I met Bre Pettis at Software Freedom Day. He’s a NY tinkerer and he’s got a new show up on the History Channel called History Hacker. He’s not actually hacking history itself so much as hacking on historical inventions.
Check out the pilot Friday Sept. 26th at 8pm (and again at midnight). If enough people Tivo it, he’ll get to make more shows. If not, this might be the only one.
Over the course of the show I learn about the inventors and inventions of the past and then hack the inventions together out of stuff in my closet.
The first pilot episode is all about Nikola Tesla who is an amazing character. He’s the man responsible for the current that comes out of your wall sockets. He battled Thomas Edison in the war of currents and won. He had over 300 patents and besides figuring out AC power, he came up with radio control and mucked about with electricity more than anybody.
In the show, I blow a glass tube from molten silica with Kevin at Scanlan Glass and then fill it neon gas with Dave of Tecnolux. I made an AC generator with my pal Raphael of NYCResistor. It got enough pedal power going to power a neon tube!
If you like the show, Bre has a blog post on how you can help turn this one-off into a series.
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