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| | --- Reply above this line to comment on this post ---  | Matthew Inman, proprietor of web comic The Oatmeal, is on a mission to build a crowd-funded museum dedicated to inventor Nikola Tesla, who Inman refers to as "the greatest geek who ever lived." Inman's goal was to raise $850,000 (which would be matched dollar-for-dollar by a New York state grant) in 45 days. But surprisingly, a little more than a week into it, the online campaign has gathered more than $1.1 million in donations. Many of the inventor's fans think Tesla was more brilliant than his more famous contemporaries, including Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Even though Tesla isn't exactly a household name, his unsung accomplishments and wild imagination have turned him into something of a folk hero. Here, a rundown of five of Tesla's craziest inventions: 1. Wireless energy transfer About 120 years ago at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, Tesla demonstrated that you could wirelessly transmit electricity by firing up a series of phosphorous light bulbs in a process he called electrodynamic induction. He dreamed that such technology would allow us to one day shoot power over long distances in the atmosphere, supplying distant destinations with the energy needed to live comfortably. Now over a century later, companies such as Intel and Sony are interested in applying the non-radiative energy transfer to things such as cell phones to allow you to charge your battery without messy power cables. 2. X-rays Tesla's research in the field of electromagnetism helped give radiologists everywhere the ability to peer into a person's anatomy without cutting them open — a concept that, in the late 1800s, sounded far-fetched. Although German physicist Willhelm Röntgen is widely credited with the discovery of X-rays in 1895, Tesla's own experiments with the technology eight years prior highlighted some of the inherent dangers of using radiation on human flesh. View slideshow at The Week. All the top stories from The Week. | | | |
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