Additional Styrofoam Gravestones 2004

In 2004, we added some new foam gravestones.

The new stones are a matched set, comemorating three pioneers in the field of electricity:

Nikola Tesla - Inventor of the AC power that lights our homes and powers modern industry.
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan - Inventor of the incandescent light bulb.
Thomas Edison - Who stole credit for the light bulb, and attempted foist his inferior power scheme on an unsuspecting public.

Activism In The Graveyard
Tesla
Swan
Edison
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Activism In The Graveyard

Most of the Wolfstone haunt is fun. We like things to be a little creepy, but not particularly gory. In 2004, we decided to add a touch of activism.

It has always been popular in America to worship Thomas Edison. Our textbooks are full of him. If asked to name a famous inventor, most kids would probably pick him.

But Edison Worship is not really a good thing. Edison was a hard worker, but he was a mean and spiteful man, taking advantage of his wealth and fame to crush superior technology offered by others.

Edison stole credit for certain inventions from others.
He hired a vast army of scientists to invent things, later credited to Edison personally.
Edison and his public relations hacks invented the electric chair, just to give AC power a bad name.
Edison was a pioneer in the field of movie piracy, ripping off French filmmaker Georges Méliès's famous film "A Trip to the Moon".
Curiously, Edison was a strong advocate for his own intellectual property, starting a monopolistic consortium (MPPC) to track down and punish film producers, distributors, and exhibitors who failed to pay licensing fees.

Tesla

We decided to embellish Tesla's tombstone with a crackling lightning bolt. We used a plasma lamp.

This crackle tube is made by Adams Apple. I bought it from American Science and Surplus in April 2004 for $20.

Here, the lamp has been removed from the box and partially disassembled.

Overall, the unit is 16-1/2" tall x 4-3/8" diameter. The glass tube is 5/8" diameter, and about 1 foot long.

These are the actual internal components of the plasma lamp.

In order to put lightning on Tesla's tombstone, we wanted to mount the tube on the front of the stone and hide the electronics inside.

After some experimentation, we decided to carve a channel in the front of the stone, in which to lay the tube.

This view from the back shows the tube being inserted from the back.

Soon, David will carve a cavity in the back to accept the electronics.

Tesla's tombstone in action.

Chained within the glass tube, a lightning bolt crackles and jumps.

The green color of the stone is from the creepy blue and green lights we use in the graveyard.

Swan

Since Sir Joseph Swan invented the incandescent light bulb, we decided to put one on his tombstone.

We were trying to produce the effect of a weakly glowing filament in an old-fashioned bulb.

We simply scooped a bulb-shaped cavity in the front of the stone and stuck in a light bulb.

The bulb was chosen for a clear envelope so that you can see the filament, and a nice filament layout.

In order to make the lamp dim, we hooked it to a dimmer.

Notes:

Lamp dimmers get cranky when turned way down low. The lamp often worked fine for a while, and then went out. We had to fiddle with the dimmer to get it back on.
Next year, we may use a step-down transformer to light the filament. Our experiments suggest that 24VAC should look good.
Beware the heat generated by the light bulb! It worked fine for us because the lamp was run so low. But if we turned it up, it became hot enough to melt the styrofoam!

Edison

Since Edison stole the credit for the light bulb, and many other inventions, we decided that his gravestone needed moving marquee lights.

We used a set of Christmas lights, prewired and ready to go. There were 100 tiny "rice lights" in the string.

The green box controls the flashing pattern.

David routed a channel in the styrofoam where the lights would go. Then he poked holes in the styrofoam, and inserted the lights from the back of the stone.

David made this little tool out of scrap metal to push the lights through the hole from the back.

The back of the Edison tombstone was left with a "stitched" pattern on the back where the wires run.

We may smear some Liquid Nails over it in the future.

Yep, just what Edison would have wanted.

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