Sunday, 24 August 2008

broadcast language

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2 comments:

troylloyd said...

radio live transmission:

Teslina poema

I Haunted thee were the ibis nods,
From the Bracken's crag to the Upas Tree.

Nikola Tesla, November 4, 1934
"Fragments of Olympian Gossip"

While listening on my cosmic phone
I caught words from the Olympus blown.
A newcomer was shown around;
That much I could guess, aided by sound.
"There's Archimedes with his lever
Still busy on problems as ever.
Says: matter and force are transmutable
And wrong the laws you thought immutable."
"Below, on Earth, they work at full blast
And news are coming in thick and fast.
The latest tells of a cosmic gun.
To be pelted is very poor fun.
We are wary with so much at stake,
Those beggars are a pest—no mistake."
"Too bad, Sir Isaac, they dimmed your renown
And turned your great science upside down.
Now a long haired crank, Einstein by name,
Puts on your high teaching all the blame.
Says: matter and force are transmutable
And wrong the laws you thought immutable."
"I am much too ignorant, my son,
For grasping schemes so finely spun.
My followers are of stronger mind
And I am content to stay behind,
Perhaps I failed, but I did my best,
These masters of mine may do the rest.
Come, Kelvin, I have finished my cup.
When is your friend Tesla coming up."
"Oh, quoth Kelvin, he is always late,
It would be useless to remonstrate."
Then silence—shuffle of soft slippered feet—
I knock and—the bedlam of the street.

Nikola Tesla, Novice

Никола Тесла

(I felt daylight flame beneath my skin
as the burning circuits of my veins
mapped each muscle.

I could scarcely stand the air,
its prickling static--
friction of dust and ...)

Tesla was born at exactly midnight on July 9, 1856, in Smiljan, Serbia. His father was a Serbian-Orthodox priest and orator, his mother Djuka Mandic, an inventor. He gave those parents a good deal of pleasure with his own early, if failed, attempts at flying. Once, he tried to fly, puffing his cheeks and unfurling an umbrella, by jumping off the roof of a barn. He ended up in a heap on the ground below, unconscious for a few moments, but unhurt. He also experimented with a sixteen-bug-power flying machine, a light contraption made of splinters forming a windmill, with a spindle and pulley attached to live June bugs. When the glued insects beat their wings, as they did desperately, the bug-power engine was supposed to take off. Young Nikola abandoned this line of research forever when a young friend dropped by who fancied the taste of June bugs. Noticing a jarful standing near, he began eating them. Nikola threw up.

Almost 40 years later, Tesla still had large dreams. On his 78th birthday, he announced that he had invented a "death beam" powerful enough to destroy 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 250 miles and annihilate an army of one million soldiers in an instant, which (in the words of tribute given Tesla by the Institute of Radio Engineers after his death on January 7, 1943) was one those "brilliant concepts, idealized dreams and aspirations so lofty as to be foredoomed."

A Serbian visitor to the U.S. once found a book of poems in the Chicago Public Library, written by the popular Serbian poet, Zmaj-Jovan -- translated into English by Nikola Tesla. Later, when this visitor was taken to meet Tesla in his New York offices on the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, he said, "Mr. Tesla, I did not know that you were interested in poetry." Tesla smiled wryly. "There are many of us Serbs who sing," he said, "but there is nobody to listen to us."

(ynlgugym)

24 August 2008 at 14:36
mike di tomasso said...

(ynlgulgym)

24 August 2008 at 14:40

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