Nikolai Tesla's Earthquake machine late 1800's...

[averagejoe]

Tesla's Earthquake Machine



5 crazy inventions from the mind of Nikola Tesla

5. Earthquake machine
"In 1898, Tesla claimed he had built and deployed a small oscillating device that, when attached to his office and operating, nearly shook down the building and everything around it," says Shea Gunther at Revmodo. The device weighed just a few pounds, but Tesla was able to tune the timing of the oscillator at such a frequency that each little vibration added just a little more energy to the wave of flex in the building. "Given enough little pushes, even the largest structure could be shaken apart." Realizing the potential terrors such a device could create, "Tesla said he took a hammer to the oscillator to disable it, instructing his employees to claim ignorance to the cause of the tremors if asked."

http://theweek.com/articles/472881/5-cr ... kola-tesla

[Fancy]

MythBusters[edit]
The oscillator / "earthquake machine" was explored in 2006 in Episode 60 – "Earthquake Machine". The Mythbusters made a device powered by electricity rather than steam. It produced vibrations that could be felt hundreds of feet away, but no earthquake shaking on the modern bridge they attached to; they judged that the claim that the device produced an earthquake to be false (i.e. a "busted myth").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s ... .22_claims

The man was certainly busy - approximately 300 patents issued. His mind must not have had an off switch.

[averagejoe]

LOL....ready any books regarding the small oscillating device that shook some New York neighborhoods and the police pleaded with Tesla not to do it again.....do some reading first before you make false claims...

You forgot snopes....

[averagejoe]

Nikolai Tesla's Patentend # 514,169 Feb. 6th, 1894



https://www.pinterest.com/pin/365213851011594867/

[Fancy]

...do some reading first before you make false claims...

??? What's false about Tesla's approximate 300 patents that was issued to him?

[GordonH]

I guess a pile driver would be similar, since it vibrates surrounding area.

Just by looking at the State of Oklahoma man made quakes are happening via fracking, maximum size around 5.0

[Fancy]

LOL....ready any books regarding the small oscillating device that shook some New York neighborhoods and the police pleaded with Tesla not to do it again...

That's up for questioning - depends on the author.

We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it."

http://www.rexresearch.com/teslamos/tmosc.htm

[averagejoe]

Thanks!

From your article....

Tells of "Quake"

He said, among other things, that he expects to have $100,000,000 within two years, and he revealed that an earthquake which drew police and ambulances to the region of his laboratory at 48 E. Houston St. in 188.7 or 1888 was the result of a little machine he was experimenting with at that time which "you could put in your overcoat pocket."

The bewildered newspapermen pounced upon this as at least one thing they could understand and "the father of modern electricity" told what had happened as follows: -

"I was experimenting with vibrations. I had one of my machines going and I wanted to see if I could get it in tune with the vibration of the building. I put it up notch after notch. There was a peculiar cracking sound.

"I asked my assistants where did the sound come from. They did not know. I put the machine up a few more notches. There was a louder cracking sound. I knew I was approaching the vibration of the steel building. I pushed the machine a little higher.

"Suddenly all the heavy machinery in the place was flying around. I grabbed a hammer and broke the machine. The building would have been down about our ears in another few minutes. Outside in the street there was pandemonium. The police and ambulances arrived. I told my assistants to say nothing. We told the police it must have been an earthquake. That's all they ever knew about it."

[averagejoe]

I guess a pile driver would be similar, since it vibrates surrounding area.

Just by looking at the State of Oklahoma man made quakes are happening via fracking, maximum size around 5.0

Yes they all can. But he was using vibrations from a small device.

[Fancy]

From the site I posted - you'll notice that the police didn't plead with Tesla not to do it again.

[averagejoe]

An “Irregular” Fact About Mark Twain


Nikola Tesla once “shook the poop out” of a constipated Mark Twain with an experiment.

One famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that he had an earthquake machine in his Manhattan laboratory that shook his building and nearly brought down the neighborhood during experiments.

Tesla’s device wasn’t actually an earthquake machine, according to W. Bernard Carlson, author of “Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age,” but a high frequency oscillator. A piston set underneath a platform in the laboratory shook violently as it moved, another experiment in more efficient electricity.

It didn’t bring the block to ruins, Carlson said, but it did “shake the poop out of Mark Twain.” Twain was known for having digestive problems, so Tesla, who knew Twain through their gentlemen’s club, invited him over. He instructed Twain to stand on the platform while he flipped on the oscillator. After about 90 seconds, Twain jumped off the platform and ran for the facilities.

https://commonplacefacts.wordpress.com/ ... ark-twain/

[averagejoe]

Hi! I have a question involving one of Tesla's inventions: Tesla's oscillator, otherwise know as Tesla's earthquake machine. I was wondering if it could really work, and if it does, if it would be possible to protect yourself from its effects.
Answer 1:

Tesla's earthquake machine did indeed work, although it didn't create real earthquakes quite like mother nature does. According to what I've heard, residents around Tesla's lab felt weird shaking from time to time, across different parts of the neighborhood. Since Tesla had a bitof a reputation as a "Mad Scientist", he was the first person the police came to question.

It worked on a principle called resonance.
To understand that, think of a block of wood attached to a spring. If you give it a push, it will start oscillating back and forth at a given frequency. That's called the oscillator's natural frequency. If you try to drive that spring with a motor at a random frequency, it won't do much. But if you drive it at that exact natural frequency, it will start to oscillate a whole lot.

Many things in the world have some sort of natural frequency. They may not be springs, but things like planks of wood or metal can wobble back and forth, as well. This is how Tesla's oscillator machine worked. He noticed that if he stuck a motor onto one of the supporting beams in his lab, he could make different parts of his lab wobble around by changing the frequency that the motor is operating at. One thing he didn't realize, though, was that these vibrations were transmitted to neighboring buildings, and if certain parts of those buildings had the right natural frequency, they would be driven to oscillate, as well.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1819

[Fancy]

We keep talking about him. Lots of information on the other threads:

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=24020&start=30
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=26178&start=15
Page 2 on viewtopic.php?f=28&t=47292
Page 16 on viewtopic.php?f=52&t=47473

[Fancy]

In reality, it is very unlikely that Tesla's oscillator would cause an earthquake. In fact, recently on the Discovery Channel, a group of scientists working on the show Mythbusters attempted to test this idea exactly. They built a working oscillator and placed it on one end of a bridge and moved to the other end of the bridge. While this device was able to produce vibrations that could be felt hundreds of feet away, it was not nearly strong enough to produce earthquakes. In other words, there is no real reason to be worried about someone using this to create earthquakes or damage to buildings and other structures. Engineers who design large buildings and bridges understand very well the idea of resonance frequencies and make sure their structure would be sufficiently strong even if the building was exposed to its resonance frequency.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1819

[averagejoe]

In reality, it is very unlikely that Tesla's oscillator would cause an earthquake. In fact, recently on the Discovery Channel, a group of scientists working on the show Mythbusters attempted to test this idea exactly. They built a working oscillator and placed it on one end of a bridge and moved to the other end of the bridge. While this device was able to produce vibrations that could be felt hundreds of feet away, it was not nearly strong enough to produce earthquakes. In other words, there is no real reason to be worried about someone using this to create earthquakes or damage to buildings and other structures. Engineers who design large buildings and bridges understand very well the idea of resonance frequencies and make sure their structure would be sufficiently strong even if the building was exposed to its resonance frequency.

Tesla's machine shook buildings on the ground.....feeling like an earthquake. The bridge would fall into the building category...