RICHARD MUNSON, Author, _Tesla: Inventor of the Modern_Nikola Tesla
invented the radio, robots and remote control. When his first
breakthrough―alternating current―pitted him against Thomas
Edison’s direct-current empire, Tesla’s superior technology
prevailed. Although penniless later in life, he never stopped
imagining. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the
Internet, death-ray weapons and interstellar communications. Drawing
on letters, technical notebooks and other primary sources, Munson
pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental
habits of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind. Strikingly
handsome and impeccably dressed, Tesla spoke eight languages and could
recite entire books from memory. Yet his most famous inventions were
not the product of fastidiousness or linear thought, but of a mind
fueled by both the humanities and sciences. He conceived the induction
motor while walking through a park, reciting Goethe’s Faust, and
then worked tirelessly to offer electric power to the world, to
introduce automatons that would reduce life’s drudgery, and to
develop machines that might one day abolish war.
LOCATION: 110 The Embarcadero, SAN FRANCISCO
TIME: 11:30 a.m. check-in, NOON PROGRAM, 1 p.m. book signing
MLF: Humanities
PROGRAM ORGANIZER: George Hammond
ALL TICKET SALES ARE FINAL AND NONREFUNDABLE.
culture
838
Views
19/06/2018 Last update