Tesla's 161 Reflections

 

On July 10, 2016 -- a year ago -- three of us met in a local restaurant to talk about Tesla and his 160th birthday. A day later, on July 11, 2016 we submitted the paperwork to register a non-profit Society in honour of this great inventor. Only 10 days later, on July 22, 2016 we became a registered Alberta Society: Nikola Tesla Historical Society of Alberta, nicknamed Alberta's Tesla Wave. We set up a website with our vision, mission and objectives -- living documents, built up some membership over the last year, held a few socials and discussions and reached out to set up some partnerships. Thanks to  Mr. Harold Hornig for being a founding member and the webmaster. 

 

On July 10, 2017 we celebrated Nikola Tesla's 161st birthday with two talks that were very well received by the audience. Dr. Allan Offerberger talked about Tesla's discoveries focusing on AC and also provided us with a perspective on other giants of that time period. Dr. Marija Nikolic-Jaric connected Tesla's early interest in using electrical current for medicinal applications and gave a mind boggling presentation on impact of electrical current on living cells. It was fascinating multimedia presentation and we could have stayed another hour or two to just listen to these folks. We followed up with a couple of trivia questions related to Tesla. Ms. Lydia Emanuel gave the closest answer to how many patents Tesla had -- this is still a mystery -- and Mr. Gene Emanuel was the first to answer that, come 2019, Volvo will be producing electric vehicles only. This couple was asked to cut Tesla's birthday cake.

 

A display of books on Tesla was inviting as were the drinks and goodies provided. The Tesla bulb -- to be now our fixed fixture at similar events -- kept reminding us of Tesla's wireless technology and his brightness bursting out of the bulb.

 

 

Thanks to those who founded the society, set on the Board throughout the year and all the members for their support and who assisted with the logistics of the events. Special thanks to our speakers and to Dr. Rob Agostinis, also a founding member,  for capturing the event on his camera. I added some taken by me, but you will quickly be able to spot iPhone photos!...

 

I've added a few folks' email addresses who were interested in keeping abreast of our society's events and projects. I invite them to review our website and let us know of their specific interests. We had fun on Tesla's birthday and will continue to work very hard in going ahead with our objectives. Hence, if you are interested in fun + Tesla, we would love to see you join our team.

 

Once again, this is a good time to thank everyone involved. It's been an interesting and formative year and we look forward to our second one. On behalf of all of us in the Society, thank you all for a successful year. Lillian

 

 

Photo Credits: R. Agostinis, A. Beltaos, L.Beltaos