The Egg of Columbus
The
story behind Nikola Tesla's "Egg of Columbus"
is that it was a trick that he devised to win a bet about
being able to make an egg stand on end. The terms of the
bet were quite simply venture-capital assistance to develop
some of his earlier projects.
Not
only did the Egg of Columbus stand on it -- it did so while
rotating at an enormously high-speed! Tesla won the bet,
and secured the venture capital.
Tesla's
Egg was essentially a form of a polyphase electric motor
-- the copper coated egg was inductively charged and spun
similarly to the winding in a conventional AC motor.
James
Corum published a speculative piece in which he postulated
that Tesla's Egg may have been the precursor to the field-layout
of the Philadelphia Experiment, due to the arrangement of
the coils and unique polyphase variant-design.
The
following link leads to additional resources and photos
of the Egg of Columbus -- it was contributed by Paul Easter:
click
here
Tesla's Death-Ray
Later
in life, Tesla announced to the media that he had developed
a "Death-Ray" -- supposedly capable of destroying
2000 airplanes at a 250 mile distance. Although Tesla did
allow photographs to be taken of a small-scale prototype
in action, he withheld much of the information that would
allow others to understand his design.
The
"Death Ray" might be the biggest mystery surrounding
Tesla's inventions. Tim Ventura wrote two speculative articles
in 1994 that might serve to help explain how the Death-Ray
might work as a function of scalar-field electromagnetism.
click
here
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