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Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

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Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#11

My headphones apparently use them as part of the cooling system: https://www.nuraphone.com/backstage/how-the-nuraphone-uses-m...

Huh that's pretty cool.

It's the exact sort of application the tesla valve was designed for. An unpredictable air flow driven by the speaker's diaphragm around the earcup used to cool the silicone.

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#12

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

Fascinating! Thanks for the book recommendation.

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#13

My headphones apparently use them as part of the cooling system: https://www.nuraphone.com/backstage/how-the-nuraphone-uses-m...

Was about to write the same thing! I had never heard of a Tesla valve prior to Nuraphone, but it’s a brilliantly simple design that works really well for this case.

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#14

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

This reminds me of Albert Einstein's thought experiments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_thought_experimen...

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#16

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

commenting to get back to this later. very interested to read that.

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#17
post #10

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

If this weren't HN someone might attempt to draw a humorous connection between this passage and his reported lack of need of romantic relationships.

Well you brought it up via apophasis instead.

Apophasis: the raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it (as in "we won't discuss his past crimes")

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#18
Because this offers different obstruction levels to different rates of flow and because it works in one direction could it somehow be used to create a version that could operate like Maxwell's demon with particles with a certain temperature rather than a fluid? Temperature being a mscroscopic measure of the microscopic velocities of particles.

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#19

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

Tesla's bio is fascinating I highly recommend Wizard: https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Times-Nikola-Biography-Genius/...

..that whole period is wild for inventors I'm surprised there aren't more movies about it!

Re: Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

#20

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

Doesn't everyone do this? I remember at the age of five finally learning to control my falling dreams at night, to be able to freeze in the air and eventually fly (the Matrix scene definitely resonated later). This was the beginning of a continuous exercise of imagining things more and more exactly and controlling that imagination. Now as an engineer, I spend most of my time staring at a wall simulating and refining designs in my head. As Tesla notes, they are usually accurate. The most interesting cases however are when I can't quite be sure what will happen. Building those projects are some of the most exciting and often most valuable work. Besides imagination, simulating on a computer is useful, but more to explain an imagined design to others. Occassionaly, when simulations scale to a certain level of parallel interaction (like neural networks), those simulations take on the character of reality which may defy imagination. At least until enough experimentation and observation develops intuition.
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