And here we come back to Nikola Tesla.
Tesla (1856-1943) himself was a certified genius, he was also a touch insane.
He discovered or perfected many different types of apparatus to generate or use electricity including the production of Alternating Current which now powers our world, the Telsa coil better known as a standard prop in Sci-Fi movies, he developed (in 1898!) effective remote radio control for objects such as boats and torpedoes as well as demonstrating various types of magnetic fields. Some of his over 100 patents were for electric spark plugs for gasoline engines, various types of electric motors and even two related to an unusual type of airplane issued in 1927.
He worked with such notables as George Westinghouse and vied with Thomas Edison, his former employer, for the acceptance of AC current over Edison's favored Direct Current (DC).
And while Tesla noted some of the properties of some of his inventions, such as the effects of certain rays produced by a special tube he invented, later to be known as X-rays, that they could pass through objects and even burn the skin, he never pursued it to its conclusion. Instead he simply noted it, and moved on.
Later, in this case some eighty years later, others would look into his inventions and see what could be made from them.
Which is where John Hutchison comes in.
Others had taken the Tesla coil and made sparks with it. Many others. However, when Tesla himself was working on the thing he made one somewhat larger than anybody else ever has and hit it with so much electricity the load blew up the local power company's generator. Which Tesla then had to fix.
He had put a three foot diameter copper ball on top of a 140 foot mast and charged it from a giant primary coil.
What did it do? Well, it created actual lightning bolts. Not little sparks that make one's hair stand on end when you walk by the Tesla coil at a middle school science fair. These were huge arcs that jumped to grounding rods some 135 feet away from the ball. The thunder from the massive discharges could be heard several miles away. The resulting blackout told the town of Colorado Springs that their resident mad scientist had struck again.
Up until the 1980's slightly tamer mad scientists had put only a fraction of the power Tesla had used to somewhat smaller balls. They used smaller coils, and less line load. Hutchison didn't instead he threw 50,000 volts at them......
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