Tesla Tessellations

The key to understanding what is a Tesla Tessellation kaleidoscope, is to answer two other questions:
     • Who was Tesla?
     • What is a Tessellation?

Nikola Tesla was the inventor of the alternating current electric system. Ben Franklin may have discovered electricity, but we have household appliances because of Tesla. He invented many other cool things like the tesla coil (used in radios), remote controls, and a “death beam”. Elon Musk named his car company for Tesla’s electrical contributions to the world.

A Tessellation is a pattern created by repeating one or more shapes without gaps or overlaps (a.k.a., tiling of a plane). Square or hexagonal floor tiles create a tessellation. The artist Escher was famous for his complex figural tessellations.

Tesla Tessellations are a kaleidoscope series of the common tessellations found in kaleidoscopes and are decorated on the outside using high voltage electricity (ala Tesla).

Learn about how the wood is burned with high voltage.

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Mirrors

Most kaleidoscopes use a triangular mirror system. If all the angles in the triangle are evenly divisible into 180, the image you see will be a tessellation. The common kaleidoscope tessellations are:
    3 point - 60/60/60 equilateral triangle, that creates a grid of triangles
    4 point - 45/45/90 right triangle or isosceles triangle that creates a grid of squares
    6 point - 30/60/90 right triangle that creates a grid of hexagons
I’ve also included a 5 point (36/54/90 right triangle that creates a 5 pointed star/pentagon) in my collection of Tesla Tessellations, because the image looks interesting and it is very close to being a tessellation. In reality, this is a full-field image not a tessellation. See images of the mirrors here. 

Copper Eye Caps

The copper eye-caps can be used to identify each type of Tesla Tessellation kaleidoscope. In addition, stands are available representing the various geometric shapes contained in the images.

Copper Eye-Cap Code
     Bright copper – 3 point (triangles)
     Textured copper – 4 point (squares)
     Glittery copper – 5 point (pentagons)
     Patinated copper – 6 point (hexagons)