Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project

The globes for the faux Tesla coils.

 I have been working on the details of my Halloween Project.  If you read my last post, you know that I plan to have an artistic rendition of a Tesla coil in it.  I have been doing some background reading on Tesla, Faraday, and Edison to try to get a feel for the early electrical experimentation.   I wanted to understand the look of the early electrical machines.  It has been interesting reading. 

The Halloween card I mentioned in my last post caused me to start thinking about life in the 1930’s.  I also wanted to get a feel for what was happening then.  By that time, most cities had electricity and were beginning to use electrically powered street lamps. Two out of three city homes had electrical service.  Only about ten percent of rural and remote homes had commercial electricity.  Outside of the cities and suburbs people either lit their homes with gas, used lanterns, or a small generator.  Innovation was coming quickly as people embraced electricity for everyday use.  I wanted to put some of this idea of change into my Halloween project.

To get into the spirit of my Halloween piece I thought about what entertainments were available in the 1930’s.  They had radio, and the movies.  The 1930’s were also at the end of an era in entertainment known as vaudeville.  There were still traveling shows and circuses that moved from town to town.  Vaudeville probably played in saloons or some type of hall.  Circuses still used tents.  In small towns with little in the way of entertainment, a traveling show or circus coming to town was a big deal.   I decided that I had to get some of this idea of a traveling show into my piece somehow.  

As you have probably guessed, my Faux Tesla Coil Halloween project will have a “mad scientist” type character in it.  However, it will be an anthropomorphic pumpkin as a mad scientist.  The setting for the piece will not be the mad scientist’s laboratory though.  The basis of the piece will be a traveling show.  My anthropomorphic pumpkin scientist will be demonstrating the wonders of electricity and the amazing Tesla coil.  I’m also imagining the traveling show to be a little outdated.  It will be using older technology.  In this case a steam generator to power the electricity.  The show would have to bring its own generator and of course they don’t have money for the most up to date equipment.  To tie it into the Halloween theme, the colors of the piece will have a lot of orange and black.  And, of course, it will contain a hissing black cat, as this was the inspiration for the piece.

I’ve started to work on the piece a little bit.  I found a piece of scrap wood for the base.  I have also done a little work on the metal support.  Although the balls on top of the pillars reminded me very much of the steel globes on early Tesla coils, I decided that they needed to be exaggerated for its artistic representation.  That is about all I’ve had time to work on so far.

Next blog:  How I created the “steel” globes.