Terry Blake
Terry Blake | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Residence | Palatine, Illinois, United States |
| Nationality | USA |
| Known for | Tesla Coil construction and musical high-voltage demonstrations |
Terry Blake, known by the stage name "Dr. Zeus", is an American engineer and Tesla Coil builder based in the Chicago area of Illinois, United States. He is recognized within the high-voltage hobbyist community for designing and constructing Tesla coils and for staging musical electrical-discharge demonstrations.
Biography
Blake lives in Palatine, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago, and has worked as an engineer, including a career at Motorola. He has been active in the Tesla coil building community for many years, documenting his construction methods and designs on his personal website (tb3.com) and participating in "Teslathon" gatherings of high-voltage enthusiasts across the United States.
Blake is a member of the "Masters of Lightning", a Tesla coil performance group that also includes Jeff Larson and Steve Ward. The group has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and has drawn audiences ranging from dozens to several hundred people, with performance videos accumulating millions of views online.
Work
Blake's Tesla coil work covers both traditional and solid-state designs. He has documented capacitor construction, from early methods using glass bottles and salt water or sheets of glass and aluminum foil to modern polyethylene-and-mineral-oil designs, as well as magnifier (three-coil) systems based on Nikola Tesla's original concept, which achieve high magnetic coupling.
With the Masters of Lightning, Blake helped develop musical Tesla coils that use industrial transistors to generate electrical discharges reported at up to 1.6 million volts, with sparks as long as roughly twelve feet. By precisely controlling the firing rate of the sparks, the coils produce audible tones, allowing the group to "play" music ranging from Bach's Toccata and Fugue to video-game themes. During performances Blake stands between the coils wearing a layered chain-mail Faraday suit, at times carrying additional high-voltage props. He has emphasized the serious dangers of high-voltage work, cautioning that it is not a hobby for the untrained.