Talk:Tesla's Egg of Columbus

This experiment is not what it appears.

If you take a regular hard-boiled egg and spin it on it's side, it will roll up onto the pointy end of the egg and spin just like Tesla's egg did...but minus all of the coils and other junk.

I think, therefore that all this complicated apparatus does is to start the egg spinning - the standing-up-on-one-end part is an unrelated thing. This PDF: explains how this happens (in relation to a toy called the 'tippe-top', which does a similar thing when you spin it).

SteveBaker (talk) 13:50, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Tesla invention?
Reading through all the sources available I can find none that credibly state Tesla invented his "Egg of Columbus" exhibit. Westinghouse engineer Charles F. Scott seems to be the one who built it for a Westinghouse exhibit. The only claim that Tesla invented it is a dubious one in the March 19, 1919 Electrical Experimenter. This claim does not show up in Oneill and other books seem to repeat Electrical Experimenter. Such is life in the Tesla echo chamber. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 02:12, 28 March 2020 (UTC)


 * There are TWO devices in the photo, one smaller.  Why is the photo cropped here, to only show one of them?   (And why pretend that the two couldn't have two differing dates and builders?)   See photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Nikola_Tesla%27s_personal_exhibit_at_the_1893_Chicago_World%27s_Columbian_Exposition_Fair.png  Also there is a labeled photo from the TC Martin book "Inventions, research, and writings of Nikola Tesla," with the two devices labeled "A" and "B", see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/WorldsFairTeslaPresentation.png/600px-WorldsFairTeslaPresentation.png  In the book pp475-476, the author writes that the large version was designed for a uniform field and prepared by CF Scott for Tesla's exhibit (for Tesla, not for Westinghouse,) while "...A smaller ring, shown at B, was arranged like the one exhibited at A but designed especially to exhibit the rotation of an armature in a rotating field." No dates or builder mentioned for the smaller, so possibly it is the earlier version described in the "alternate story" mentioned on the WP entry.


 * And yes, but "echo chambers" plural, one for each side in this "religion/politics" battle, both producing similar distortions. 128.95.172.170 (talk) 02:57, 27 October 2023 (UTC)


 * per your own talk, the second device was not the Egg of Columbus exhibit, it was to show the "rotation of an armature", probably the one sitting next to it. We can't speculate any further than that. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2023 (UTC)