Introducing Nikola Tesla
Part visionary, part mad scientist, and absolute genius, Tesla should be as famous as Edison – but he’s been largely forgotten. Kurt talks with Samantha Hunt about her novel The Invention of Everything Else. Tesla is the protagonist, and despite the outlandish biographical details all through the book, there was very little she had to make up.
Hunt confesses it was the ’90s hair metal band, Tesla, that first got her interested in the inventor. (They have a song called “Edison’s Medicine.”) When she started researching the details of the inventor’s life, Hunt was struck by the oddities. “He had wonderful plans to light the ocean, to build a ring around the center of the earth and use that for traveling around the world in a day,” she says. He saw “machines swirling in his head,” but most of them were never developed. “Part of what’s so great about Tesla is rather than solving mysteries, he created more mysteries.”
(Originally aired: January 25, 2008)
Bonus Track: Samantha Hunt reads from her novel
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