Oddities: Super Mario Tesla coils
March 7, 2009 by Mike
Ahh, geeks. Given enough time on their hands, they’ll do anything—and that includes making two huge seven-foot Tesla coils to play the Super Mario Bros. theme. Steve Ward and Jeff Larson, the creators of the Tesla coils, didn’t exactly make them contraptions for kicks. They actually took part in the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
From the video’s YouTube page:
“The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programmed into the computer software.”
Nikola Tesla would have been proud.
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[...] Mario and his theme are ubiquitous. Through the years, different versions have been made, from Tesla coils to dual guitars, fans have done it all. This week, we check out another adaptation from someone [...]