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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
TESLA: Inventions, Researches and Writings opens a gateway into the brilliant and often enigmatic world of Nikola Tesla. This anthology, curated with meticulous care, captures the full breadth of Tesla's contributions to science and technology, from his ground-breaking experiments in electricity and magnetism to his visionary ideas that transcended the technological limits of his time. Readers will be inspired by the diversity of thought and depth of insight present within these works, a testament to Tesla's genius and his unrelenting curiosity. While the collection stands out for its comprehensive coverage, it also invites readers to explore Tesla's lesser-known musings that continue to intrigue and inspire. The anthology benefits from the expertise of Thomas Commerford Martin, an electrical engineer and contemporary of Tesla. Martin's editorial contributions provide context and clarity, weaving together Tesla's disparate works to present a cohesive narrative of intellectual rigor and pioneering spirit. The collection aligns with the historical backdrop of the progressive era of scientific discovery, reflecting Tesla's role in the cultural and technological movements that propelled society into the modern age. The contributing voices, including Martin's perspective, create a tapestry that broadens understanding of Tesla's immense impact on both his contemporaries and successors. This anthology offers readers a unique chance to engage with the multifaceted perspectives within the realm of innovative thought. By delving into this collection, readers gain not only educational insights into the evolution of electrical engineering but also a profound appreciation for Tesla's enduring legacy. Inviting a dialogue between history and modern innovation, TESLA: Inventions, Researches and Writings is an essential volume for those eager to explore the singular vision and diverse contributions of an unparalleled pioneer. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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TESLA: Inventions, Researches and Writings
Table of Contents
Introduction
This collection presents a comprehensive panorama of Nikola Tesla’s intellectual and experimental life, bringing together his autobiographical reflections, formal lectures, technical monographs, and wide-ranging articles for scientific and general audiences. Its purpose is to offer a single, coherent resource that traces the evolution of his ideas across alternating current systems, high frequency phenomena, wireless transmission, illumination, electro-therapeutics, and communication. While centered on Tesla’s own voice, it also includes Thomas Commerford Martin’s contemporary survey The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, which documents and contextualizes Tesla’s early work. Assembled together, these texts provide primary sources for studying the emergence and influence of modern electrical thought and practice.
The contents span multiple genres and text types: an autobiography in My Inventions; formal lectures such as those on alternate current motors, transformers, and very high frequency currents; technical monographs on apparatus and methods; scientific articles reporting experimental results and theoretical considerations; popular essays that interpret complex ideas for non-specialists; brief notes and reports on specific devices or observations; and letters to magazine editors addressing debates, clarifications, and priority claims. The inclusion of Martin’s compendium brings a contemporary documentary perspective, complementing Tesla’s first-person accounts with a structured presentation of research, demonstrations, and writings from the formative years of his career.
A unifying theme across these works is Tesla’s conviction that electrical principles reveal underlying harmonies in nature, with resonance, frequency, and energy storage serving as organizing concepts. Stylistically, he blends rigorous experimental description with lucid analogies and a persuasive, forward-looking tone. The lectures emphasize clear presentation of apparatus, method, and result, while the essays broaden the implications for industry, health, illumination, and global communication. Throughout, Tesla links laboratory precision with expansive vision, inviting readers to see technical progress as inseparable from social and cultural transformation. The collection’s coherence lies in this sustained fusion of theory, experiment, and prophetic imagination.
Taken as a whole, the writings record major shifts in electrical science and engineering, from early demonstrations of alternating current motors and transformers to investigations of high frequency currents and wireless effects. They document practical advances in power transmission and lighting, experimental explorations connected with radiography, and the development of wireless control and signaling. Equally important, they capture how ideas circulated between laboratory, lecture hall, and the press, shaping public understanding of modernity. The collection’s significance rests not only on specific results, but on the ways Tesla framed problems, defined terms, and proposed directions that influenced subsequent research and technological adoption.
Readers can follow a chronological and thematic arc: early lectures and monographs establish foundations for alternating current machinery and high frequency apparatus; later papers and essays extend those principles to wireless transmission, remote control, and illumination; speculative and programmatic pieces address planetary communication and large-scale engineering concepts; and the autobiography supplies personal context for the experiments and public demonstrations. Recurring subjects—resonance, carefully tuned circuits, transformer behavior, electrostatic induction, and high potential discharges—reappear across decades in new settings, revealing a consistent methodological core. This continuity underscores how successive investigations deepened, rather than replaced, earlier insights.
The diversity of formats offers multiple entry points. Specialists will find detailed accounts of apparatus, measurement, and experimental conditions relevant to alternating current systems, high frequency oscillators, and electro-therapeutic devices. Historians of science can trace debates, priorities, and reception through articles and letters to editors. General readers encounter accessible explanations in essays on the age of electricity, the future of wireless, and the societal reach of new technologies. The presence of Martin’s compendium provides a contemporaneous framework for Tesla’s early achievements, enriching the later self-interpretations and retrospective accounts with documentation assembled during the period of initial discovery.
By uniting technical rigor with public-facing exposition, this collection reveals an inventor who argued through instruments as much as through words. The laboratory photographs and diagrams that often accompanied individual pieces are here represented by the texts that described them, preserving the logic of construction and test. Read comparatively, the works show how alternating current engineering, high frequency experimentation, wireless effects, and visionary proposals interlock into a single project: understanding and directing electrical energy at scale. As a sustained record of inquiry and advocacy, they remain indispensable for grasping the origins and ambitions of electrical modernity.
Historical Context
Nikola Tesla’s oeuvre emerged from the late nineteenth-century crucible of electrification, transatlantic migration, and corporate rivalry. Born in 1856 at Smiljan, Austrian Empire (now Croatia), he trained in the Habsburg and French systems before arriving in New York in 1884 to work for Edison Machine Works. By 1887–1888 he had patented the polyphase induction motor and presented A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers to the AIEE in New York, securing George Westinghouse’s backing amid the “War of Currents” with Thomas A. Edison. European transformer advances by ZBD (Ganz, Budapest) and British figures such as Ferranti contextualized Tesla’s alternating-current program and many later writings.
Public experimentation and spectacle shaped the reception of Tesla’s lectures and articles. In 1891 he disclosed the Tesla coil and high-frequency lighting effects before the AIEE in New York; in 1892 he demonstrated related phenomena to British audiences in London. In 1893 he lectured at the Franklin Institute (Philadelphia) and the National Electric Light Association (St. Louis), coinciding with Westinghouse’s alternating-current triumph at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Niagara Falls hydroelectric project (Adams Power Plant, 1895; power to Buffalo, 1896) provided industrial proof of polyphase transmission. Thomas Commerford Martin’s 1894 compendium, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, anchored these advances within a coherent public narrative.
Tesla’s investigations of high-frequency currents unfolded alongside a broader electrotherapy movement. Following Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval’s work (1891) and Paul Marie Oudin’s resonator (1893), Tesla publicized oscillators and resonant apparatus used to light vacuum tubes, heat tissues, and probe physiological responses. Articles on High Frequency Oscillators for Electro-Therapeutic and Other Purposes and essays on the physiological effects of currents positioned his devices within both laboratory physics and contested medical markets. Professional societies—the AIEE in the United States and counterparts in Britain—debated safety, dosage, and mechanism as manufacturers, clinicians, and showmen adopted “violet rays.” Tesla’s showmanship with brush discharges and wireless lamps served both pedagogy and commercial demonstration.
The X-ray age began abruptly with Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s announcement in late 1895, and Tesla quickly reported independent radiographic experiments in 1896. He investigated Crookes and Lenard tubes, speculated on reflected radiations, and warned of injuries—burns, eye damage—well before standardized protection. His articles on Roentgen Rays and on the hurtful actions of Lenard and Röntgen apparatus reflect a transitional moment when physics, medicine, and newsrooms converged. The 1895 fire that destroyed his New York laboratory forced a reconstitution of equipment, yet press accounts in Electrical Review and metropolitan papers show sustained work on long-distance radiography and tube construction, situating Tesla among early adopters navigating hazards and promise.
Wireless communication and power transmission frame many texts in this collection. Building on Heinrich Hertz’s wave experiments (1887–1889), Tesla filed U.S. patents in 1897 for systems and apparatus to transmit energy, then pursued resonant earth experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899. In 1901, with J. P. Morgan’s investment, he began the Wardenclyffe project at Shoreham, Long Island, while Guglielmo Marconi attempted transatlantic signaling the same year. Predictions of the Kennelly–Heaviside layer (1902) and reports of solar disturbances informed debates on propagation. Tesla’s essays—on the True Wireless, tuned lightning, and the disturbing influence of solar radiation—advance a global, earth-coupled model that differed from prevailing “Hertzian” interpretations and foreshadowed spectrum-era controversies.
Automation and military modernity pervade Tesla’s writings on telemechanics. At the 1898 Electrical Exhibition in Madison Square Garden, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat—a “teleautomaton”—seeking U.S. Navy interest during a period defined by the Spanish–American War (1898) and intensifying naval competition. Concepts for submarine destroyers, wirelessly guided torpedoes, and electric drive for battleships aligned with contemporary advances by Charles A. Parsons (steam turbines) and high-frequency alternators associated with A. E. Kennelly and J. A. Ewing. Articles proposing deterrent “tidal waves” and coast defense reflect fin-de-siècle faith that electricity’s precision and reach could make war impracticable, even as new technologies simultaneously enlarged the battlefield.
Tesla’s speculative essays intersected Progressive Era ideals of social uplift through engineering. The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (Century Magazine, 1900) linked efficient energy conversion—hydropower at Niagara, steam turbines, and wireless distribution—to urban growth and global prosperity. Popular fascination with Mars, amplified by Percival Lowell’s observatory work (1894 onward), nourished Tesla’s proposals for interplanetary signaling in Talking with Planets and related pieces on bridging the gap to Mars. World’s fairs (Chicago 1893; Paris 1900), philanthropic industry, and mass-circulation magazines created a platform where laboratory results, public policy, and utopian forecasts mingled, shaping his journalism on the wonder-world of electricity and the destinies steered by cosmic forces.
Institutional and legal contexts complete the backdrop to these writings. The professionalization of electrical engineering—AIEE (founded 1884), IRE (1912)—and corporate laboratories at Westinghouse and General Electric conditioned debates over patents and priority, including Marconi’s radio claims later revisited by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943. Vacuum-tube breakthroughs by J. A. Fleming (1904) and Lee de Forest (1906), and long-wave power by Ernst F. W. Alexanderson, redirected wireless practice. Tesla received the AIEE Edison Medal in 1917, emblematic recognition within a changing field. Martin’s editorial role, from the 1894 volume onward, knit lectures, technical papers, and press interviews into a transatlantic record of an era’s ambitions and disputes.
Synopsis (Selection)
My Inventions – Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Tesla recounts his life, formative experiences, and the genesis of his key inventions, from polyphase AC to wireless transmission. The memoir blends personal anecdotes with concise explanations of his methods and aims.
Lectures (Collected Volume)
A curated set of Tesla’s public demonstrations and talks outlining his core discoveries in alternating currents, high-frequency phenomena, lighting methods, and early wireless concepts. It showcases experimental setups and practical applications alongside theory.
A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers
Tesla introduces the polyphase AC system, detailing induction motors and transformer principles that enable efficient generation, transmission, and use of electric power. The work establishes the architecture of modern electrical power systems.
Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination (Lecture)
Tesla demonstrates high-frequency coils and resonant circuits to produce novel lighting effects and contactless illumination. He emphasizes safe handling, dielectric phenomena, and practical lamp designs.
On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena
Expanding on prior demonstrations, Tesla explores luminous discharges, phosphorescence, and the behavior of matter under high-frequency currents. He connects these effects to improved lighting and wireless energy transfer.
On Electricity
A broad lecture synthesizing Tesla’s views on electrical theory, generation, and transmission, with emphasis on resonance, high-potential effects, and practical engineering challenges. It frames electricity as a universal medium for power and communication.
High-Frequency Currents, Oscillators, and Illumination (Phenomena of Alternating Currents of Very High Frequency; Experiments with Alternate Currents... [Article]; Alternate Current Electrostatic Induction Apparatus; Electrical Oscillators; High Frequency Oscillators for Electro-Therapeutic and Other Purposes [both versions])
A suite of papers describing the construction and tuning of high-frequency oscillators and coils, their dielectric and resonant behavior, and applications to efficient lighting and contactless power. Tesla codifies techniques for stable high-frequency generation, matching, and safe operation.
Electrotherapy and Physiological Effects (The Physiological and Other Effects of High Frequency Currents; Nikola Tesla—About His Experiments in Electrical Healing)
Tesla reports on the sensory, thermal, and therapeutic effects of high-frequency currents on the human body. He argues for controlled medical uses while outlining safety limits and apparatus design.
Vacuum Tubes and X-Ray/Roentgen Investigations (Electric Discharge in Vacuum Tubes; On Roentgen Rays series; Tesla's Latest Results...; On Reflected Roentgen Rays; On Roentgen Radiations/Streams; On Hurtful Actions...; On the Source of Roentgen Rays...)
A comprehensive exploration of high-voltage discharges in rarefied gases and the production, properties, and hazards of X-rays. Tesla details tube construction, remote radiography, scattering versus reflection, and safety practices for Lenard/Roentgen apparatus.
On the Dissipation of the Electrical Energy of the Hertz Resonator
Tesla analyzes how resonant circuits lose energy through radiation, dielectric absorption, and conductor heating. He draws design rules for minimizing losses and maximizing selective resonance in wireless systems.
Wireless Power and Communication—Foundational Papers (The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires; The True Wireless)
These cornerstone essays set out Tesla’s wireless method based on earth–ionosphere coupling and tuned resonance rather than radiative broadcasting. He describes station architecture, scaling laws, and global power and signaling concepts.
Wireless—Applications, Phenomena, and Public Explanations (Tesla’s Wireless Light; Tuned Lightning; Possibilities of Wireless; Nikola Tesla Sees a Wireless Vision; The Disturbing Influence of Solar Radiation...; My Apparatus, Says Tesla; Correction by Mr. Tesla)
Popular and technical pieces illustrating practical wireless lighting, controlled high-voltage discharges, environmental effects on propagation, and clarifications of his apparatus and intentions. They translate laboratory advances into envisioned services and address public misconceptions.
Interplanetary Signaling (Talking with Planets; Can Bridge the Gap to Mars; How to Signal to Mars)
Tesla proposes using powerful tuned transmissions and planetary electrical resonance to communicate with Mars and other worlds. He outlines methods for detectable signaling and discusses natural electrical phenomena that might be interpreted as extraterrestrial.
Military and Naval Concepts (My Submarine Destroyer; Tesla's Wireless Torpedo; Tesla's Tidal Wave to Make War Impossible; Electric Drive for Battle Ships)
Essays on remotely controlled craft, electrically powered naval propulsion, and deterrent technologies intended to render warfare impractical. Tesla stresses precision control, long-range actuation, and strategic implications of electrical systems.
Electrical Machinery and Components (Swinburne's 'Hedgehog' Transformer; The 'Drehstrom' Patent; The Ewing High-Frequency Alternator and Parson's Steam Engine; Notes on a Unipolar Dynamo)
Technical notes and critiques on transformer designs, polyphase patents, specialized alternators, and unipolar machines. Tesla evaluates efficiency, magnetic behavior, and mechanical integration in advanced electrical equipment.
Instruments and Miscellaneous Apparatus (An Electrolytic Clock; A Lighting Machine on Novel Principles)
Short descriptions of novel devices for precise timekeeping via electrochemical processes and for generating light with improved efficiency. Tesla emphasizes simplicity, stability, and unconventional operating principles.
Capacitance and Conductor Properties (Tesla's New Discovery—Capacity of Electrical Conductors is Variable)
Tesla claims that a conductor’s effective capacitance changes with electrical state and surroundings, affecting resonance and tuning. He discusses measurement implications and circuit design consequences.
Essays, Interviews, and Futurism (The Age of Electricity; The Wonder World to Be Created by Electricity; Wonders of the Future; Mr. Tesla's Vision; What Science May Achieve This Year—New Mechanical Principle for Conservation of Energy; Tesla Describes His Efforts in Various Fields of Work; Some Personal Recollections; How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destinies; Little Aeroplane Progress)
Public-facing pieces that forecast societal transformation through electrification, outline ongoing projects, reflect on past milestones, and comment on contemporary technology and cosmic influences. They blend advocacy for peaceful progress with critiques of current limitations.
Letters to Magazine Editors (Mr. Nikola Tesla on Alternate Current Motors; The Losses Due to Hysteresis in Transformers; The Tesla Alternate Current Motor; Tesla's New Alternating Motors; Alternate Current Motors; Electro-motors; Phenomena of Currents of High Frequency; Mr. Tesla on Thermo Electricity; Nicola Tesla Objects)
Concise letters clarifying technical points on AC motors, transformer losses, high-frequency effects, and thermoelectric claims, as well as correcting public misstatements. They document Tesla’s positions in ongoing scientific and industrial debates.
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (T. C. Martin)
An early compendium that assembles Tesla’s patents, lectures, and core papers with editorial commentary and illustrations. It offers a structured overview of his AC systems, high-frequency experiments, and lighting research up to the mid-1890s.
TESLA: Inventions, Researches and Writings
My Inventions – Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
I. My Early Life.
The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.[1q] It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements.
Speaking for myself, I have already had more than my full measure of this exquisite enjoyment, so much that for many years my life was little short of continuous rapture. I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.
In attempting to give a connected and faithful account of my activities in this series of articles which will be presented with the assistance of the Editors of the ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER and are chiefly addrest to our young men readers, I must dwell, however reluctantly, on the impressions of my youth and the circumstances and events which have been instrumental in determining my career.
Our first endeavors are purely instinctive, promptings of an imagination vivid and undisciplined. As we grow older reason asserts itself and we become more and more systematic and designing. But those early impulses, tho not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies. Indeed, I feel now that had I understood and cultivated instead of suppressing them, I would have added substantial value to my bequest to the world. But not until I had attained manhood did I realize that I was an inventor.
This was due to a number of causes. In the first place I had a brother who was gifted to an extraordinary degree—one of those rare phenomena of mentality which biological investigation has failed to explain. His premature death left my parents disconsolate. We owned a horse which had been presented to us by a dear friend. It was a magnificent animal of Arabian breed, possest of almost human intelligence, and was cared for and petted by the whole family, having on one occasion saved my father's life under remarkable circumstances. My father had been called one winter night to perform an urgent duty and while crossing the mountains, infested by wolves, the horse became frightened and ran away, throwing him violently to the ground. It arrived home bleeding and exhausted, but after the alarm was sounded immediately dashed off again, returning to the spot, and before the searching party were far on the way they were met by my father, who had recovered consciousness and remounted, not realizing that he had been lying in the snow for several hours. This horse was responsible for my brother's injuries from which he died. I witnest the tragic scene and altho fifty-six years have elapsed since, my visual impression of it has lost none of its force. The recollection of his attainments made every effort of mine seem dull in comparison.
Anything I did that was creditable merely caused my parents to feel their loss more keenly. So I grew up with little confidence in myself. But I was far from being considered a stupid boy, if I am to judge from an incident of which I have still a strong remembrance. One day the Aldermen were passing thru a street where I was at play with other boys. The oldest of these venerable gentlemen—a wealthy citizen—paused to give a silver piece to each of us. Coming to me he suddenly stopt and commanded, "Look in my eyes." I met his gaze, my hand outstretched to receive the much valued coin, when, to my dismay, he said, "No, not much, you can get nothing from me, you are too smart." They used to tell a funny story about me. I had two old aunts with wrinkled faces, one of them having two teeth protruding like the tusks of an elephant which she buried in my cheek every time she kist me. Nothing would scare me more than the prospect of being hugged by these as affectionate as unattractive relatives. It happened that while being carried in my mother's arms they asked me who was the prettier of the two. After examining their faces intently, I answered thoughtfully, pointing to one of them, "This here is not as ugly as the other."
Then again, I was intended from my very birth for the clerical profession and this thought constantly opprest me. I longed to be an engineer but my father was inflexible. He was the son of an officer who served in the army of the Great Napoleon and, in common with his brother, professor of mathematics in a prominent institution, had received a military education but, singularly enough, later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence. He was a very erudite man, a veritable natural philosopher, poet and writer and his sermons were said to be as eloquent as those of Abraham a Sancta-Clara. He had a prodigious memory and frequently recited at length from works in several languages. He often remarked playfully that if some of the classics were lost he could restore them. His style of writing was much admired. He penned sentences short and terse and was full of wit and satire. The humorous remarks he made were always peculiar and characteristic. Just to illustrate, I may mention one or two instances. Among the help there was a cross-eyed man called Mane, employed to do work around the farm. He was chopping wood one day. As he swung the axe my father, who stood nearby and felt very uncomfortable, cautioned him, "For God's sake, Mane, do not strike at what you are looking but at what you intend to hit." On another occasion he was taking out for a drive a friend who carelessly permitted his costly fur coat to rub on the carriage wheel. My father reminded him of it saying, "Pull in your coat, you are ruining my tire." He had the odd habit of talking to himself and would often carry on an animated conversation and indulge in heated argument, changing the tone of his voice. A casual listener might have sworn that several people were in the room.
Altho I must trace to my mother's influence whatever inventiveness I possess, the training he gave me must have been helpful. It comprised all sorts of exercises—as, guessing one another's thoughts, discovering the defects of some form or expression, repeating long sentences or performing mental calculations. These daily lessons were intended to strengthen memory and reason and especially to develop the critical sense, and were undoubtedly very beneficial.
My mother descended from one of the oldest families in the country and a line of inventors. Both her father and grandfather originated numerous implements for household, agricultural and other uses. She was a truly great woman, of rare skill, courage and fortitude, who had braved the storms of life and past thru many a trying experience. When she was sixteen a virulent pestilence swept the country. Her father was called away to administer the last sacraments to the dying and during his absence she went alone to the assistance of a neighboring family who were stricken by the dread disease. All of the members, five in number, succumbed in rapid succession. She bathed, clothed and laid out the bodies, decorating them with flowers according to the custom of the country and when her father returned he found everything ready for a Christian burial. My mother was an inventor of the first order and would, I believe, have achieved great things had she not been so remote from modern life and its multifold opportunities. She invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her. She even planted the seeds, raised the plants and separated the fibers herself. She worked indefatigably, from break of day till late at night, and most of the wearing apparel and furnishings of the home was the product of her hands. When she was past sixty, her fingers were still nimble enough to tie three knots in an eyelash.
There was another and still more important reason for my late awakening. In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined. When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. This caused me great discomfort and anxiety. None of the students of psychology or physiology whom I have consulted could ever explain satisfactorily these phenomena. They seem to have been unique altho I was probably predisposed as I know that my brother experienced a similar trouble. The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation. They certainly were not hallucinations such as are produced in diseased and anguished minds, for in other respects I was normal and composed. To give an idea of my distress, suppose that I had witnest a funeral or some such nerve-racking spectacle. Then, inevitably, in the stillness of night, a vivid picture of the scene would thrust itself before my eyes and persist despite all my efforts to banish it. Sometimes it would even remain fixt in space tho I pushed my hand thru it. If my explanation is correct, it should be able to project on a screen the image of any object one conceives and make it visible. Such an advance would revolutionize all human relations. I am convinced that this wonder can and will be accomplished in time to come; I may add that I have devoted much thought to the solution of the problem.
To free myself of these tormenting appearances, I tried to concentrate my mind on something else I had seen, and in this way I would of ten obtain temporary relief; but in order to get it I had to conjure continuously new images. It was not long before I found that I had exhausted all of those at my command; my "reel" had run out, as it were, because I had seen little of the world—only objects in my home and the immediate surroundings. As I performed these mental operations for the second or third time, in order to chase the appearances from my vision, the remedy gradually lost all its force. Then I instinctively commenced to make excursions beyond the limits of the small world of which I had knowledge, and I saw new scenes. These were at first very blurred and indistinct, and would flit away when I tried to concentrate my attention upon them, but by and by I succeeded in fixing them; they gained in strength and distinctness and finally assumed the concreteness of real things. I soon discovered that my best comfort was attained if I simply went on in my vision farther and farther, getting new impressions all the time, and so I began to travel—of course, in my mind. Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start on my journeys—see new places, cities and countries—live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations.
This I did constantly until I was about seventeen when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind. Thus I have been led unconsciously to evolve what I consider a new method of materializing inventive concepts and ideas, which is radically opposite to the purely experimental and is in my opinion ever so much more expeditious and efficient. The moment one constructs a device to carry into practise a crude idea he finds himself unavoidably engrost with the details and defects of the apparatus. As he goes on improving and reconstructing, his force of concentration diminishes and he loses sight of the great underlying principle. Results may be obtained but always at the sacrifice of quality.
My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practise of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time.
My early affliction had, however, another compensation. The incessant mental exertion developed my powers of observation and enabled me to discover a truth of great importance. I had noted that the appearance of images was always preceded by actual vision of scenes under peculiar and generally very exceptional conditions and I was impelled on each occasion to locate the original impulse. After a while this effort grew to be almost automatic and I gained great facility in connecting cause and effect. Soon I became aware, to my surprise, that every thought I conceived was suggested by an external impression. Not only this but all my actions were prompted in a similar way. In the course of time it became perfectly evident to me that I was merely an automaton endowed with power of movement, responding to the stimuli of the sense organs and thinking and acting accordingly. The practical result of this was the art of telautomatics which has been so far carried out only in an imperfect manner. Its latent possibilities will, however, be eventually shown. I have been since years planning self-controlled automata and believe that mechanisms can be produced which will act as if possest of reason, to a limited degree, and will create a revolution in many commercial and industrial departments.
I was about twelve years old when I first succeeded in banishing an image from my vision by wilful effort, but I never had any control over the flashes of light to which I have referred. They were, perhaps, my strangest experience and inexplicable. They usually occurred when I found myself in a dangerous or distressing situation, or when I was greatly exhilarated. In some instances I have seen all the air around me filled with tongues of living flame. Their intensity, instead of diminishing, increased with time and seemingly attained a maximum when I was about twenty-five years old. While in Paris, in 1883, a prominent French manufacturer sent me an invitation to a shooting expedition which I accepted. I had been long confined to the factory and the fresh air had a wonderfully invigorating effect on me. On my return to the city that night I felt a positive sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as tho a small sun was located in it and I past the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head. Finally the flashes diminished in frequency and force but it took more than three weeks before they wholly subsided. When a second invitation was extended to me my answer was an emphatic NO!
These luminous phenomena still manifest themselves from time to time, as when a new idea opening up possibilities strikes me, but they are no longer exciting, being of relatively small intensity. When I close my eyes I invariably observe first, a background of very dark and uniform blue, not unlike the sky on a clear but starless night. In a few seconds this field becomes animated with innumerable scintillating flakes of green, arranged in several layers and advancing towards me. Then there appears, to the right, a beautiful pattern of two systems of parallel and closely spaced lines, at right angles to one another, in all sorts of colors with yellow-green and gold predominating. Immediately thereafter the lines grow brighter and the whole is thickly sprinkled with dots of twinkling light. This picture moves slowly across the field of vision and in about ten seconds vanishes to the left, leaving behind a ground of rather unpleasant and inert grey which quickly gives way to a billowy sea of clouds, seemingly trying to mould themselves in living shapes. It is curious that I cannot project a form into this grey until the second phase is reached. Every time, before falling asleep, images of persons or objects flit before my view. When I see them I know that I am about to lose consciousness. If they are absent and refuse to come it means a sleepless night.
To what an extent imagination played a part in my early life I may illustrate by another odd experience. Like most children I was fond of jumping and developed an intense desire to support myself in the air. Occasionally a strong wind richly charged with oxygen blew from the mountains rendering my body as light as cork and then I would leap and float in space for a long time. It was a delightful sensation and my disappointment was keen when later I undeceived myself.
During that period I contracted many strange likes, dislikes and habits, some of which I can trace to external impressions while others are unaccountable. I had a violent aversion against the earrings of women but other ornaments, as bracelets, pleased me more or less according to design. The sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit but I was fascinated with the glitter of crystals or objects with sharp edges and plane surfaces. I would not touch the hair of other people except, perhaps, at the point of a revolver. I would get a fever by looking at a peach and if a piece of camphor was anywhere in the house it caused me the keenest discomfort. Even now I am not insensible to some of these upsetting impulses. When I drop little squares of paper in a dish filled with liquid, I always sense a peculiar and awful taste in my mouth. I counted the steps in my walks and calculated the cubical contents of soup plates, coffee cups and pieces of food—otherwise my meal was unenjoyable. All repeated acts or operations I performed had to be divisible by three and if I mist I felt impelled to do it all over again, even if it took hours.
Up to the age of eight years, my character was weak and vacillating. I had neither courage or strength to form a firm resolve. My feelings came in waves and surges and vibrated unceasingly between extremes. My wishes were of consuming force and like the heads of the hydra, they multiplied. I was opprest by thoughts of pain in life and death and religious fear. I was swayed by superstitious belief and lived in constant dread of the spirit of evil, of ghosts and ogres and other unholy monsters of the dark. Then, all at once, there came a tremendous change which altered the course of my whole existence. Of all things I liked books the best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading. He did not permit it and would fly into a rage when he caught me in the act. He hid the candles when he found that I was reading in secret. He did not want me to spoil my eyes. But I obtained tallow, made the wicking and cast the sticks into tin forms, and every night I would bush the keyhole and the cracks and read, often till dawn, when all others slept and my mother started on her arduous daily task. On one occasion I came across a novel entitled "Abafi" (the Son of Aba), a Serbian translation of a well known Hungarian writer, Josika. This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practise self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before—that of doing as I willed. In the course of time this vigorous mental exercise became second nature. At the outset my wishes had to be subdued but gradually desire and will grew to be identical. After years of such discipline I gained so complete a mastery over myself that I toyed with passions which have meant destruction to some of the strongest men. At a certain age I contracted a mania for gambling which greatly worried my parents. To sit down to a game of cards was for me the quintessence of pleasure. My father led an exemplary life and could not excuse the senseless waste of time and money in which I indulged. I had a strong resolve but my philosophy was bad. I would say to him, "I can stop whenever I please but is it worth while to give up that which I would purchase with the joys of Paradise?" On frequent occasions he gave vent to his anger and contempt but my mother was different. She understood the character of men and knew that one's salvation could only be brought about thru his own efforts. One afternoon, I remember, when I had lost all my money and was craving for a game, she came to me with a roll of bills and said, "Go and enjoy yourself. The sooner you lose all we possess the better it will be. I know that you will get over it." She was right. I conquered my passion then and there and only regretted that it had not been a hundred times as strong. I not only vanquished but tore it from my heart so as not to leave even a trace of desire. Ever since that time I have been as indifferent to any form of gambling as to picking teeth.
During another period I smoked excessively, threatening to ruin my health. Then my will asserted itself and I not only stopt but destroyed all inclination. Long ago I suffered from heart trouble until I discovered that it was due to the innocent cup of coffee I consumed every morning. I discontinued at once, tho I confess it was not an easy task. In this way I checked and bridled other habits and passions and have not only preserved my life but derived an immense amount of satisfaction from what most men would consider privation and sacrifice.
After finishing the studies at the Polytechnic Institute and University I had a complete nervous breakdown and while the malady lasted I observed many phenomena strange and unbelievable.
II. My First Efforts At Invention
I shall dwell briefly on these extraordinary experiences, on account of their possible interest to students of psychology and physiology and also because this period of agony was of the greatest consequence on my mental development and subsequent labors. But it is indispensable to first relate the circumstances and conditions which preceded them and in which might be found their partial explanation.
From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering but, to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness thru all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.
The premature death of millions is primarily traceable to this cause. Even among those who exercise care it is a common mistake to avoid imaginary, and ignore the real dangers. And what is true of an individual also applies, more or less, to a people as a whole. Witness, in illustration, the prohibition movement. A drastic, if not unconstitutional, measure is now being put thru in this country to prevent the consumption of alcohol and yet it is a positive fact that coffee, tea, tobacco, chewing gum and other stimulants, which are freely indulged in even at the tender age, are vastly more injurious to the national body, judging from the number of those who succumb. So, for instance, during my student years I gathered from the published necrologues in Vienna, the home of coffee drinkers, that deaths from heart trouble sometimes reached sixty-seven per cent of the total. Similar observations might probably be made in cities where the consumption of tea is excessive. These delicious beverages superexcite and gradually exhaust the fine fibers of the brain. They also interfere seriously with arterial circulation and should be enjoyed all the more sparingly as their deleterious effects are slow and imperceptible. Tobacco, on the other hand, is conducive to easy and pleasant thinking and detracts from the intensity and concentration necessary to all original and vigorous effort of the intellect. Chewing gum is helpful for a short while but soon drains the glandular system and inflicts irreparable damage, not to speak of the revulsion it creates. Alcohol in small quantities is an excellent tonic, but is toxic in its action when absorbed in larger amounts, quite immaterial as to whether it is taken in as whiskey or produced in the stomach from sugar. But it should not be overlooked that all these are great eliminators assisting Nature, as they do, in upholding her stern but just law of the survival of the fittest. Eager reformers should also be mindful of the eternal perversity of mankind which makes the indifferent "laissez-faire" by far preferable to enforced restraint.
The truth about this is that we need stimulants to do our best work under present living conditions, and that we must exercise moderation and control our appetites and inclinations in every direction. That is what I have been doing for many years, in this way maintaining myself young in body and mind. Abstinence was not always to my liking but I find ample reward in the agreeable experiences I am now making. Just in the hope of converting some to my precepts and convictions I will recall one or two.
A short time ago I was returning to my hotel. It was a bitter cold night, the ground slippery, and no taxi to be had. Half a block behind me followed another man, evidently as anxious as myself to get under cover. Suddenly my legs went up in the air. In the same instant there was a flash in my brain, the nerves responded, the muscles contracted, I swung thru 180 degrees and landed on my hands. I resumed my walk as tho nothing had happened when the stranger caught up with me. "How old are you?" he asked, surveying me critically. "Oh, about fifty-nine," I replied. "What of it?" "Well," said he, "I have seen a cat do this but never a man." About a month since I wanted to order new eyeglasses and went to an oculist who put me thru the usual tests. He lookt at me incredulously as I read off with ease the smallest print at considerable distance. But when I told him that I was past sixty he gasped in astonishment. Friends of mine often remark that my suits fit me like gloves but they do not know that all my clothing is made to measurements which were taken nearly 35 years ago and never changed. During this same period my weight has not varied one pound.
In this connection I may tell a funny story. One evening, in the winter of 1885, Mr. Edison, Edward H. Johnson, the President of the Edison Illuminating Company, Mr. Batchellor, Manager of the works, and myself entered a little place opposite 65 Fifth Avenue where the offices of the company were located. Someone suggested guessing weights and I was induced to step on a scale. Edison felt me all over and said: "Tesla weighs 152 lbs. to an ounce," and he guest it exactly. Stript I weighed 142 lbs. and that is still my weight. I whispered to Mr. Johnson: "How is it possible that Edison could guess my weight so closely?" "Well," he said, lowering his voice. "I will tell you, confidentially, but you must not say anything. He was employed for a long time in a Chicago slaughter-house where he weighed thousands of hogs every day! That's why." My friend, the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, tells of an Englishman on whom he sprung one of his original anecdotes and who listened with a puzzled expression but - a year later - laughed out loud. I will frankly confess it took me longer than that to appreciate Johnson's joke.
Now, my well being is simply the result of a careful and measured mode of living and perhaps the most astonishing thing is that three times in my youth I was rendered by illness a hopeless physical wreck and given up by physicians. More than this, thru ignorance and lightheartedness, I got into all sorts of difficulties, dangers and scrapes from which I extricated myself as by enchantment. I was almost drowned a dozen times; was nearly boiled alive and just mist being cremated. I was entombed, lost and frozen. I had hair-breadth escapes from mad dogs, hogs, and other wild animals. I past thru dreadful diseases and met with all kinds of odd mishaps and that I am hale and hearty today seems like a miracle. But as I recall these incidents to my mind I feel convinced that my preservation was not altogether accidental.
An inventor's endeavor is essentially lifesaving. Whether he harnesses forces, improves devices, or provides new comforts and conveniences, he is adding to the safety of our existence. He is also better qualified than the average individual to protect himself in peril, for he is observant and resourceful. If I had no other evidence that I was, in a measure, possest of such qualities I would find it in these personal experiences. The reader will be able to judge for himself if I mention one or two instances. On one occasion, when about 14 years old, I wanted to scare some friends who were bathing with me. My plan was to dive under a long floating structure and slip out quietly at the other end. Swimming and diving came to me as naturally as to a duck and I was confident that I could perform the feat. Accordingly I plunged into the water and, when out of view, turned around and proceeded rapidly towards the opposite side. Thinking that I was safely beyond the structure, I rose to the surface but to my dismay struck a beam. Of course, I quickly dived and forged ahead with rapid strokes until my breath was beginning to give out. Rising for the second time, my head came again in contact with a beam. Now I was becoming desperate. However, summoning all my energy, I made a third frantic attempt but the result was the same. The torture of supprest breathing was getting unendurable, my brain was reeling and I felt myself sinking. At that moment, when my situation seemed absolutely hopeless, I experienced one of those flashes of light and the structure above me appeared before my vision. I either discerned or guest that there was a little space between the surface of the water and the boards resting on the beams and, with consciousness nearly gone, I floated up, prest my mouth close to the planks and managed to inhale a little air, unfortunately mingled with a spray of water which nearly choked me. Several times I repeated this procedure as in a dream until my heart, which was racing at a terrible rate, quieted down and I gained composure. After that I made a number of unsuccessful dives, having completely lost the sense of direction, but finally succeeded in getting out of the trap when my friends had already given me up and were fishing for my body.
That bathing season was spoiled for me thru recklessness but I soon forgot the lesson and only two years later I fell into a worse predicament. There was a large flour mill with a dam across the river near the city where I was studying at that time. As a rule the height of the water was only two or three inches above the dam and to swim out to it was a sport not very dangerous in which I often indulged. One day I went alone to the river to enjoy myself as usual. When I was a short distance from the masonry, however, I was horrified to observe that the water had risen and was carrying me along swiftly. I tried to get away but it was too late. Luckily, tho, I saved myself from being swept over by taking hold of the wall with both hands. The pressure against my chest was great and I was barely able to keep my head above the surface. Not a soul was in sight and my voice was lost in the roar of the fall. Slowly and gradually I became exhausted and unable to withstand the strain longer. just as I was about to let go, to be dashed against the rocks below, I saw in a flash of light a familiar diagram illustrating the hydraulic principle that the pressure of a fluid in motion is proportionate to the area exposed, and automatically I turned on my left side. As if by magic the pressure was reduced and I found it comparatively easy in that position to resist the force of the stream. But the danger still confronted me. I knew that sooner or later I would be carried down, as it was not possible for any help to reach me in time, even if I attracted attention. I am ambidextrous now but then I was lefthanded and had comparatively little strength in my right arm. For this reason I did not dare to turn on the other side to rest and nothing remained but to slowly push my body along the dam. I had to get away from the mill towards which my face was turned as the current there was much swifter and deeper. It was a long and painful ordeal and I came near to failing at its very end for I was confronted with a depression in the masonry. I managed to get over with the last ounce of my force and fell in a swoon when I reached the bank, where I was found. I had torn virtually all the skin from my left side and it took several weeks before the fever subsided and I was well. These are only two of many instances but they may be sufficient to show that had it not been for the inventor's instinct I would not have lived to tell this tale.
Interested people have often asked me how and when I began to invent. This I can only answer from my present recollection in the light of which the first attempt I recall was rather ambitious for it involved the invention of an apparatus and a method. In the former I was anticipated but the latter was original. It happened in this way. One of my playmates had come into the possession of a hook and fishing-tackle which created quite an excitement in the village, and the next morning all started out to catch frogs. I was left alone and deserted owing to a quarrel with this boy. I had never seen a real hook and pictured it as something wonderful, endowed with peculiar qualities, and was despairing not to be one of the party. Urged by necessity, I somehow got hold of a piece of soft iron wire, hammered the end to a sharp point between two stones, bent it into shape, and fastened it to a strong string. I then cut a rod, gathered some bait, and went down to the brook where there were frogs in abundance. But I could not catch any and was almost discouraged when it occurred to me to dangle the empty hook in front of a frog sitting on a stump. At first he collapsed but by and by his eyes bulged out and became bloodshot, he swelled to twice his normal size and made a vicious snap at the hook.
Immediately I pulled him up. I tried the same thing again and again and the method proved infallible. When my comrades, who in spite of their fine outfit had caught nothing, came to me they were green with envy. For a long time I kept my secret and enjoyed the monopoly but finally yielded to the spirit of Christmas. Every boy could then do the same and the following summer brought disaster to the frogs.
In my next attempt I seem to have acted under the first instinctive impulse which later dominated me - to harness the energies of nature to the service of man. I did this thru the medium of May-bugs - or June-bugs as they are called in America - which were a veritable pest in that country and sometimes broke the branches of trees by the sheer weight of their bodies. The bushes were black with them. I would attach as many as four of them to a crosspiece, rotably arranged on a thin spindle, and transmit the motion of the same to a large disc and so derive considerable "power." These creatures were remarkably efficient, for once they were started they had no sense to stop and continued whirling for hours and hours and the hotter it was the harder they worked. All went well until a strange boy came to the place. He was the son of a retired officer in the Austrian Army. That urchin ate May-bugs alive and enjoyed them as tho they were the finest blue-point oysters. That disgusting sight terminated my endeavors in this promising field and I have never since been able to touch a May-bug or any other insect for that matter.
After that, I believe, I undertook to take apart and assemble the clocks of my grandfather. In the former operation I was always successful but often failed in the latter. So it came that he brought my work to a sudden halt in a manner not too delicate and it took thirty years before I tackled another clockwork again. Shortly there after I went into the manufacture of a kind of pop-gun which comprised a hollow tube, a piston, and two plugs of hemp. When firing the gun, the piston was prest against the stomach and the tube was pushed back quickly with both hands. The air between the plugs was comprest and raised to high temperature and one of them was expelled with a loud report. The art consisted in selecting a tube of the proper taper from the hollow stalks. I did very well with that gun but my activities interfered with the window panes in our house and met with painful discouragement. If I remember rightly, I then took to carving swords from pieces of furniture which I could conveniently obtain. At that time I was under the sway of the Serbian national poetry and full of admiration for the feats of the heroes. I used to spend hours in mowing down my enemies in the form of corn-stalks which ruined the crops and netted me several spankings from my mother. Moreover these were not of the formal kind but the genuine article.
I had all this and more behind me before I was six years old and had past thru one year of elementary school in the village of Smiljan where I was born. At this juncture we moved to the little city of Gospic nearby. This change of residence was like a calamity to me. It almost broke my heart to part from our pigeons, chickens and sheep, and our magnificent flock of geese which used to rise to the clouds in the morning and return from the feeding grounds at sundown in battle formation, so perfect that it would have put a squadron of the best aviators of the present day to shame. In our new house I was but a prisoner, watching the strange people I saw thru the window blinds. My bashfulness was such that I would rather have faced a roaring lion than one of the city dudes who strolled about. But my hardest trial came on Sunday when I had to dress up and attend the service. There I meet with an accident, the mere thought of which made my blood curdle like sour milk for years afterwards. It was my second adventure in a church. Not long before I was entombed for a night in an old chapel on an inaccessible mountain which was visited only once a year. It was an awful experience, but this one was worse. There was a wealthy lady in town, a good but pompous woman, who used to come to the church gorgeously painted up and attired with an enormous train and attendants. One Sunday I had just finished ringing the bell in the belfry and rushed downstairs when this grand dame was sweeping out and I jumped on her train. It tore off with a ripping noise which sounded like a salvo of musketry fired by raw recruits. My father was livid with rage. He gave me a gentle slap on the cheek, the only corporal punishment he ever administered to me but I almost feel it now. The embarrassment and confusion that followed are indescribable. I was practically ostracised until something else happened which redeemed me in the estimation of the community.
