Reflections on How We Began and Where We are Now

by

Lillian D. Beltaos, President, NTHSA

 

On July 10, 2016 – nearly ten years ago, three of us, Harold Hornig, Bill Bromling and I, met in a local restaurant to talk about Nikola Tesla and his 160th birthday. A short time later, on July 11, 2016 we submitted the paperwork to register a non-profit Society in honour of this great inventor. Then, on July 22, 2016 we became a registered Alberta Society: Nikola Tesla Historical Society of Alberta, informally known as Alberta's Tesla Wave. We set up a website with our vision, mission and objectives – living documents – and proceeded to build up the memberships, held a few socials and discussions, and reached out to form some partnerships. The entire focus of the Society was to be on innovation, science and education.

 

On July 10, 2017 we celebrated Nikola Tesla's 161st birthday with two talks that were very well received by the audience. Dr. Allan Offenberger spoke about Tesla's discoveries focusing on AC, and also provided us with a perspective on other giants of that time period. Dr. Marija Nikolic-Jaric connected Tesla's early interest in using electrical current for medicinal applications and gave a mind- boggling presentation on the impact of electrical current on living cells. It was a fascinating multimedia presentation and we could have stayed another hour or two to just listen to these folks. We followed up with a couple of trivia questions related to Tesla. Ms. Lydia Emanuel gave the closest answer to how many patents Tesla had – this is still a mystery –and Mr. Gene Emanuel was the first to answer that, come 2019, Volvo will be producing electric vehicles only. This couple was asked to cut Tesla's birthday cake.

 

A display of books on Tesla was inviting as were the beverages and goodies provided. The Tesla Plasma bulb – to now be our fixture at similar events -- kept reminding us of Tesla's wireless technology and his brightness bursting out of the bulb.

 

Thanks to those who founded the Society, sat on the Board throughout the year and all the members for their support and who assisted with the logistics of the events. Special thanks to our speakers and to Dr. Rob Agostinis for capturing the event on his camera.

 

The Founding Members of the Society were:

 

Lillian D. Beltaos

Harold Hornig

Dr. Rob Agostinis

Vesna Farnden

Dr. Moira Walker

 

 

 

 

Nov 2016 1^st Meeting in Session

From left to right: Dr. Bradley Kerr, Ms. Vesna Farnden, Dr. Moira Walker,

Dr. Elaine Beltaos-Kerr, Ms. Lillian D. Beltaos

 

www.teslawave.org