Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-born inventor who made major contributions to the development of the AC electricity system that we use today. His experiments to learn of the effect that lightning storms had on the earth revealed evidence of terrestrial stationary waves which indicated that planet earth was an excellent conductor of electricity. And this is the basis of wireless technology. (The Internet is full of information on this topic if you care to read more about it.)
In 1899, Tesla conducted an experiment at his laboratory in Colorado Springs that was reported to have produced 100 foot long lightning bolts before it blew a dynamo at the El Paso Electric Company. Not shabby.
What does that have to do with beads or me? Well may you ask. When I made the polymer clay beads, you see below, some of them reminded me of lightning and electric waves. And I took the pictures with an iPad which is a wonderful example of wireless technology. Tesla is known in some quarters as the “Master of Lightning” so I call these “Tesla Beads” despite the fact that my Italian American father was fond of reminding me that Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio-another example of wireless technology.
You’ll have to admit that the name “Marconi Beads” does not evoke the same kind of image. It just reminds me of pasta and then I get hungry.
Here are some pictures. The round beads are hollow and I formed the cores on marbles up to 40mm. I described the technique in this post.
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