tesla

Be a Part of this Massive Interactive Diorama Celebrating Elon Musk

Be a Part of this Massive Interactive Diorama Celebrating Elon Musk

Mike Winter

By Mike Winter

Mike Winter

Mike Winter has spent his life writing software, solving problems, and building robots for places like Google. Along with his daughter Lisa, he’s most notable as a longtime BattleBot alum. Now he’s focused on artificial intelligence — specifically determining if a computer-controlled combat robot can best a human-controlled robot opponent in an endeavor he calls “AI or Die.” Always the educator, he guides the new maker through the basics of exploring AI robotics in this piece.

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Elon Musk is the world’s top maker — no contest — and his goal is to save the Earth from global warming. To celebrate that, I’m building a giant diorama of Elon Musk’s spaceships, Tesla cars, Hyperloop transportation, Solar City energy, Paypal, Boring company, a colony on Mars, electric aircraft and whatever he invents tomorrow. […]

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Maker Pro News: Why This Venture Capital Firm Is Investing in Makers

Maker Pro News: Why This Venture Capital Firm Is Investing in Makers

By Jon Christian

Jon Christian

Jon Christian is the co-editor of the Maker Pro Newsletter, which covers the intersection between makers and business. He's also written for the Boston Globe, WIRED and The Atlantic.

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By DC Denison

DC Denison

DC Denison is the co-editor of The Maker Pro Newsletter, which covers the intersection of makers and business. That means hardware startups, new products, and market trends.

DC manages customer stories at Acquia, the digital experience company.

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This week: Funding for engineering startups, the struggle to fix a Tesla, and how to quit your job.

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Physicists Rebuilding the Tesla Tower for Planetary Energy Transmission

Physicists Rebuilding the Tesla Tower for Planetary Energy Transmission

Mike Senese

By Mike Senese

Mike Senese

Mike Senese is a content producer with a focus on technology, science, and engineering. He served as Executive Editor of Make: magazine for nearly a decade, and previously was a senior editor at Wired. Mike has also starred in engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It.

An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with electronics, fixing cars, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza. You might spot him at his local skatepark in the SF Bay Area.

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A team of Russian physicists want to revisit Tesla’s greatest unrealized plan, update it with modern technology, and try to make his theoretical world-wide wireless power transmission system a reality.

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Giant of Words Finds Giant of Electricity

Giant of Words Finds Giant of Electricity

By Sabrina Merlo

Sabrina Merlo

Sabrina is the Maker Faire Program Director. She works on stage content for the flagship fairs (Bay Area & New York), and also runs Maker Faire's global licensing program for locally and independently produced Maker Faires. She also co-creates the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in her town, Oakland, CA.

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Writer Michael Chabon found a vintage gem at The Journal of Irreproducible Results’ booth in Expo Hall.  Norman Sperling of JIR is not only sharing his fab science humor magazine, but he’s also selling classic, out-of-print sci & tech books and miscellany like this biography of Tesla.

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The Tesla Valve: One Way Flow With No Moving Parts

The Tesla Valve: One Way Flow With No Moving Parts

By Sean Michael Ragan

Sean Michael Ragan

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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Here’s yet another delightful mechanical curiosity from among Nikola Tesla’s nearly 300 known patents. Shown above is the sole drawing page from US patent #1,329,559, “Valvular Conduit,” issued 1920. You may have to stare at the upper section, for a moment, to figure out what’s going on: Flow from left to right, as illustrated, is against the valve’s bias—the stream is broken up and diverted in circular paths that return to interfere with each other. Flow from right to left, however, is not so impeded.

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Help Build the World’s Largest Tesla Coils

Help Build the World’s Largest Tesla Coils

By Sabrina Merlo

Sabrina Merlo

Sabrina is the Maker Faire Program Director. She works on stage content for the flagship fairs (Bay Area & New York), and also runs Maker Faire's global licensing program for locally and independently produced Maker Faires. She also co-creates the East Bay Mini Maker Faire in her town, Oakland, CA.

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The man behind the world’s largest Tesla coil (the 30,000-watt Electrum) is once again upping the ante on machine-generated lightning. Greg Leyh and his group Lightning On Demand (LOD) have launched a new a project, The Lightning Foundry, that will try to re-create super-long discharge effects normally found only in lightning.

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