14 DAY TRIAL // I must admit I felt quite weird as I looked at the uncanny performance of a Tesla coil sending blasts of electricity through the air at resonating frequencies that actually were the Super Mario theme. What in the first place looked like a very erroneous experiment has turned out to be a real breakthrough in (so far) futile science: making electricity sing.
Still such a phrase sounds quite weird and almost silly but it is the pure truth: the large blasts of electricity were actually singing and performing. This experiment was initiated and conducted by Steve Ward, an EE student at the U of I Urbana-Champaign and Steve is also the builder and owner of the singing Tesla coil assembly.
Shortly, the primary runs at specific resonant frequency of 41kHz and is modulated by means of digital circuitry. You can watch this movie of the Ward's Tesla coil "doing the show"; one thing you will not be able to exactly sense from this movie is how loud the performance actually is.
Those who have seen Tesla coils in action before know how extremely loud electricity bolts can be; those who have never experienced such a thing should know that the sound is easily covering a 15-20 people crowd cheering and screaming. In fact, in the last part of the movie you can hear the crowd's voice being far overwhelmed by the sound of the Tesla device in action.
So far it seems like simple music and sounds are the only thing there is to the "talking current" but this initial step is one very good piece of a start in this direction. Hopefully, we'll see more complex modulations at work with Tesla coils and why not, even a synthesizer adaptation. Tesla vocoders, anyone?
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