After Lunch Wander

Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Mon 16 May 2011 18:47
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

 

“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”

 “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