Thanks to the power of the internet (not the least of whose forces of awesomeness is Matt Inman of The Oatmeal), more and more people are becoming acquainted with Nikola Tesla, and realizing that he was one of the most gifted, visonary and unsung scientists to ever walk the earth.

Inman just ran an indiegogo campaign to raise $850,000 toward purchasing Tesla’s last lab im Shoreham, New York, and converting it into a Tesla museum; he actually raised $1,370,511.00.

Yeah, Tesla is awesome, and Edison, who boinked Tesla in the bung, laughed about it, and took all the credit for alternating current, is somewhere on the awesomeness scale right next to Christopher Columbus, who boinked an entire population into the grave (with due respect to all my Italian relatives who still love him.)

But there are other awesome people in the world whom we also haven’t heard much about unless we happen to be internet addicts, and Stumble across an interesting fact at 3:00 AM because we can’t sleep.

Raymond Loewy is just one such engineering wonder.

Loewy’s designs are everywhere, and when you see them, they’re unlike anything else in their field. In the 1930’s, he designed the PRR S1 steam locomotive that looks like it came out of the year 2155;

Found at Frog Blog

He designed pencil sharpeners that look like TOS Phasers:

CocaCola dispensing machines upon which 1960’s toys were modeled:

And more cool stuff than you could shake a stick at.

Although the 1953 Studebaker Starliner designed by Loewy’s firm (which was the inspiration for later Mustangs) was largely designed by Robert Bourke, Loewy was later called back to Studebaker to supervise and inspire the team that designed the 1963 Avanti.

This particular model was spotted at a Mobil station at 236 Route 15 in Sturbridge, MA on June 20, 2012. It caught my eye even before I even knew who Loewy was.

Read about him here; you can see more pictures of Loewy’s swooshy stuff at SuperRadNow.

The Old Wolf has spoken.