July 10, 2013

Let’s Give Nikola Tesla His Due on His 157th Birthday

Neon and fluorescent lighting. Radio. Electric motors. Robotics. These are just a few of the inventions of the Serbian engineer Nikola Tesla that he never got credit for during his lifetime.

bigthinkeditor

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Neon and fluorescent lighting. Radio. Electric motors. Robotics. These are just a few of the inventions of the Serbian engineer Nikola Tesla. And yet, Tesla received scant credit for his inventions during his lifetime, and posthumous credit has also been hard to come by.

In this great animated video below by the Tesla Science Foundation in partnership with the Art Institute of Philadelphia, however, Tesla gets his due.

So watch here in honor of his 157th birthday today:

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

A digital illustration of a human brain with blue veins and a glowing light at the top, set against a black background.

The Future

How Neuralink’s chief competitor is tapping into the brain without surgery

“Neurotech is not just about the brain,” says Synchron CTO Riki Banerjee, explaining how their tech can help with paralysis, brain diseases, and beyond.

An abstract illustration features a bell curve with red dots and a percentage labeled 49%. The background includes a monochrome portion of a face with wide-open eyes peeking below the curve.

Thinking

Everyday Philosophy: Bad at probability? That might be a blessing.

How black and white is your thinking?

Image of Earth set against a black background with the text "A Volatile World" in large white letters.

Why does it feel like the world is falling apart?

“We’ve engineered a volatile world where Starbucks is completely unchanging from year to year, but democracies are collapsing and rivers are drying up.”

▸

11 min

—

with

Brian Klaas