The contrast of the blue tile and the dark statue really bring out the fully aesthetic g’oh. Who am I kidding? (Dan Brickley/DP)

I usually sprint into DRL, in an attempt to get to class only 5 minutes late. But in the rare case I’m on time, I walk slowly and admire Mr. Rittenhouse’s lab for the architectural beauty it is (cough SARCASM cough).

But last Tuesday, something caught my eye as I passed through the beautiful turquoise-”mosaic-ed” foyer. Sitting next to the stack of DPs is a bust of Nicola Tesla.

The bust is rather small, with a short description honoring Tesla for his pioneering work in mechanical and electrical engineering. Jackie Jacovini, curator of the University Art Collection, has no record of this statue in her database. Mark Lloyd, the director of the University Archives and Records Center, is unaware of any connections between Penn and Tesla. In short, the statue is a mystery (dun dun dun!).

However, Tesla’s contributions to society are no mystery. A contemporary (and nemesis) of Thomas Edison, Tesla led research in fields like x-rays, electric motors, and electric currents. Whenever he spoke in public, he demanded that his giant “Tesla coil” shoot bolts of electricity through the air in the background. In short, he was an engineering bad-ass.

Despite being regarded as a “Mad Scientist” at his death, Tesla’s influence lives on, especially with a group of California entrepreneurs headed by Martin Eberhard. Mr. Eberhard and company named their business after Tesla since he created the key component of their cars.

“The motor that we use was outright invented by Nicola Tesla,” said Martin Eberhard in an interview with the Oakland Business Review. “Now, we’ve optimized it a bit since his day. But he was the inventor and in our opinion Nicola Tesla has been a bit overlooked amongst the inventors of this country.”

Tesla Motors cannot be overlooked. Unlike other automobile makers that work solely on electric cars (Sparrow or REVA), Tesla prioritized looks in its first car — it had a solid cruising range and went fast. Based on the high performance Lotus Elise, it appears Tesla Motors seeks to groom “high-performance DNA” before getting into mainstream automobiles.

And it looks like Telsa’s succeeding at that too. With a new engineering center in Michigan and a factory in New Mexico, project “White Star” is fully underway. A reliable, long-range, electrically powered sedan should be on the market by 2009 and cost under $50,000.

So cherish your hike to DRL. When Tesla Motors reinvents the American car industry, you can look back and say you saw it all coming . . . every time you walked past the mystery bust.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.