Sparks fly in Lee Street shed from engineer's Tesla coil
Like some mad scientist, a man with a long white beard dons his white lab coat and goggles and enters a dark shed to tinker with his creation.
Mathew Deming, a retired engineer who worked for Columbia Gas for 33 years, now spends his time working on a machine he built in his basement workshop on Charleston's East End.
The machine, called a Tesla coil, generates 3-foot-long bolts of high-voltage electricity. It looks like a miniature spaceship. The top piece is supported by a column of wire tubing attached to a motor.
The coil, a type of transformer, is named after 19th century Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who developed alternating electric current.
"Tesla's theory did not get enough recognition because it competed with Thomas Edison's theory of direct current," said Deming. "Edison's theory only dominated because it was more profitable to industrialist investors."
Deming belongs to an international group of scientists and engineers who call themselves The Geek Group. They work to continue the research of scientists like Tesla, who worked for the sake of science without consideration of profit.
"Tesla was a visionary," Deming says, "He would see an idea for an invention in his head, complete with all the details, and when he built it, it worked!"
Deming retired about six months ago and began his work on the coils. He said he's been fascinated by science since he was a child.
His library, on the second floor of his Lee Street house, has two walls covered from floor to ceiling with books about physics, engineering, mathematical theory and, of course, Tesla.
Deming has built two Tesla coils so far. The larger coil, 5 feet high, stands ready to be activated at a moment's notice in a special high-voltage shed adjacent to his house on Lee Street. The shed is a dark wooden room with a large metal cage surrounding the coil.
"The hardest thing about building a coil is finding the parts," Deming said. "Once, I used refrigerator piping for electrical tubing and a microwave motor for a generator."
He orders rare parts from the Internet or builds them himself. Sometimes, he has to build the tools he needs to make parts.
Deming says it takes about three months and $1,000 in parts to build a Tesla coil. Deming wants to build a third coil that will stand about 7 feet high and shoot 5-foot bolts of electricity, then sell it at cost to an organization like Sunrise Museum so more people can see it.
