Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

I'm planning to attend Duckon in Naperville, Illinois. Here's my schedule for next weekend, as seen on the Duckon 19 programming page.

Saturday 19 June
1 PM
Conference F
Geeks and Nerds
Bill Higgins

Are you offended by the way Geeks and Nerds are depicted on Big Bang? Or do you see yourself as a “Penny”?

As an avid viewer of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and a student of the role of techies in society, I thought this was worth discussing. Disturbingly, the only panelist listed is me. I'm hoping the panel will be filled out with others, because I can't fill an hour on this topic by myself. (Not an interesting hour, anyway.)

Saturday 19 June
3 PM
Conference B
The Science of 2010 (The Movie, Not the Year)
Bill Higgins

The film 2010 , released in 1984, is a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie that set a high standard for technical accuracy. In filming Arthur C. Clarke's novel, director and screenwriter Peter Hyams brought updated scientific ideas into an established universe. In the years since Stanley Kubrick's film, the Voyager spacecraft had revealed Jupiter and its satellites in immense detail. Io had volcanoes. Europa might have an ocean. The flow of Jupiter's atmosphere was better understood. Engineers were proposing aerocapture-- braking into orbit using friction with Jupiter's atmosphere. Moreover, the technology of filmmaking was changing swiftly, and 2010 is a significant milestone along its path. With Voyager data as the seed, one of the world's fastest computers created spectacular Jupiter sequences, precursors to the computer-generated imagery that would become routine for movies in decades to follow.

In 2009 I was on a panel with Jeffrey Liss about "The Science of 2001: A Space Odyssey." Jeffrey suggested that, since 2010 was coming, I cook up a talk about the sequel.

Sunday 20 June
2 PM
Conference B
Time Travel, can you really get a second chance?
Steven Silver, Bill Higgins

I have no further description for this one, so I'm wondering what it's supposed to be about. But I volunteered because it's always fun to talk to Steven Silver about science fiction for a while.

I see the Masters of Lightning will again be giving a Zeusaphone performance on Saturday evening in the parking lot-- around nightfall, I imagine-- weather permitting. If you haven't seen musical Tesla coils, catch this.

Here's the picture of me that ran with my article in Symmetry:

This was cropped down.

It came from a photo shoot where typical shots looked more like this:
Back in June, when the magazine needed a portrait, I got a call from Reidar Hahn, our photographer from Fermilab's Visual Media Services.

I figured Reidar was going to pose me in front of an equipment rack or something. Instead he suggested that, since we were both planning to attend a performance by Zeusaphones, he could snap pictures there. Jeff Larson and Steve Ward set up their musical Tesla coils in the parking lot of the Naperville hotel where Duckon 17 was taking place.

Reidar needed to use a combination of flash (to illuminate me in the foreground) with a long exposure time (to capture the arcs of the Zeusaphones). I think it was four seconds. I tried to be still. His remote-controlled flash setup was unhappy in the presence of powerful radiofrequency emitters, but he coped. I'm sure he's faced tougher challenges in a lifetime of superscience photography.

While I was posing, Terry Blake donned his chainmail suit and chicken-wire helmet, becoming "Doctor Zeus." He strode between the coils and began to brandish a pair of fluorescent tubes amid a storm of purple lightning. The crowd loved it. The music buzzed. Reidar snapped away.

So I was recorded for posterity by a Hasselblad with 36 megapixels. There is more detail in this photo than you wanted to see.

Here's my General Technics pin.
Here are half of my eyelashes.

All in all, given that I am quite vain, I am very glad to have these pictures (even if their full glory did not find its way into the magazine). You can never have too many photos of yourself posing in front of Tesla coils, I always say.

The video clip entitled "Singing Tesla Coil at Duckon 2007," posted on 21 June 2007, has now been viewed over one million times.

(Don't bother to click on it-- you've already seen it!)

As I write this, Google has 2770 hits for "zeusaphone" and 46 for the variant spelling "zeusophone."

Not bad for a word that didn't exist four months ago.

As you may know, high-voltage hobbyists have recently developed a so-called solid-state method for driving a Tesla coil. The pulse rate can be increased or decreased, so the sound of "lightning bolt" discharges from the coil have a varying tone. Think of it as a series of rapidly repeated thunderclaps.

I know Jeff Larson—we both work at Fermilab—and Jeff has introduced me to other Teslaphiles. Now and then, Jeff puts on a public demonstration, with wirelessly flickering fluorescent lamps, sparkling CDs, and giant arcs of barely-tamed lightning delighting crowds.

On the evening of 9 June 2007, Jeff set up a demonstration at Duckon, a science fiction convention in Naperville, Illinois. He was joined by Steve Ward, who has built one of the first "singing" Tesla coils. Jeff put his coil through its paces, which was impressive enough. But when Steve's device started playing music, it added a new dimension to the experience. Naturally, the audience went wild.

Several of us shot videos of the performance. One such video was posted to the Internet, and soon became the hottest thing on Youtube [footnote 1].

Around 19 June, in a phone call, I was describing the musical coil and the performance to another of Jeff's friends, Prof. Barry Gehm of Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas.

"...so the lightning is actually making the music," I said.

"Ah," said he, "then you could call it a Zeusaphone."

On 21 June, I reported Barry Gehm's neologism to a mailing list, and also e-mailed a copy to Steve Ward. Steve loved the name, quickly sought Barry's approval to use the name for his device, and just as quickly received it.

So that's how "Zeusaphone" was born, and how the world came to know about it.

As I wrote to Steve: "The Net is buzzing (so to speak) with talk about your performance. People who weren't at Duckon are envious of those who were. Perhaps it will all be forgotten the next time a kitten learns to flush a toilet on camera, but for now, your machine is a star..."

Meanwhile, in the Upper Peninsula, Dan Butler-Ehle posted this, also on 21 June, in response to my mentioning the Zeusaphone:

"Hee hee. When I showed the clip to my wife yesterday, I told her the device should be called a 'Thoremin.'"

This is also an excellent suggestion (and it has 48 Google hits).

On 16 August, after "Zeusaphone" had been in circulation a while, Steve Klec in Los Angeles registered "zeusaphone.com" for his business selling Tesla coil products.

Jeff Larson has now built a Zeusaphone of his own. On 8 September 2007, Jeff and Steve Ward demonstrated the first public duet at the "Lightning on the Lawn" festival in Baraboo, Wisconsin. And I'm sure there are more adventures ahead.

In fact, I'm positive.

Footnote 1: Since artificially-induced plasmas are involved, I mean this literally.