"A famous image of inventor Nikola Tesla shows him casually sitting on a chair, legs crossed, taking notes—oblivious to the profusion of artificial lightning rending the air meters away."
Oblivious, because the image was a double negative.
"The photo was a promotional stunt by photographer Dickenson V. Alley; a double exposure. First the machine's huge sparks were photographed in the darkened room, then the photographic plate was exposed again with the machine off and Tesla sitting in the chair. In his Colorado Springs Notes Tesla admitted that the photo is false:
"Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined!"
Tesla's biographers Carl Willis and Mark Seifer confirm this."
Tesla had figured out the math for the minimum safe distance from his coils and had a habit of building the biggest one he could get away with in the shop space he had. Which meant they tended to nearly exactly fit into his workshop.
Which led to a situation mentioned in one of his biographies, where he was on the far side of the shop and somehow the switch got thrown. It was either make a new exit through a wall or window, or leverage the fact that discharges are sphere shaped but shops are generally box-shaped; army crawl out through the little 'triangle' of space between the floor and the wall/benches outside of the radius. I would hope some new safety protocols were introduced after that, but I couldn't rightly say. The rest of that story sort of overshadows such details in your memory.
Exposing lightning, and an indoor inventor, would require very different apertures and shutter speeds.
As I understand it, sitting nonchalantly while his Tesla coil threw gouts of lightning was a stunt which Tesla would frequently perform.
It took a bit of trickery to produce a photograph of it, sure. But anyone who has been to Burning Man has seen such feats as bands 'obliviously' playing music mere feet from a running Tesla coil.
Tesla doesn't seem to have entirely endorsed the procedure:
> To give an idea of the magnitude of the discharge the experimenter is sitting slightly behind the "extra coil". I did not like this idea but some people find such photographs interesting. Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined!
If the only issue was one of lighting it, I don't know why he'd express reservations. He says that it was only done to give a sense of scale, not to demonstrate safety ("of course" he wasn't actually sitting there- why "of course" if not for the issue of safety?). If he'd wanted to defend the image on the basis of being basically accurate (ie if he really did have a habit of hanging around next to his apparatus in full force) then it seems like he'd have mentioned it. Why would he "not like" such an image if he didn't think it was a little deceptive?
This book reads it exactly the same way:
> Perhaps the most memorable image was of Tesla calmly reading a book in front of a deluge of sparks; yet this photograph proved little about the inventor’s experiments. Alley had cleverly used a double exposure since it would have been too dangerous for the scientist to actually sit so close to such an electrical storm. Tesla later admitted, “The streamers were first impressed upon the plate in dark or feeble light, then the experimenter placed himself on the chair and an exposure to arc light was made and, finally, to bring out the features and other detail, a small flash powder was set off.”54 The publicity-conscious experimenter claimed he didn’t like such trick photography, but he argued, unconvincingly, that “some people find such photographs interesting.”
Oblivious, because the image was a double negative.
"The photo was a promotional stunt by photographer Dickenson V. Alley; a double exposure. First the machine's huge sparks were photographed in the darkened room, then the photographic plate was exposed again with the machine off and Tesla sitting in the chair. In his Colorado Springs Notes Tesla admitted that the photo is false:
Tesla's biographers Carl Willis and Mark Seifer confirm this."https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nikola_Tesla,_with_h...