Nikola Tesla: Fine line between Science Fiction and Science

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Nikola Tesla was labeled many things over his career: brilliant, genius, and fanatical. He
was considered crazed in the end, though, when he couldnt make good on his free, unlimited,
clean-electricity-for-everyone claim.

W. Bernard Carlson---Writer ofTesla: Inventor of the Electric Age---had this to say:
Tesla may have had a brilliant mind, but he was not as good at reducing his ideas to
practice. In the race to develop transatlantic radio, Tesla described to his funder and business
partner, J.P. Morgan, a new means of instant communication that involved gathering stock
quotes and telegram messages, funneling them to his laboratory, where he would encode them
and assign them to his laboratory, and designate them each a new frequency. That frequency
would be broadcast to a device that would fit in your hand, he explained. In other words, Tesla,
had envisioned the smartphone and wireless internet in 1901, Carlson said, adding that of all his
ideas, that was the one that stopped him in his tracks. He was the first to be thinking about the
information revolution in the sense of delivering information for each individual user, Carlson
said.

I agree with Mr. Carlson.
Tesla certainly was genius, but there is a pattern in his behavior that showed up
everywhere I searched, that keeps indicating he had distractions. Several times he was on the
forefront of technology, only to have others reap the rewards. He was on the cutting edge of
development in remote control, laser, and radio .Even with the A/C motor that he did follow
through on correctly, he ended up making a bad business decision and tearing up a potentially
huge contract. We still use Teslas lighting principles today and the man died broke and alone.
Speculation isnt what this is about, but its quite feasible he just was consumed with ideas and
he sorted through them and prioritized things the way his program scripted him to.

According to Teslas biography:
Around 1900, 10 years after inventing the Tesla Coil, and 5 years after designing the first
hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls (a feat highly publicized throughout the world). Tesla
began working on his boldest project yet: Building a global communication systemthrough a
large, electrical towerfor sharing information and providing free electricity throughout the
world. The system, however, never came to fruition; it failed due to financial constraints, and
Tesla had no choice but to abandon the Long Island, New York laboratory that housed his work
on the tower project. In 1917, the Wardenclyffe site was sold, and Teslas tower was destroyed.

Free unlimited clean electricity.
This is the point where the experiment becomes either courageous or complete science
fiction. If you think about it, he did believe in going big, with such an easy footprint on things,
the idea is so outrageous your brain just naturally wants to discard the possibility. I think its
certainly safe to say technology would certainly be slightly more advanced had his fiction been
real, or maybe his brains program was wrote just a little different? Number two of Clarks law
states: The only way to find the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.


Nikola Tesla: Fine line between Science Fiction and Science

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References



Nikola Tesla. (2014). The Biography.com website. June 08, 2014, from
http://www.biography.com/people/nikola-tesla-9504443

8 Things You Didnt Know About Nikola Tesla. Jacobson, Rebecca. July 10, 2013, from
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla/