Nikola Tesla, Inventor

My grandfather was full-blooded Croatian, so I always enjoy discovering new things about his cultural heritage. I recently found out that Edison's fiercest competitor was Nikola Tesla, a Serb from modern day Croatia. Tesla's father was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church, which may help explain Tesla's later pledge of abstinence. Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic, where he memorized complete books with the help of a photographic memory. He worked for the National Telephone Company in Budapest and the Continental Edison Company in Paris. Along the way, he conceived many inventions and adaptations of electrical devices related to his field. In 1884, Tesla came to the US to work for Edison himself, and, in 1886, Tesla formed his own company, where he continued to develop advancements in electric engineering (that I couldn't begin to explain, thus the vagueness). Tesla and Edison butted heads in the late 1880s partly due to Edison's promotion of the less efficient DC (direct current) and Tesla's advocation of AC (alternating current). During his life, Tesla contributed research to radiation, remote control devices, radio, commercial electricity, wireless telegraphy, and energy conversion. After his death in 1943, Tesla was cremated and his papers confiscated and declared top secret, as officials like J. Edgar Hoover feared that Tesla's work on such hypothetical weapons as "the death ray" would fall into the wrong hands.



Tesla, circa 1890.

Interesting facts about Nikola Tesla: predicted his mother's death after a dream; was influenced by Hinduism and named devices after Sanskrit words; displayed obsessive-compulsive tendencies; was obsessed with pigeons; spoke eight languages; never married; openly expressed disgust for overweight people; was a close friend of Mark Twain; famously ripped up a contract that would have made him a billionaire; lived the last ten years of his life on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker; believed women would become the dominant sex in the future; was a vegetarian.



Publicity picture of Tesla's magnifying transmitter.

Victorian Inventions

Click here for antique illustrations of bizarre Victorian inventions, like this multipurpose cane, perfect for catching butterflies, smoking a pipe, playing the flute, and measuring horses:

Freak Shows and Joseph Merrick

Freak show exhibitions became popular in the States and in the UK during the 1840s. Freak shows often exhibited medical anomalies and people who were considered "freaks of nature," like albinos, hermaphrodites, midgets, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, etc. Freak shows were associated with traveling carnivals and circuses, and so they are still today, in some form or other. Still, their popularity began to wane in the 1970s, as awareness for the degradation of handicapped persons increased. Interestingly, a Michigan law forbids the exhibition of "any deformed human being or human monstrosity, except as used for scientific purposes."







In 1884, Joseph Merrick was billed as the Elephant Man in London's East End. Merrick was born a healthy child and only showed signs of skin deformation at the age of five. Though Merrick got his nickname from the belief that he had elephantiasis, modern scientists have speculated that he suffered from a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome. Unable to keep a job, Merrick accepted his fate as a human novelty and allowed himself to be exhibited as such. Merrick spent the last few years of his life in the hospital, as his condition worsened. Throughout his life, Merrick believed the cause of his affliction was due to maternal impression, the antiquated idea that the emotional experiences of pregnant women could have a lasting physical effect on their unborn children.



Click here for more antique images of tattooed people.

Quagga

The quagga is an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra. They were found in South Africa and hunted to extinction for meat and hide. The last wild quagga was probably shot in the late 1870s. The last captive specimen died in 1883 at a zoo in Amsterdam.  The quagga was the first extinct creature to have its DNA studied. After it was discovered that surviving zebra and quagga share a close relationship, a selective breeding process was began by the Quagga Project to "breed back" the quagga. The first foal, named Henry, was born in 2005. It is a matter of controversy among scientists whether or not the Quagga Project has truly accomplished its mission.



1793 illustration of a quagga mare belonging to Louis XVI.



Quagga in London zoo, circa 1870.

Antoni Gaudi's Architecture

Antoni Placid Guillem Gaudi i Cornet was born in 1852 to a family of coppersmiths in Catalonia, Spain. Gaudi worked as an architect in a unique Art Nouveau style. In the last years of his life, Gaudi suffered a number of personal tragedies and became a recluse, living in the crypt of La Sagrada Familia, his unfinished masterpiece.





Casa Mila or La Pedrera.



La Sagrada Familia.

The Corset

Some historians attribute the corset to Catherine de Medici but others claim it was in use in early Crete. By reinforcing a bodice with bone or metal, the corset was used to maintain a firm shape, emphasize the waist, and bring back the shoulders. By the 18th century, most women wore a form of corset and the tight-lacing was only common with the very fashionable. At this time, men, dandies usually, began wearing corsets to slim their figures.





1908.

Tight-lacing became popular among all classes in the Victorian era. Corsets became more heavily boned in the 1840s, and steel was a popular reinforcement by 1850. Corsets evolved over the years to fit popular fashion. During the Edwardian period, the corset had an S-shape with a straight front and pushed out derriere. By World War I, the corset was beginning to fall out of style and was later replaced by girdles and elastic brassieres. Today, corsets are popular in fetish and BDSM culture.



1886 Advertisement.



S-Shaped Corset.


"The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work." -Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899).

Victorian and Edwardian Currency

Now for a short lesson in Victorian and Edwardian currency... There were 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pennies in 1 shilling. A farthing (fourth-thing) was a fourth of a penny, and a halfpenny (hay-p'ny) was half a penny. A pound coin was called a Sovereign, as it was stamped with the image of the queen, and was made of gold. A paper pound was called a quid. Other coins included the crown, guinea, sixpence, and groat.



A sovereign.



Pound notes.