeting and forgotten. Instead they would become a world unto him and he would find pleasure and comfort among them. They would be his continuous assurance of things to come as he grounded them into a substance we could see. His was such as there was little distinction of the things of his mind and the inventions we behold, to him they were the same.

"My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time." Nikola Tesla from Tesla's Autobiography

It was in this that he desperately tried to bring us into the light of potentiality of a world which would free us from distance through the arts of telematics, be it sound, light, work, art, text, automatons, it was clearly conceived and lacked only the time to place it before the unbelieving peers of his time.

Today we know of our drone planes that are capable of being out of site, yet watching and able to deliver incredible forces in times of war. Tesla also saw them. Having displayed a boat that could be steered and lights caused to flash at will, he looked ahead and declared;

The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond the limits of vision and at great distance from the center of control, and I have ever since advocated their employment as instruments of warfare in preference to guns. The importance of this now seems to be recognized, if I am to judge from casual announcements thru the press of achievements which are said to be extraordinary but contain no merit of novelty, whatever. In an imperfect manner it is practicable, with the existing wireless plants, to launch an aeroplane, have it follow a certain approximate course, and perform some operation at a distance of many hundreds of miles. A machine of this kind can also be mechanically controlled in several ways and I have no doubt that it may prove of some usefulness in war. But there are, to my best knowledge, no instrumentalities in existence today with which such an object could be accomplished in a precise manner. I have devoted years of study to this matter and have evolved means, making such and greater wonders easily realizable. Nikola Tesla

The only thing he lacked was time and the resources to bring it about.
I am convinced, as he was, that our unbelieving world is still not ready. Today, many of us can see the potentials, lacking the technologies to create them. Tesla saw the technologies, yet struggled to help us see their potentials.

I hope that some day we can put aside our differences, live in the truth that we are all part of an incredible creation, of which we each affect the other. We cannot isolate ourselves, but must embrace each other and lift one another up. It is only in putting the needs of other before our own that we can hope to see the future glory for man, and even as glorious as that is, it is just a shadow of what God has planned for those who love Him.

Batteries

Batteries are the largest obstacle hindering Electric Vehicles. Until we have Teslas' Witricitiy, we will have to develop power storage, including batteries. Battery's have not been in demand apart from our laptops and cell phones, and with those we are mostly content. EV's in the wings is causing a surge in battery development and manufacturing worldwide. One game changing feature will be fast charging. MIT recently anounced that they have run computer models that show iron phosphate can make fast charging of lithium ion batteries a reality.

John Miller says "The new batteries would store nearly 10 times as much energy as an ultracapacitor of the same size. The combination of small size and extreme power could make the batteries particularly useful for race cars", he says. (Starting this year, new Formula One racing rules will allow race cars to store energy from braking to deliver very brief jolts of acceleration.

I believe that if applied to current Hybrids, could greatly improve regen braking, which is where Hybrids gain miles for city driving.

Jeff Dahn, a professor of physics at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This battery is good for acceleration, but not as much for long range. "A real breakthrough . . . would be a new positive electrode material with quantum-leap performance specs" in energy storage, Dahn says.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22280/