Once in a blue moon, an incredible mind comes along and sweeps the world with insane innovation and creativity. These people are ahead of their time, sometimes seen as crazy and mislead. A lot of them are misunderstood, shafted and forgotten until much later down the road.
Amongst these great minds is a man by the name of Nikola Tesla, a visionary in the world of electricity.
Tesla is best known for his experiments with AC, or alternating currents, which took the world’s use of electricity and revolutionized it. He trumped Thomas Edison’s discovery of DC, or direct currents, and made electricity cheaper for people to use in their everyday lives. He is also known for other advancements and inventions, such as the Tesla Coil, and even worked on a ray gun, which he named “The Teleforce Weapon,” and could liquefy steel and vaporize anything in its path.
Yes, you read correctly. Liquefy steel. Could that be anymore awesome? Nope. The man was a quintessential bad-ass, as well as a quintessential crazy.
Tesla has been dead since 1943. So what does that have to do with us?
One word: Inspiration.
When he was young, Tesla knew he wanted to get into engineering. In his early school years, before he discovered the new road of AC currents, Tesla “conceived of building a gargantuan elevated ring around the equator….Thus travelers could climb aboard it and be sped around Earth at a dizzying speed of 1,000 miles per hour, or rather, Earth would race beneath them, enabling them to circle the globe in a day while sitting still.”
It is the radical, and practically impossible, ideas that Tesla had that were so inspiring. And here is where Gen Y comes into play.
We are a generation of a million directions. We go where we please; we choose our own road to travel on and innovate from there. I see a personality within the whole of this generation — a determination and a smidgen of insanity — similar to the one that defined Tesla’s life. We hate being told where we have to go and seem to push the limits and boundaries of our everyday lives, fighting the norm and looking for the new.
Gen Y has a most interesting placement in the timeline of technology. Most of us were born in that in-between phase. We definitely owned a computer with Prodigy-dial-up Internet, no one had cell phones, there were floppy disks and cassette tapes. Generations after us will have no idea what any of that means, which is a shocking and kind-of-frightening thought.
Gen Y lives in the twilight.
We have been placed in between two worlds, one that somewhat rejects technology and advancement, and one that embraces it too much and understands nothing of its past. With this unique placement, Gen Y is right where Tesla was: on the cusp of change. It is our drive and ambition that will change everything, just like ol’ Tesla did.
The possibilities for the future are endless.
As unknown as his is, Tesla did change the world. He just wasn’t given the recognition he deserves for his accomplishments. Although lots of his inventions failed (for instance, that giant elevator idea), he created a lot that did end up working. To this day, some of his experiments cannot be recreated because they are still too advanced. We, as a generation on the rise, have this potential.
Plus, we grew up with Bill Nye, so we know what’s up.
We are the new mad scientists of the world. Let’s do some good with it.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
I am so not surprised you wrote on Tesla.
And I LOVE Bill Nye.
Great post.
Kenzie’s Mom here again….don’t think I’m a TNGG blog ‘ho but you seem to write about subjects which catch me unawares. Three things about Tesla….he invented electricity, years before Edison, but contemporary historians at the time thought Tesla “unsuitable” to be credited with with this era changing invention. Also, the new electric $200,000 Tesla Roadster (0 to 60 MPH in 3.7 seconds) is named for him and 3.) download a movie called “The Prestige” with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Awesome movie about magicians at the turn of the 20th century but Tesla played a key role in the storyline.
Keep up the good writing. Mrs. L.