That wasn't supposed to happen. Tesla ran in and found Kolman half deaf, one of his ears bleeding.
It turned out that the power company turned off his power feed!
Tesla phoned them, shouted at them, - they were interrupting his experiment!
The foreman replied thatTesla had just overloaded the generator and set it on fire! His people are busy putting out the fire, and it will be a cold day in hell before Tesla got any more power from The Colorado Springs Power Company.

All the lights in Colorado springs had gone out. In 1899.

Wow!

And that, gentle reader, is the greatest hack in history. I know for some amazing hacks. The 8-bit Atari OS, the Mac OS. But I've never heard of anyone set the world lightning record, and shut off the power to an entire town, just to see what would happen!

For a few historical moments, there at the Colorado Springs outskirts, Nikola Tesla achieved something that was never done before. He had used the entire planet as a conductor, and send a pulse through it. In that moment, one summer day of 1899 Nikola Tesla made history.

And, by the way, set a world record for man - made lightning. 130 feet. The record which he still holds.

Tesla did his experiment in 1899. There were'nt any computers with delicate chips hooked to the ground then. If they had been, he'd have fried everything in Colorado springs and near surroundings.

There was, however, one piece of electrical equipment grounded at the time of the experiment. The city power generator. It caught fire and ended Tesla's experiment. The cause of its failure is worth mentioning too. It died from "high frequency kickback", something most electrical engeneers know about.

Tesla forgot that, as the generator fed him power, he was feeding it with high frequency from his coil. High frequency quickly heats the insulation; a microwave oven works on the same principle. In a matter of minutes, insulation inside the generator grew so hot that the whole generator caught fire.

When the lights went out in Colorado springs, there was the first proof that Tesla's ideas have strategic possibilities. But more on that later.

So, gentle reader, you who work on your computer every day, or you who spend nights ICQ-ing and having fun browsing the web, remember Tesla. His Tesla coil supplies the high voltage for the picture tube you use. The electricity for your computer comes from  Tesla AC generator. Then is sent through Tesla transformer, and finally reaches your house through 3-phase Tesla power.

Much more coming about this extraordinary man. Stay tuned.