NikolaTesla
Latest
Nikola Motor Company wants to be the Tesla of trucking
A new entrant to the electric vehicle industry called Nikola Motor Company is unabashedly riding the wave of the future in Tesla's wake. Although the company may have copped their name from Elon Musk's inspiration, Nikola is taking a slightly different course with their two planned electric vehicles: a 2,000-horsepower semi-truck and a four-seater, open-frame 4x4.
Nikola Tesla Museum could have a brick with your name on it
After running a successful initial round of crowdfunding, The Oatmeal is now looking to put the finishing touches on its plans to build a Nikola Tesla Museum. To do so, it needs a bit more help from kind souls on the internet. Despite hitting the goal amount on Indiegogo a couple of years ago, and having since received an unexpected, hefty donation from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, additional money is needed to start the actual building process on the property, one that was bought with the $1.37 million originally raised. In an effort to make things interesting, this new campaign offers to give contributors engraved bricks in exchange for their hard-earned cash -- the more you donate, the bigger brick you're going to have at the museum. But hurry because, as The Oatmeal points out, the sooner you back the project, the better location your brick will get. Eventually, the idea is to build the Nikola Tesla Museum on the land where his final lab was located, in Shoreham, New York.
Elon Musk pledges $1 million to help build Nikola Tesla Museum
Nikola Tesla just scored a very generous birthday present. The "father of electricity" was born 158 years ago today, and several fans are trying to preserve his legacy with a museum, to be built on the site of his final laboratory in Shoreham, New York. A 2012 Indiegogo campaign helped raise more than enough to cover purchasing the land, but nowhere near the $8 million that's needed to refurbish the property and actually build a museum. Fortunately, Elon Musk, the father of the modern day Tesla, has pledged $1 million and has promised to install a supercharger in the parking lot. That's still not enough to complete the project, but you can help out by making your own contribution here. [Image credit: Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe]
Tesla Motors' Elon Musk will help fund a Nikola Tesla museum
You may recall The Oatmeal's (aka Matthew Inman's) fundraising campaign to save Nikola Tesla's former lab and get a museum built in the electrical pioneer's honor. Well, it only partly succeeded; while the money was enough to rescue the property, Inman realized that it would take at least $8 million to build and maintain an actual museum. Thankfully, a little serendipity is coming his way. Following a public plea from Inman, Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk now says that he'll be "happy to help" make the museum a reality and pay tribute to his company's namesake.
PSA: New York Hall of Science's Nikola Tesla exhibit opens today
Nikola Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire, but the brilliant inventor has a connection to New York, having lived his final years in a midtown hotel that now bears a plaque in his honor. Starting today, the city's New York Hall of Science (at the World's Fair site in Queens) is offering up a new exhibition about his life, in honor of Nikola Tesla Day -- also, coincidentally, the man's birthday. Created in collaboration with Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Museum, the exhibit features working models of his inventions, photos and models of his labs. Tesla's Wonderful World of Electricity runs through October 20th and is free with admission to the museum.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Bicymple, computer-age fossils and an underground mushroom tunnel
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. We tend to look to green designers and architects to inspire us and reshape our understanding of what's possible, and this week we've seen plenty of visionary green designs over at Inhabitat. First, JM Schivo & Associati unveiled ambitious plans for "Earth City," a futuristic green city that would be entirely powered by renewable energy. Then, inspired by NYC's High Line, Fletcher Priest won the Green Infrastructure Ideas Competition with his proposal for an underground mushroom tunnel beneath the streets of London. At the World Architecture Festival, Nikken Sekkei took home the sustainable building award for its evaporative cooling bioskin building in Tokyo, and science fans successfully purchased Nikola Tesla's old Long Island workshop to turn it into a museum.
The Oatmeal does it: $850,000 raised for a Tesla Museum
The Oatmeal's campaign to raise cash helping Tesla Science Center purchase Wardenclyffe has hit its $850,000 target. The property, formerly the home of the scientist's project to create wireless electricity can now be purchased with a matching grant from New York state. The charity is planning to build a museum on its original foundations, in a fitting tribute to the "Greatest Geek who ever lived."
Campaign to build Nikola Tesla museum hits $500k in less than 48 hours, hopes to raise $850k
Nikola Tesla may not have gotten all the credit he was due in his lifetime, but his stature has grown considerably since, and many of the inventions he dreamed up are now finding new life in today's technology. Now, a new effort is underway to truly cement his place in history -- even moreso than having David Bowie play him in a movie. Two days ago, Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal comic strip launched an Indiegogo campaign to help fund a Tesla museum at the site of Nikola Tesla's laboratory in Shoreham, New York, and it's now already raised over $500,000. That money will go directly to the non-profit Tesla Science Center, which has been attempting to buy the property for $1.6 million, half of which will be covered by a matching grant from the state of New York (meaning the goal for the campaign is $850,000, although anything raised above that will go toward the actual building of the museum). As Inman notes, however, even raising "just" $850k will ensure that the property isn't sold to someone else and demolished, as others have been looking to do. Those interested in contributing can find all the details at the links below.
MIT researchers demonstrate more efficient wireless power
MIT researchers have been working on wireless power longer than most (Nikola Tesla aside), and it looks like they've now made a somewhat surprising discovery that could lead to more efficient wireless power. In addition to reducing the size of the transmitters and receives used in their system to something approaching practical, the researchers found that the system's efficiency at transmitting energy increased "significantly" if multiple devices are charged at the same time. What's more, while the amount of power transmitted in the latest experiment only amounted to 100 watts, MIT's André Kurs says that is only limited by the amplifier used for the transmitting coil, adding that the system could easily "feed power to a medium-sized room and power a dozen devices."
D.I.Y. wireless power project unleashes your inner mad scientist
Before he was the patron saint of electric cars and GPUs, Nikola Tesla invented the AC motor, the Tesla coil (or, as he called it, the "coil"), and demonstrated that power could be transferred wirelessly. A hundred-plus years later, companies like Solaren Corp are angling to beam electricity down to earth from outer space -- quite possibly solving our energy crisis with science fiction means that would even make ol' Nicky T. look twice. But why should the big companies have all the fun? You too can experiment with wireless power, albeit on a significantly smaller scale, with merely a square wave generator, some coiled wire, a 60 watt bulb, and a few other low priced thingamabobs. Don't believe us? Hit that read link and see for yourself.[Via Make]
