Damn, the two sources of the earthquake claim are print and I would have liked to read them. They don’t include a quote directly mentioning earthquakes in the wiki…
[EDIT] I was wrong, I missed a reference. See my reply below
At one point, while experimenting with the oscillator, he alleged it generated a resonance in several buildings, causing complaints to the police.
I believe that. Resonant frequencies have collapsed bridges
he was forced to use a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived
I was a huge Tesla fanboy decades ago. I even built my own Tesla Coil. Still have quite a few books on him and his experiments. The quote you cited is the one always used by people to imply the device has far greater power than it really does - note it says “alleged” - and people trying to reproduce the effect haven’t managed it. Hence the missing magical property.
As far as the bridge collapse goes, there’s only one known reference to a bridge collapse thanks to soldiers crossing it. That collapse was because the soldiers noticed the resonance of the bridge with their pace, thought it was fun, and deliberately acted to increase it, just like you would on a playground chain bridge, thereby causing some of the cables to fail. The bridge would not have failed had they continued to march normally, so the random collapse due to regular marching isn’t really a thing.
I didn’t mean it to dunk on Tesla, that dude rocked! I was just hoping to see the source of the claim. I went back to copy part of the page for this reply and apparently I missed the [4] so my comment was wrong. Here’s the relevant bit from that page which satiated my curiosity:
[…] he revealed that an earthquake which drew police and ambulances to the region of his laboratory
I didn’t think the bridge collapse was random, I was just commenting on the power of resonance. You can also shatter a glass with your voice if you can hold the frequency!
I didn’t take it as a dunk on Tesla at all, you’re fine. I’m not a gatekeepong fanboy. I just find the conspiracy theorists that circle around his work irritating. A lot of people do blindly accept that marching across a bridge will cause a collapse, but the science says it has to be deliberate and accentuated to make it happen.
Tesla was an odd character. Highly likely he was autistic, which created a lot of problems for him getting so easily taken advantage of as he didn’t really get the business side of things and focused on his work. He made a lot of wild claims even though his inventions were amazing enough as they were.
Damn, the two sources of the earthquake claim are print and I would have liked to read them. They don’t include a quote directly mentioning earthquakes in the wiki…[EDIT] I was wrong, I missed a reference. See my reply below
I believe that. Resonant frequencies have collapsed bridges
Sounds like a real big fish he caught there!
I was a huge Tesla fanboy decades ago. I even built my own Tesla Coil. Still have quite a few books on him and his experiments. The quote you cited is the one always used by people to imply the device has far greater power than it really does - note it says “alleged” - and people trying to reproduce the effect haven’t managed it. Hence the missing magical property.
As far as the bridge collapse goes, there’s only one known reference to a bridge collapse thanks to soldiers crossing it. That collapse was because the soldiers noticed the resonance of the bridge with their pace, thought it was fun, and deliberately acted to increase it, just like you would on a playground chain bridge, thereby causing some of the cables to fail. The bridge would not have failed had they continued to march normally, so the random collapse due to regular marching isn’t really a thing.
I didn’t mean it to dunk on Tesla, that dude rocked! I was just hoping to see the source of the claim. I went back to copy part of the page for this reply and apparently I missed the [4] so my comment was wrong. Here’s the relevant bit from that page which satiated my curiosity:
I didn’t think the bridge collapse was random, I was just commenting on the power of resonance. You can also shatter a glass with your voice if you can hold the frequency!
I didn’t take it as a dunk on Tesla at all, you’re fine. I’m not a gatekeepong fanboy. I just find the conspiracy theorists that circle around his work irritating. A lot of people do blindly accept that marching across a bridge will cause a collapse, but the science says it has to be deliberate and accentuated to make it happen.
Tesla was an odd character. Highly likely he was autistic, which created a lot of problems for him getting so easily taken advantage of as he didn’t really get the business side of things and focused on his work. He made a lot of wild claims even though his inventions were amazing enough as they were.