A traveller would hardly notice a small white house not far from town, nor would they expect that within its walls, on a hot summer's afternoon, there would be a young genius at work, playing with electricity.
The young genius is Ron Adams, who became fascinated
some time ago with Nicholae Tesla, the Russian scientist
whose experiments with electricity served as a foundation
for much of what we now take for granted in our electrical
society.
In a spare room, Adams has assembled a number of electrical experiments, starting first with a Tesla Coil, then a larger one, then other demonstration devices that display the generation and propagation of electrical energy.
At our request, he turns off the lights, and cranks up
the apparatus, demonstrating that he can light a common
fluorescent lamp by passing current through the air,
and over his body.
Sounds reminiscent of "The Bride of Frankenstein" fill
the air as a bluish arc passes from the coil to the lamp,
lighting it in his hand, he passes it to his other
hand, and it stays lit.
"There's a lot of wattage", he says, "but it's low amperage. So, it doesn't hurt or anything... When Tesla did his experiments, he would point his hand and literally hurl bolts of electicity quite a distance. Must have been pretty amazing, to see that."
Pretty amazing indeed. We're amazed at his understanding of the elemental principles around him, and his easy mastery of them. But Ron's still like most young men his age.
"The capacitors are beer bottles, as you can see," he
says, pulling out a plastic reservoir filled, it turns out,
with a neat array of green glass containers topped with
some sort of nut and wire arrangement.
"Where did the beer go ? " we ask.
"I drank it. I'm old enough." he answers.
"Oh..." we reply. Hard to believe.
Electricity is only a part of his experimentation, however. Ron's house is wired with digital audio, and his computer has a wide array of video and audio inputs. He likes to take sounds and images from the real world, and put them in his machine.
Like many other young people, Ron is driven by technology, he lives and breathes it, but there are few technical opportunities around, so he learns everything he can, and bides his time.
He does other things, too. He served in the Gulf War with the National Guard, he's directed television news, done computer work, but a real job with a real challenge, that is hard to find.
He keeps hoping, as a lot of young people do,
that the region will change, become more technically
oriented as it grows, and that he will have a chance
to do the kind of work he knows that he can do.
For now, he keeps looking, and fiddling around, and learning. Ron's people are from Somerset County, and they're not the kind that give up. Not easily, not ever.
So, if you need a young genius, write to Ron at: radams@shore.intercom.net. For our region to prosper, we must do more than develop our beaches, our croplands and our highways. Our young people need a place to grow, too.
July 10, 1996 Charles Paparella The Shore Journal