By Susan Milius
There’s a lot to love about 19th century electronics that spray sparks into the air.
When Abigail Swann was a high school student, building a modern version from scratch of what’s called a Tesla coil struck her as a fine project to tackle with her engineer father in the garage. The underdog genius Nikola Tesla, who developed the voltage-amplifying device, “was really fun to learn about,” she says.
For months, daughter and father poked around electronics surplus stores, custom-cut plastic pieces and repurposed old wine bottles – the family lived among the vineyards in California’s Sonoma County.