Q & A: Plasma No. 1

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Q:

Who invented the plasma ball? What year was it invented in, and what did the first one look like?
- Lil’ Rob (age 14)
Lancaster,CA, United States

A:

Great question!

First of all, it’s important to realize that a plasma ball is just a small Tesla Coil. Click here for more information about that. The very first Tesla coil was invented by an electrical engineer named Nikola Tesla (and hence the name of the coil) in 1891.

For more information, please visit the following sites:

http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/
http://www.eng.utah.edu/~kier/about.html

(This is where I found what the first Tesla coil probably looked like.)



Thanks for the question!

~Ann

(published on 10/22/2007)

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