Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Twin Musical Tesla Coils Playing the Super Mario Bros. Theme

I don't really get all the science behind it, but anything that manages to make me geek out on both Super Mario Bros. and The Prestige, is worth a blog post.

This is the text that came with the link: Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software.

Enjoy!

3 comments:

Peggy said...

Too bad there is a writers' strike, I still want that character from Studio 60 to finish his Tesla script.

Thank goodness for my imaginary world . . .

Anonymous said...

Yes, too bad there's a writer's strike.

Sigh....

Anonymous said...

The practical applications of this are endless... well not really. Very cool though. Call if you are ever having trouble sleeping and want a lengthy explanation on the technical aspects of this musical endeavor and the tesla coils involved--guaranteed to counter any restlessness or caffeine.