Earthquake

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Nikola's lastest invention was a steam-powered mechanical oscillator-which he named Tesla's Oscillator.

While experimenting at his Houston Street lab, he generated a resonance which affected several buildings.

As the speed grew, the machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and, he did not realize the danger until it was too late.

He was forced to use a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived.

In February 1912, an article called "Nikola Tesla, Dreamer" was published in World Today, in which an artist's illustration appears showing the entire earth cracking in half with the caption,

"Tesla claims that in a few weeks he could set the earth's crust into such a state of vibration that it would rise and fall hundreds of feet and practically destroy civilization. A continuation of this process would, he says, eventually split the earth in two."

We laughed over that article.

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