(photobunny)
(Image by photobunny)

This evening I went to the theater to see the movie The Prestige, which was a fantastic. I highly recommend it. The acting was superb and the subject matter was intriguing. And hell, David Bowie was in it! Magic, and ultimately its relationship to science, were key themes in the story. Though there were a few minor holes in the plot it was definitely the type of movie that spurred some discussion after the viewing.

I don’t want to spoil anything with this post, but I will say that Nikola Tesla plays an important role in the story. When I got home I immediately turned to Tesla’s Wikipedia entry where I learned that three pieces of information played up in the movie were at least partially true:

  1. There was some bad blood between Edison and Tesla, not least of which because Edison seems to have screwed Tesla out of a large chunk of change for some brilliant work he did for Edison.

  2. Tesla did move his base of operations for a time to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he did some work on “wireless telegraphy”.

  3. Especially later in life Tesla held some fantastic theories regarding subjects such as UFOs and the like. It seems to be the case that some of these beliefs came out of an untreated psychiatric disorder (probably OCD).

Interesting. Feel free to read more about Tesla at the link above. And I’d highly recommend seeing the movie. It’s one of the best I’ve seen this year.