An Engineer's Aspect

Lockheed Martin Presents Airship of the Future

2011-09-04T01:21:00.000-05:00

I thought this new airship designed by Lockheed Martin was very interesting. According to The Daily Climate: This new airship is "Far safer than the Hindenburg, whose tragic 1937 docking remains an icon of aerospace gone wrong, these modern airships are a hybrid of lighter-than-air and fixed-wing aircraft. They can loft enormous payloads without requiring the acres of tarmac or miles of roadway necessary for conventional air and truck transport. And they do so at a fraction of the fuel and cost of aircraft."

Ten Physics Cartoons

2011-09-02T22:59:00.001-05:00

Nikola Tesla - "An Electrical Wizard" - An article found in the Newspaper Archives from 1893

2011-08-26T23:18:00.001-05:00

The Newark Daily Advocate, Newark, Ohio, Page 7. Monday, March 20, 1893.

AN ELECTRICAL WIZARD.
----------
Nikola Tesla Allows a Charge of 200,000
Volts to Pass Through His Body."I am convinced that I can today send a message to a ship at sea, and that those on board can understand it. If I cannot, I am willing to lay my head on the guillotine."

It was Nikola Tesla who made the above strange remark, and his wonderful achievements in the development of electrical science make his words worthy of respectful consideration. He has already established the fact that but one wire is necessary to create an electrical current and is now engaged on the problem of transmitting a current without the use of a wire at all. That he has grasped the secret of how this may ultimately be accomplished some of the experiments exhibited at his public lectures would seem to demonstrate.

Tesla produces a distinct and powerful glow without the aid of wires or globes and with apparatus remarkable chiefly for its simplicity. This consists of two highly charged disks, between which the light appears without a connecting filament of any kind. In an incandescent lamp hung on a single wire, but not connected with it, he produces a red light almost blinding in its brilliancy, which becomes a powerful white on increasing the frequency of alternations in the current. Concerning his theory of the possibility of transmission without wires Mr. Tesla says: "I have already proved the contrary of what everybody believed. I have proved that it is not necessary to have two wires to establish an electrical current. In my machine I have but one wire. I utilize the air as the other. But as I now get a return through the air I believe that I can also transmit through the earth, thus doing away with even the one wire. The earth is a great insulated globe filled with electricity, or the capability of electrical vibration. The only problem is to awaken this electricity, to shake this immense earth so as to set this mighty world force swinging or wagging. Of course it will take a great force to start this motion, but there is no doubt we can get it. Electricians thought 10,000 volts was a wonderful pressure. I have already stirred up hundreds of thousands, and the limit is far off. Instead of 300 vibrations I have already secured 3,000,000 a second. Give me the machine, and I will make a spark half a mile long. Now, at Niagara, for instance, which is destined to be a marvelous center of electrical force for America, enough force can be secured to supply all the needs of the human race twice over. By shaking the entire earth with the mighty power to be obtained there this earth electricity could be started.

With this earth force in vibration the next problem would be to build machines able to catch and respond to the earth motion. There would have to be a synchronism between the electrical swinging of the earth and the machine. For example, I hold a glass to my mouth and speak. The glass is shattered. My voice to do this must have the same resonance as the glass. Such I conceive to be the secret of all nature--resonance. Then, setting this machine at any point in the world, the message transmitted through the earth can be received and read at Paris, at Hong-Kong--anywhere. Distance no longer exists. I am convinced that I today can send a message to a ship at sea, and that those on board can understand it. If I cannot, I am willing to lay my head on the guillotine."

Mr. Tesla has also discovered a means of harnessing electricity so that it shall serve mankind without injuring him. To demonstrate this he allows a current of 200,000 volts to pass through his body and illuminate a bulb containing sulphate of calcium which he holds in his hand. The bulb glows with a light so intense as to fill the room with brightness and to disclose the great electrician holding it aloft, unharmed and smiling. Then he assures the spectators that "this is nothing."

Nikola Tesla is only about 35 years old. He is a Montenegrin by birth, but was educated in Hungary and now resides in New York. Inheriting an eager inventive genius from his mother and a fortune from his father, he has given his whole energy to the science of electricity as a labor of love. He has no commercial connections whatsoever, and his lectures are given purely to stir up interest in his loved study. When only about 21 years old, he came to America and worked under Edison at Menlo Park. In the discovery of the harmlessness and free transmission of electricity he has eclipsed every thinker in the world.

Nikola Tesla - "Rain Can Be Controlled and Hydraulic Force Provided, Says Nikola Tesla, if We Turn to Sun for Our Power"

2011-08-17T19:33:00.001-05:00

This is a terrific article from The Syracuse Herald in 1920 where Nikola Tesla is directly quoted throughout most of the text. Unfortunately, at the end of the first column, there are some unreadable passages. I did my best with the transcription in those parts.

The Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York. Sunday Morning, February 29, 1920.

Rain Can Be Controlled and Hydraulic Force Provided, Says Nikola Tesla, if We Turn to Sun for Our Power"
----------
FAMED INVENTOR SEES WIDE POSSIBILITIES IN NEW SCIENTIFIC THEORY
----------
Decries Project of Harnessing Atomic Energy,
Saying It Would Require More Power to
Do This Than Could Be Obtained Through
Plan Likened to Dream of Communicating
With Dead.
----------
LIGHTNING HAS POTENTIALITIES;
TIDES AND WAVES NOT FEASIBLE
----------
By EDWARD MARSHALL

New York, Feb. 28.--Can the world get from its rainfall all the power it needs or ever will need, though the demand for power be multiplied a hundredfold?

Nikola Tesla tells me that this can be done.

No living human being is better qualified to speak.

He has been studying all our various sources of energy and rejects them all save this.

He sees no hope in the suggested possibility of harnessing atomic energy; he sees none in the suggested utilization of the vast force of the ocean's tides; the power of ocean waves cannot be harnessed; heat from the earth's interior for the creation of steam is not genrally (sic) available or to be made available; sun-engines are not practical; windpower is not dependable; coal and oil are decreasing in availability and therefore increasing in cost.

So Tesla, realizing that the sun is the source of all the energy we know or ever can know, plans to harness it through the medium of water power.

And he makes the amazing statement that water-power can be controlled almost at will through the control of rainfall, which he regards now as a fully feasible thing.

LEAVES HIS CONTROL PLAN A MYSTERY.

Perhaps of all the fascinating things he says in the interview which follows, this statement that rainfall can be controlled is the most engaging. But he leaves his plan for it a mystery.

Our talk resulted from a casual statement made recently while we were discussing for publication in the Syracuse Herald the announcement from London that Marconi had heard upon his wireless instruments sounds which might have been, he thought, signals from inter-stellar space and possibly from Mars.

That afternoon Tesla had spoken of our need for new power sources and, when I asked him if they were available, had answered:

"Certainly."

So yesterday I asked him to explain.

One must listen to him with profound respect as one of the world's greatest scientists. To catalogue his discoveries and inventions would be an extraordinary task, which I shall not attempt.

His name is known throughout the progressive world.

"Are our present sources of power sufficient for our future needs?" I asked.

"No." said Mr. Tesla.

"Have we other sources to be utilized?"

"One, only, I believe," he answered, "the fundamental source, the sun, manifested through water."

"But water power, even though it be developed, is not generally enough distributed to fill all our needs."

"That can be arranged," said this extraordinary man, and then began a smooth, unhesitant statement of the whole vast problem which in the last analysis is the problem of human comfort and well being. Indeed, of human life itself.

And this rapid fire of scientific fact gathered force and speed as it progressed, carrying me over technicalities and through scientific terms without a stop until its final vital statement about control of rainfall at man's will left me gasping.

Power of Future.
"Technical improvements, more or less essential," said Mr. Tesla, "have made it possible for mankind to aggregate in civilized communities, thus economizing effort, insuring the comfort and safety of existence, and raising life in general to a higher plane of culture and refinement.

"Among these [unreadable] the development of power [unreadable] the most urgent and vital [unreadable] not have [unreadable] the telegraph and [unreadable] are the [unreadable] with [unreadable] the development of power we would [unreadable] But without power [unreadable].

"The [unreadable] we would be [unreadable] mechanically [unreadable] power [unreadable] what a [unreadable] might be [unreadable] interruption [unreadable]. If this knowledge were more [unreadable] if everybody were clearly [unreadable] of the terrible consequences that were liable to result from the [unreadable] of such an interruption [unreadable] railroad workers would be impossible.

[unreadable] from [unreadable] and light [unreadable] the [unreadable] peasant [unreadable] mean; [unreadable] even death [unreadable] the fear of [unreadable] source and gratitude for their life giving qualities gave birth to religious beliefs which transmitted and transformed through countless generations, have shaped our destinies.

"In the beginnings, therefore, we were wholly subject to the forces of nature. Our ultimate goal seems to be their complete mastery. That will have been accomplished when [unreadable] power [unreadable] we will [unreadable]

been so successful in putting it to service that our life has become artificial to a degree hard to realize. Millions of human beings, almost never or even never see the sun, and yet our dependence on it is absolute.

"Those few who are mindful of the future long ago ceased to look upon power as a mere means of securing individual safety and comfort, learning to attach to it a significance national, international and humanitarian.

"Not only this, but the idea is slowly gaining ground that the resources we command belong as much to coming generations as to our own and the thoughts of engineers and inventors are turning to the discovery of such an improvement in methods as will do away with the barbarous waste now going on, which, in the end, must exhaust our stores.

"This is the reason why all sorts of sensational announcements relative to new sources of power create such a hysterical interest and find such ready if sometimes unintelligent acceptance. Not more than one out of a thousand, even among professional men, is able to sift the wheat from the chaff.

Dream of Atomic Energy.
"As an instance I may refer to the harnessing of atomic energy which now seems to be the plan uppermost in the speculative public mind. Much of the discussion on this subject is of the same order of merit as talk about communion with the spirtis (sic) of the dead, or similar nonsense springing from a morbid craving for the perpetuation of self. It is contradictory to all natural laws, reason and experience.

"The simple truth is this: During ages philosophers have endeavored to ascertain the constitution of matter, and have been led to the conclusion that the micro- and macro-cosmos are very much alike in some respects. In other words, there are similarities of structure, arrangement and operation between the micro-organism and the universe.

"The suns, stars and moons of the heavens have their counterpart in the molecules, atoms and electrons which form those divisions of matter too small for the unaided human eye to see.

"Accordingly, all bodies are composed of independent particles of different sizes, spinning around each other with prodigious velocities and containing an amount of kinetic energy which recent physical research has shown to be immense.

"If we could capture and transform it we would obtain unlimited power anywhere on this globe. This possibility presented itself to the minds of advanced investigators long ago. It is not a new idea, but science in recent years has rendered it definite and precise.

"Since the discovery of the Roentgen rays 24 years ago, I myself have devoted much thought and experiment to the realization of this dream. The first promising result was reached in 1897, when I succeeded in projecting to a distance primary matter, apparently not further decomposable, and collected some of its energy.

"This formed one of the subjects of my address before the New York Academy of Sciences in the same year of which, however, only meager reports appeared in some technical papers, due to the fact that time did not permit me to prepare it for publication.

The Practical Obstacle.
"Subsequently I perfected apparatus which, perhaps, even at this time would be considered unique and seemed well adapted for the accomplishment of the first step, namely, the liberation of atomic energy. But although my method was promising and one of the ablest physicists, Professor Bucherer, shared my opinion, these investigations have only tended to prove that an amount of power greater than that obtainable must be expended in the process.

"In fact, I am satisfied that the problem is very much of the same nature as that involved in the separation of heavenly bodies.

"To get a concrete idea we may consider, as analogous to atoms, the earth and the moon, whirling about it with a speed of 0.291 miles per second. The kinetic energy of the orbital movement of this planet is equal to half the product of its mass and the square of its velocity. Let us now ask what energy would be required to separate the moon from the earth.

"This readily can be ascertained by the use of the calculus. We only need assume that the satellite has fallen from the depths of space to its present distance of 238,800 miles, acquiring a certain velocity, and

then the energy necessary to separate it from the earth would be equal to half the product of its mass and the square of this velocity.

"I find the latter to be about 0.9 miles per second, from which it follows that the energy of the moon's motion which might be liberated would be only a little over 10 per cent of that which would have to be expended in order to bring about the result.

"It is obvious, however, that only a part of the liberated energy would be recoverable. If the vis viva of the atoms is first transformed into heat, which seems unavoidable, hardly more than one-third of the whole will be actually abstracted and the external energy required should not be more than, say, one-sixth.

"Thus if atomic energy were released at the rate of 6,000 horsepower, 2,000 would be converted, 1,000 for working the process and an equal amount for useful purposes.

"This condition would obtain in the case of the moon if it were gyrating around the earth with its present orbital velocity but at a distance of 13,755,000 miles which is, in proportion, much greater than any separation of the constituents of the atomic structure.

Would Not Pay.
"The logical inference is that while it is possible to liberate the atomic energy it will not pay to do so.

"I am afraid that we are confronted with some such insuperable difficulty in the undertaking in question and if so, the prospect of its practical realization is poor. La Place has concluded the planetary system to be unchangeable--eternal, and his reasoning would seem to apply to the molecular world as well, for its motions obey the same laws.

"But the question naturally will be asked, how about the radium phenomena? Here we have an example of actual disintegration. I expressed myself in this regard in 1896, long before these effects had been thoroughly observed and studied.

"In my view the energy instrumental in the process of disintegration resides in the ether of space, and in this light the problem before us appears to be more rational, inasmuch as it resolves itself into that of harnessing the energy of the medium. This has presented itself to my mind as a more promising line of research along which practical success may be achieved.

"Discounting for the present this possibility, and examining the sources of energy at our disposal, other than fuel, we have to consider the light and heat rays of the sun, the wind, the tides and ocean waves, atmospheric electricity, terrestrial heat and waterfalls.

"A few statements will suffice to show that the energy of falling water is our most precious asset, all the more so as its value may be increased an hundredfold.

"The heat of the sun's rays falling upon the earth represent an enormous amount of energy. Careful measurements show it to be about 83 foot-pounds per square foot, which would mean that approximately 6 1/2 square feet exposed perpendicularly to these rays would collect energy at the rate of one horsepower.

Other Sources of Power
"As the earth is spherical and the angle of incidence varies from place to place, the average amount is 20 3/4 foot-pounds for every square foot of the exposed surface or over 1,000,000 horsepower per square mile, and if a considerable amount could be usefully transformed we would not need coal and oil.

"This plan of obtaining motive power is old and was always particularly attractive to the ill-informed.

"The hard facts are these: When we take into account the daily variations, the diurnal, casual and seasonal changes in the intensity of the rays, the power is reduced, fairly estimated, to about 100,000 horsepower per square mile of which 10,000 horsepower might be recovered in turbines.

"That in itself would not be bad, were it not for the necessity of the installment of huge storage plants and apparatus so large and expensive that a project of this kind is beyond the pale of the commercial. It is true that the evolution of modern life entails a continuous rise in the price of commodities and for this reason the value of meager and less profitable resources is steadily increasing. As time goes on we may find the harnessing of the sun's rays less objectionable, especially as great improvements are possible in the methods and devices which have been so far employed. But now, no.

"The wind furnished power in amounts not to be disdained and has been put to use by man since time immemorial. In many countries the employment of windmills for lighting and storage purposes is quite practicable, but the erratic character of the power supply makes it unsuitable for enterprises of any magnitude.

"As to the tides, barring exceptional cases, they can not be even seriously considered. Ordinarily their power does not amount to more than about one horsepower per acre and its intermittances necessitate storage. This and the difficulty of collecting energy over wide areas preclude the possibility of developing power in this manner in competition with engines, however dear the fuel.

"The energy of ocean waves is great, often amounting to several hundred horsepower per foot of width. Thousands of inventors have grappled with the problem of harnessing them and have failed. There are four distinct ways of operating with wave motors, but, whichever method is adopted, it leads to discouraging results. Only an insignificant amount of energy can be salvaged and with forms of apparatus not adapted for most practical uses. Worst of all, the power is whimsical and uncertain.

"Nature's display of electrical forces often involves vast amounts of energy. During my investigations of terrestrial electric phenomena in Colorado I discovered 12,600 lightning discharges in two hours and some of them I estimated as sufficient to furnish 5,000 horsepower for one year.

"Taking the theoretical energy of each discharge as equivalent to 2,000 horsepower years and one hundred strokes per minute, the mean power rate, while the display lasted, was nearly 263 billion horsepower, a staggering figure but nevertheless of small practical significance. With my osciliatory (sic) transformers it is possible to derive energy from lightning, but its economic storage is

next to impossible on account of the extreme suddenness and violence of manifestation.

"The utilization of terrestrial heat on an immense scale appears quite feasible and there is a strong probability that at a time not distant projects of this kind will be seriously undertaken. I dealt with this subject at length in an article published in the Century magazine of June, 1900.

"The interior portions of the globe are known to be very hot, the temperature rising about one degree centigrade for every hundred feet of descent.

"If the engineering difficulties of sinking shafts to great depths could be successfully overcome, steam power in any desired quantity for industrial uses might be made available in any country irrespective of location.

"Although the materials composing the earth's crust have only one-sixteenth of conductivity of steel used in boilers, this impediment could be largely done away with and an influx of heat to the boiler obtained sufficient for effective evaporation of water into steam under a pressure which would be merely dependent on the depth of the shaft.

"The energy could be converted in turbines with fair economy and, according to a rough estimate, it would be possible to develop one brake horsepower for every ten square feet of shaft surface. If a shaft's diameter were fifty feet, up to 100,000 horsepower might be developed per mile.

"This plan has been advocated recently in England by Sir Charles Parsons, who has contributed so much to the perfection of the turbine engine.

"The necessity of carrying it out on a stupendous scale, the technical difficulties involved, and incertitude in the estimate of cost will be deterrents to investment of capital which however, may be eliminated by carefully working out all the details of such an undertaking.

"But no matter what may be accomplished in the future along any of these lines, the power derived from waterfalls is destined to be our mainstay.

Water Power Ideal.
"In most of the processes of transformation we are confronted with appalling waste and definite limits exist to improvements aiming at economy. No amount of ingenuity can ever circumvent the natural laws imposing these restrictions.

"Water power is a remarkable exception in this respect. In hydraulic development the wheel can have an efficiency of 85, and the dynamo can have an efficiency of 98 per cent, so that the combined efficiency is over 83 per cent, that is to say, we are enabled in this way usefully to apply

almost the entire energy furnished by the sun.

"Not only this but the apparatus is simple, well-nigh indestructible, and requires virtually no attention.

"Unfortunately this source of power supply is not adequate to meet all our needs, although the theoretical energy of falling water is, so to speak, unlimited. Assuming for the rain-clouds an average height of 15,000 feet and an annual precipitation of 33 inches, the power over the whole area of the United States amounts to more than twelve billion horsepower but a large portion of the potential energy is transformed into heat by friction of the rain drops against the air so that the actual mechanical energy is much smaller.

"Most of the water comes from a height of something like 2,000 feet, and in all represents over one-half a billion horsepower, but in the form of available waterpower we cannot obtain more than a fall of 100 feet so that by harnessing all the falls in the United States not more than eighty million horsepower can be developed.

"So far we have harnessed approximately 8,000,000 horsepower in this country, thus effecting a saving equivalent to nearly one-third of the entire coal mined. By extensive damming the power derived can be greatly increased, possibly to several hundred million horsepower, giving us more power by far than we have now with all our coal. But this will not be the limit.

On Eve of Great Feats.
"We are on the eve of accomplishments which will be of tremendous consequence to the future advancement of the human race. One of these is the control of the precipitation of moisture.

"The water is evaporated and thus

raised against the force of gravity. It is then held in suspension in the vapor which we call clouds. Air currents carry this vapor, hither and yon, often to distant regions, where it may remain for long periods at a height, in a state of delicate suspension.

"When the equilibrium is disturbed the water falls to earth form of rain and through rills and rivers flows back to the ocean.

"Thus the sun, whose heat causes the evaporation, even maintains this life-sustaining stream. The energy necessary to cause the precipitation of the rain, compared with that rain's potential energy when released, is like that of the spark setting off a charge of dynamite compared to the dynamite.

"If this part of the natural process were under the wilful (sic) control of man he could transform the entire globe.

"Many schemes have been proposed to this end, none of which have knowledge offering the remotest chances of success.

"But I have ascertained that with proper apparatus this wonder can be performed.

"Any amount of power will then be at our disposal; we can make out of deserts fertile land and create lakes and rivers almost without effort on our part.

"However, our triumph would not be complete if the power could not be conveyed to distances without limit. This achievement, too, is now within our reach. With my wireless system it is practicable to transmit electrical energy over a distance of 12,000 miles with a loss not exceeding 5 per cent. I can conceive of no advances which would be more desirable at this time and more beneficial to the further progress of mankind."

--(Copyright by Edward Marshall Syndicate, Inc.)

Monolithic Dome Home Floor Plans

2011-08-06T13:45:00.006-05:00

Many people are looking for beautiful Monolithic Dome home floor plans like The Stitt Residence pictured below.

If you are one of these floor-plan-seeking people, I have included three links to some amazing Monolithic Dome home floor plans in this post:

A wall of windows in the dining area provides light and a gorgeous view of the surroundings in this Monolithic Dome home that is three stories high with a diameter of 55 feet, built on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

“President’s Choice” Monolithic Dome Home Plans

This link is for free Monolithic Dome home floor plans that the president of The Monolithic Dome Institute, David B. South, calls his favorites.

The Oberon

Free floor plans for different styles of the Monolithic Dome home called "The Oberon."

Dome Living, Volume I and Volume II

Two gorgeous books full of Monolithic Dome house plans can be purchased from The Monolithic Dome Institute here.

Nikola Tesla - Tesla's Plan to Create a Tidal Wave for Defense

2011-08-03T16:59:00.000-05:00

An interesting article found in the Newspaper Archives about one of Tesla's defense ideas...a man-made tidal wave:

The Baldur Gazette, Baldur, Manitoba, Canada, Page 6. July 2, 1908.

HOW TO DISPOSE OF A NAVY.
------
Nikola Tesla's Method of Dealing
With Enemy's Fleet.It is suggested by Nikola Tesla that in the event of war a hostile navy could be swamped by a huge tidal wave created by the explosion at sea of a large quantity of nitro-glycerine. Says a writer:

"Nikola Tesla bears an honored name in electrical science and has done memorable work in oscillatory currents and in connection with Hertzian waves. A few years ago, it may be remembered, he stood in the theatre of the Royal Institution with oscillatory currents of unheard of voltage playing about his unharmed head, and this taste for the sensational appears to grow with increasing years.

"His latest idea is that of creating an enormous tidal wave for purposes of coast defence in order to annihilate a hostile fleet. It may be assumed, remarks Mr. Tesla, that thirty tons of nitro-glycerine compound be employed to create the tidal disturbance. This material, weighing about twice as much as water, can be stored in a cubical tank eight feet each way or in a sperical (sic) vessel of ten feet diameter....

"At the propitious moment the signal is given, the charge sunk to the proper depth and ignited....The water is incompressible. The explosion propagates through the compound at a speed of three miles a second, so that the whole mass will be converted into gas before the water can give way appreciably, and a sperical (sic) bubble ten feet in diameter will form.

"The gaseous pressure against the surrounding water will be 20,000 atmospheres, or 140 tons to the square inch.

"At this point Mr. Tesla relapses into a maze of calculations of calories and power units, where it is difficult and unnecessary to follow him. He emerges presently with the resultant statement that 2,500,000 tons of water would be raised one foot, or a smaller quantity to a correspondingly greater elevation. The height and length of the wave will be determined by the depth at which the disturbance originated. Opening in the centre like a volcano, the great hollows will belch forth a shower of ice.

"Some sixteen seconds later a valley of 600 feet depth, counted from normal ocean-level, will form, surrounded by a perfectly circular swell, approximately of equal height, which will enlarge in diameter at the rate of about 220 feet per second. It is futile, concludes Mr. Tesla, pleasantly, to consider the effect on a neighboring vessels (sic), however large. Even a navy would be destroyed."
----------------

Nikola Tesla - Announcements at the Academy of Science on April 6, 1905

2011-08-02T23:37:00.000-05:00

The Railroad Telegrapher, St. Louis, Missouri, Page 472. June 1, 1905.

Nikola Tesla, at New York.Nikola Tesla was the attraction at the Academy of Science April 6th, when he explained several of his discoveries and intimated the direction of the experiments upon which he is now engaged. Mr. Tesla exhibited a new electrical oscillator, based upon a discovery made by him six years ago. Mr. Tesla announced that the manufacture of ozone and other chemical products now attained by costly processes may be done economically and cheaply by the vibrations produced by this apparatus. He said it furnished an ideal instrument for the production of the Rontgen rays. Its advent means the abolition of many devices of older design, particularly, Mr. Tesla said, of the use of the induction coil. Upon the subject of the Rontgen rays, Mr. Tesla announced that he had made two important discoveries. The first is a powerful source in an electric arc under certain conditions. The second is the deflection of the rays by a magnet, the fact needed to establish the identity of the Rontgen ray and the ray discovered by Lenard in 1891. Mr. Tesla said that in 1894 he himself was investigating the actinic action of the phosphorescent bodies and observed the Rontgen rays, but did not recognize them. He said that ever since Rontgen's announcement of his discovery scientists have been endeavoring to establish the identity between the Rontgen and Lenard rays by deflecting them by a magnet. The deflection, however, was so slight that the finest instruments could not record it. Mr. Tesla tried for a long time and failed. A (sic) last he invevted (sic) an instrument by the aid of which, he said, a boy could perform the experiment. Mr. Tesla showed diagrams and designs tending to prove his theory that Rontgen rays were formed by streams of minute electrified particles of matter projected from the bulb at an extreme velocity.
--Bubiers Popular Electrician.

Nikola Tesla - Radiography Experiments

2011-07-23T18:11:00.000-05:00

This article from the Newspaper Archives is about the experiments Nikola Tesla began to do with X-rays during 1896.

The Constitution, Atlanta, Georgia, page 9. Friday, March 13, 1896.

RADIOGRAPHY.
----------
EXPERIMENTS MADE BY NIKOLA
TESLA.
----------
Shoulder of a Man Taken Through His
Clothing--Chalky Deposits Infal-
libly Detected.
----------

New York, March 10.--The Electrical Review will publish tomorrow a communication from Nikola Tesla, describing for the first time his very interesting experiments in radiography. The scientific world has been awaiting an expression of opinion from Mr. Tesla, who is known to have begun his experiments within an hour after the news of Professor Roentgen's discovery was cabled to this country. In connection with Mr. Tesla's communication, The Electrical Review prints two remarkable radiographs. One of these shows the right shoulder of a man taken through his clothing, a plate of glass three-sixteenths of an inch thick and two inches of wood. This radiograph, which was made at a distance of four feet from the source of the X rays, shows the ribs, shoulder bones and bones of the upper arm. The other radiograph shows a copper wire bent to form the word "Roentgen," and was made at a distance of eleven feet from the wooden side covering the sensitized plate.

Mr. Tesla also states that the refraction of the Crooke's tubes used in these experiments may be increased by electrical means to any degree desirable far beyond that obtainable by mechanical appliances. This method he describes. In regard to the nature of the X rays, he says:

"I am getting more and more convinced that we have to deal with a stream of material particles which strike the sensitive plate with great velocities. Taking as a basis the estimate of Lord Kelvin on the speed of projected particles in a Crooke's bulb, we arrive easily, by the employment of very high potential, to speeds of as much as a hundred kilometers a second. Now, again, the old question arises: Are the particles from the electrode or from the charged surface generally including the case of an external electrode, projected through the glass or aluminum walls, or do they merely hit the inner surface and cause particles from the outside of the wall to fly off, acting in a purely mechanical way, much as a row of ivory balls is struck? So far most of the phenomena indicate that they are projected through the wall of the bulb of whatever material it may be, and I am seeking for still more conclusive evidence in this direction.

"It is now demonstrated beyond any doubt that small metallic objects, or bony or chalky deposits can be infallibly detected in any part of the body."

Tesla has also secured radiographs showing the bony structure of birds and rabbits, even to the hollow bones. He has secured a radiograph of a rabbit after an hour's exposure, in which not only details of the skeleton are visible; but also a clear outline of the abdominal cavity, location of lungs and the fur are shown. Radiographs of large birds show the feathers distinctly; in another instance an exposure of forty minutes gave a radiograph of the human skull, showing clearly not only the outline, but the cavity of the eye, chin, cheek, nasal bones, the lower jaw and connection to the upper one, the vertebral column and connections to the skull, the flesh and even the hair.

Mr. Tesla concludes his communication in the following interesting words;

"By exposing the head to a powerful radiation, strange effects have been noted. For instance, I find that there is a tendency to sleep, and the time seems to pass away quickly. There is a general soothing effect, and I have felt a sensation of warmth in the upper part of the head. An assistant independently confirmed the tendency to sleep and a quick lapse of time. Should these remarkable effects be verified by men with keener sense of observation, I shall still more firmly believe in the existence of material streams penetrating the skull. Thus it may be possible by these strange appliances to project a suitable chemical into any part of the body."

Nikola Tesla - "Dr. Tesla Says Adamick Ready to Win Crown"

2011-07-22T00:07:00.000-05:00

Another article found in the Newspaper Archives...

The Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Wisconsin, page 2. Monday, April 17, 1939.

Dr. Tesla Says Adamick
Ready to Win Crown
------
By JACK CUDDY

NEW YORK--(U.P.)--In the Twilight of his glorious career, Dr. Nikola Tesla, one of the world's greatest inventors, is cooperating in the rehabilitation of Jimmy Adamick, a man who--a few short months ago--was considered a hopelessly shattered fighting machine.

Dr. Tesla, father of modern methods of generation and distribution of electrical enery (sic), says Adamick is now ready to return to the ring again and "he is certain to become the next heavyweight champion of the world."

It seemed that the young "Midland Mauler's" career was ended definitely when he suffered brain concussion and partial paralysis resulting from a beating by Roscoe Toles at Detroit on Sept. 28.

The bout was stopped in the second round after Adamick had been floored four times. Adamick was unconscious for 11 hours. At first physicians feared that his injuries might prove fatal. He was hospitaled (sic) for about six weeks.

Developed Warm Friendship"The boy has recovered completely." Dr. Tesla said. "His remarkable recovery was due largely to the ability of Dr. Albert S. Crawford at Henry Ford hospital in Detroit and partially to Adamick's exceptional constitution. Adamick visited me here this week and he seemed in excellent condition. I advised him to return to the ring and win the title."

Tesla, who devised the rotating magnetic field and set motors going throughout the world, has become the Michigan farm boy's advisor and inspiration. Tesla, who made millions of dollars through his hundreds of patents in the electrical and mechanical industries, has a warm interest in Jimmy because both are of Jugoslav extraction. Nikola is 83 years old, but remarkably chipper physically and mentally for his age. Adamick is 24.

The elderly wizard of the laboratories sat in his room at the hotel New Yorker, in the midst of an orderly hodge-podge of apparatus and experiment record files, as he told of his friendship for the young fighter--a friendship that blossomed shortly after Jimmy first launched his brief but sensational career two years ago. Old Nikola regarded Jimmy as a sort of foster son.

Arms Right Length"I know fighters and fighting fairly well," explained the tall, lean scientist with the sparse gray hair. Nikola wore a bluish-green lounging robe over his pajamas during our chat. He seldom leaves his room now because of internal injuries suffered 10 months ago in an auto accident. But he is a busy man with his calculations and telephone contacts with various factories and laboratories.

"I have been interested in boxers and boxing ever since meeting John L. Sullivan," he continued. "And when I was about 18 years old in Jugoslavia I was one of the best wrestlers in my area. I took up wrestling because of poor health. It did wonders for me.

"Adamick is one of the finest specimens of young manhood I've ever seen. He is perfectly proportioned for a great fighter. His arms are just the right length for powerful punching. Roscoe Toles' are too long. I have calculated by formula that Adamick's punching performance is 32 per cent more ewwicient (sic) than that of Toles, and his general fighting performance is 100 per cent more efficient.

"Jimmy has the body, power, ruggedness and speed to be champion. And I'm positive that nothing can prevent it. He was not in proper condition when he fought Toles in September. He had been suffering from a sinus infection. This impaired his alertness and brought about his being struck by a lucky punch--that he otherwise would have evaded--in the first round. That punch stunned him and left him helpless. It will not happen again. Because I have instructed Adamick about scientific principals (sic) of keeping in condition--principals (sic) I have followed all my life.
Will Watch Jimmy"Moreover--within two months I expect to give to the world my most important invention, the oscillator, which will so stimulate

many functions of the human body that physical efficiency will be increased incredibly. And Adamick will be one of the first to benefit by my oscillator."

Some intimates of Dr. Tesla believe that he is assisting Adamick financially, but the old man gave no indication that such is the case. Most of his wealth is gone--expended in costly laboratory experiments. But he is still comfortably situated.

"As soon as I have recovered sufficiently from my accident, I intend going to Michigan and watch Adamick train," he concluded. "I'll do anything within my power to help him in his comeback--to help him win the championship, which he is certain to do."
****

Nikola Tesla - "A New Lung Cure."

2011-07-19T23:22:00.000-05:00

Another article I found in the Newspaper Archives about Nikola Tesla. This one is from 1900:

The Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, page 7. August 4, 1900.

A NEW LUNG CURE.
----------
ELECTRICITY A REMEDY IN
CONSUMPTION CASES.
----------
TESLA'S LATEST DISCOVERY
----------
OSCILLATION THEORY FATAL
TO DISEASE GERMS.
----------
CURRENT APPLIED TO BODY
----------
PATIENT EXPECTED TO DIE IN
FEW DAYS RECOVERS.
----------

New York, Aug. 4.--Unusual interest has been aroused among physicians in a new treatment for tuberculosis evolved by Nikola Tesla. It is described as "electrical oscillation," and it is said to be a sure cure of consumption, even in its worst stages.

Dr. Croft C. Carroll, of 21 East Twenty-fourth street, is a strong advocate of Mr. Tesla's system. other physicians and one clergyman verify to the wonderful virtue of "electrical oscillation."

Dr. E. P. Iliff, of Newark, a specialist in lung disease, who, three weeks ago, was declared to be dying of consumption, received his third treatment yesterday at the clinic in Dr. Carroll's office, and then ran to catch a car on his way back to Newark.

Rev. S. W. Switzer, pastor of the Baptist tabernacle in Harrison, N. J., who had been sent to Dr. Carroll in the last stages of consumption, told of his remarkable cure.

Dr. John B. Rich, president of the American Microscopical society, declared that it was the most wonderful demonstration of positive beneficial results that he had ever seen in the treatment of germ diseases.
ON APPARATUS TWO YEARS.Nikola Tesla had worked for two years on the apparatus which Dr. Carroll is using in his public clinic. It was Dr. Carroll's idea to apply the new principle in electricity evolved by Tesla to the treatment of consumption. Mr. Tesla had predicted that oscillation would accomplish wonders, but had not thought of using it as a germ killer.

By applying the electrode of the Tesla machine Dr. Carroll drives through the affected parts a quantity of electricity which if applied in any other way would cause instant death. With a Tesla "oscillator" he handles between 2,000 and 3,000 volts of electricity with impunity.

Dr. Carroll says that after the oscillation treatment all tubercular matter is eliminated from the system by the emunctories--the liver, kidneys, bowels and general glandular system. The treatment is one of destruction to the germs.

Dr. Iliff told how he had contracted the tuberculosis from his patients about a year ago. It had developed in the aorta, which is the artery leading from the heart to the pulmonary system. Stenosis of the aorta resulted. The tubercular matter had clogged the aorta about one inch from the entrance to the heart, so finally the heart could not pump blood to the extremities. A dropsical condition ensued. Dr. Iliff said that in forty-eight hours four weeks ago he increased in weight thirty pounds.

SAVED ON VERGE OF DEATH."I was removed to Dr. Carroll's office in New York ten days ago," said Dr. Iliff. "My brother physicians protested against my being removed. They said there was not the slightest chance of recovery. They even predicted the hour I was to die. I took my third oscillation treatment today. I am now attending to my practice again in Newark and am on the speedy road to complete recovery."

The testimony given by Rev. Mr. Switzer was almost as remarkable. He had contracted acute tuberculosis four years ago. When he was removed to Dr. Carroll's house the physicians of Newark and Harrison told him he had six weeks to live. He was attending to his pastoral duties in less than three weeks and declared yesterday that he had recovered completly (sic).

Henry J. Rice, a patient who had been put under the electrical treatment for the first time July 9, when he had a respiration of 86, now, it was said, had the full use of his lungs. His respiration was 12. He had had tuberculosis of the lungs for five years. The lower third of the right and left lungs was hepatic.

There had been a cavity at the left of the heart bone, so Dr. Carroll said, as large as a silver dollar. Dr. Carroll declares that the cavity has entirely disappeared and is refilled with new lung tissue.
THEORY OF THE CURE.Asked for an explanation of the treatment, Dr. Carroll said:

"All life is a force manifestation in which electricity plays a part. Life force, spirt (sic) force and electrical force I believe to be one and the same force. Disease or unhealth is only

a difference of potential that requires it to be brought into a state equilibrium in order to be brought into a state of health.

"The reason why this high oscillation does not take life is because the wave motions of the machine are in synchronous harmony with the life force in the body."

Dr. Carroll declined to allow the Tesla machine to be seen. All of the apparatus that was visible was the glass electrode, which was spoon-shaped and hollow. While the current was on there was an opalescent blaze, or a series of big sparks, in the electrode, which was applied directly to the part affected.
------------------

Nikola Tesla - "Mr. Tesla Explains Why He Will Never Marry"

2011-07-18T21:04:00.000-05:00

I've been researching Nikola Tesla quite a lot lately. I decided to go ahead and post this article I found in the Newspaper Archives. I think that it is part of a complete portrait of the man who was Nikola Tesla--BUT I think that it is important to remember that the year was 1924. And further, remember that Nikola Tesla always attributed his intellect and gift for invention to his mother, who was an inventor herself.

Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.

Mr. Tesla Explains Why He Will Never Marry

Famous Scientist Felt Un-
worthy of Woman as She
Used To Be, and Now He
Can't Endure Her
Trying to Outdo
the Men
WHEN a man who has made a name for himself deliberately chooses to remain a bachelor the world is naturally curious to know what the reasons were that impelled him to this choice.

Marriage has come to be considered the natural thing for every normal man, and when some pre-eminent man shows a firm determination to sidestep it everybody wonders whether his superior intelligence has revealed to him some fatal defects in the institution of matrimony which are not apparent to the average person.

But the public's curiosity in this respect is seldom gratified. Most of the distinguished bachelors try to pass off their bachelorhood as a joke, saying that it is not a matter of choice, but because they have never been able to find a woman who would marry them. As a rule, they are singularly averse to giving any serious reasons for their failure to become husbands.

Nikola Tesla, the great scientist and inventor, is a striking exception to this rule. In a recent interview with a representative of this newspaper he frankly explains why he has never married and why he probably never will marry.

And in connection with his explanation he presents some ideas about woman's freedom and what he thinks it is sure to lead to that will be read with interest by those who agree with him as well as by the many who will not.

Caption: "In place of the soft voiced, gentle woman of my reverent worship," says Mr. Tesla, "has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man--in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind"

In the past the reason why Mr. Tesla never married was because his estimation of woman placed her on such a lofty pedestal that he could never bring himself to feel worthy of her. Now that she has, as he feels, stepped down from her pedestal and bartered all her noblest qualities for what is called her "freedom," he is even more disinclined to matrimony than he was before.

Although of course Mr. Tesla is too gallant a gentleman to say it in so many words, his comments let it be inferred that he thinks the new woman almost as far beneath him as the one of other days was above him. According to his views, the sex has rushed from one extreme to another of quite a different kind, and in the plunge it has left for Mr. Tesla and other bachelors who think as he does no "happy medium" such as Josiah Allen's wife used to declare one of the essentials to happiness.

Caption: Ida Schnall, the all-around woman athlete, in a boxing bout with Willie Bradley--a sure indication, according to Mr. Tesla's rather gloomy views, that our civilization is deteriorating

"I had always thought of woman," says Mr. Tesla, "as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in these respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshiped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship.

"But all this was in the past. Now the soft-voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man--in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind."

In those words the great electrical genius sums up the reasons for his bachelorhood.

Some who read them will urge that his view of womankind is distorted by the years he has spent in the laboratory, dealing with inanimate things and developing perhaps an abnormal shyness which acts as an insuperable barrier to marriage. Others will say that the very fact of his detachment from the ordinary routine of life makes him all the better qualified to point out its defects and to criticize the change for the worse which he believes new conditions have brought to womankind.

Caption: Nikola Tesla, the electrical wizard whose discoveries paved the way for this radio age

"Women," says Mr. Tesla, "are becoming stronger than men, both physically and mentally.

"The world has experienced many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization.

"Woman's determined competition with man in the business world is breaking down some of the best traditions--things which have proved the moving factors in the world's slow but substantial progress.

"Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again.

"Perhaps the male in human society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it--and there is striking evidence at hand that they do--then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history.

"Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants and other insects--a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life.

"The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.

"Woman's independence and her cleverness in obtaining what she wants in the business world is breaking down man's spirit of independence. The old fire he once experienced at being able to achieve something that would compel and hold a woman's devotion is turning to ashes.

"Women don't seem to want that sort of thing to-day. They appear to want to control and govern. They want man to look up to them, instead of their looking up to him."

Mr. Tesla is not given to making statements that he cannot prove. His life's work has been based on logic, not on guesses.

Caption: Mrs. Davenport Engberg, the director of a symphony orchestra and a good example of the way women are entering fields that used to be exclusively men's

In voicing his gloomy views of modern life Mr. Tesla says his observations are not confined to the women of this country. Conditions abroad, he says, suggest that the same tendency is world-wide. Having always regarded woman as a super-being, he expresses great sadness over the change he thinks the last few years have brought in her.

"I am considering this question not merely from the standpoint of a man," he points out. "I am thinking of the woman's side of it.

"As we contemplate any change, we naturally take into consideration the results that may follow such an innovation. One of the results to my mind is quite a pathetic one. Woman, herself, is really the victim instead of, as she thinks, the victor. Contentment is absent from her life. She is ambitious, often far beyond her natural equipment, to attain the thing she wants. She too frequently forgets that all women cannot be prima donnas and motion picture stars.

"Woman's discontent makes the life of the present day still more overstressed. The high pitch given to existence by people who are restless and dissatisfied because they fail to achieve things wholly out of proportion to the health and talent with which Nature has endowed them is a bad thing for the world.

"It seems to me that women are not particularly happy in this newly found freedom, in this new competition which they are waging so persistently against men in business and the professions and even in sport. The question that naturally arises is, whether the women themselves are the gainers or the losers.

"Discontent makes for cranks and unnatural people. There seems to be an uncommon number of them about to-day. This is one of the reasons I remain apart from the crowds. The public, or semi-public, character is the target for all sorts of attacks and unpleasant communications.

Caption: A woman worker in a Michigan railroad machine shop

"For example, I used to receive all sorts of strange notes, many of them letters from cranks threatening my life, because they had read about my experiments in manufacturing lightning bolts. They wrote that they believed I was using these lightning flashes to kill them!
"It seems to me that anything which adds to the great discontent which we observe on every side to-day must be a bad influence on our life. Women who keep themselves agitated by their tremendous ambition to beat man at his game are losing at the same time something that counts for more in the end, it seems to me, than the empty honors that success in business or one of the professions can ever give.

"The power of the true woman is so great that I believe if a beautiful woman--that is to say, one beautiful in spirit, in manner and in thought, in fact, beautiful in every respect, a sort of goddess--were to appear suddenly on earth, she could command the whole world. Her leadership, I believe, would be universally recognized.

"History has given us many examples of the wonderful influence exerted by unusual women. Among these have been the mothers of great men. But their influence lay not in their determination to outdo man, or even to compete with him.

"Perhaps because woman is a finer and more highly sensitized instrument she knows by instinct her power and understands that the extent of it lies in the high position she takes for herself. But the superior never descends to the level of the commonplace."

These views of Nikola Tesla will be received with great interest, whether one agrees or not with his idea that woman in her new role is a sinister force that is going to pull down to ruin our whole social structure. He is generally recognized as one of the greatest mentalities of the present day.

Caption: Renee Prahar, one of many women who are trying to outstrip the men in sculpture

Twenty years ago Tesla astonished the world by flashing a wireless message clear around the globe. His experimental work paved the way for the radio age in which we are now living. Many scientists think it quite possible that one of his highly sensitized machines actually caught signals from Mars.

For several years past he has been living in comparative seclusion in the Colorado Rockies, devoting himself to the perfection of two or three inventions which he expects will revolutionize methods of transportation and communication. He is almost ready to explain to the world a way of transmitting electrical energy without the use of wires.

This will enable the energy from some great source of power like Niagara Falls to be quickly and economically transmitted to any desired part of the earth--and, perhaps, some day to Mars and other planets.

Some philosopher has said that it is as perilous for a man to say he will never marry as for a physician to try to predict the exact hour of a person's death. Mr. Tesla is not an old man. Perhaps he will live long enough to find some woman who will be able to convince him that she has attained her new freedom without sacrificing any of the womanly qualities which he so greatly admires.

Nikola Tesla - Alternating Current - An Article from the Newspaper Archives of 1889

2011-07-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

Manufacturer and Inventor, London, Middlesex, UK, page 20. December 18, 1889.

CONTINUOUS CURRENTS FROM ALTERNATING CURRENTS.--The problem of obtaining continuous currents from alternating is one that has received not a little attention, and various solutions have been offered on both sides of the Atlantic. The New York correspondent of the Electrician says that Mr. Nikola Tesla has applied himself to the matter, and now offers a simple and ingenious solution. His idea and method consist broadly in directing the waves of an alternating current so as to produce continuous currents by developing in the branches of an alternating-current circuit certain manifestations of energy or active opposite resistances by which the alternating-current waves of opposite sign are diverted through different circuits. Thus the currents of different sign are, so to speak, sifted out: those of one sign passing over one branch, and those of an opposite sign over the other. There may thus be obtained from an alternating current two or more direct currents without the employment of a commutator. Mr. Tesla proposes both electrical and electro-magnetic methods for achieving this result. In the electrical method the device to create an electromotive force counter to the waves of current on one side may, for example, be batteries or continuous-current machines. In the electro-magnetic method, instead of producing the electromotive force in each branch of the circuit, a field of force may be established, and the branches be led through it in such a manner that an active opposition will be developed therein by the passage, or tendency to pass, of the alternations of current. Another purely magnetic method is that wherein Mr. Tesla employs two strong permanent magnets, the armatures of which are built up of thin laminae of soft iron or steel, the amount of magnetic metal which they contain being so calculated that they will be nearly or fully saturated by the magnets.

Nikola Tesla - "Dr. Tesla Visions the End of Aircraft in War"

2011-07-18T16:49:00.000-05:00

In this article from 1934, found in the Newspaper Archives, Nikola Tesla discusses a new weapon to be used to destroy aircraft.

Another interesting addition to the article is the reference to his "electric bath" he apparently was working on, at the time, for fun. It seems much like his invention, mentioned in an 1897 article (click here to view the article), to make complexions beautiful and people young-looking for life.

Additionally, Dr. Tesla talks about his mother, his ancestry, his diet and his sleeping habits.

The Montana Butte Standard, Butte, Montana, page 24. October 21, 1934

Dr. Tesla
VISIONS the END
of AIRCRAFT
IN WAR

By Helen Welshimer
"AMERICA Enters War!"

"United Stated Joins Allies!"

"Congress Declares War!"

The newsboys were screaming the headlines through the rainy April night. Men and women stood on corners, talking, talking, talking--

The drift of the days went on. Troop trains pulled out of the stations, from Centreville, Mississippi, up to Bangor, Maine. The drums throbbed and the trumpets blew. The ships sailed and the casualty lists came back. One by one, the gold stars replaced the white--

And 1917 drifted into 1918.

Dr. Nikola Tesla was in his laboratory trying hard to solve a problem of ages. Once in a while he raised his head to listen. Then he turned back to his experiments. He was going to end war!

The noted inventor, 78 years old now, already had 700 inventions to his credit. This was to be his greatest.

Years marched on. The fanfare and the drums were done. The dead were buried. The living came home.

NOW, 15 years after the war has ended, Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of all time, has announced that his invention to end all wars, by a perfect means of defense which any nation can employ, is ready. Soon, he says, he will take it to Geneva to present it to the Peace Conference.

Whether it is a dream or reality may soon be known. He claims to have created a new agent, silent and invisible, which kills without trace and yet pierces the thickest armor. It is a beam of death and destruction formed of minute particles of matter carrying such tremendous energy that they could bring down a fleet of 10,000 attacking planes and wipe out an army of millions at a distance of 250 miles.

"The invention," says Dr. Tesla, "will make war impossible for it will surround any country using this means with an impenetrable, invisible wall of protection. Plants for the generating of this beam will be erected along the coasts and near cities. One plant will afford perfect safety within an area of 40,000 square miles.

"The beam will be effective at any distance at which the object to be destroyed can be perceived through a telescope. Every country will have to adopt this invention, for without it a nation will be helpless.

"The beam, intended chiefly for defense, will be projected from an electric power plant, ready to be put in action at the first sign of danger. The cost of operation will be insignificant, as the plant is chiefly intended for use in emergency. But to make the investment profitable in times of peace it may be commercially employed for a number of purposes."

Dr. Tesla wishes it to be understood that the means he has perfected has nothing in common with the so-called "death ray."

"It is impossible to develop such a ray. I worked on that idea for many years," he says, "before my ignorance was dispelled and I became convinced that it could not be realized. This new beam of mine consists of minute bullets moving at a terrific speed, and any amount of power desired can be transmitted by them. The whole plant is just a gun, but one which is incomparably superior to the present.

THE picture of the protected world in which men will devote their time to pursuits of peace, is a strangely fascinating one.

Imagine the map of the world, every country surrounded by great plants which will offer absolute protection to the nation itself and instant death to any intruders. Only ships flying white flags of peace can sail into a foreign harbor.

The power plants, resembling forts placed at strategic distances along a country's border, will be on guard. As they are immovable, they will constitute essentially means for defense, and by making invasion impossible will greatly advance the cause of peace.

IF, occasionally, nations decide that they must have war just for the thrill of a throbbing drum and a singing bugle, it can be staged on the sea, Dr. Tesla says. Navy supremacy will banish aircraft.

"The airplane will cease to be used as a means of offense," the great inventor explains. "It will be used entirely for peace, as it should be. An airplane, through the very nature of its construction, can not carry with it a generating plant for the beam. If it comes in contact with a country which is protected, it has no chance.

"The battleships will ride to sea safe from air raids, for they will be equipped with smaller plants for generating a beam of sufficient power to destroy any attacking airplane. But they will not be permitted to come near the shore of a protected country and attack it with any chance of success.

"The nation which has the best equipped battleships, however, will gain the supremacy of the seas. Submarines will be obsolete, for the methods of detecting them will be perfected to such a degree that there will be no longer any advantage in submerging. When a submarine is located the beams will function under water, though not quite so effectively as in air."

Four new inventions of Dr. Tesla are involved in the creation of the beam.

"Briefly, the first comprises a method and apparatus for producing rays and other manifestations of energy in free air, eliminating the high vacuum heretofore indispensable," he explains.

"The second one is the process for producing electrical force of immense power.

"The third method amplifies the process, and the fourth produces a tremendous electrical repelling force."

In times of peace such a plant can be used to transmit power in any amount up to its full capacity and to any place on the earth visible through a telescope, according to its inventor. Voltages never before attained, of 50,000,000 volts or more, will have to be applied.

The man who is responsible for so many discoveries and improvements has devoted his entire life to his scientific pursuits. Tall, lean, reserved, his path goes between the two small laboratories and the various manufacturing plants with which he has contact.

Born in Yugoslavia, Tesla comes from a race of inventors.

"On my mother's side, for three generations, almost all members of the families were inventors," he says. "My mother was Georgianna Mandic, who was noted as an inventor of household appliances. One of the things which she perfected was her own weaving machine.

"Her family can be traced back to the seventh century, in the historical records. My grandfather was an officer in Napoleon's army."

TESLA began to invent at the age of six.

As he grew up his interest focused in the laboratory.

"I sleep about one and one-half hours a night," the inventor says. "I think that is enough for any man. When I was young I needed more sleep. But age doesn't require so much. There are so many things to do I do not want to spend time sleeping needlessly. In my family all were poor sleepers. Time spend in sleep is lost time, we always felt."

Tesla, busy with his 700 inventions, never had time for marriage. He never had a girl in his young days. He never had a romance. There was no leisure for them.

His diet is simple. He lives chiefly on vegetables, cereals and milk. The menu includes onions, spinach, celery, carrots, lettuce, with potatoes occasionally. Whites of eggs and milk complete the diet. There is no meat on his vegetable plate. He never smokes or tastes tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages or any other stimulant.

While he is perfecting the beam which will defend nations from attack, the inventor is playing with other ideas. He goes from one to the other, he says, as this or that gains paramount interest or some new clew is suggested.

"BUT what is giving me more fun than anything I have done for a long, long time," Dr. Tesla explains, "is an electric bath which I hope to have ready for general use very soon.

"It doesn't require much room. There is a platform on which the person stands. He turns on the current. Instantly all foreign material such as dust, dandruff, scales on the skin and microbes is thrown off from the body. The nerves, too, are exhilarated and strengthened. The 'bath' is excellent for medical as well as for cleaning purposes."

However, the war picture gives the master inventor more satisfaction than the minor inventions. He is rejoicing because his instrument of death will save millions of lives and inestimable property.

His only regret is that there may be another war before the discoveries he has made have been placed before the Disarmament Conference at Geneva, and generally adopted by the nations of the world.

"The next war, and I am afraid that there will be one before long," he says, "will be fought in the air. But if the beam is adopted war in the air will cease.

"Whatever battles there are thereafter will be confined to the sea. But no nation will dare to attack another nation when every country is armed. There will be a general feeling of safety throughout the world."

Nikola Tesla - "Man of the Future" - An interview by Curtis Brown in 1894

2011-07-17T15:51:00.000-05:00

Curtis Brown interviewed Nikola Tesla in 1894. The story and its accompanying illustrations were published in several newspapers in October of 1894. I found this article in the Newspaper Archives. It seems to be very thorough and I felt the author was trying to portray an accurate picture of the man, Nikola Tesla, and his visions for the future.

The Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 10. Sunday, October 21, 1894.

MAN OF THE FUTURE.
------
A Genius Who Loves America and
Has Added to Its Present
Greatness.
------
HOW HE LOOKS AT WORK.
------
Once a Newspaper Man, Now the Greatest of
Electrical Seers--When We Can Tele-
graph Messages Without Wires.
------For the News--Copyright.

It is a most difficult thing to interview Nikola Tesla, but to sit down and talk with him, man to man, ah, that is a different matter, and if one has had that privilege he will be glad to remember it in years to come, and to tell his grandchildren about it, for it is quite likely that they will know very well who Nikola Tesla was.

This brilliant young electrician, who undoubtedly is the foremost thinker of the world in his chosen field, is honestly and sincerely modest. No writer who has tried to get him to talk for publication has any doubts on that score. "It is an embarrassment to me," he says, "that my work has attracted much public attention, not only because I believe that an earnest man who loves science more than all else should let his work speak for him, if it will, but because I am afraid that some of the scientists, whose friendship I value very much, suspect me of encouraging newspaper notoriety." Mr. Tesla reverted to this matter several times in the course of two conversations, and is evidently sensitive about it. Therefore the portions of this article that come from him should be regarded as a special concession, particularly as he has never talked so freely before. Bogus interviews with him have been published of late, but this is genuine.
TESLA'S LABORATORY.Mr. Tesla spends his days on the fourth floor of a machine shop at No. 33 South Fifth avenue. His name does not appear anywhere on the building, and there is nothing about the place to indicate that it is one of the world's centers of electrical interest. The whole floor is occupied by Mr. Tesla's laboratory, except that one corner is partitioned off into the plainest of little offices containing principally a modest desk for the inventor, a yet more modest desk for his bookkeeper, a book case largely devoted to the "Official Gazette of the patent office," and a small blackboard which hangs on the wall and bears evidence of hard usage. The black is worn from this board in several spots, and the rest of it is covered with figures and cabalistic signs. No doubt the science of electricity would have been notably poorer but for some of the problems worked out on that shabby blackboard, for when the inventor is puzzled he goes to it and works away on it nervously with a stubby piece of chalk.

The laboratory itself looks commonplace to the uninitiated. It is filled with machinery and electrical appliances, and a stranger prowling about the building at will would surely mistake its fourth floor for a part of the machine shops below. One who is not an electrician would find in the Tesla workshop none of the marvels that make Edison's laboratory better than a circus for the sightseer. An electrician, however, would find secrets there with which he could make and break colossal fortunes on the stock market, for reasons that will appear further on.

But Mr. Tesla's half dozen employes are tried and trusted men, and the would-be visitor would find it an extremely difficult matter to get into this laboratory. If he did get in he would be more than likely to find the inventor there working over some bit of machinery with a handkerchief tied about his throat in lieu of a collar, yet dressed in clothes of fashionable cut, and generally looking very neat and clean. Unlike Mr. Edison, the younger inventor has some regard for his personal appearance.
HIS PERSONALITY.One rarely meets a man more free from affectations and self-consciousness than Nikola Tesla. He does not like to talk of himself, and when that subject comes up he is sure to steer away from it as quickly as possible. He has bachelor quarters at the Gerlach on West Twenty-seventh street, but he can be found at Delmonico's nearly always at breakfast and dinner time.

With due apologies to Mr. Tesla for so much personality, it may be said that he has the same cast of countenance as Ignance Jan Paderewski--long and thin, with fine, clean-cut features, low forehead, and a certain gleam of the eye that denotes wheat might be called spirituality. He is an idealist, and one who has created an ideal of him from the fame that he has won will not be disappointed in him upon seeing him for the first time. He is fully six feet tall, very slender, very dark of complexion, nervous and wiry. Impressionable maidens would fall in love with him at sight, but he has no time to think of impressionable maidens. Day and night he is working away at deep problems that fascinate him, and anyone who talks with him for even a few minutes will get the impression that science is his only mistress and that he cares more for her than for money or fame.

Any one who has met Paderewski and has been able to speak German or French with sufficient fluency to enjoy a conversation with him, and who has also had the pleasure of a talk with Tesla across one of Delmonico's tables, will feel instinctively that the Polish pianist and the Servian electrician have much in common, and that it is a great pity they have never met. Some philanthropist could do both of them a service by bringing them together when Paderewski comes to this country again next December. They could at least find a common ground of interest in Slavic literature, with which both have a wide acquaintance.

Speaking of love for science, Mr. Tesla said the other day in one of the rare moments when he could be induced to talk of himself: "Wherever I am I can not help working at problems that present themselves to me and seem so important that I can not help but try to solve them. I spend so many hours at my laboratory at times that my friends become alarmed and threaten to lock the place up and hide the key. Seriously," he continued, with earnest face and eyes fairly ablaze, "if they tried to do that I should shoot them. I would, indeed. It makes no difference to a man's health how long he works, so long as he loves his work, for his affection is like the oil in the lamp which keeps the wick burning without consuming the wick itself. When the oil is gone, then it is that the wick goes fast. If at any moment I lost my eagerness and enthusiasm, then very likely I would go to pieces.
TESLA WAS ONCE A JOURNALIST"That was what would have happened to me if I had continued to be a journalist. You never knew that I was once a member of your profession? Well, I was. The trouble with me was that I wrote too carefully, and, as it seems to me, too thoughtfully. When I wrote an article of which I was particularly proud, my friends would say: 'Tesla, that was a masterpiece!' But the editor would say: 'Why don't you write something more lively? Not half a dozen people will read that stuff.' No, journalism is the hardest work in the world for the man who wishes to be thoughtful. My heart was not in it, and it would have worn me out soon, like the wick without any oil. Even as it is now, I get worn out sometimes, but it is a great comfort to be one's own master and to feel that there is nothing to prevent one's dropping all work at any moment and starting for Europe or somewhere else for as long a rest as one wants.

"I have noticed a queer thing about my mental operation, and that is that my mind seems to work in two halves, each independently of the other, so that when I talk, or even when I sleep, only half of my mind appears to be thus engaged, the other half goes on steadily with whatever I have on my mind, or may be I ought to say with whatever it has on its mind. My friends say, 'You will kill yourself.' I say, 'Nonsense.' I used to be an athlete once and I recuperate very quickly. See me now." He held up his hands as if they were trustworthy indicators of his physical condition. They were long and thin and nervous. They trembled a little and the conclusion naturally to be drawn from them was that their possessor was a man whose tremendous energy, although under good control, was likely to use him up if run at such high pressure much longer.
HIS TRAINING.Mr. Tesla is only 37 years old, and he looks even younger. He was born at a town called Smiljan in Servia, on the borderland of Austro-Hungary. His family was an old one, cultured and highly respected. His father was an eloquent preacher of the Greek church and his mother was a woman of remarkable ingenuity. He had an inherited taste for mechanics, and it is her blood that made Tesla what he is. His father wanted him to enter the church, but he could not be kept away from experiments in magnetism and electricity, in which he was deeply interested by the time he was 16. He was finally permitted to go to a polytechnic school with the idea of becoming a professor of mathematics and physics. He was making inventions of improvements for the telephone before he was 25 years old. He secured employment in Paris as an electrical engineer and then came to America early in the '80s, not because he had any definite employment in view, but because he became convinced that the United States was the best country in the world for an inventor, because new ideas were more quickly and more highly appreciated here than anywhere else.

The day he arrived here he went to work for Mr. Edison, for whom he had and has yet the strongest admiration. He left the wizard of Menlo park in order to join a company organized to sell some of his inventions in arc lighting.

Much of Mr. Tesla's spare time during his first five years in this country was devoted to experiments with what is known as the rotating field for use with the alternating current. In 1837 Prof. Anthony proved that the young electrician had produced an alternating current motor of an efficiency equal to that of direct current motors, yet dispensing with the brushes and commutator which had added materially to the cost and inconvenience of manufacturing electricity.
SUDDENLY FAMOUS.He pushed on eagerly in the field he had opened, experimenting with alternate currents of extraordinary high potentials and frequencies. The results of his experiments were laid before the public in a lecture delivered before the American Institute of engineers in May, 1891. Before that time he had been known only to electricians. By the hour the reports of that lecture had found their way to the public he was famous. The brilliant gathering of scientists before whom the lecture was delivered was taken by storm with his theories and his remarkable experiments in verification of them. Soon after another lecture was delivered before the most notable body of electricians in Europe, the institute of electrical engineers in London, and his reception by them was as enthusiastic as it had been in America. A day later, by special request, he repeated his experiments before the royal institution, and soon after responded to an urgent call from the two foremost societies in France. In 1893 he delivered lectures in Philadelphia and Europe which served to intensify public interest in him.

One of his experiments on these two occasions was spectacular in the extreme. Finding an audience of some 5000 persons, he passed through his body a current of 200,000 volts, causing streams of light to pour from his body and break forth from his finger tips, whereas a current of a hundredth part of that energy would have killed him instantly, thus proving that the amount of electric energy that may be passed into the human body depends on the strength and frequency of the current, and that the higher these are the less harm they do the body. Mr. Tesla said at the time that the only inconvenience he felt from thus making an electric light of himself was a slight prickling as of a needle and a burning sensation at the finger tips.
HIS LATEST ACHIEVEMENT.The most important work on which Mr. Tesla is now engaged, and which bids fair to bring him more fame than anything he has done before this, is a machine by which a heretofore unheard of steam pressure can be applied to the generation of electricity, reducing the waste, of the current, and, what is of supreme importance, reducing the cost of electricity.

It is easy to see that any device by which the cost of electric power is brought below the cost of steam power will bring a revolution in the processes of manufacturing more sudden and startling than was brought about by the introduction of steam. The economical transmission of electricity generated by water power, as at Niagara Falls, has already brought a promise of this revolution, and if Mr. Tesla's machine will bring a corresponding reduction in the cost of electricity to cities too far away to derive benefit from water power like that at Niagara, then, indeed, the revolution will be complete. Electric motors will everywhere take the place of costly and wasteful shafting in mills and factories, and the day when private houses will be lighted and heated, and to some extent run by electricity, will be brought almost as near to other cities as it now is to Buffalo, which will receive its first installment of power from Niagara Falls in a few weeks at a price promised to be somewhere near a fourth cheaper than that now paid for the work done by steam.

This much may be said positively, and the statement is here made public for the first time: If the wonderful machine on which Mr. Tesla is now putting the finishing touches, works as well elsewhere as it has worked already in the Tesla laboratory, it will bring the extraordinary advantages suggested above. The inventor himself refuses to make any definite statement as to what his engine will do. "I know," he says, "that it will accomplish in my laboratory results that can not but be considered important, and that certainly open up a new field for high-pressure boilers. It is now in operation and has succeeded absolutely, but of course I must not predict from laboratory results what a machine will accomplish when applied to public uses. It may take two or three years to prepare for placing it on the market. I have, of course, a pretty definite idea as to the reduction it will make in the cost of electricity, but there are many reasons why it would not be well to give the figures."
UNPARALLELED STEAM PRESSURE.The young inventor endeavors to speak very conservatively of this new machine of his, but it is quite probable that he believes he has solved one of the most important practical problems within reach of the electrical science of the present day.

Any one who is familiar with the mathematics of the steam engine will appreciate one phase of his device when it is stated that it is now run with a steam pressure of 375 pounds, the highest that was ever put to practical use. The pressure generally used is about 175 pounds. The boiler which supplies this steam pressure in the Tesla laboratory is said to be the most powerful ever constructed. It was built for the inventor by Babcock & Wilcox, and so far has responded to the amazing test to which it has been put. The machine to which this unprecedented pressure has been applied has to run almost without friction; that is the kernel of Mr. Tesla's discovery. He tells me that he would dare apply a steam pressure of 1000 pounds to his machine, and would do so if he could get a boiler that could supply the pressure. Engineers who read this statement will conclude, unless they know Mr. Tesla personally, that he is crazy.

One technical value of this new discovery for utilizing steam at high pressure is in the saving that it makes in the cost of heat for producing the steam, because it is a queer freak of nature that requires proportionately much less heat to produce steam at high pressure than to produce it at low pressure. For instance, it takes an increase of only 56 deg. Fahrenheit to raise steam pressure from 12 pounds up to 250 pounds.
ELECTRICITY'S PROPHET.There are other electricians who say of Mr. Tesla that he is not a particularly great man as a practical, working electrician, and that his machines are not always as valuable in practice as they are in theory, but most of them admit willingly that he has no peer as a theorist and investigator, a dreamer of the dreams that will come true. His talk of the future is worth thinking about. He is very confident that great things are coming soon through the utilization of the electrostatic or magnetic condition of the earth itself. "Some time," he says, "electricity will be taken from all about us and used for light, heat, and motive power. We will reach down to the earth and tap the current anywhere, getting all we want without expense. It is interesting to sit down somewhere away from all interruption and think out what that would mean. It seems hardly possible that these wonders can be far away, because the process by which they can be realized is so simple. Expressed roughly, all that would have to be done would be to set the earth's electricity to vibrating, and adjust a machine to these vibrations wherever the force was required. It is something as if the earth were a rubber bag. Shake it in one place and you feel the vibrations in another place. You and I could not feel the electrical vibrations, but I have in mind a machine that will. If nothing else is transmitted by these vibrations, intelligence surely will be. I have the best of reasons for predicting that messages will be transmitted through the earth in this way without wires, like a pulse through a human being. It seems surprising that his has not been done before.

"It is reasonable to suppose that the earth's electricity is generated by the atoms of which all things are composed. We and our world are not only whirling through space with a terrific speed, but every little atom in the world is whirling, too. Now there is good reason to believe that the molecules and their atoms are really little worlds that revolve and move in their orbits like stars, causing the ether about them to spin with them, thus generating electricity, or affording the conditions suitable to its generation.

THE INCANDESCENT HUMAN LAMP"While electricity could hardly be called the ether itself, it is probable that the effects of dynamic electricity and electro-magnetism are the effects of ether in motion, and the effects of static electricity are the effects of ether under a strain. The discovery of a method of utilizing this practically exhaustless force that lies so close at hand, would uncover what are surely some of the greatest secrets of the universe. It would be the greatest discovery since the creation, and would bring about a total revolution in all life."
NIAGARA POWER FOR NEW YORK.Mr. Tesla's enthusiasm is of the kind that kindles quickly, and the great electrical work now going on at Niagara Falls is one of the subjects that is most likely to arouse it. "Some day all wood and coal will be used up," he said, when this subject was introduced, "and, so far as I can see, we will freeze and starve to death unless electricity is used to transmit the exhaustless energy of water power to any distance, wherever man has his habitation, and turn it into light, heat and power for him. But now that transmission of energy by means of electricity has become not only possible but practical, there need be no more unpleasant speculations about what will happen to us after the world's supply of fuel has been exhausted. The operations at Niagara are a promise to us of this insurance against what the future may have in store for us. The work there is inspiring of confidence, too, for the future of electricity."

He believes it is possible to deliver electricity generated at the Falls to the doors of New York cheaper than steam power is generated here. He was explicit on this point and had evidently given careful thought to the subject at some previous time. He said: "If you have 150,000 horse power to transmit in one bulk you can send it 500 miles and yet compete with steam generated on the spot for the engines now in use. But if you send only 10,000, for instance, then in any estimation it can not be sent to compete with steam to a distance of much more than fifty miles. It should be added, however, that while this statement is true according to the results of laboratory practice, it may not apply exactly to the actual operation where all the differences of conditions from those in the laboratory can not be fully discounted beforehand."

A fellow electrician who is in a position to judge of Mr. Tesla with friendly impartiality gives this opinion of him--and it is an opinion that probably will be found to have the approval of most of the scientists who have come in contact with this wonderful young man: "He is a scientist who is in advance of his time, a seer, a genuine poet of electricity, a man whose eye is focused to the great things of science, and whose mind is fitted by nature to deal with them better than the commonplace things that the most of us are obliged to busy ourselves with. He has been charged with being a visionary, but it seems to me that the charge is misleading, for though Tesla undoubtedly saw visions that other scientists had not seen, some of them were based on reasoning rather than on imagination unaided by facts, as was proved by the circumstance that the other scientists saw the same visions after Tesla had pointed out the way to look for them. They were visions that opened rich new fields for scientific exploration and that will bring practical benefits to every household. Tesla is young and strong and his head is not turned. He is as eager as ever and there is no reason to suppose that the most brilliant and useful part of his life is not yet before him."

Mr. Tesla is going to Europe very soon, but not to stay--not by any manner of means--he is too thorough going an American for that. He believes the United States is the most progressive, enlightened and liberal land on earth, and of all the reasons he has for satisfaction with life he holds one of the greatest to be the decision that brought him to this country ten years ago.

I said to him a week ago on bidding him goodby: "You're sure you are thoroughly Americanized now; that you'll never hunger after any other titles than that of a citizen of this United States?" And this was the memorable saying with which he made an enthusiastic answer:

"You bet."

CURTIS BROWN.
-------------------------------

Nikola Tesla - 7 Short Articles from the Newspaper Archives

2011-07-16T17:41:00.000-05:00

Below are seven short newspaper articles about Nikola Tesla that I found in the Newspaper Archives. Topics: X-rays, photography, wireless communication, warfare, electrical airplanes and club membership. The articles span the years between 1896 and 1935:

The New-York Times, New York, New York, page 9. Wednesday, April 22, 1896.

HE SEES THE HUMAN HEART.
----------
Some Further Experiments Conducted by Nikola Tesla with X Rays.
Nikola Tesla is still devoting a great deal of time to the scientific investigation of the Rontgen ray effects. In a long communication to The Electrical Review, to be published to-day, he announces, among others, two interesting results he has achieved. One of these is that if a sensitive film be placed between two plates, say of magnesium and copper, a true Rontgen radiograph would be obtained after a very long exposure in the dark.

Another result Tesla has obtained is that by the use of a new type of fluorescent screen, devised in his laboratory, he has been able greatly to increase the sharpness of the outlines in a shadow on the screen and actually to see the human heart. Regarding this, Tesla says:

"By the use of the above apparatus I have been enabled to examine much better than before the body by means of the fluorescent screen. Presently the vertebral column can be seen quite clearly, even in the lower part of the body. I have also clearly noted the outlines of the hip bones. Looking in the region of the heart, I have been able to locate it unmistakably.

"The background appeared much brighter, and this difference in the intensity of the shadow and surrounding has surprised me. The ribs I could now see on a number of occasions quite distinctly, as well as the shoulder bones. Of course there is no difficulty whatever in observing the bones of all the limbs."
----------------------

Middletown Daily Argus, Middletown, New York, page 1. Thursday, January 6, 1898.

TO ADVANCE PHOTOGRAPHY.
-----
Odd Application of the Vacuum Tube by Nikola Tesla.
NEW YORK, Jan. 6.--The Electrical Review of the current issue announces an important work by Nikola Tesla which promises to greatly advance the art of photography by means of vacuum tubes of immense illuminating power which he has succeeded in producing. The light emitted is so great as to be applicable for lighthouse purposes, and trials in this line will very likely be made soon.

The Review says editorially that this particular application is the "oddest and most unlooked for development of the vacuum tube." Its value in photography is shown by photographs reproduced in the journal named, which states its belief that this light will cause the "supersedence of the objectionable flashlight and makes the photographer entirely independent of sunlight" and concludes "that the bearing of these advances on practical illumination is obviously important."

Tesla also makes an interesting comparison between the vacuum tube and the now almost universally used incandescent electric lamp.

---------------

The Massillon Independent,--Semi-Weekly,, Massillon, Ohio. December 14, 1899.

Tesla Again.Nikola Tesla, who opened an experiment station in Colorado Springs, Col, in May last for the purpose of making scientific measurements and observations with wireless telegraphy in high altitudes, has successfully concluded his work and will soon return to this city to continue his work here. He has perfected a machine by which he intends to send messages to Paris next year, and his experiments here will be in communication by means of the machine with Paris, without the use of a wire.

"I have been successful in my experiments beyond anything I ever accomplished." he said to a correspondent. "I am glad I have come to Colorado. I am delighted with the results. I am not at liberty to give out the details of my work at this time, but you can say the system of wireless telegraphy has been successfully demonstrated in this altitude, which is 6,000 feet above sea level." It will be an astonishing thing if this wizard succeeds in sending a message across the Atlantic ocean, but this is an age of marvelous things.

Sandusky Daily Star, Second Edition, Sandusky, Ohio, page 2. Tuesday Evening, March 4, 1902.

NIKOLA TESLA, WHO IS TRYING TO OUTDO MARCONI.Nikola Tesla, the electrical expert, intends to beat Marconi at the latter's own game. Mr. Tesla is preparing to send wireless messages not only through the air, but through the earth. At his new headquarters on Long Island he has erected a tall iron mast and has dug a well 50c feet in depth. He expects to begin his experiments in a few weeks.

The San Antonio Light, San Antonio, Texas, page 1. Wednesday, March 11, 1908.

U. S. WILL WHIP
WORLD SAYS TESLA
------
Wizard Gives His Views at
a Banquet Last
Night.
------New York, March 11.--Rear Admiral Charles D. Sigsbee, retired, and Nikola Tesla were guests of honor at a dinner and reception given by the Entertainment club last night. General J. Fred Pierson presided.

Nikola Tesla spoke on the future of warfare. He said:

"Mankind will eventually harness the waterfalls and transform this enormous pressure into energy and this will simplify warfare. Aerial vessels of war will be used to exclusion of ships and with 10,000,000 tons of energy this country will be equipped to rout the civilized world.

"I consider the greatest achievement of humanity will be the wireless telegraphy, which may be operated throughout the globe. This will solve an intricate feature of our civilization. It is scientifically possible and it will gradually become an actuality."

Admiral Sigsbee related his social activities during his long career in the navy. He told of a pork and beans dinner he ate with the family of Mme. Emma Ames in Shanghai in 1866.
----------------------

Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, page 1. Wednesday, March 12, 1924.

Today
By Arthur Brisbane
--------Nikola Tesla says that he can transmit power, so that flying machines could take power from the earth, carrying no fuel.

He declares that power can be transmitted without wires 12,000 miles, half way around the earth, making the power of every waterfall available everywhere else on the planet. The loss by transmission is only one-quarter of 1 percent, plus 4 per cent of loss in the apparatus itself.
--------Some scientists do not believe that Nikola Tesla can prove it. But that the thing will be done eventually there is no doubt. What men can CONCEIVE they can do.

Tesla, whose genius as an electrician has the Niagara power-plant for its monument, sees far ahead of his time. Thirty years ago he outlined to this writer the terrific power locked up in the atoms now so much discussed.
--------

The Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, page 2. Friday, July 12, 1935.

All Officers
Are Re-elected
By Federation
-----
Milwaukee--(UP)--The 1935 convention of the Serbian National federation, which began June 28, had ended today after re-election of officers. Youngstown, O., was selected as the 1939 convention city.

Nikola Tesla, who celebrated his 79th birthday yesterday by announcing three important inventions in electrical science, was elected honorary life president of the federation.

Officers re-elected include: Samuel Werlinich, McKees Rock, Pa., president; Voislav Djokovich, Cambridge, O., vice-president; Branko Pekich, Pittsburgh, Pa., secretary; Louis Christopher, Gary, Ind., treasurer, and Nikola Vurdelja, Pittsburgh, Pa., recording secretary.

Elected to membership on the board of trustees were Milian Radakovich, Wauwatosa, Wis.; Paul Kobac, Sharon, Pa.; Boza Markovich, Pittsburgh, Pa., and George Skokich, Chicago.

Mihailo Bajich, Chisholm, Minn.; Mileta Milovanovich, Slovan, Pal; Nikola Klipa, Steelton, Pa.; Ilija Pekich, Butte, Mont.; and Dusham Silashiki, Akron, O., were elected to the judicial board.

Branko Dajichich, editor of the Daily American Srobran for the last 16 years, was unanimously re-elected.

Nikola Tesla - "Man's Greatest Achievement"

2011-07-16T01:51:00.000-05:00

This editorial found in the Newspaper Archives from 1930, not only includes a tribute to babies and mothers, it also includes a statement about "Man's Greatest Achievement" written by Nikola Tesla, himself.

San Antonio Sunday Light, Editorial-City Life Section, San Antonio, Texas. Sunday, July 20, 1930.

MAN'S BRAIN OUTWEIGHS ALL
Copyright, 1930, by N. Y. American, Inc. Great Britain Rights Reserved.

ALL that you see piled up in the scale, on the right of this picture, was once a misty unreality, in the brain of some newborn child.

Many marvels are upon the powerful rivers, volcanoes, oceans, the flashing lightning, the tropics' heat, and the cold of the poles.

But all is as nothing compared with the power and possibilities locked up in the brain of a newborn child.
* * *Read Nikola Tesla's statement on this page.

You will delight in his thoughts and speculations, based not on mere imagining, but on thorough scientific training and 'scientific' genius.

When Mr. Tesla suggests that man in the millions of years ahead of him might change the size and shape of this planet, and choose for himself its direction through space, he speaks not lightly.

Mr. Tesla, is one of the real scientists and inventors of his age. More than thirty years ago, sitting in Delmonico's old restaurant in New York, at 26th Street and Fifth Avenue, he raised in his hand a small wine glass, and said: "The power that holds together the molecules and atoms in that glass, if it could be released, would run the machinery of the biggest factory in the United States." That seemed wild imagining then. It is taught to children in school now. Everybody knows that the force holding together the electrons within the atom, as they revolve around the nucleus, trillions of times in a second, is great beyond our imagining.
* * *

To the great majority, however, abstract science is painful, and even conservative speculation as to what may come tires and appalls us.

But it requires no scientific training, no "peering into the atom," or weighing of distant universes, to realize that a little baby, kicking up its heels, a few hours old, is, in its possibilities, the most important thing that ever appears on this planet.

Well may the mother look with intense pride on the tiny face. No man can exaggerate the possibilities there.

The spinning jenny that clothes the world was once in the brain of a little baby named Arkwright.

The light of the world, taken from the clouds and locked up in a small bulb, was born in the brain of a baby named Edison.

All the skill of engineers, scientists, surgeons,

industrialists, merchants, is due to small babies that good mothers give to the world.
* * *And the humble baby, born poor and obscure, often has, in the race for fame and usefulness, a far better chance than the baby we call "better born."

A small, long, blue-eyed baby, born in a wooden cabin with a dirt floor and no windows, ended slavery in the United States. The power that ended it was given to him by his mother, Nancy Hanks. Upon the day that Abraham Lincoln first opened his little blue eyes and looked around, he had that power.

Every mother should remember, with hope and pride, that there is no limit to the possibilities of the baby upon her knee, and the little children around her.

In them is the hope of the future.
* * *The millions of mothers, some of whom would not understand all of the things that Mr. Tesla says on this page, know ONE thing, more important than ALL that any scientist has ever said, namely, that love is the greatest power in the world, and that the greatest, most important love among earthly beings is the love of a good mother for her helpless child.

"Love can hope, where reason would despair."

Reason might well despair, looking at a sickly little baby, the big head taking more than

its share of blood, legs and arms thin, its little hands so feeble.

But in such babies, the mothers of the world see boundless possibility, and hope without limit.

Every newborn child, to its mother, is a genius.

And, "Mother is the name of God, in the lips and hearts of little children."
* * *This picture, an admirably expressed tribute to the mind of man, emphasizes the power of the human brain, an aggregation of molecules and atoms, the atoms tenuous particles of electric force. But far more interesting to the average mortal than all that science sees, in the energy and accomplishment locked up in the brain of a child, is the fact that the child is a product of human affection, its success reflecting the love of the mother. That mother love is the power back of all other power, the power that moves the human race forward, and creates everything that means progress away from the dark cave and its brutality, toward the sunlight of real civilization.

Dickens said, "It must somewhere be written that the virtues of mothers shall, occasionally, be visited on their children, as well as the sins of their fathers."

The qualities of the mother are reflected in the child, in its success and its usefulness. Whatever the son does, the mother also does.

Any tribute to the genius of humanity as a whole, the undeveloped power of a newborn child, to any thing that is human, is a tribute to motherhood, the creating force to which the world owes all that it has.

Richter said: "Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother hath not made all other mothers venerable."

And Lord Langdale, a good son, said: "If the whole world were put into one scale, and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam."
* * *

Here you have a baby in one scale, the wonders of the world, its inventions, railroads, skyscrapers, ships, factories, in the other.

And the child weighs it all down. To have the picture so is no exaggeration. All the world's wonders are inside of that little skull, and all the future progress of the world that will spread over hundreds of millions of years, is written, and hidden away in the productive power of the mothers.

"It hath not yet been shown what we shall be." And as the marvels are revealed, one after another, the mothers will create them in their children, and the children will produce them from their brains.
* * *From the ox-cart to the flying machine, from the dugout canoes to the submarine, everything worth while is a product of thought.

Man is "fearfully and wonderfully made." He should know and appreciate it, and endeavor, in a BIG way, if possible, in a SMALL way if the big way is not possible, to be worthy of the opportunity given to him.

HONOR YOUR MOTHER, USE YOUR BRAIN, and everything is possible.

MAN'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
By Nikola Tesla.WHEN a child is born its sense-organs are brought in contact with the outer world.

The waves of sound, heat and light beat upon its feeble body, its sensitive nerve-fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience: a gasp, a breath, and in this act a marvelous little engine, of inconceivable delicacy and complexity of construction, unlike any on earth, is hitched to the wheel-work of the Universe.

The little engine labors and grows, performs more and more involved operations, becomes sensitive to ever subtler influences and now there manifests itself in the fully developed being--Man--a desire mysterious, inscrutable and irresistible: to imitate nature, to create, to work himself the wonders he perceives.
* * *Inspired to this task he searches, discovers and invents, designs and constructs, and enriches with monuments of beauty, grandeur and awe, the star of his birth.

He descends into the bowels of the globe to bring forth its hidden treasures and to unlock its immense imprisoned energies for his use.

He invades the dark depths of the ocean and the azure regions of the sky.

He peers into the innermost nooks and recesses of molecular structure and lays bare to his gaze worlds (unreadable) remote. He subdues and puts to his service the fierce, devastating spark of Prometheus, the titanic forces of the waterfall, the wind and the tide.

He tames the thundering bolt of Jove and annihilates time and space. He makes the great Sun itself his obedient toiling slave.

Such is his power and might that the heavens reverberate and the whole earth trembles by the mere sound of his voice.
* * *What has the future in store for this strange being, born of a breath, of perishable tissue, yet immortal, with his powers fearful and divine? What magic will be wrought by him in the end? What is to be his (unreadable) deed, his crowning achievement?

Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, of a tenuity beyond conception and filling all space--the Akasa or luminiferous ether--which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena.

The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.
* * *Can Man control this grandest, most awe-inspiring of all processes in nature? Can he harness her inexhaustible energies to perform all their functions at his bidding, more still--can he so refine his means of control as to put them in operation simply by the force of his will?
* * *If he could do this he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural. At his command, with but a slight effort on his part, old worlds would disappear, and new ones of his planning would spring into being.

He could fix, solidify and preserve the ethereal shapes of his imagining, the fleeting visions of his dreams. He could express all the creations of his mind, on any scale, in forms concrete and imperishable.

He could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, guide it along any path he might choose through the depths of the Universe.

He could make planets collide and produce his suns and starts, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms.
* * *To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world, his crowning achievement which would place him beside his Creator and fulfill his ultimate destiny.

Nikola Tesla - X-Ray Experiments, Blindness and Fertilizers Manufactured by Electricity

2011-07-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

Here is another interesting article about Nikola Tesla from 1896. During this time period, Tesla had become distracted by Roentgen's discovery of x-rays. Tesla admits, in other articles from this time period, that he temporarily suspended some of his electrical experiments in order to explore the x-rays further.

Middletown Daily Argus, Middletown, New York, page 1. Wednesday, December 2, 1896.

X-RAY EXPERIMENTS
----------
Interesting Discoveries and Sug-
gestions by Nikola Tesla.
----------
NO HOPE HELD OUT FOR THE BLIND
----------
The Sunburn Effects Noted in Many Im-
pressions Due to Ozone Generated by
the Rays and Skin--Fertilizers
Manufactured by Electricity.

New York, Dec. 2.--The Electrical Review to-day publishes an exhaustive communication from Nikola Tesla on his latest experiments with the x-ray, which it characterizes as conveying a wealth of suggestions and most important and timely information. Tesla states that the sunburn effects noted by many experimenters are not due directly to the rays, or Roentgen streams, but to the ozone generated by the rays in contact with the skin. He says: "Nitrous acid may also be responsible, to a small extent. The ozone, when abundantly produced, attacks the skin and many organic substances most energetically, the action being no doubt heightened by the heat and moisture of the skin. Owing to this I have always taken the precaution, when getting impressions with the rays, to guard the person by a screen made of aluminum wires which is connected to the ground, preferably through a condenser. The radical means, however, of preventing such actions is to make impossible the access of the air to the skin while exposing, as, for instance, by immersing in oil." The inventor in referring to the recently widely heralded experiment for making the blind see by means of the Roentgen rays regretfully remarks:

No Good for the Blind."Is it not cruel to raise such hopes when there is so little ground for it? For, first of all, the rays are not demonstrated to be transverse vibrations. If they were they would have to find means for refracting them to make possible the projection of a sufficiently small image upon the retina. As it is, only a shadow of a very small object can be projected. What possible good can result from the application of these rays to such purposes? I cannot confirm some of the experiments reported. For instance--when a hand is put before the closed eyes it is easy to distinguish the shadow, much the same as before the light of a candle; but when the tube is inclosed, and all the light from the same excluded, I fail to get such an impression. The latter is, therefore, chiefly due to ordinary light."

Fertilizers by Electricity.Tesla points out a possible and strikingly unique method of manufacturing fertilizers by electricity in the following interesting language: "With currents produced by perfected electrical oscillators, such as was described in one of your recent issues, the production of the ozone is so abundant that it is sufficient to merely turn on the current for a few seconds and ozonize strongly permeates the atmosphere of a large hall. These currents are also capable of bringing about chemical combinations, of which the chief is that of the nitrogen with the oxygen of the atmosphere, and an immense possibility, which I have been following up for a long time, is opened up; namely, the combination of the nitrogen of the atmosphere on an industrial scale by practically no other means than mechanical power. If merely fertilizers of the soil would be manufactured in this manner, the benefits to humanity derived therefrom would be incalculable."

50 More Gifts Under $30 for Your Engineer--July, 2011

2011-07-14T23:30:00.006-05:00

People are starting to think about the holiday season and what to get for those "hard-to-buy-for-technical-types." These are 50 more cool gift ideas for your engineer that I found on various websites--all priced at under $30!

51. Silver Shuttle with Boosters Earrings

"Sterling Silver Shuttle with Boosters design earrings. Post closures."

$28.99

52. Space Shuttle Rubber Duck

"This Space Shuttle rubber ducky is mission ready!"

$3.99

53. Glow Constellation Creations

"Includes: 10 Constellations, 150 glow in the dark self adhesive stars and a complete instruction with the glossary of star terms."

$9.99

54.

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things

"Satisfy Your Inner MacGyver. 179 pages of devious things to make and do. Be just like MacGyver. You'll be shocked at the things you can make."

$9.99

55.

Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver of the 11th Doctor

"Better than fish and custard. Collectible sonic screwdriver from the TV show Doctor Who. Made by the TARDIS, used by the 11th Doctor. Green light and sonic screwdriver sound effects."

$25.99

56.

Doctor Who TARDIS Talking Cookie Jar

"The perfect excuse to keep all the cookies. Cookie jar in the shape of the TARDIS. Makes authentic TARDIS sound effects. A must for Doctor Who fans who like cookies."

$26.99

57. Unit Circle (Radian) Wall Clock

"What is 90 degrees in radians? With this great clock, trigonometry will be a breeze! Inspired by my math teacher, Ms. Pinocci."

$15.00

58.

Flying Alarm Clock

"My, how time flies...ugh. I can't believe I just said that... When normal alarm clocks don't get you out of bed. Helicopter flies away when the alarm goes off. You must return it to the base to shut off the alarm."

$19.99

59. Pi Clock

"Decorate any room in your home or office with our 10 inch wall clock. Black plastic case. Requires 1 AA battery (included)."

$15.00

60.

Resistance is Futile

"Resistance Equals Voltage Divided By Current Events. Vulcan or Borg? Resistance = Voltage / Current Events. White print on a black t-shirt."

$16.99-$18.99

61. Smithsonian Mega Science Lab

"Learn about chemistry, biology, volcanoes, crystal growing and weather with this one-of-a-kind hands-on multi-lab science set. Molded lab-station provides the foundation for a multi-activity set that is fun, interesting and complete, Bioscope magnifying device accomodates a microscope slide, live specimen holder and tweezers attachment. Grow a crystal and erupt a volcano."

$27.95

62.

Our Amazing Bridges Architecture Kit

"Our Amazing Bridges, by Slinky Science, allows you to discover the wonders of building! Build and display attractive models of 3 different bridge types - The Roman Arch, The Truss Bridge, and The Suspension Bridge. Learn all about how bridges work. Explore the art and science of bridge building throughout history in your 48-page Fact & Fun Bridge Architecture Book. Ideal for building landscape dioramas. Contents: Landscape Base; Bridge Parts; Casting Compound, Molds, Scraper, and Sandpaper; Architecture Book, with instructions; Painting Guide; Non-Toxic Paints, Glue, and Brush; Sticks and Thread. Slinky Science is a fun way for children to learn and explore. They offer activity kits, activity books, fun labs, magic science, magnets, mini labs, and science kits. Get your children involved with FUN science! For ages 8+."

$19.95

63. The Most Amazing Science Pop-Up Book (Hardcover)

"Working pop-up models of seven key scientific inventions, including the record player, the periscope, and the camera obscura, are accompanied by full-color photographs and illustrations, explanations of underlying principles, and important developments in the history of each device."

$19.00

64. Wooden Boomerang

"Experience the fun and clever ingenuity of the Australian outback with the Wooden Boomerang. Simply find yourself an open area and let the boomerang go for a spin--no need to chase after it, because it will come right back to you! A unique toy for birthdays or holidays!"

$6.95

65.

Men's Mathematics Silk Tie by Wild Ties in Red

"Silk. Brilliant necktie to make you feel like a genius."

$19.95

66. Solar Spark Lighter

"Hand any science teacher a parabolic mirror, and the first thing they want to do is start a fire. (Trust us. We’ve met thousands.) Get right to the point with this mirror, originally designed for the hikers and campers! It’s equipped with a prong that holds fuel right at the focal point. Held in bright sun, it generates smoke in seconds! But don’t stop with ordinary paper fuel. Try our favorite demo – the mini-marshmallow roast."

$19.00

67. Portable Blacklight

"This blacklight can be used for many tasks: checking hand stamps, finding pet stains, checking for bacteria, applying blacklight sensitive cosmetics, identifying antique glass and hunting scorpions."

$13.00

68. Galileos Thermometer

"This solid glass thermometer contains hand-blown multi-colored glass dolphin globes. It is a functional and attractive accessory is based on the physicist Galileo. Galileo’s (1564-1642) discovery that the density of fluid expands and contracts depending on temperature. The lowest floating sphere in the upper group indicates the current temperature. As the temperature decreases, spheres will rise and as the temperature increases, spheres will fall. Multi-colored globes inside the thermometer have gold tags that read from 64° to 80° Fahrenheit in 4 degree increments, combining beauty and accuracy."

$19.00

69. UV Beads (1000 Pack)

"These beads are sensitive to UV light and change from white to a bright array of colors when they are exposed to sunlight or UV rays."

$24.95

70. Laser Pointer (Silver)

"This remarkable hand-held silver laser makes reasonably-priced laser demonstrations a reality. The powerful 3mW solid-state laser diode emits a beam at a frequency of 670nM that can focus upon a board or diagram -- anywhere you want your audience's attention -- up to 500 feet away."

$27.00

71. Dynamo Hand-Powered Flashlight

"Based on Michael Faraday's groundbreaking invention (which he called the "dynamo"), this flashlight uses only a disk magnet and two coils of copper to generate electricity."

$14.95

72. Giant Prism

"This is the biggest solid prism you'll find anywhere!

3" equilateral prism, 4" long, it makes bright rainbows from sunlight or artificial sources like an overhead projector."

$25.00

73. Einstein Simplified, Revised Edition: Cartoons on Science (Paperback)

"Sidney Harris is America's foremost science cartoonist. He has been praised by luminaries such as Linus Pauling and Isaac Asimov, as well as countless others throughout the world, for his ability to find humour in what is traditionally regarded as a somewhat dry subject. Harris does for science what Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) does for business: his unique perspective illustrates the scientific and technological environments in such a funny way that everyone can enjoy it. This edition of "Einstein Simplified" has been updated and revised with new cartoons."

$11.16

74. Popular Science (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]

"The 'What's New'" magazine of science and technology. Covering the latest developments in cars, electronics, communications, tools, energy, aviation, science, space exploration and much more."

$12.00

75. Discover (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]

"DISCOVER Magazine provides access to startling developments in science, technology and medicine with a renewed emphasis on how those breakthroughs affect the world.? DISCOVER is where curious people turn for the news and stories that interest them?and that make them more interesting."

$19.95

76. Scientific American [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION] [PRINT]

"This magazine is designed for technically educated professionals and managers who have a positive predisposition to read about, get involved with and act on a broad range of the physical and social sciences. Its articles and features anticipate what the breakthroughs and the news will be in a society increasingly dependent upon scientific and technological advances."

$24.97

77.

Einstein Relativity Watch

"A clever take on Einstein’s relativity! The face of this Einstein watch has a curved grid behind various mathematical representations of numbers. The hand stays in one place and the numbers move around it. This clever watch comes in a deluxe tin box and features a black leather-like band. This gift is sure to please!"

$29.00

78.

100% Engineer Tshirt

"We’ve given the classic baseball jersey a modern and sophisticated take. It now has long sleeves! Made from pre-shrunk 5.0 oz, 100% combed ring-spun cotton, super-soft baby jersey knit. The shirt has a loose fit and features contrasting colored ribbed cuffs, sleeves and neck trim. Imported."

$17.95-$32.35

79. Silver Abacus Earrings

"These adorable Chinese Abacus earrings are made of sterling silver and feature moving beads. Cute, useful, and they definitely make a statement."

$19.95

80. The Pop-Up Book of M.C. Escher (Hardcover)

"Pop up Book lovers need this in their collection. If you like the work of M. C. Escher this is great."

$8.90

81. The Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book (Hardcover)

"The Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book showcases three-dimensional replications of some of the most innovative modern and contemporary architecture from around the world. Accompanied by illustrations, photographs, and elaborate pop-ups, the talent and imagination of architects and builders of the modern era is brought to life. Ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, the pages follow the development of modern architecture: the creation of new buildings and innovations that led to such feats as the Brooklyn Bridge; the birth of the skyscraper and the modern city; mid-century modernism, and the cutting-edge architecture of today. Modern Architecture Pop-Up features the following structures: London’s Crystal Palace; the Brooklyn Bridge; the Eiffel Tower; New York’s Flatiron Building; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, Chicago; Reitveld’s Schroeder House; Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye; Saarinen’s TWA terminal; Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao; Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum; and Foster’s London "Gherkin" building, to name only a few. Innovative, informative, and elegant, Modern Architecture Pop-Up is an elegant visual tour of the world’s dynamic, inventive, and original architecture."

$29.70

82. Discovery FRS Walkie Talkie Watch Set

"Get crystal-clear reception for up to a mile and a half with these time-keeping Walkie Talkies."

$29.95

83. Remote Control Moon In My Room

"Bring the beauty of the moon right into your room with this authentic, remote control, model moon."

$29.95

84. Extreme Engineering DVDs

"Extreme Engineering is a documentary television series that aired on the Discovery Channel and The Science Channel. The program features futuristic and ongoing engineering projects."

$29.95

85.

Duct Tape Wallet by Ducti

"The Universe: Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen...and Duct Tape! Wallet made from Super Duct Tape. Won't lift, peel, or get sticky like lesser duct tape. Available in bi-fold or tri-fold models."

$14.99

86.

AirVolt Wireless Phone Charger

"Charge your iPhone wirelessly

Simply slide your phone into the included receiver case, place it on the power tray, and watch in amazement as your phone charges wirelessly via induction. It works as quickly as a standard charger and powers off once your phone is completely charged."

$4.99 - $9.99

87.

Ice Samurai - Japanese Style Inspired Blue LED Watch

"Introducing The Ice Samurai, a chilling blue Japanese inspired LED watch from an entropic tomorrow which gives its master below zero Kelvin supremacy by blurring the boundaries of how temporal intelligence (time) is shown."

88.

Digital Video Memo - Fridge Magnet Gadget

"Want to leave a message for your spouse or kids, but can't find pen or paper? Or did you leave a message for them on a piece of paper, but the wind blew it away and they never got to see it? Now, you just need to buy this video memo device and stick it on your fridge. Say bye to all your worries!. To operate this video memo, look into the camera lens, press record and start talking. You have 30 seconds to say what you want after which the video memo recording will automatically stop - it’s so simple that even your small children can use it! "

$16.58

89.

Star Trek Enterprise Bottle Opener

"What better way to crack open that Romulan Ale. Officially Licensed Star Trek Bottle Opener. Looks just like the Enterprise NCC-1701. Heavy in your hand, like a good phaser."

$19.99

90. Engineer/Evolution Engineer Book Set

"Engineer/Evolution Book Set includes: To Engineer is Human book will intrigue and educate you as to the role of failure in successful engineering designs, and Evolution of Useful Things book describes the fascinating history of everyday artifacts from paperclips to zippers."

$29.99

91.

Tesla T Shirt

"A White Tee that shows just a few inventions Nikola Tesla actually patented."

$20.20

92.

Tesla: Man Out of Time

"Tesla: Man Out of Time (ISBN 0743215362) is a biography of Nikola Tesla by Margaret Cheney."

$10.88

93.

Hog Wild Robo Vacuum (Colors May Vary)

"The desk top robot that never gets tired of cleaning up your messes. Simply push the top button to activate surprisingly powerful suction and slide over dry crumbs, pencil shavings and other debris. Kids will want to clean up after homework with this bad boy. Powered by two AA batteries (not included)."

$14.04

94.

Doctor Who Dalek T-Shirt: Navy

"Exterminate!! Genetic mutations housed in armoured travel machines, the Daleks are the distillation of all that is evil in the Universe.
100% cotton Fruit of the Loom 5.6 oz tee. Seamless neck rib and double-needle stitching on sleeves and hem."

$25.98

95.

Never Question the Engineer Sign

"Handsome, wood Never Question the Engineer Sign belongs in your office or home. Hand-crafted in USA with the look of a weathered antique to complement any décor. Makes an exceptional gift for your favorite engineer."

$24.99

96.

Mirrorkal Escher Puzzle

"Ever lost yourself in an M.C. Escher drawing? A challenging puzzle for art lovers. Features 5 drawings by M.C. Escher. Arrange the mirrored cubes to recreate the drawing."

$19.99

97.

OWI Frightened Grasshopper Kit - Solar Powered

"Build your own life-size grasshopper. An educational robot and mini solar kit. He's small, but he's an attention-getter. Explore the potential of solar power with this neat science kit. This build-it-yourself educational solar hobby kit is for the first time science experimenters with little or no experience. The Frightened Grasshopper Solar Powered Bug Teaches about forms of alternative energy in a easy-to-use science kit. Shows how solar energy can be used to generate electricity Illustrates how radiant energy from the sun can be transformed to electrical energy with a PV cell A motor inside the grasshopper transforms electrical energy to motion Functions best very close to a non-florescent light bulb or in direct sunlight An attention-grabbing display piece related to solar power for a science fair project, class discussion, or just out-of-the-ordinary play Ages 10+."

$4.00

98.

ThinkGeek Slide Rule

"Bow Down to the Original Pocket Calculator. Perfect re-recreation of the classic slide rule. Perform calculations without a calculator. The one and only slide rule currently manufactured."

$14.99

99.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide

"It's the whole Hitchhiker series in one big ol' book! Including all five books: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the end of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. Also included is the bonus story Young Zaphod Plays It Safe. The coolest five novel (plus one short story) trilogy you'll ever read - with an introduction by Neil Gaiman!"

$18.99

100.

Wi-Fi Detector Shirt

"Wi-Fi Signal Status for You and the World! A shirt with a built-in Wi-Fi signal detector. You won't need to crack open your laptop. Perfect for nomads with laptops."

$14.99

50 Gifts Under $30 for Your Engineer--July, 2011

2011-07-14T20:27:00.000-05:00

People are starting to think about the holiday season and what to get for those "hard-to-buy-for-technical-types." These are 50 cool gift ideas for your engineer that I found on various websites--all priced at under $30!

1.

USB Plasma Ball

"A Cube Friendly Nikola Tesla Classic. A small plasma ball powered by USB. A tiny version of the Tesla original for your desk."

$12.99

2. I AM CE (Civil Engineering) T Shirts

"The classic heavyweight t-shirt. Tagless design for ultimate comfort. Pre-shrunk, 6.1 ounce 100% cotton. Double-needle stitched bottom and sleeve hems. Loose, classic fit, wears well on anyone. Imported."

$13.62 - $20.95

3. Pop Quiz Math Clock

"It's half-past the square root of 64

Pop Quiz, hotshot. Think back to a time when you were a young geek. Sure, you were brilliant at math, but being asked to solve problems on the chalkboard... That's the stuff of nightmares. Thankfully, that time is over... Or is it? The smell of chalk, and the feel of the blackboard is still fresh in your mind. If you close your eyes, you can almost feel the eyes staring at your back as you labor to engage your brain and simplify the polynomial."

$26.99

4.

Star Trek Enterprise Pizza Cutter

Boldly cut pizza where no man has cut before! Metal Pizza cutter in the form of the famous NCC-1701 Enterprise ship from Star Trek the original series. Officially licensed Star Trek collectable. Laser Etched Stainless steel blade with solid zinc-alloy chromium plated body.

$29.99

5. There are 10 Types Binary T-shirt

"Are you one of those who understand binary? There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't! Keep 'em guessing with this funny 100% cotton black There are 10 Types Binary T-shirt."

$19.99

6. Exclusive All-over Engineer Cheat Sheet T-shirt

"We designed this exclusive Engineer Crib Cheat Sheet T-shirt printed front and back just for you! Need engineering help? Wear this exclusive printed all over with engineering concepts, equations and hints to help solve your engineering problems."

$24.99

7. Scientist Action Figures

"Carry this century's most notable scientific minds in your pocket. These miniature scientist action figures are colorful caricatures, and the perfect gift for any scientific fan.

Fun for play and display, the set includes Curie, Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Tesla."

$17.95

8. Askew! A Suspended Construction Game

"This tabletop game challenges you to create a suspended structure by taking turns hanging rods on a hook."

$28.95

9.

Solitaire Chess

“Nobody will play chess with me!” A strategic twist on a timeless classic. Great for learning chess or perfecting your game. 60 unique challenges from beginner to expert.

$19.99

10. Brunton Classic Mirrored Map Compass

"A classic example of a trusty compass, the 8040G is a mirrored map compass with easy-reading optic green baseplate. Tool-free declination adjustment makes for less confusion, and the built-in thermometer gives you knowledge most compasses do not."

$28.36

11. Tv-b-gone

"Your TV-B-Gone universal remote control resembles other TV remote controls, but is different in two important ways. First, it only has a power button that allows you to switch a TV on or off. You control when you see, rather than what you see. Second, the device is so small that it easily fits in your pocket, so that you have it handy whenever you need it wherever you go: airports, bars, restaurants, laundromats, etc.TV-B-Gone features the Instant Reactivation Feature which allows you to turn TVs on or off quickly and easily."

$19.99 - $24.99

12. Original TEDCO Gyroscope/Nostalgic Pak

"Classic toy for 75 years. Cast, machined, painted and balance-fitted all by hand. Demonstrates properties of gyroscopic inertia, angular motion, torque, rotational inertia and rigidity in space as first recorded by Sir Isaac Newton."

$9.93

13.

Rats! Space Shuttle Program Shirt

"Geeks love the Space Shuttle Program. After all, it was a huge write-in campaign by Star Trek fans that got the first orbiter named Enterprise instead of its intended name, Constitution. We'll admit it. We're gonna miss it."

$16.99-$18.99

14. Reading Glass Magnifiers;Dia., 2.0 in. (50mm); Focal length, 0.5 in. (12cm); Magnification, 3x

"Magnifier, Reading Glass; EISCO USA; Metal frame with bakelite handle; Chrome plated; Packed in cardboard box; Dia., 2.0 in. (50mm); Focal length, 0.5 in. (12cm); Magnification, 3x."

$6.25

15.

Black Stealth 3-Channel R/C Helicopter

"Easiest to fly, most precise controlling R/C copter yet! Sleek black radio controlled helicopter. Three channels while most copters are only two. Precise flying means fewer crashes."

$9.99-$19.99

16. FunFlyStick Static Electricity Demonstration

"This static generator amazes adults and children alike, and is the perfect static electricity demonstration for any classroom. Simply touch the FunFlyStick to the Mylar FunFlyers, and watch them instantly expand and float."

$19.95

17. Hand Boilers

"Hand Boilers are looped and twisted glass sculptures containing a liquid that will "boil" as heat is transferred from your bare hand. Simply hold the large bulb end in the palm of your hand and within minutes, your body heat will cause the liquid to rise."

$5.10

18.

PadTab - Wall Mount for iPad

"Mount your tablet on any smooth surface! Hang your tablet from fridge, cabinet, or wall
Great for reading recipes or watching movies. Kit comes with 2 WallTabs to mount in 2 locations

$19.99

19. 3D Pin Impression Art

"Take an object (your face, hand or anything!) you want to make a 3D impression of and push it into the pins at the back - it's effortless! Show off your art until you decide to change it over and over."

$16.99

20.

123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius

"Another of our "Evil Genius" line of books, 123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius provides a solid grounding in robotics, electronics, and programming. Each experiment builds on the skills acquired before it so you can develop a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts understanding of robotics from the ground up. A printed circuitboard is also included with the book so your engineer will be on his or her way in no time!"

$24.95

21. Deluxe Cosmos Perpetual Motion Desktop Toy

"The Deluxe Cosmos perpetual motion desktop toy is perfect for your outer space themed office or room décor. A simple spin of the top of the base sets the galaxy in motion. The multicolored rings start spinning in different orbits around the planet in the center."

$18.99

22. Newton's Cradle 5" Balance Balls Wood Grain

"Known as motion balance balls, these steel balls keep you entertained all day long. Newton's Cradle makes a great desktop executive gift. Draw back one or more of the balls and release."

$12.99

23. Antworks Illuminated Antfarm Habitat for Ants

"Illuminated LED Version - Complete

A highly complex ant farm, the most captivating insect toy we've ever seen! Based upon a 2003 NASA Space Shuttle experiment to study animal life in space and test how insects-ants, successfully tunnel in microgravity. Nutrient gel means that THE ANTS NEED NO FOOD OR WATER!"

$25.99

24. HexBug Inchworm Robotic Creature Blue

"HexBug Inchworm is a remote controlled 2 channel insect type robot with 7 directions of motion.

These ultra cool robots fit in the palm of your hand. Batteries included and no assembly is required."

$19.99

25.

Crumpled Blueprint Paperweight

"This is one of our favorite items here, and this paperweight will surely make your engineer smile and add a little levity to his or her desktop. With the frustrations of the day safely sealed in this "crumpled blueprint" paperweight, your engineer will finally be able to smile the next time his clients make changes to the drawings.

Designed by artist Tibor Kalman, this piece is created from a patented method utilizing silk-screened vinyl, hand-crumpled and wrapped around a steel weight. Dimensions are 5" x 4".
This item comes wrapped in a piece of blueprint paper inside a unique brown gift box, ready for you to give to your engineer."

Starting at $26.95

26. Fish in Space Aquarium

"Retro space distinct styling features a domed space city, 3-D planets and a rocket bursting right out of the aquarium. The compact size (half gallon) makes it ideal to place on a desk, cubical, or counter top. The cool U.F.O. aquarium cap projects a shaft of light alien light into the aquarium from above."

$22.99

27. Airzooka Air Cannon

"A takeoff from the old Trashcan Air Cannon; this amazing new vortex launcher sends a strong blast of air all the way across the room!"

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Nikola Tesla - "Inventions of Tesla--A Man Whose Mind Works While He Sleeps."

2011-07-13T23:44:00.000-05:00

This is a wonderful article I found in the Newspaper Archives from 1904. Frank G. Carpenter interviewed Nikola Tesla on two separate occasions. The first time was September of 1894 at Tesla's laboratory on East Houston and the second interview took place at the Waldorf on the evening of December 17, 1904. Mr. Carpenter never published his notes from the first interview until this article where he combines both interviews into a marvelous glimpse into the world of Nikola Tesla:

The Boston Sunday Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, page 3. December 18, 1904.

New York.I give you today the substance of two remarkable talks with Nikola Tesla. The first I had in his laboratory on East Houston st. nine years ago last September. The second was held in the Waldorf last night.

The first interview was most interesting, giving a wonderful insight into Tesla the inventor and Tesla the man, but it was never published, for Mr. Tesla at its close on the ground of business reasons, begged that I say nothing about him for months to come. I wrote out the notes, however, and laid them away, and when I met Mr. Tesla last night I told him I now intended to use them. At the same time we had the extraordinary conversation about his recent discoveries and inventions as to the transmission of force, which I reproduce in the latter part of this article.
----------Tesla the Man.First take a glance at Tesla the man. He looked more like an Italian savant than a hard-working inventor when I saw him in the Waldorf. He was in evening dress and was the most striking figure of the score of public men who stood about the lobby. Mr. Tesla is now 47 years of age and is in his physical and intellectual prime. He is tall and slender, his head is long, thin and intellectual, with a forehead high and full. He was born in Hungary and educated there, but he speaks English perfectly and is one of the most charming conversationalists I have ever met.

His father was a clergyman of the Greek church, and Nikola was intended for the priesthood. He had a brother older than himself, whom the rest of the family considered much brighter. That brother died young, and this so crazed his father and mother that it took them long to realize the genius of Nikola. If he stood well in his studies his father's eyes would fill as he thought how much better, perhaps, the other son might have done, and whatever Nikola did was always compared with the possible work of the boy who had passed away.

His first education was in the public schools of Gospich, and after that he went to the Real Schule at Karlstadt. As he went on with his studies he liked mathematics so much that he intended to fit himself to be a professor of mathematics and physics, and with that view studied at the polytechnic school at Gratz. He changed to the engineering course, and later on studied philosophy and languages in the colleges at Prague and Buda Pest. He has since been made a doctor of laws by Yale and Columbia.

Shortly aftere (sic) completing his studies Mr. Tesla was associated with the government of Austria-Hungary in the telegraph engineering department, where he invented several improvements. From there he went to Paris to be engineer of a large lighting company, and thence to the United States, where he was employed by Thomas Edison in his laboratory. His next position was that of electrician to the Tesla electric light company, and at the same time he established the Tesla laboratory here, from which his great inventions have come.
----------Tesla the Inventor.
During my first chat with Mr. Tesla I asked him when he first realized that he had the inventive faculty and he told me he had always been inventing something or other. When he was a small boy he made toy guns, which would shoot birds, and as he was the only one who could make them he supplied the boys of his neighborhood. He made clocks at eight or nine years and began to dabble in electricity before he was in his teens.

His first determination to devote his life to invention came shortly after he went to London to deliver a lecture before a scientific body there. At this lecture he met Lord Rayleigh, the great physicist, and showed him some of his experiments. Rayleigh said that he had undoubtedly, the faculty of discovery and that he would succeed as an inventor.

"Shortly after this my mother died," said Mr. Tesla, "and I concluded to exert this faculty. Lord Rayleigh had said I possessed it and, upon examining myself, I believed him correct. I did not want to waste my powers on small things and I decided to strive toward something that would benefit humanity. I am working on an invention for the transmission of force. This invention will, I believe, revolutionize the world of labor. I am also working on electricity and I cannot remember when I was not working more or less in the direction of a successful flying machine. My idea, as to that, is along different lines than any yet proposed and I expect to see it realized. Indeed, we shall eventually have flying machines that will be large enough to carry crowds through the air. They must be large in order to succeed."

These words were uttered by Mr. Tesla nine years ago. Today he says he has completed his force-transmission invention, as will be seen by my Waldorf conversation which follows. He has also done other things which he proposed in that interview. Remember, it was before the time of the wireless

telegraph, but he then said to me the following:

"I tell you, we are on the threshold of a new era. We have only begun to master the great forces of nature, and the inventions of the next few decades will be far superior to any of the past. What would you think of standing on the shore and telephoning to your friends in midocean (sic)? What of being in the center of a room and making your whole body blaze with light? What of sending power to and fro over the earth at will and making it di its work anywhere and almost anyhow?
----------How it Feels to Invent.
Mr. Tesla told me that his greatest pleasure was in his work, and that he could conceive no moment so exciting and rapturous as that connected with the discovery of a new principle which, when put into use, would revolutionize the work of the world.

Take, for instance, the invention which brought forth the apparatus used in the transmission of power at Niagara Falls. Said he, as he took me to a great coil of wire wound about a stationary magnet, which was conected (sic) with the dynamo, and held above it a little glass globe in which was a steel wheel moving on a pivot:

"I had been working upon that experiment for a long time, and this was the test. I knew that if I were correct that the wheel in this globe would revolve as soon as I turned on the electricity. It did revolve, and I knew I had discovered what would revolutionize the labor of the world. You can run all sorts of power by that principle. You can take power from Niagara and bring it to New York. The cars can be pulled by it, factories run, houses heated and dinners cooked. I cannot describe my sensation when I saw the wheel revolve. I thought I should go crazy, and I went to my laboratory and took some bromide of potassium to quiet me.

"It has been the same in some of my experiments with electric lights and other things. The greatest rapture one can have is to discover a new force or series of forces which will reduce man's working necessities to the minimum. I do not believe in laziness, and I should like to see the loafer wiped from the face of the earth; but I want that those who are willing to work should accomplish their results with the least labor and in the best way."
----------How Tesla Works.
As to Mr. Tesla himself, there is no harder worker known. He told me that he seldom slept more than four hours of a night, and during some periods not more than three. When in the thick of a new invention it is hard to sleep. His work is always with him and he says that his mind sometimes works in his sleep. He awakes in the morning to find that the problem which had worried him when he went to bed has been practically solved over night. He has always been a light sleeper. His mother died at 70 and she never took more than four hours' sleep. His father was a light sleeper.

Tesla is a peculiar worker. Failures do not trouble him. After he undertakes a thing and decides that it should come out a certain way, he keeps on experimenting and experimenting, believing in his success. He says that if he doubted his ability it would make him crazy. He seems to have a dual mind. He told me that he often found himself carrying on two trains of thought at the same time, and said that while he was talking to me he could see the figures of some of his calculations behind me and could carry them on at the same time. He is always figuring. His scrap basket is filled with the calculations which he has torn up and thrown away. He keeps a record of his experiments, and when his laboratory burned some years ago he lost the work of years in ideas and suggestions which had been thus recorded.
----------His New Inventions.
And now to Mr. Tesla's latest discoveries. If he has what he thinks he has he will revolutionize labor and give man greater benefits than have come from any inventor since the world began. Indeed, the statements made to me last night in the mouth of any other man would be a fair test of insanity. But many of Tesla's wild statements of the past have been verified by great working inventions. He said he could harness Niagara, and through his experiments in the rotary magnetic fields Niagara is now furnishing a power equal to that of tens of thousands of horses, and electrical works are being run by the same principle all over the globe. The New York subway, for instance, is founded upon it. Tesla demonstrated that wireless telegraphy could be done in 1893, and it is a question whether his inventions in that field are not prior to those of Marconi or De Forrest.

Last evening he told me that he had almost completed inventions by which he could send electrical power to any distance without wires, and that in any quantity, small or great. Said he:

"I have proved that power can be thus transmitted. Let us suppose I have my plant at Niagara and you are running a sugar factory in Australia; by my discoveries it will be possible to send you 100, 500 or 1000-horse power for your factory, and to supply the same regularly by the force furnished from Niagara falls. Suppose you are traveling in the wilds of the Andes and make your camp on the shores of lake Titicaca. By the outcome of this principle you may have telegraphed to you there instantaneous reports of the news of the world as it happens from time to time. You may cook your dinner over an electric fire thus transmitted, and you may have the same at will on any part of the globe. We shall be able to send power from place to place at will, and that at such a small cost that it will be industrially profitable."

"How did you discover that this might be done, Mr. Tesla?" I asked.

"I have for years been working on the transmission of electrical energy, and in 1898 established a laboratory on the edge of the rocky mountains near Colorado Springs. My laboratory there was over 6000 feet high, higher than the top of Mt. Washington, and I had extraordinary conditions for my experiments. Colorado is famous for its natural displays of electrical force. The earth at times is alive with electrical vibrations and the air is full of electricity. I have seen 12,000 lightning discharges within two hours and all within a radius of 30 miles of my laboratory. These discharges were of great violence, some of them looking like trees of fire on the heavens. It was among such discharges that I had my electrical instruments and studied the principles of electrical transmission through the earth and air. One day while watching the lightning I noticed that the discharges afar off often affected the instruments in my laboratory more than those near by. Upon examination I found that this could not be caused by the difference of intensity in the individual discharges.

"What could it be?

"Through instruments made for the purpose I tested the matter from time to time and finally came to the conclusion that the vibrations caused by the lightning moved around the world and that there were stationary waves. I could gage the discharges near the laboratory and see them fade away and after a certain fixed period find them returning with almost no loss of power In short, this planet, as big as it is, was acting as a conductor, and I became convinced that upon it not only telegraphic messages, but also the modulations of the human voice and electrical power in unlimited amounts, could be carried around the entire globe and sent to any part of it with hardly any perceptible loss. With my transmitter I actually sent electrical vibrations around the world and received them again, and I then went on to develop my machinery. I had, as I have told you, been studying and inventing along the lines of electrical transmission and was ready to take advantage of my discovery. I have since so improved the means of individualization and isolation that such energy may be sent in any amount to any fixed place without danger of its going elsewhere or affecting others, and I believe the individualization can be carried out to almost any degree."
----------Niagara for the World.
"Will this enable the power of Niagara to be sent anywhere over the world?"

"Yes. I have been experimenting at my laboratory on Long island. I have machinery and buildings there which have cost in the neighborhood of $350,000, and the results show me that a plant could be erected at Niagara which can transmit its force to any place desired. I am designing such a plant now at my laboratory, and would have had it completed had it not been for unforeseen delays, which have nothing to do with its technical features. The design which I have adopted will have a transmitter which will emit a wave complex of a total maximum activity of 10,000,000 horse power, 1 percent of which is enough to girdle the globe. This enormous rate of energy delivery--it is twice as much as the force of Niagara falls--is obtainable only by the use of certain artifices which I shall make known some time in the future.

"We have been offered 10,000 horse power from the Canadian power company. What I want to do is to build machinery there and transmit this power to different parts of the globe. The value of that amount of horse power would be about $200,000 per year, and a plant erected to take advantage of it will pay large dividends."

"How much would the plant cost?"

"It might cost in the neighborhood of $2,000,000, but its value would be enormous, and its success would revolutionize the working forces of the globe. It would result in other plants being erected otherwheres and in the utilization of all the great waterfalls for the work of man."
----------Mother Earth Put to Work.
"By this invention every live part of Mother Earth's body would be brought into action. Energy will be collected all over the globe in amounts small or large, as it may exist, ranging from a fraction of one to a few horse power or more. Every waterfall can be utilized, every coal field made to produce energy to be transmitted to vast distances, and every place on earth can have power at small cost. One of the minor uses might be the illumination of isolated homes. We could light houses all over the country by means of vacuum tubes operated by high frequency currents. We could keep the clocks of the United States going and give every one exact time; we could turn factories, machine shops and mills, small or large, anywhere, and I believe could also navigate the air.
----------Transmission of Intelligence.
"One of the most important features of this invention," said Mr. Tesla, "will be the transmission of intelligence. It will convert the entire earth into a huge brain, capable of responding in every one of its parts. By the employment of a number of plants, each of which can transmit signals to all parts of the world, the news of the globe will be flashed to all points. A cheap and simple receiving device, which might be carried in one's pocket, can be set up anywhere on sea or land, and it will record the world's news as it occurs, or take such special messages as are intended for it. If you are in the heart of the Sahara your wife can telegraph you from Washington, and if the instrument is properly made you alone will get the message. A single plant of a few horse power could operate hundreds of such instruments, so that the invention has an infinite working capacity and will cheapen the transmission of all kinds of intelligence.

Frank G. Carpenter
(Copyright, 1904, by Frank G. Carpenter.)

Nikola Tesla - "Four Hands that are Worth Study"

2011-07-12T23:00:00.000-05:00

This is an article from 1896 that I found in the Newspaper Archives while researching Nikola Tesla. It's not exactly scientific, but it is interesting...and the best part is that a sketch artist carefully sketched Tesla's hand and the drawing was published in this article:

The World, New York, New York, page 19. Sunday, July 5, 1896.

FOUR HANDS THAT ARE WORTH STUDY.
----------
The student of palmistry may learn something from a study of the pictures of hands herewith presented.

The smallest one is that of the baby monkey born ten days ago in the Central Park Zoo. The largest is a sketch of the hand of Nikola Tesla. One of the other hands is that of Johanna, who was well known to visitors to the Central Park Zoo last winter, and the other belongs to a New York baby that first saw the light of day last Sunday. all of them are life size.

The baby monkey is a wee mite, and its hand is small and insignificant. Few monkeys are born in captivity, and those which do come into the families of the bandarlog folk who live in cages rarely survive the teething period. Perhaps this baby monkey will have better luck, and it may live to be admired and respected for years.
THE BABY MONKEY.The mother, Mrs. Cleopatra Max, does not seem to be the best nurse in the world. She adores the bit of monkey which she hugs to her bosom, but she has an inordinate curiosity about it, and, she examines it somewhat roughly at times, holding it up by the tail to get a good look at it. The baby will not be on exhibition for some time, as such an exhibition would diminish its chances of life, which are small enough at the best.

Perhaps an expert palmist might examine the lines in the hand and thus tell whether the infant is what an insurance expert would designate as a "good risk."
THE HAND OF JOHANNA.The hand of Johanna, the gorilla that was at the Central Park Zoo all last winter, is immense when compared with that of the baby monkey. Johanna's fingers are pointed, an indication of an artistic temperament. It will be remembered that this talented monkey drew some clever pictures last winter, some of which were printed in the Sunday World. The baby will never have a hand as long and as large as Johanna's, for the baby is a different kind of simian.

But the baby will have whiskers when

she grows up. Mamma Max has nice long whiskers on each side of her face. She does not seem to be particularly proud of them, and it is possible that she would patronize a facial expert and have the hairs removed with electricity if she knew of such vain things.

There is great strength in the tiny fingers of the baby monkey. Those fingers, no larger than straws, can support the weight of the body all day long. The little one hangs to its mother's breast with remarkable tenacity, clasping the clawlike fingers in the hair.

In their wild state it is necessary for the baby to cling on while the mother climbs trees or runs through brush to avoid an enemy, and being captive does not change that ability. Should Mrs. Max escape from her cage and run through the park at her best speed and climb to the topmost branches of the tallest tree, the baby would be found hanging to her when the race was over.
TESLA'S HAND AND A BABY'SNikola Tesla has a remarkable hand. It is large and strong. Action is expressed in every joint. The thumb is long, with large joints and a broad, well-formed nail. The lines in the hand are deep, well colored and full of meaning to the chiromancer.

Compare it with the hand of Baby Davis, of Caristadt, N. J., born last Sunday. It hardly seems possible that the two hands belong to the same species. While they are of the same general shape, there is a vast difference in the formation and in the size. And yet the baby boy will some time have a hand that will approximate the hand of Mr. Tesla in size, but it is doubtful if such a thumb will ever grow on the hand of the infant.

Mr. Tesla is proverbially modest, and he laughingly declined to allow a photograph to be made of his hand. The picture presented herewith was made from a sketch by an artist. The formation of the lines of the palm is interesting. The line of fate, which passes from the wrist down the palm, or the luck line, as it is sometimes called, is remarkably strong and clearly defined.

The line of life, which surrounds the base of the thumb, could not be better, and there is no reason why Mr. Tesla should not be making electrical experiments long after other men of his age have been gathered to their fathers.

But the remarkable feature of it is the thumb. Its length and breadth indicate logic, will, perseverance, reason--things which Mr. Tesla possesses to a notable degree.

If the baby monkey had a thumb which would rival the one on Mr. Tesla's hand, that baby monkey would be the brainiest ape that ever delighted children by eating peanuts. But no monkey ever had such a thumb, and few men can boast of one.

A Trip for Life

2011-07-12T16:46:00.000-05:00

Aaron Fown travels to a small town in Texas, with a big vision for the future. In Italy, is a place called the Monolithic Dome Institute, where over the past few decades an awesome new form of construction has been developed. Monolithic domes are efficient, durable, and very resistant to disaster. He sat down with the founder and CEO of the institute, David South, to talk about his technology and how he is working to build a better future, one dome at a time.

Nikola Tesla - "Tesla's New Aircraft Flies Any Old Way"

2011-07-12T00:26:00.000-05:00

I was excited to find this article in the Newspaper Archives because it had clear sketches of Tesla's Helicopter/Airplane plans!

The Bee, Danville, Virginia. March 2, 1928.

Caption: Upper drawing shows how Nikola Telsa's (sic) new plane looks when used as a helicopter. By manipulating a few levers the plane is adjusted for an airplane and looks like the bottom drawing. It is worth noticing that the pilot's seat swings so that it is always level with the ground.

(International Illustrated News)THE latest creation of Nikola Tesla, inventor, electrical wizard, experimenter and dreamer, is a helicopter airplane.

It is a tiny combination plane which, its inventor asserts, will rise and descend vertically and fly horizontally at great speed, much faster than the speed of the planes of today. But despite the feats which he credits to his invention. Tesla says that it will sell for something less than $1,000.Plane is SmallThe helicopter-airplane is a small structure, with two wings about eight feet square. It may have one propeller and it may have several, to be driven by a light but powerful turbine motor of Tesla's invention.

When the plane rests on the ground the propeller will be overhead and the wings will be standing vertically. The motor is expected to generate a terrific power that will lift the plane into the air. This power can be sustained only a short while.

At the desired height, the aviator begins to tilt his plane. The wings gradually are brought into a horizontal position that puts the propeller in front of the machine. During this operation the engine power is decreased, and, at this lower power, the helicopter becomes an airplane and is operated as such.

The wings now are supporting surfaces, and, except when exceptional speed is wanted for a few moments, the engine will be run at a low rate.

Seats for the pilot and three or four passengers are suspended from trunnions on which they can turn through an angle of ninety degrees. This enables those in the plane to sit in a normal position at all times.

With two wheel bases at right angles, the helicopter-airplane is able to descend in a glide or vertically, landing easily either way. As a helicopter, it has a low landing velocity.Patents ObtainedThese are the assertions of Tesla about the new invention. He has not yet built a full-sized machine for tests, and he probably will not, he says, until he is ready to produce them in quantity. He obtained two patents on the helicopter-airplane January 3.

Tesla, for years one of the world's pioneer inventors, now is nearly seventy-two. He has attained his greatest fame, perhaps, through his work on wireless, in which he had made great progress even before the experiments of Marconi.

He designed an airplane when he was in college in 1876, and he says that a plane built from his design recently has been flown in France. In 1900 he claimed to have communicated with Mars, and since then he has dreamed of establishing communication with the planet.

Three Great Inventors--Edison, Tesla and Moore

2011-07-10T18:09:00.001-05:00

While researching Nikola Tesla, I found many interesting articles in the Newspaper Archives. This one is from 1896:

Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin. April 20, 1896.

THREE GREAT INVENTORS.
----------
Doings in the Laboratories of Edi-
son, Tesla and Moore.
----------
Let the Gas Companies Beware--Great
Improvements in Electric Lighting Are
Promised in the Near Future--Cheap
and Effective Illumination.
----------
[COPYRIGHT, 1896]
We are soon to have electric lights so cheap that anyone can afford to have them. At least, this is the promise of three noted electricians who have been working on the problem for some time past. The fact that Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla are two of the three referred to gives strong assurance that we may look for a revolution in our system of illumination in the near future. It begins to look as if the gas companies would be distanced this time, despite the discovery of the new method of producing acetylene, and will not be able hereafter to manufacture light for the million, as they have done in days gone by.

I had occasion to pay a number of visits to the laboratory of Mr. Edison near Llewellyn Park, N. J., within the past month, in order to find out how he was progressing in his experiments with the wonderful Roenigen rays, which seem to respect neither substance or shadow, but go through everything. It was on one of these trips that I learned from Mr. Edison's own lips how he had practically succeeded in improving his incandescent lamp so that he could run 20 of them for each horse-power used. This is a distinct gain of 33 1-3 per cent., as at present only 15 lamps can be run per horsepower.

"I started out with ten incandescent lamps per horse-power," said the Wizard, "and after awhile succeeded in bringing these up to such a state of perfection as to string 15 of them on a line for each horse-power employed. Now, I have practically succeeded in improving my incandescent lamp so that I can put 20 lamps where I could use only 15 before."

"Then you are not experimenting with etheric or phosphorescent lighting." I said.

"No," replied Mr. Edison. "I believe that the incandescent lamp can be improved so that it will give as good light at as small a cost as anything in the market. Besides, I don't take any stock in these grave-yard lights that some electricians are experimenting with. The incandescent lamp sends out as soft and mellow a light as could be expected; it is quite adequate for all practical purposes."

"Would you care to say just how you have improved your new lamp?"

"Not just yet. I have still some finishing touches to make on it. You see, when Prof. Roentgen made his wonderful discovery of the X rays, I dropped everything in order to repeat the experiments here. These rays open up wonderful possibilities in the electrical world, and may make it necessary for us to completely reconstruct the undulatory theory of light. Just think where we are now! Photographing through wood and metal, talking by telephone a thousand miles away, telegraphing under the ocean despite of storm and tempest--why, one of these days we shall perhaps see by electricity.!

Of course, it is idle to look for the improved incandescent lamp until Mr. Edison gets tired of his investigation of the Roentgen rays. The truth is, when the great electrician begins to experiment in any one line he sticks to his work as close as a hen does to her nest, when she is hatching out a lot of eggs. He has eyes and ears only for the subject in hand, and nothing can take him away from his work. He even dreams over his theories--that is, when he takes time to sleep, for sometimes he will continue right along in his laboratory for three days at a stretch without shutting an eye.

"You will keep your carbon filament in the improved incandescent lamp and not dispense with it as Tesla proposes to do?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," he replied. "No need of changing that now. I had quite a time finding it; I searched all over creation. They are using cellulose now, but it isn't much cheaper than the Japanese bamboo splints that I first used."

"Then you think your latest improvements will cheapen electric lighting?" I asked again.

"I don't see how it can help it," replied Mr. Edison. "If I can run 20 lamps where I now use 15, don't you see that there will be considerable saving?"

"Have you taken out your patents yet?"

"No--nor shall I. I don't believe in getting things patented any more. It doesn't protect you. The only safe way is to keep the secret yourself as far as possible."

And the great electrician hereupon began to experiment with a telephone, in the hope of transmitting the Roentgen rays by wire to some distance, just as in the case of sound waves. As he did so, he added:

"Faraday could only turn the most delicate needle at first with his electrical current; yet to-day an electrical engine is hauling a train of 40 cars. You must not despise the day of small beginnings."

Nikola Tesla is almost as Prominent a figure in the electrical world as the "Wizard of Menlo Park." He is the man who allowed 250,000 volts to pass through his body, who discovered the art of transmitting electricity without

a wire, and who has promised to make sunshine as soon as he can safely care for the 8,000,000 volts necessary for that purpose. His laboratory on South Fifth avenue was burned down a year ago, and he lost a great many valuable instruments for experimental purposes, some of which can never be replaced. This is why the world has not heard so much of Mr. Tesla during the past year. Those of his friends who have been permitted to witness his late experiments at the new laboratory on East Houston street say that he has made some remarkable discoveries which will soon be announced.

I had a pleasant chat with Mr. Tesla the other day, and learned from him that he has about perfected his new phosphorescent light, which will come as near artificial daylight as anything yet attempted. There will be no filament in the glass bulb; nevertheless, it will glow with all the brilliancy of an arc light. The current employed will be of low voltage, but it will be changed into one of high potential by induction coils. In this way three improvements will be effected over the present incandescent lamps--brighter illumination, no deadly wires and cheaper cost.

Mr. Tesla is not yet ready to give to the public the details of his wonderful invention, but those who have seen the new light say that it will work a revolution in methods of illumination. Some remarkable photographs have already been obtained from it. It is stated that the cost will be scarcely one-half of the rates that at present prevail.

The third electrician who is grappling with the problem of cheap illumination is Dr. D. McFarlan Moore, who claims to have solved the secret of the firefly. Following close upon the heels of Roentgen rays, the discovery promises to work a revolution in electric illumination, and foreshadows an era of one unbroken day.

Mr. Moore is comparatively unknown to fame. For several years past he has been quietly at work in his Newark laboratory--which, curiously enough, is within a stone's throw of Edison's old place--and success seems at last to have crowned his efforts. He calls the new kind of illumination "ether lighting" for want of a better name, and employs only the most simple apparatus to manufacture it. Indeed, like Roentgen's rays, the wonder is that some electrician has not before this time hit upon Mr. Moore's discovery. It is certainly as simple as it is remarkable in the effect produced. Not only is it the nearest approach to the production of light without heat that the world has yet seen, but the whole illumination is obtained from an ordinary current of low voltage.

There are no hairpin filaments in Mr. Moore's system, as with the incandescent lamp, and the illumination agent is distributed through pipes and tubes, just as we now distribute water and gas.

Mr. Moore's invention involves a new principle in molecular vibration. He separates the several divisions of energy, and employs only the illuminating elements. He hopes to get as much light with a one-volt current as Tesla now does with a million volts. In short, the new light promises to turn things topsy-turvey (sic). We are certainly on the eve of a revolution in electric lighting, if Tesla, Edison and Moore are to be believed.

Mr. Moore's new light, owing to the absence of heat, requires little power to generate it, and can be produced from a battery the size of that which rings the front doorbell. In other words an ordinary glass jar, containing pieces of zinc and carbon immersed in acid, will furnish a current sufficient to produce a good illumination.

Mr. Moore's apparatus is not much bigger than an ordinary-sized teacup, and the little machine that breaks the circuit and corresponds to the electric bell is not bigger than one's finger.

I had occasion to visit Mr. Moore's laboratory the other day. Some of the experiments I witnessed were beautiful, and the light was certainly as good as one could wish. One experiment struck me particularly. After we entered the dark room the inventor handed me a long glass tube, about as big as a broom stick, and then ordered the lights out. In a few seconds, streams of light began playing through the tube from one end to the other.

Of course I asked Mr. Moore to explain.

"It is only a manifestation of electrical induction," he replied, smiling. "The current from the diminutive vibrator is connected with a small piece if (sic) tin on the ceiling, and the electric waves pass through the intervening air space to your body."

If what Mr. Moore says is true, the possibilities of this one feature of the new light are simply enormous. If, instead of a piece of tin, metallic paint were put on the walls or ceiling and made a part of the circuit, the same effects would be produced. The tube becomes a veritable stick of daylight.

No wires or connections are needed. All that is necessary is a glass tube in which the light can manifest itself. No matches, no oil, no gas, no buttons to press--all you need is a glass much like a walking stick. This new light promises to be a bonanza to a club man. When he comes home from a "night out," he has only to point his walking stick in the air in any direction, as Franklin did with his lightning rod, and the electric fire will come down and illuminate the place. It doesn't matter which way the stick is pointed, he will be sure to get light sufficient to find his way upstairs.

Neither of the inventions I have just described have been placed on the market as yet, but they are liable to make their appearance almost any day. Meanwhile the oil trusts, the acetylene trusts and some of the big electric light companies would do well to be on the lookout for cheap illumination, for it is bound to come. Three electrical experts have said it, and it is greatly to their credit. Perhaps we shall soon be even better off than the people at the North pole. They have daylight half the year, whereas we are now promised artificial daylight for every hour in the twenty-four.

FRANCIS LEON CHRISMAN.

Nikola Tesla - "Has Invented Machine That Can Start Real Earthquake"

2011-07-10T01:02:00.000-05:00

During my Nikola Tesla research, I have run into many interesting articles about him in the Newspaper Archives. Here is yet another:

The Zanesville Signal, Zanesville, Ohio, page 5. Friday Evening, July 12, 1935

New York, July 12.--UP--Scientist Nikola Tesla's birthday revelation that he started an earthquake alarmed a downtown ghetto today.

Most immediate reaction to the famous inventor's announcement of three "revolutionary discoveries" has startled curiosity about the location of his secret laboratory, which supposedly still houses his earthquake machine.

Tesla refused pointedly to disclose where he works--the world's weirdest spot in popular mind today. In addition to the mysterious "quake maker" he puckishly described during a scientific upset intended for Albert Einstein and others. Tesla workshop has revealed as containing also a new kind of motor driven by "cosmic particles" from the sun, and a mechanism that sends vibrations rippling through the earth as a new form of communication.

The inventor, whose 700 basic patents include widely used methods of large-scale distribution of electricity, assumed on his 78th birthday the aspect of a sinister wizard, when he confessed that in his bony, wedge-

shaped head started the Houston street earthquake of 37 years ago.

One day violent tremors shock a neighborhood. They centered mysteriously, in one building. People were thrown into panic. Firemen and police responded to alarms.

Suddenly the vibrations stopped. Tesla said the "quake" ceased when he snatched up a hammer and knocked a gadget from the wall of his laboratory. His workshop then was in the most affected building. Where it is now he refused to reveal.

The gadget he said, was a vibration amplifying mechanism set to harmonise with the building's vibrations. He said a small quake maker could shake a whole city to pieces.

The inventor already has in his laboratory a "cosmic" machine, he disclosed. He said it was driven by "cosmic particles" which strike the earth at speeds 50 times greater than light. He contended that such machines, if perfected, will supply enough power for New York city from cosmic particles striking one square foot.

The relativists theory holds that light, traveling 182,000 miles a second, is the greatest velocity. Tesla said the theory is a "mass of errors," and that science had overlooked cosmic particles by concentrating upon cosmic rays.

Tesla's second announcement was of perfection of an electrical generator--"something that engineers since Faraday have agreed could not be done."

But he was proudest of all of his "tele-geo-dynamics." This he described as a method of transmitting mechanical energy through the earth. It will traverse the globe, he said with vibration waves much as radio sends sound waves. It will, he said, permit a new form of communication, guide ships at sea, discover new ore deposits, and otherwise "radically affect everyday life." The waves sent through the earth tell what properties they pass through, revealing ore yet undiscovered, he explained.

This discover, he said, has the backing of "a wealthy man" and may be put to practical use within a year.

Nikola Tesla - "Scientists Will Win the Next War"

2011-07-09T17:34:00.001-05:00

Another article about Nikola Tesla found in the Newspaper Archives:

The Oelwein Daily Register, Oelwein, Iowa. May 26, 1916.

IN THE science which man has spun out of his brain he has created a monstrous Frankenstein, which is now rending him limb from limb on the battlefields of Europe. But one of the fatal qualities of science is that it always progresses. What part will it play in the next world war? Will the inventive intellect by then have unloosed forces which, compared to the 42-centimeter howitzer of today, will be as the 42-centimeter gun is to the two-handed sword of the Roman legions?

Yes, reply the experts; the present war is based on chemistry; but future warfare will wield the enormously more gigantic power of destruction provided by electricity, according to a writer in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Then it will not be a question of the annihilation of armies; it will be one of the extermination of whole populations. It will not be a matter of demolishing cities and fortresses, but of wiping whole nations at one stroke from the face of the earth. The scientists, in fact, offer us one ultimate alternative: Either man must conquer his innate murderous instincts and cease from war, or else in the end the human race will perish in a universal act of suicide such as Schopenbauer foretold--self-slain by the unspeakable agencies of destruction with which science will inevitably arm us.

For 600 years, gunpowder and its derivatives have ruled the destinies of mankind. A flash from the pestle of the scientist-monk, Roger Bacon, blew feudalism off the globe, and made possible the coming of democracy. Gunpowder gave to the European races away over the whole world; it subjected to them America, Asia and Africa. Little did Bacon dream of these consequences from his experiment with saltpeter and sulphur. Perhaps as little do we today realize the possibilities of the wireless current which in an instant bears the spoken word from Arlington to Honolulu.

In the imagination of every scientist in the world today there is a vision of a machine with a key by means of which a wave of electricity will be flashed through the air to explode the enemy's bombs, torpedoes, cartridges and magazines. The man who first perfects this device will go down in history--if any historians are left alive--as a greater man than Roger Bacon, for his invention will make lyddite and picric acid obsolete, and will send rifles, cannon and dreadnaughts to the junk heap.

Only one scientist so far makes a claim to have advanced some steps towards the perfect electric man-killer. But that man is no other than Nikola Tesla, electrical wizard, who has just been awarded a part of this year's Noble (sic) prize for physics. In an interview the other day he laid down these prophesies:

1. This is the last war in which the explosive power of chemicals will decide the issue.
2. In the next war electricity will be the force of organized slaughter.

The confidence with which Tesla uttered these predictions is based upon an invention which he says he has just completed but the details of which he is for the present jealously guarding, for fear they might be worked out by one of the belligerents in the present war. In case the United States were involved in war, however, he says he would place his device unreservedly at the disposition of the military authorities.

"It is, of course, possible," he said to a representative of the Post-Dispatch Sunday Magazine a few days ago, "to produce electrical effects at a distance by means of wireless energy. But the insurmountable difficulty thus far has been to aim an electric wave in one direction only, with all of its force concentrated on a given target.

"I will go so far as to say that after twenty years of application to the problem of transmitting energy by wireless, I have just made a valuable advance in this direction. The stage has been reached where to an extent it is practicable to use this force in war, and to predict such a development as will make electricity supplant cannon in battle.

"It is impossible to give details at this time, but in a general way my invention can be used in three methods.

"In the first place, it will be possible to send an explosive body through the air--an aerial torpedo flying many times faster than an aeroplane--and to direct this projectile to the spot desired, where it can be exploded by wireless. It will be possible to guide the projectile by wireless after it has passed beyond the range of the eye, and the aim is so accurate that it is possible to reduce the error to a few feet in a thousand miles.

"In the second place, it will be practicable with this apparatus to produce effects at a distance which will interfere with the enemy and tend to make him ineffective.

"In the third place, it promises to be able to produce at a distance such effects of electrical tension as will jeopardize life and property."

The inventor declined to go into specific details, saying that it is safer to be specific after the fact. But one would gather from the words he did speak that he has contrived a torpedo of the air flying under its own power as a torpedo swims in the water, which can be steered by wireless and exploded by the same force. Such a projectile would have a range not of some twenty miles, like the highest power cannon, but one limited only by its own flying endurance. It would be harder to hit with shell and rifle fire than an aeroplane, because of its smaller size and swifter velocity, and it need not be manned by a crew who would be exposed to death at every instant.

Such a missile, aimed according to the mathematical formulas used today by gunners whose target is beyond the range of eye and telescope, could be dispatched for the destruction of a battleship long before her own guns would be able to come into play. Safe from the shells of the greatest ordnance, it could start from a point miles beyond their range and destroy the batteries without the possibility of a reply.

The second and third methods of which Tesla speaks are discussed in rather cryptic language, but leave the inference that he believes himself already able, in some degree, to produce at a distance by wireless and electric shock similar to that produced by touching a charged wire. One can think of no other way in which effects perilous to life and property could be obtained with electricity.

With this idea worked out to its ultimate perfection, one might foretell such appalling events in warfare as this: An entire army, in its trenches, is without warning seized with the death agonies of a wretch in the electrical chair, and is exterminated by a silent enemy, using no bullets. Or, at a given moment, every living thing in a great city is struck dead as if by lightning, by means of a force unleashed hundreds of miles away by an officer who merely pulls a lever in a wireless tower.

Tesla appears to see in the future a warfare of electrical appliances more deadly than all the cannon every made; he sees entire areas electrified and made untenable for any living creature. Death and destruction will be dealt out at unheard of distances, with zones of action more spacious than we now dream of. There is foreshadowed a conflict in which not armies but nations may be destroyed in a single action, by men armed with thunderbolts more mighty than those of the heavens. No wonder that Tesla, his own imagination recoiling in horror, says:

"I hope this is the invention that will make war impossible."

Another device for which inventors are seeking is one that will be able, by means of the wireless current, to explode at a distance the enemy's magazines of ammunition. If this were perfected, one man in London, by pressing a button, could set fire to all the explosives in the Krupp factories and blow that institution into bits; or he could blow up all the cartridges and explosives in the German army. Or another man in Berlin could with one stroke blow the English fleet out of the water with its own powder. In an article in a Paris newspaper recently, Marconi, father of wireless telegraphy, declared that such an invention would mean the abolition of firearms and a reversion to hand-to-hand fighting.

A Dutch inventor named Lanzius, now in New York, claims to have made such a device. An Italian inventor won considerable notoriety for himself two years ago by demonstrating an apparatus which he declared would explode ammunition at a distance by means of a wireless current--but he was shown to be a fraud. A young New Yorker, who already has several authentic inventions to his credit, declares he has perfected a method of emitting wireless current which will melt all metals within a certain radius. A California inventor asserts that he can create a flame at a distance by means of wireless, and offers to set fire to any fleet approaching the Pacific coast.

The Germans are reported to have used heat to destroy the barbed-wire entanglements of the Russians. Tesla believes that the result was obtained, if at all, by the projection of a flame produced by hydrogen gas under high pressure. Such a flame can readily be projected for 10 feet, which might be sufficient when the trenches are close enough together. In such a flame barbed wire would melt like wax.

In all of the belligerent countries, and in those which fear they may sometime become belligerents, the best brains are hard at work on the problem of contriving new methods of murder more deadly and more wholesale than those now employed. Some of their dreams of future warfare may seem fantastic. But the rude cannon of the Turks seemed an incredible prodigy at the siege of Constantinople in the fifteenth century; and to the artillerymen of our Revolutionary war the machine gun of today would appear an equal marvel. On (sic) can scarcely doubt that if man continues to maintain his delight in war, science will be at hand to supply him with weapons as advanced in murderous power over those today, as the arms of today surpass the sling and stone with which David, introducing the artillery of his era, slew the armored giant. Will human nerves be able to endure these colossal horrors? Probably; today they endure the shock of explosives, the sound of which would have sent Achilles to the madhouse.

Nikola Tesla - An Interview with Tesla at Delmonico's in New York in 1894

2011-07-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

This article about Nikola Tesla was written by Arthur Brisbane. He is particularly opinionated and insults just about everybody mentioned during the first part of the article while he shares his laughable views about physical signs of intelligence. But, his description of his interview at Delmonico's with Tesla is wonderful and it becomes clear during the thorough reporting of the interview, Mr. Brisbane respects and admires Nikola Tesla greatly. He really paints a worthy portrait of Tesla through words.

The World, New York, New York, page 17. Sunday, July 22, 1894.

OUR FOREMOST
ELECTRICIAN.
----------
The Wonderful Discoveries and Daring Theories of Nikola Tesla, as Told by Him to The World.
----------
GREATER EVEN THAN EDISON.
----------
Hard at Work Experimenting with a New
Kind of Light and Promises Wonders
That Are Now Undreamed
Of by Scientists.
----------
THE ELECTRICITY OF THE FUTURE.
----------
He Predicts It Will Be the Great Labor
Saver--Picturesque Personality of a
Man Who Is Toying with the
Secrets of the Universe.
----------There is a small country in Europe called Lika, and in that country there is a village of forty houses, called Smiljan.

You have probably never heard of either, but you and many others will live to know about a baby that was born in the village of Smiljan in the country called Lika thirty-seven years ago.

It was probably the usual Slavonic baby, very dark, very nervous and doomed in advance to a dull and wasted life. Lika is really a part of Servia, and Servia had her day long ago. Her men gained fame by fighting and helping the Hungarians to keep Asia out of Europe. Huxley, who thinks seriously, and Oscar Wilde, who is foolish, can enjoy life and London now because those old fighters fought so hard.

Most of Servia's modern babies might as well have avoided the annoyance of birth for all they can ever do in the world, but this baby is an exception.

He was visible yesterday, in his grown-up condition, at Delmonico's. His name is Nikola Tesla. He is the best electrician living, if men who know about electricity may be believed. He is to the average electrician as Horace Greeley is to Bill Nye. He is serious, he is earnest, and in all ways he commands respect.

Every scientist knows his work and every foolish person included in the category of New York society knows his face. He dines at Delmonico's every day. He sits each night at a table near a window. When Ward McAllister, that strange contradiction of the theory that nature abhors a vacuum, wanders in, he sees Nikola Tesla with his head buried in an evening paper.

Every foolish young man who cares for the law of gravitation only because it interferes with jumping fences, every foolish young woman who thinks that there is something new about her two-cent love affair, has seen this serious, owl-faced Servian eating his dinner, and thinking about electrical vibrations.

Nikola Tesla is almost the tallest, almost the thinnest and certainly the most serious man who goes to Delmonico's regularly.
VERY THIN, AND VERY TALL.He has eyes set very far back in his head. They are rather light. I asked him how he could have such light eyes and be a Slav. He told me that his eyes were once much darker, but that using his mind a great deal had made them many shades lighter. I have often heard it said that using the brain makes the eyes lighter in color. Tesla's confirmation of the theory through his personal experience is important.

He is very thin, is more than six feet tall and weighs less than a hundred and forty pounds. He has very big hands. Many able men do--Lincoln is one instance. His thumbs are remarkably big, even for such big hands. They are extraordinarily big. This is a good sign. The thumb is the intellectual part of the hand. The apes have very small thumbs. Study them and you will notice this.

Nikola Tesla has a head that spreads out at the top like a fan. His head is shaped like a wedge. His chin is as pointed as an ice-pick. His mouth is too small. His chin, though not weak, is not strong enough. His face cannot be studied and judged like the faces of other men, for he is not a worker in practical fields. He lives his life up in the top of his head, where ideas are born, and up there he has plenty of room. His hair is jet black and curly. He stoops--most men do when they have no peacock blood in them. He lives inside of himself. He takes a profound interest in his own work. He has that supply of self-love and self-confidence which usually goes with success. And he differs from most of the men who are written and talked about in the fact that he has something to tell.
WONDERS OF THE FLY.It is most pleasing to hear this wise man talk about figures that tire the usual brain. Mr. Delmonico and an aged friend were talking to Mr. Tesla when I saw him night before last. Mr. Tesla, having had his supper was discussing, by way of relaxation, the number of vibrations of the wing of a certain fly. The fly, of which Mr. Tesla did not know the name, is a fly that flies straight ahead so fast that you can't see him, and flies back in a straight line without any apparent effort.

"That," said Mr. Tesla, "is the strongest living animal, in proportion to his size. He moves his wings about twenty-five thousand times to the second." The aged man who had consented to take a drink with Mr. Delmonico mopped his forehead worriedly, for it was a hot night.

"And that is nothing from the ordinary point of view." mused the distinguished Mr. Tesla. "You see, if you move your hand ten times in a second and then try to move it one hundred times to the second, it will take a hundred times as much strength to move it ten times as fast. The fly that moves its wings twenty-five times to the second requires twenty-five thousand multiplied by twenty-five thousand times as much force as he would to move them once in a second. That makes him use up about six hundred million times as much force as you might think to move his wings like that." Mr. Delmonico's aged friend said: "Don't talk of such exertion in this weather," and wearily mopped himself out of the place.

When the aged man had gone Mr. Tesla said he could go to sleep floating on the water, and Mr. Delmonico, who is a very handsome young man with a pointed black beard, said that he did not believe sharks ever ate any one up. Mr. Tesla said that was nonsense, for in the lower Danube pikes sometimes had seized men and dragged them beneath the surface. The pikes were four feet long, and became so dangerous that swimming about there was prevented. Mr. Delmonico said he was going to Sharon Springs, and started for the Springs at once.

Mr. Nikola Tesla then talked, at my urgent request, about electricity and the things that he hopes to do.

There is no intention here to give a technical account of Mr. Tesla's past achievements and future ambitions. It would be much too hard to write to begin with, and utterly incomprehensible to almost every one after being written. The idea is to discover the new great electrician thoroughly; to interest Americans in the Smiljan baby's personality, so that they may study his future achievements with proper care.
TESLA'S THEORY OF LIGHT.Mr. Tesla's biggest undertaking at present--that to which he is devoting his most earnest efforts--is the production of light by the vibrations of the atmosphere. He has no intention of heating a bit of cinder red hot and letting it glow by incandescence. The present incandescent system, compared to the Tesla idea, is as primitive as an ox cart with two solid wooden wheels compared to modern railroading.

The light of the sun, according to Mr. Tesla, is the result of vibrations in 94,000,000 miles of ether which separate us from the centre of this solar system. Mr. Tesla's idea is to produce here on earth vibrations similar to those which cause the sunlight, and thus to give us a light as good as that of the sun, with no danger from clouds or other obstructions. Mr. Tesla has already achieved decided success in this line. He takes in his hand a long bar of glass, which, by vibration alone, lights up into most amazing brilliancy. He himself comes out of his experiments a most radiant creature, with light flaming at every pore of his skin, from the tips of his fingers and from the end of every hair on his head.

NIKOLA TESLA. Showing the Inventor in the Effulgent Glory of Myriad Tongues of Electric Flame After He Has Saturated Himself with Electricity.

In explaining his experiments, Mr. Tesla uses figures calculated to pulverize an ordinary mind.

"It is difficult for me," he said, "to give you an idea that you will readily grasp about this question of vibration. In ordinary life our minds do not deal with the figures that come up in such investigations, but take a 5 and put after it fourteen zeroes; then you will have the number of vibrations which occur in the ether every second and which produce light."

I carried out Mr. Tesla's suggestion, with the following result--500,000,000,000,000.

"All I have to do," said Mr. Tesla, "to duplicate the sunlight is to get this number of vibrations to the second with my machinery on earth; I have succeeded up to a certain point, but am still at work on the task."
THE POWER OF VIBRATION.I tried in various ways to present in cold writing some notion of what five hundred trillions of vibrations to the second might mean. I didn't succeed very well. The nearest I could was to mention, at Mr. Tesla's suggestion, the following fact: If a mass of metal as big as the Delmonico restaurant, in which we sat, possessing 10,000 times the resisting force of the most finely tempered steel, should be caused to vibrate with one millionth of the rapidity of the light-producing electric vibrations in ether, that mass of metal, 10,000 times harder than steel, would simply vanish into the air like smoke. It would disappear into separate atoms too small to be seen and would never be heard of again.

Electricity in its vibrations, according to Mr. Tesla, has a great advantage over all other things, such as flies' wings and other material bodies. Electricity has no weight, and therefore no opposition is offered to its moving backward and forward freely any number of times to the second.

"It is perfectly easy to prove that electricity weighs nothing," said Mr. Tesla. "I will load you so full of electricity that you can't hold any more and then put you on the finest weighing machine, and you will not find one-thousandth part of an ounce added to your weight."

I ventured to suggest to Mr. Tesla that as a vibrator electricity might meet with serious competition among modern statesmen, but his mind was so serious that he only said: "No statesman could vibrate fast enough to be of any value scientifically."

Before deciding to give Mr. Tesla unlimited space in the greatest newspaper that was ever heard of, I had heard from a dozen reliable sources that there was not the slightest doubt about his being a very great man. Authorities unite in declaring him the very greatest man living in the line of abstract electrical research.

One able electrician told me that there never was such a man for working out purely intellectual problems. Another said he could conceive of nothing more extraordinary than the devotion and admiration for Tesla entertained by all of the young electrical engineers. It is a pitiful thing for a morbidly conscientious writer to find himself booming one not altogether worthy of his periods and climaxes, but I am certain in the case of Mr. Tesla that it is safe to go ahead.
ONE OF HIS DISCOVERIES.Mr. Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field. That seems to me, next to his idea of getting light by vibration, the best thing he ever did. The rotating magnetic field is a thing which may be described but not understood. Everybody knows that a magnet will seize a piece of iron and hold it firmly; everybody knows that the magnet must use up force in holding that iron, but of course as long as it holds the iron perfectly still the force is wasted. The piece of iron if left alone would stand still. There is no use in getting a magnet to make it stand still. But Mr. Tesla found that he could get a magnet to use its force in such a way as to cause the piece of iron to spin violently round and round. He can make a wheel at a distance from the source of electromagnetic force spin round with 10,000 horse-power. He expects to apply this principle in employing the strength of the Niagara Falls electric current. The fact may be mentioned that the Niagara Falls people who have relied upon Tesla to tell them how they may use their power at a distance have adopted his scheme.

This rotating magnetic field struck me as a most impressive discovery. I asked Mr. Tesla whether he didn't think it possible that the spinning, rotary motion of the earth and her fellow planets, commonly attributed to some unexplained primary propulsive force, might be due to the application on a grand scale of his rotating magnetic field idea. I suggested that the sun might be a great magnet, that the five hundred trillion vibrations per second which he spoke of showed considerable electrical power somewhere; that there was a great deal of iron and a powerful lot of electricity in the earth. Mr. Tesla observed that he thought it was dangerous to jump at such conclusions, but he treated my enthusiasm, born of complete ignorance, with a kind toleration, which did much to convince me of his true greatness.
THE SECRET OF ELECTRICITY.Electricians in general think that Tesla's best work thus far is a machine which has industrial value as a new and more direct agent for producing electrical force. I didn't care much about that compared with the rotating magnetic field, but I asked Mr. Tesla to tell me in as few words as possible just how we get electricity, and why we get it when we do get it. Said Mr. Tesla:

"We get electricity by causing a wire to revolve near a magnet. The stronger the magnet the faster the revolutions of the wire, and the bigger the wire the more electricity.

"Why we get electricity in this way, and what electricity is, are different questions. Every electrician has his theory. I have one which I think I can demonstrate mathematically. There is no accepted explanation of the most extraordinary phenomenon in nature."

Mr. Tesla does not care to see in cold print an account of those things which he hopes to accomplish, or to see accomplished, by means of electricity.

"You would think me a dreamer and very far gone," he said, "if I should tell you what I really hope for. But I can tell you that I look forward with absolute confidence to sending messages through the earth without any wires. I have also great hopes of transmitting electric force in the same way without waste. Concerning the transmission of messages through the earth I have no hesitation in predicting success. I must first ascertain exactly how many vibrations to the second are caused by disturbing the mass of electricity which the earth contains. My machine for transmitting must vibrate as often to put itself in accord with the electricity in the earth."
TOOK 250,000 VOLTS HIMSELF.Mr. Tesla is the interesting person who, in Philadelphia, before a large gathering, allowed a quarter of a million volts of electricity to go through his body. Having seen Carlyle Harris and one other unfortunate individual instantly killed by the application of less that 2,000 volts, I asked Mr. Tesla if he didn't feel a little worried about taking a current of a quarter of a million volts. Said he:

"I did at first feel apprehensive. I had reasoned the thing out absolutely, nevertheless there is always a certain doubt about the practical demonstration of a perfectly satisfactory theory. My idea of letting this current go through me was to demonstrate conclusively the folly of popular impressions concerning the alternating current. The experiment had no value for scientific men. A great deal of nonsense is talked and believed about 'volts,' &c. A million volts would not kill you or hurt you if the current vibrated quickly enough--say half a million times to the second. Under such conditions the nerves wouldn't respond quickly enough to feel pain."

"You see, voltage has nothing to do with the size and power of the current. It is simply the calculation of the force applied at a given point. It corresponds to the actual pressure per square inch at the end of a water pipe, whether the volume of the water be great or small. A million volts going through you doesn't mean much under proper conditions. Imagine a needle so small that the hole it would make in going through your body would not allow the blood to escape. Imagine it so small that you couldn't even feel it. If you had it put through your arm slowly, that would be, electrically speaking, a very small voltage. If you had it stuck through your arm with great rapidity, going, say, at the rate of a hundred miles a second, that would be very high voltage. Voltage is speed, pressure at a given point. It wouldn't do you any more harm to have a needle shot through your arm very rapidly--that is to say, with high voltage--than it would to put it through slowly. In fact if it hurt you at all, the slow operation would probably hurt more than the other. The question of danger is simply the size of current, and yet if a big enough current should be turned against you and broken with sufficient rapidity--if it should, so to speak, jerk back and forth an inconceivable number of times, to the second--it wouldn't kill you. Whereas, if applied continuously, it would simply burn you up."
ELECTRICITY OF THE FUTURE.When Mr. Tesla talks about the electrical problems upon which he is really working he becomes a most fascinating person. Not a single word that he says can be understood. He divides time up into billionths of seconds, and supplies power enough from nothing apparently to do all the work in the United States. He believes that electricity will solve the labor problem. That is something for Mr. Debs to ponder while he languishes in his dungeon. It is certain, according to Mr. Tesla's theories, that the hard work of the future will be the pressing of electric buttons. A few centuries from now the criminal instead of working a treadmill or picking oakum will be sentenced to press fifteen electric buttons every day. His fellows, long since disused to work, will look upon his toil with pity and horror.

Mr. Nikola Tesla is to be envied. He owns one of those rare minds which do not absorb trivialities. A computation of the vibrations of a fly's wing is to him what croquet would be to Grover Cleveland--it is play. He can play when he wants to, but he doesn't do it very often.

Mr. Delmonico lowers his voice when he speaks of Mr. Tesla, as Boston cab-drivers used to lower their voices in speaking of John L. Sullivan. He said:

"That Tesla can do anything. We managed to make him play pool one night. He had never played, but he had watched us for a little while. He was very indignant when he found that we meant to give him fifteen points. But it didn't matter much, for he beat us all even and got all the money. There are just a few of us who play for 25 cents, so it wasn't the money we cared about, but the way he studied out pool in his head, and then beat us, after we had practised for years, surprised us."

I talked to this Mr. Tesla of Smiljan until all but one of the lights had gone out and until the feeble daylight found Mr. Delmonico's scrub-ladies scrubbing his marble floor. All that he said was interesting, both the electrical things and the others.
HARD WORK HIS PLEASURE.He is very proud of his Slavonic race. He believes that the poetry of the Slavs written in Servian and Croatian would surprise the civilized world if it could be presented in widely known languages.

He says that the thin man relies constantly on the food which he eats at the moment. He looks upon good food as most important and feels the strengthening effects of it within twenty minutes. He believes that work never hurts, but that play does.

Nobody, he thinks, can work enough to hurt him.

He thinks that marriage and love interfere with success.

That suppers are very bad for one in New York, but all right in Paris.

He does not believe in telepathy, which is, according to its exponents, a sort of psychical electricity enabling one mind to communicate ideas to another without words. He considers that what is usually taken as an evidence of the existence of telepathy is mere coincidence. But the working of the human mind through observation and reason interests and amazes him, as it well may.

"Suppose I made up my mind to murder you," he said, "In a second you would know it. Now, isn't that wonderful? By what process does the mind get at all this?"

One wise man whom I knew used to say that the scientists with their jumble of laws governing the universe were ignoramuses, and that there weren't more than half a dozen fundamental laws all told. I asked Mr. Tesla what he thought about that.

"I think," said he, "that they could all be reduced to one."
ARTHUR BRISBANE.
------------------------

Nikola Tesla - The "Tesla Death Beam"

2011-07-08T00:45:00.000-05:00

Even at 82-years-old, Nikola Tesla was still hard at work. This article is from The Lethbridge Weekly Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, page 9. Saturday, July 16, 1938.

The
HUMAN SIDE
OF THE
NEWS
BY EDWIN C. HILL
-------------------
Greatest Living American Inventor Working On
Invention of Death Ray, With Which He
Hopes to Be Able to Put a Stop to Wars

To the moon with America's greatest living inventor, Nikola Tesla! Well, not precisely--though if Father Time were to grant Mr. Tesla another half century or so of life I, for one, wouldn't bet against the moon adventure under his eager auspices. The man has lived long and wrought greatly, and the keenest desire of his life is to live longer and materialize the dreams which haunt his scientist's imagination.

He is working now on an energy-transmitting device to project electrical waves to Lady Luna, waves of such potency and power that a tract of light as large, perhaps, as the state of Connecticut could be fixed momentarily upon the surface of the moon. If he lives long enough he will do it, and that's a fairly safe prediction, for Dr. Tesla has accomplished many marvels in his 82 years upon this earth.

His birthday fell on July 10, and found him in fair health for one of his years. It was 40 years ago, B.M. (Before Marconi), that Nikola Tesla predicted the coming of radio communication and sent electrical waves racing around the globe from high voltage generators.

Ship-Protecting Ray
Another dream of this truly great scientist is to perfect what we laymen might call a "Magic ray" which would protect ships from the mariner's greatest peril, fog, and bring them unfailingly to port. It might indeed--so far does his dream range out over the troubled field of human life--put an end to war. A magic ray so terrible, so powerful that raiding airplanes could not last one second above their designed victim of a city.

Mr. Tesla lives and dreams and works at a New York hotel and there, usually you may find him upon any proper business--amiable, charmingly conversational, intensely interesting with his glimpses of new marvels and promises of new world. He is the only American inventor with 750 basic patents to his credit--the only inventor who ever lived, so far as this writer knows, who ever explored so many fields with patented results to prove his rovings and wanderings. Half the civilized nations of the world have honored him with orders and medals.

Nikola Tesla is an Austrian. He was only 28 years old when he came from the University of Praha to enter the laboratory of the great Edison. That was the beginning of an amazing career. For more than 50 years he has been a man of magic. Full-fledged from his amazing brain have come marvel after marvel. He gave us the induction motor which made possible alternating electric current. He gave us innu-

merable indispensible electrical appliances. His imaginative mentality reaches out into the hereafter itself. He wonders if life cannot be recalled--as to whether a man electrocuted in the death chair could be restored to life by the application of an electrical current. He really thinks it could be done.

Message From Mars
It was 30 years ago, on Pike's Peak, that he is sure he plucked from the air at that 14,000-foot height signals from the planet Mars. Mr. Tesla believes, as the late Prof. Lawrence Lowell believed, that there are living, humanlike creatures on our nearest neighbor in the family of planets, and much more intelligently advanced than we are. He thinks that they have been trying for many centuries to reach our dull intelligences.

Now, at 82, Nikola Tesla is working not only on an apparatus to prove unfailing communication, to insure safety of ships, to locate hidden treasure and to determine the earth's physical constants, but also on a means to end war. Mr Tesla is reaching into the infinite to snatch a bolt of lightning for the salvation of mankind. It is to be the Tesla death beam--literally a lightning bolt. It will have such a terrific energy that a thousand invading airplanes could be sent earthward in flaming fragments within 10 heartbeats--annihilated. Two hundred thousand men, horse, foot and artillery crossing the border of a defending enemy could be dropped dead in their tracks.

Dr. Tesla will tell you--an you believe him--that it will summon a force, a weapon, which will be so irresistible that war will become

sheer insanity. Submarine warfare would be made impossible by the Tesla death beam. One human being, sitting in a glass tower, gently pressing a forefinger on an ivory button, could hurl a lightning bolt hundreds of miles out to sea and 200 feet below the surface, to destroy in one blinding flash the lurking submarine.

With Dr. Tesla still dreaming and planning with youthful enthusiasm, there is not such thing as old age. At 82 his imagination reaches out for new worlds to conquer, and visions the day when we can put in a call for Mars and get an answer.

-----------------------

Old vs. New

2011-07-07T20:54:00.000-05:00

As I was looking through the Newspaper Archives the other day, reading articles about Tesla, I ran into a house plan. The newspaper was The Daily Advocate from Newark, Ohio. The date: January 11, 1901.

What struck me was that nearly everything in that newspaper had radically changed. Everything, except the house plan. Houses today are almost exactly the same as they were a century ago! They rot. They get eaten by bugs. Winds blow them down. Fires lay waste to them.

I asked myself, "Why in the world, when everything else has radically changed with the times for the better, wouldn't we all want a house that is modern, safe, green and beautiful?"

So, using this newspaper and its articles and advertisements, I put together this slideshow asking the same question.

(Side note: The music is a recording of my grandfather, Norman A. Bates, playing piano in a lounge in Honolulu, Hawaii.)

Personally, I love my Monolithic Dome home and there are so many other beautiful Monolithic Dome homes around the world.

An exceptionally beautiful home was built on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Barbara Stitt, who together with husband Paul own this dream-come-true Monolithic Dome home, said, “On a slightly foggy day, the house just about disappears, which is what we wanted.” The Stitts achieved that effect by choosing just the right shade of blue paint for the outside of their Airform. You can read more here.

The Stitt's beautiful home was featured on "This New House." Watch below:

Nikola Tesla - Tesla Believes Experiment Interruption Caused by Extraterrestrial Energy from Another Planet

2011-07-06T21:30:00.000-05:00

Here is another article about Nikola Tesla from the Newspaper Archives. This one was published in The Newark Daily Advocate, Newark, Ohio, page 3. January 11, 1901. Tesla is both interesting and somewhat mysterious to me.

TESLA'S NEW WONDER.
-----------
Some Planet, It Seemed to Him, Affected His Machine.
-----------
MAY HAVE BEEN A CALL FROM MARS
-----------
Suggestive of Signaling, the Movements Recorded When He Was Observing Electrical Conditions on a Peak in Colorado--Why Shouldn't Mars Know Morse as Well as We!
Not quite two years ago Mr. Nikola Tesla went out to Colorado to conduct experiments in relation to the wireless transmission of energy, which has engaged his attention for several years. Mr. Tesla found it necessary, in order to carry on his investigations and his experiments to the extent he desired, to work at an altitude of several thousand feet. He found the conditions suitable for his purposes in Colorado and went out there in the spring of 1899, built a laboratory about ten miles from Pike's peak and went to work. What he accomplished in the eight or nine months while he was working there he has kept pretty much to himself ever since, but when the National Red Cross, which was arranging for the end of the century meetings of its various branches throughout the country, asked Mr. Tesla to indicate what, in his opinion, would be one of the great achievements of the coming century he gave just a hint of one of the wonders he discovered in Colorado.

In a more elaborate way Mr. Tesla dwelt on his work to a New York Sun

man the other afternoon. He regards his latest results as far and away the most important he has ever attained. Briefly, Tesla has been able to note a novel manifestation of energy, which he knows is not of solar or terrestrial origin, and, being neither, he concludes that it must emanate from one of the planets. While he was conducting his investigations in his Colorado laboratory one day the instrument he was using to observe the electrical condition of the earth was affected in an unaccountable manner. It recorded three distinct though very faint movements, one after the other. These movements were observed not once, but many times, the number of impulses varying, and Mr. Tesla now firmly believes that with improved apparatus it will be quite possible for the people of the earth to communicate with the inhabitants of other planets. In telling about his work and his discoveries Mr. Tesla said:

"I went to Colorado early in May, 1899, and staid (sic) there about eight months. I believe that during that time I did more work than I could have done in the city in three years, on account of the marvelously invigorating climate. I was compelled to go either to Colorado or to California, as only in these two states I could obtain power at a high altitude, which was necessary for certain investigations I had in view relative to the transportation of power in accordance with a method I had invented. I had tested the conditions at sea level thoroughly, and wanted to know how far my laboratory observations would agree with practical tests at high altitudes. Colorado was nearer than California and I had some friendly relations in Colorado Springs, and this determined me to select that neighborhood for my place of observation.

"A laboratory was erected on an elevation at a distance of about ten miles from Pike's peak. I set out to carry on my experiments along three different lines: First, to ascertain the best conditions for transmitting power without wires; second, to develop apparatus for the transmission of messages across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on which problem I have been engaged for eight years, and, third, to work on another problem which involves a still greater mastery of electrical forces and which, with my present knowledge, I consider of still greater importance than even the transmission of power without wires, and which I shall make known in due course. There were, however, numerous points to be found out about electrical vibrations, and there were actions on which I was still in doubt. In my laboratory in New York I was able to go only to electrical discharges of 16 feet in length, and I had only reached effective electrical pressure of about 8,000,000 volts. To carry the problems on which I was working further I had to master electrical pressure of at least 50,000,000 volts, and electrical discharges were necessary for some purposes measuring at least 50 or 100 feet.

"The results I attained were far beyond any I had expected to reach, and this has forcibly brought to my mind the stimulating influence of nature in scientific research. I found that my mental vision was incomparably clear.

-----------------

*Note: I searched this entire newspaper and could find nothing more. I thought the article ended abruptly, but apparently, that was the total article.

Nikola Tesla - "Tesla's New Invention to Preserve the Beauty of Youth Through Life." - Oct. 31, 1897

2011-07-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

Another interesting article about Nikola Tesla from 1897, found in the Newspaper Archives:

From: The World, page 33. Sunday, October 31, 1897.

TESLA'S NEW INVENTION TO PRESERVE THE BEAUTY OF YOUTH THROUGH LIFE.

Has the secret of eternal youth been discovered by Nikola Tesla in the electrical apparatus which he describes in another column? If it has--if a woman by its means can really retain the pure, soft, pink-white skin of babyhood, why, then--the machine! What is it like? Quick, quick! Tell us all about it.

Well, then, Mr. Tesla, you must know, first of all, experimented with the most powerful microscope ever built, which he turned upon the human skin. He found--physicians and chemists know this of course--that it is practically never clean, that in the cities especially, it is not only covered with inorganic waste constantly settling down upon it, like coal smoke, for instance, but that is is the playground of minute microbic organisms that drop upon it from the polluted air and live and multiply.

Then Mr. Tesla experimented with a big globe covered with paint. Through this he ran a powerful electric current, which caused the paint to scale off, leaving the globe clean and fresh.

That's precisely what the wizard of the wire proposes to do with fair woman to make her more fair.

He has devised a reclining chair upon which the subject lies, perfectly nude. Two wet sponges are applied to her feet, two to her arms. The current is turned on; it thrills, tingles and wakens the skin, and then, as the paint flakes fell from the globe, so fall from her all the dirt which covers the skin, so flutter away also, the hideous microbes, fairly shocked into quitting their hold.

Caption: The apparatus invented by Tesla to give the beauty of youth to the skin. Note the bg sponges upon which hands and feet rest, by contact with which the newly discovered electric current is made to permeate the skin and eject all beauty-destroying matter.

The skin becomes as the skin of a babe. It is as the fresh skin which replaces that which sloughs off from a scar or a burn. This is the discovery in a nutshell.

So far as external appearance goes, there will be no more old men and old women if the use of this electric chair becomes general. Everyone will go down to his grave retaining all the outward appearance of blooming youth. There will be no more wrinkles, no more sallow cheeks, no more hideous alpine valleys ploughed in the surface of beauty's brow. Every man and woman may at will enjoy the appearance of youth. It is like the fabled spring of Ponce de Leon.

There has always existed in the minds of the people a conviction that somewhere, either in the deep forests of America or in the valleys of the little-known countries of Asia, there is to be found a magic spring or clear pool of wonder-working water which, if plunged into by any man, would immediately restore to him all the appearance of his youth. No matter how old the person might be, it was held that the moment he had entered the pool his white hair would turn to its original color, the deep wrinkles of his face would be smoothed away, and that the glossy yellow of his skin would be replaced at once by the soft, pink hue of his boyhood.

Like every other boy, Nikola Tesla heard this myth when he attended school. It so strongly impressed itself upon his mind that he decided to find that spring when he should have grown to be a man. In his maturer years Tesla realized the impracticability of roaming over the earth in search of something he would probably never find.

He has done better; he has found the haunted pool in science and has plumbed it with electrodes.

He says, does this magician, that although it seems impossible, it is a fact he has demonstrated that to bathe the body in water is not to rid the skin of the deadly microbes which prey upon it. "Indeed," says Mr. Tesla, "water is really an aid to the microbes in fixing their hold upon the skin and hair."

Mr. Tesla refuses to discuss for publication the construction of his new battery at this early stage. He says that it has involved a great deal of labor, and to give out a full description of the principles upon which it is built before he has had it patented would be scarcely doing himself justice. Besides, he wishes the first full description to be written by himself and, to appear in the columns of some purely technical magazine. Just as soon as the battery has been patented stations will be opened in all large cities where the Tesla battery treatment will be given to people every day just as Turkish baths are now given.

The cost of the new apparatus will likely always be too great to allow of every home being provided with one, but baths at public stations will be easily available and no doubt popular, as the price will be ultimately only 25 cents or less. The fixtures and working appliances of the Tesla baths will be much less numerous and expensive than those required in a Turkish bathing institution.

The chief feature of Tesla's method to make all women beautiful and young is the specially invented battery he uses to charge the body with electricity. All that can be seen of its construction is a huge iron chest with a meter on its face and a single bar of bronze which juts from the top, and is turned about to regulate the amount of electrical power transmitted from the concealed battery over the four covered wires which hang from the bottom of the chest and are used to charge the hands and feet of the person undergoing the bath.

This battery has a marvellous power, of which Tesla gave The Sunday World reporter a practical illustration. A huge ball of copper was lying on the floor near by. It had been coated with black paint some three weeks before, and the thick coating of the paint was as dry as the ball itself.

Merely to show the violence with which the new battery rids any body of foreign substance when charged with electricity from the battery, Tesla picked up this huge copper ball and placing it on a wire stand lightly touched the four wires of the battery to the ball. Just on the instant a perfect shower of black flew about the room, and a few minutes afterward it was discovered that not a single particle of dried paint remained on the surface of the copper ball, and the ball continued to shine just as it had been shining before receiving its murky coat.

NIKOLA TESLA'S STATEMENT TO THE SUNDAY WORLD EXPLAINING HIS INVENTION.
EVERY one is aware how fresh looking and peachy is the complexion of the women who live in high altitudes which are free from rugged winters, such, for instance, as the Alps or Pyrenees, mountains of Europe. The same is also true of women living in the small but high and dry islands of the Atlantic ocean. But in large cities, and particularly among the poorer classes who live in tenements, women are almost universally sallow and yellow-faced. Now what is the cause of this state of affairs?

Pasteur and Koch have each established the fact, now becoming generally recognized among scientists, that between 4,000 and 7,000 microbes per square foot fall through space and fasten themselves on every human body in each twenty-four hours. For the past six years I have been studying these bacilli through the most powerful microscope I could have manufactured and the results have been simply amazing to me. People who bathe themselves thoroughly in soap and water every day have an idea that they are utterly free from microbes and that their skin cannot be made any cleaner. If these people had only the opportunity to gaze for a moment through a very powerful microscope such as mine, they would be utterly astonished to see the millions of germs swarming over every inch of their own bodies. These germs, besides making such a hideous sight, are eating up the vitality and freshness and destroying the healthy particles of the skin at a rapid rate.

It is the presence of these millions of germs and their voracity in devouring what is good in the human skin that rots away the hair, helping to turn it gray or white; that accounts for the fading of the natrually (sic) pink tint of the human body; that is responsible for the drying up and wrinkling of the fresh soft skin; that turns the skin eventually to yellow, and that in the case of people with very dirty habits brings on warts and other revolting sores.

Caption: This Shows How the Hand, Seen Under a Powerful Magnifying Glass, Appears When the Beauty-Destroying Matter in the Pores is Being Ejected by the Forcible New Electric Current invented by Tesla.

This being the case, the question suggested itself to me. Cannot some means be devised of keeping these microbes from reaching to the human body?

There is no escape from the invasion of the human body in city localities by these microbes. No amount of clothing can keep them off, as they fall through the pores of the clothing just as a fly would get through the meshes of the net of a fisherman.

I have made extensive study and experiment to the end of finding some means of clearing the human skin of these deadly microbes, and I have succeeded in inventing a means by which it can be kept free from their ravages. The presence of these microbes being the cause of so much injury, with the removal of the cause of injury there is every reason to believe that the skin of a perfectly clean woman can be made to retain through old age to her death the bloom and freshness of youth, the color and softness of girlhood, and the vigor and pliableness of the skin which every woman possesses until by degrees these wandering microbes fall headlong to her skin and begin the ravages which result in wrinkles, yellowness, gray hair and general puckered-up appearance.

Next, the body is thoroughly rubbed with the hands to stir up electricity, and through the feet and hands the whole body is charged with electricity from a battery I myself invented. With this battery I have charged human bodies so successfully that the microbes have been thrown off in a perfect shower to the ground, some of them being thrown as far away as four and five feet. This charging of the hands and feet relieves the skin and hair entirely of the microbes, and the skin can go on living its natural life of softness and freshness. Still other microbes will fall upon it the next day, but these are always removed before twenty-four hours, so that none of them remain long on the skin and in the hair, being removed by the electricity before they have had time to do much ravaging.

After the body has been charged it is given an electric massage by means of the new current invented by me. The whole affair is finished off by a slight bath of the same disinfectant used in the beginning.

Nikola Tesla - A New Source of Energy and Photographing Thoughts

2011-07-04T15:48:00.002-05:00

The Charleston Daily Mail, Charleston, West Virginia, Page 40. September 10, 1933.

By Carol Bird

PROVING his theory that a man's efficiency and accomplishments should increase and not diminish with mellow age, Nikola Tesla, inventor, physicist and one of the world's leading electrical technicians, enters his 78th year busily engaged on three or four great scientific projects.

Several of these inventions or discoveries will be looked upon as "miracles" by many people, for Mr. Tesla has long been a scientist years ahead of his time, one whose advanced theories have alternately stamped him a "madman" and a wizard.

Just as people ridiculed Copernicus' theory of the planetary system, the unenlightened jeered Tesla's pronouncement, years ago, regarding cosmic rays. The pathfinder and the pioneer--and Mr. Tesla is both--are always condemned by the masses.

NIKOLA TESLA, tall, lean, with the face of an ascetic and deep-set eyes, whose expression denotes concentration on a canvas of work too big for most people's comprehension, partially described a new and inexhaustible source of power he has discovered after years of research, revolutionizing modern physical science. At the same time he touched on his own reservoir of energy which makes such monumental discoveries possible at his advanced age.

How does he tap both these deep wells? What is the secret of fine health, keen mind, unusual vitality and mental force at 77, the time of life when most men are sitting in the sun with shawls over their knees or, alas! lying beneath the sod?

Mr. Tesla is the father of the alternating system of power transmission and radio, the induction motor and Tesla coil.

Asked about his startling new scientific discoveries, one of which concerns the "photographing of thought," which will, he maintains, bring about a tremendous social revolution, he said:

"My first and most important discovery concerns the harnessing of a new source of power, hitherto unavailable, to be developed through fundamentally novel machines of my invention.

I am not yet prepared to dwell on the details of the project, for they must be checked before my findings can be formally announced. I have worked on the development of the underlying principles for many years. From the practical point of view of the engineer engaged in power development, the first investment will be relatively very great, but once a machine is installed it may be depended on to function indefinitely, and the cost of operation will be next to nothing.

"My power generator will be of the simplest kind--just a big mass of steel, copper and aluminum, comprising a stationary and rotating part, peculiarly assembled. I am planning to develop electricity and transmit it to a distance by my alternating system now universally established. The direct-current system could also be employed if the heretofore insuperable difficulties of insulating the transmission lines can be overcome.

"Such a source of power obtainable everywhere will solve many problems with which the human race is confronted. My alternating system has been the means of harnessing 30,000,000 horsepower of waterpower, and there are projects now going on all over the world which will eventually double that amount. But, unfortunately, there is not enough waterpower to satisfy present needs, and everywhere inventors and engineers are endeavoring to unlock some additional store of energy."

WILL the smashing of the atom lead to this new power energy? Let Mr. Tesla answer:

"The public is naturally led to expect a great revolution through the harnessing of atomic power, but that is an illusion. Atomic energy is not available for work. I operated many years ago apparatus of a capacity of 2000 horsepower and tension of 18,000,000 volts with which trillions of atoms were smashed in a fraction of a second. I generated all sorts of intense and destructive rays, but found no trace of any energy which should have been liberated through the shattering of atomic structures, according to theory. For the last thirty years I have warned my fellow scientists that there is nothing to be expected in this field except some specific effects due to changes in the atomic structure which may have more or less value."

Beyond adding that the new form of energy which he has been investigating many years would be available at any place in the world in unlimited quantities, and that the machinery for harnessing it would last more than 5000 years, Mr. Tesla would say little more on the subject. Just when the power will become available for practical purposes he could not predict with any degree of precision. In a few years, perhaps, he ventured to say.

Mr. Tesla then talked of several other projects on which he has been working by way of relief from too much concentration on the main piece of work. He described one of his other interests, one highly dramatic, which stirs the imagination and which, doubtless, will sound too revolutionary to most people. But it must not be forgotten, as Mr. Tesla points out, that the ideas of television and radio and airplane were scoffed at in their infancy.

"I expect to photograph thoughts," announced Mr. Tesla calmly, in the same tone of voice that a person occu-

pied with some trivial things in the scheme of life might announce that it was going to rain.

Continued Mr. Tesla: "In 1893, while engaged in certain investigations, I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought must, by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might possibly be read by suitable apparatus. This brought me to my system of television, which I announced at that time.

"My idea was to employ an artificial retina receiving the image of the object seen, an 'optic nerve' and another such retina at the place of reproduction. These two retinas were to be constructed somewhat after the fashion of a checkerboard, with many separate little sections, and the so-called optic nerve was nothing more than a part of the earth.

"An invention of mine enables me to transmit simultaneously, and without any interference whatsoever, hundreds of thousands of distinct impulses through the ground just as though I had so many separate wires. I did not contemplate using any moving part--a scanning apparatus or a cathodic ray, which is a sort of moving device, the use of which I suggested in one of my lectures of that period.

"Now if it be true that a thought reflects an image on the retina, it is a mere question of illuminating the same properly and taking photographs, and then using the ordinary methods which are available to project the image on a screen.

"If this can be done successfully, then the objects imagined by a person would be clearly reflected on the screen as they are formed, and in this way every thought of the individual could be read. Our minds would then, indeed, be like open books."

BESIDES his discoveries concerning the harnessing of the new energy, television and thought photography, Mr. Tesla is working to produce a type of radio transmitter which will insure the strictest privacy in wireless communication regardless of the number of subscribers, and he is developing some important discoveries in molecular physics which will revolutionize the science of metallurgy and greatly improve metals.

After a discussion of his new scientific finding, Mr. Tesla turned to the subject of his personal source of energy and what he considers the real values of life.

"One of the most fundamental and

also one of the saddest facts in human life is well brought out in a French proverb which, freely translated, means: 'If Youth had the knowledge and Age the power of doing,'" said Mr. Tesla. "Our condition of body and mind in old age is merely a certificate of how we have spent our youth. The secret of my own strength and vitality today is that in my youth I led what you might call a virtuous life.

"I have never dissipated. When I was a young man I understood well the significance of that old French proverb, although I doubt that I had even heard it then. But I seemed to have a clear understanding while still young that I must control my passions and appetites if I wanted to make some of my dreams come true.

"So with this in view, quite early in life I set about disciplining myself, planning out a program of living for

what I considered the sane and worthwhile life.

"Since I love my work above all things, it is only natural that I should wish to continue it until I die. I want no vacation--no surcease from my labors. If people would select a life work compatible with their temperaments, the sum total of happiness would be immeasurably increased in the world.

"Many are saddened and depressed by the brevity of life. 'What is the use of attempting to accomplish anything?' they say. 'Life is so short. We may never live to see the completion of the task.' Well, people could prolong their lives considerably if they would but make the effort. Human beings do so many things that pave the way to an early grave.

"First of all, we eat too much, but this we have all heard said often before. And we eat the wrong kinds of

foods and drink the wrong kind of liquids. Most of the harm is done by overeating and underexercising, which bring about toxic conditions in the body and make it impossible for the system to throw off the accumulated poisons.

"My regime for the good life and my diet? Well, for one thing, I drink plenty of milk and water.

"Why overburden the bodies that serve us? I eat but two meals a day, and I avoid all acid-producing foods. Almost everybody eats too many peas and beans and other foods containing uric acid and other poisons. I partake liberally of fresh vegetables, fish or meat sparingly, and rarely. Fish is reputed as fine brain food, but has a very strong acid reaction, as it contains a great deal of phosphorus. Acidity is by far the worst enemy to fight off in old age.

"Potatoes are splendid, and should be eaten at least once a day. They contain valuable mineral salts and are neutralizing.

"I believe in plenty of exercise. I walk eight or ten miles every day, and never take a cab or other conveyance when I have the time to use legpower. I also exercise in my bath daily, for I think this is of great importance. I take a warm bath, followed by a prolonged cold shower.

Nikola Tesla, dean of American Inventors, with numerous triumphs in electrical engineering behind him, as he looked on his 77th birthday, which he recently celebrated

"Sleep? I scarcely ever sleep. I come of a long-lived family, but it is noted for its poor sleepers. I expect to match the records of my ancestors and live to be at least 100.

"MY SLEEPLESSNESS does not worry me. Sometimes I doze for an hour or so. Occasionally, however, once in a few months, I may sleep for four or five hours. Then I awaken virtually charged with energy, like a battery. Nothing can stop me after such a night. I feel great strength then. There is no doubt about it but that sleep is a restorer, a vitalizer, that it increases energy. But on the other hand, I do not think it is essential to one's well-being, particularly if one is habitually a poor sleeper.

"Today, at 77, as a result of well-regulated life, sleeplessness notwithstanding, I have an excellent certificate of health. I never felt better in my life. I am energetic, strong, in full possession of all my mental faculties. In my prime I did not possess the energy I have today. And what is more, in solving my problems I use but a small part of the energy I possess, for, I have learned how to conserve it. Because of my experience and knowledge gained through the years, my tasks are much lighter. Contrary to general belief, work comes easier for older people if they are in good health, because they have learned through years of practice how to arrive at a given place by the shortest path."

Copyright by Public Ledger

Nikola Tesla - A Cure for Every Ill

2011-07-02T16:35:00.005-05:00

Another interesting article about Nikola Tesla from the Newspaper Archives.

The Perry Bulletin, Perry, Iowa, Page 3. February 20, 1896.

TESLA'S LATEST MOVE.
----------
NO MORE SICKNESS WHEN IT
IS COMPLETED.
----------
The Great Inventor Said to Have Found
a Cure for Every Ill That the Hu-
man Body Is Heir To -- Commands
Great Attention.
----------Has the science of electricity discovered a cure for all human ills? Nikola Tesla, the wonderful electrician, announces that he has devised a machine by which every fiber of the human frame can be made vibrate so as to cause a complete renovation of all the tissues, thus restoring to the diseased body a healthy and perfect condition. If Wizard Tesla says truly there will be no end to the drug stores that will be compelled to abandon trade. It may be of interest to those who expect to be cured by his new process to know something of the genius who is to be their savior. Tesla was born somewhat more than thirty years ago in Servia (sic). He is a Slav of the Slavs, with all the characteristics of that race. His father was an eloquent clergyman of the Greek church, but Nikola probably derived his inventive genius from...

...his mother, who constructed looms and churns for household use while her husband preached the word. As a boy, in the Polytechnic school at Gratz, he first saw a direct current gramme machine and was told that a commuter was a vital and necessary feature in all apparatus. He at once was interested in electricity, but continued to pursue his mechanical and mathematical studies until he was ripe for graduation. Incidentally, he mastered half a dozen languages and finally secured a position as assistant in the government telegraph engineering department at Buda-Pesth (sic). Soon he left that employment and went to Paris to make his way across the Atlantic. He secured work in one of Edison's shops and at once entered on an entirely new stage of development. So quick, bright and original was he that Edison soon became personally interested in him. News of Tesla's wonderful discoveries was spread abroad and he leaped into the foremost rank as an electrician. Indeed, there are those who contend that he is greater than Edison's self, although his discoveries have been in an altogether different line. His last is an indication of his trend, and if the human body is to share in the blessings that have been showered on a man by modern electrical research the one man to point the way is Nikola Tesla. Whatever comes from him will command the attention of scientists.

Nikola Tesla and "Force Rays"

2011-07-02T16:00:00.002-05:00

I've been reading a lot lately about Nikola Tesla. In my research, I have found many interesting articles from the Newspaper Archives. I thought I'd share some. So here goes...

The Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, Page 4. Tuesday, July 17, 1934.

Can't Avert Causes

If it had been anyone but Nikola Tesla who announced discovery of means to erect a wall of "force rays" around a nation's borders to keep out invading armies, the country would very likely indulge in a hearty horse laugh.

Mr. Tesla, however, is one of those scientific gentlemen who can't be laughed off. His assertion sounds wild enough, in all conscience--a cross between Jules Verne and the earlier H.G. Wells--but these modern inventors are miracle workers anyway, and few of them are any cleverer than Mr. Tesla.

Each country would be able to enclose its borders in a new kind of military wall, an impalpable but infinitely effective wall, unlike anything ever seen before. Microscopic particles of dust electrically driven in vast whirlwind curtains, impervious to armies, navies, or fleets of airplanes--let each nation shelter itself inside such barriers and there could be no more war, because invasion would be an impossibility.

This having been done, we would get--what? The millennium? Probably not. For the problem of war is a problem that goes to the very roots of modern society, and it can't be settled simply by making it impossible for pugnacious peoples to get at each other.

The causes of war would remain untouched. The rivalries, the suspicions, and the conflicting aims which breed war would be right where they were before. If they could not find an outlet in armed strife, they would find it in some other kind of strife.

There can be economic wars, bloodless but quite as bitter as those in which armies and navies are used.

For the modern world, after all, is still very like a jungle, in which might makes the rules and self-interest is the first law.

As long as it continues to be that kind of world, there will be international conflicts of one kind or another.

Making invasion a physical impossibility would save many lives and prevent much suffering, of course; but it would not bring us any nearer to finding how to live harmoniously in a genuine community of nations.--NEA.

Today, I am sad and just plain irritated.

2011-05-23T13:47:00.005-05:00

So, I wake up this morning to hear there are about 90 people dead because of tornadoes in Missouri. I am so sorry for all the friends and relatives. I am saddened for the people who have lost their homes and livelihoods. The devastation is tragic.

I am also irritated with people's resistance to change!

A Monolithic Dome hospital would have protected all of the patients. Monolithic Dome houses would have protected families.

Monolithic Dome businesses would have protected many, many people seeking shelter and preserved the business so afterward, people could go on making a living.

Monolithic Dome schools have actually been mostly funded by FEMA because they can be tornado shelters for entire communities. There is no reason that every town in "Tornado Alley" couldn't have a Monolithic Dome Tornado Shelter.

Yet--people are so resistant to change (for the better even) that when it comes right down to it, many choose metal buildings and wood buildings because they don't want something round in town.

I live in a Monolithic Dome in Texas. I go to bed at night knowing that if a tornado hits while I am sleeping, my children are protected. Yes, my house is round!

I also think it is beautiful. I love the sweeping curves and I appreciate the openness and better use of space. I think my Monolithic Dome home is sexy...like a new sports car. Why would I want an old model car that doesn't pass safety tests, when I could have a new, sleek, curvy safe car!?
I am so sad about the lives lost that could have been protected, if not by a Monolithic Dome house, by the community having a Monolithic Dome as a shelter somewhere.

Please visit The Monolithic Dome Institute's website. You will not find a more helpful, caring company anywhere in the world. Send me a note and come see our house...tour the president's house. You can tour dome gyms, or call the church in Alabama that was unharmed by the tornadoes there. One phone call could save many lives.

My heart goes out to all the people in Missouri today. May you find peace.

I Hate This Kind of News

2011-03-04T14:40:00.003-06:00

Yahoo News reported today that a rocket carrying a new NASA Climate Satellite, valued at $424 million dollars, most likely crashed into the Pacific Ocean today...seems to have been a booster problem.

It's really tragic. The video below describes the satellite, "Glory," that the rocket was carrying.

More Math Cartoons

2010-09-29T22:52:00.000-05:00