After Lunch Wander
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Post Lunch
Amble back to the Marriott Hotel
  We left the Skylon
Tower and thought we would take a slow wander back to the hotel. No we were not
cold, we were frozen right
through
  Not many other
tourists about as it began to rain really hard
 
Walking through the park we saw a statue of Tesla. Stan, our driver yesterday had told us about Nikola Tesla, a Serbian (born on the 10th of July 1856, died on the 7th of January 1943) who was an inventor, mechanical and electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. 
Nikola Tesla and a few of his quotes
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the
human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the
brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep,
friends, love, everything.” “The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent
merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is
quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the
ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by
the succeeding frost.”
“The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a
feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever
increasing in speed and power.” “Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according
to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for
which I have really worked, is mine.” Stan also told us about the first electric
chair, which was produced by Harold
P. Brown (an employee of Thomas
Edison) and Arthur
Kennelly (Edison’s chief engineer), the
development of the electric chair is often erroneously credited to Edison
himself. Brown intended to use alternating
current (AC), then emerging as a potent
rival to less transport-efficient direct
current (DC), which was further along in
commercial development. It fascinates us that Edison’s people used Tesla’s
AC. The first person to be executed by the electric chair was William
Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on the
6th of August 1890, thankfully he was unconscious soon after
the eight minute process began. The first woman to be executed in the
electric chair was Martha
M. Place, executed at Sing
Sing Prison on the 20th of March
1899. Paul
Warner Powell, executed in Virginia on the 18th of March 2010, is the most recent
individual to choose electrocution over lethal injection. As of
2008[update],
the only places in the world which still reserve the electric chair as an
option for execution are the U.S. states of Alabama, Florida, South
Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. (Oklahoma, Arkansas and Illinois laws provide for its use should lethal injection ever be
held to be unconstitutional.) Inmates in the other states must select
either it or lethal injection. Our room, three storey's below
the left-hand Marriott sign, complete with birthday banner We took a short cut through the casino, another first for
me, really to get warm. I stroked the baize on some of the tables. I
looked in awe at the one-arm bandits. When I was young I remember the fun
of putting a coin in, pulling the arm and watching for my favourite three
cherries in a row. Now you poke a thing like a credit card in the slot,
pre-paid of course and watch the five rows of fruit and bars whizz round,
never touching the pretend bandit arm. Bear pointed out a machine that
took hundred dollar notes, with that we threw a coin in the fountain and
scarpered back to the hotel. ALL IN ALL MUCH MORE THAN A PLACE
WITH WATERFALLS
IF IT HAD BEEN WARM - SO MUCH TO EXPLORE IN THE
AREA |
