In Memory: Tesla
Today is Monday, 7 January 2008.
Nikola Tesla died this date in 1943.
Unlike that self-promoting dim bulb (pun intended) T. A. “DC” Edison, Tesla died impoverished.
Tesla was, however, the greatest electrical engineer who ever lived. The fact you can read this, the fact of that astonishing power that comes out of that little socket in your house, is due to Tesla’s discovery of alternating current.
Tesla died in The New Yorker Hotel, at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street, ironically a block away from HH’s first NYC residence at Ninth Avenue and 34th Street. I always thought a good thought of Tesla when I walked by on my way to the subway to university in Greenwich Village. Super ironically, at the time, the hotel was owned by the Moonies, and I would see them loading vans with flowers to sell to suckers.
My guess: the ghost of Tesla was laughing.
Nikola Tesla died this date in 1943.
Unlike that self-promoting dim bulb (pun intended) T. A. “DC” Edison, Tesla died impoverished.
Tesla was, however, the greatest electrical engineer who ever lived. The fact you can read this, the fact of that astonishing power that comes out of that little socket in your house, is due to Tesla’s discovery of alternating current.
Tesla died in The New Yorker Hotel, at Eighth Avenue and 34th Street, ironically a block away from HH’s first NYC residence at Ninth Avenue and 34th Street. I always thought a good thought of Tesla when I walked by on my way to the subway to university in Greenwich Village. Super ironically, at the time, the hotel was owned by the Moonies, and I would see them loading vans with flowers to sell to suckers.
My guess: the ghost of Tesla was laughing.
posted by HH at 4:04 AM
2 Comments:
I do not see irony in either of the two situations you describe in the final paragraph. Please elaborate.
Upon reflection, you're right in the first situation: no irony that Tesla and I lived a block away from one another some decades apart.
However, that scientific genius Tesla lived and died in a NYC hotel later owned by a religious con artiste (Sun M. Moon) who pretends to be God on Earth and was tossed out of the Presbyterian ministry ca. 1955 for molesting parishoners, fairly drips with irony.
Sorry for the lack of elaboration.
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