TESLA, A BIZARRE GENIUS, REGAINS AURA OF GREATNESS

THE world of science is belatedly recognizing the genius of one of its most important, eccentric and enigmatic inventors,
Nikola Tesla.

A century after he arrived penniless on the docks of New York City, Tesla is receiving credit for brilliant achievements
that outdid those of his contemporaries, Edison and Marconi. And more than 40 years after the recluse died in a Manhattan
hotel room, in the company of the pigeons who were his favorite companions in the final years of his life, he is at last being
elevated to the pantheon of the world's great inventors.

It was Nikola Tesla, not Marconi, who invented the first radio; it was Tesla, not Edison, who devised the system of
electric power disribution now used throughout the world. Working in small laboratories in midtown Manhattan and
Greenwich Village, Tesla invented the polyphase electric motor, the bladeless steam turbine and the radio-guided torpedo.
Some scientists say it was Tesla who first conceived ideas for a ''Star Wars'' type of military shield in space.

To help analyze and publicize the accomplishments of the reclusive genius, a group of scientists and engineers have
formed the Tesla Centennial Committee and recently held a symposium, organized a museum exhibition and persuaded the
Governor of Colorado to dedicate the month of August to Tesla.

''He helped spawn the industrial revolution,'' said Toby Grotz, chairman of the Tesla Centennial Committee and an
engineer at Martin Marietta Aerospace in Denver. ''It couldn't have happened without him. He came from a period when a
single individual could still change the course of history.''

The centennial events have largely taken place in Colorado, where the inventor had built a laboratory to create huge
bolts of artificial lightning.

''We're trying to bring his name to its rightful prominence,'' said William H. Terbo, who is Tesla's great-nephew and
honorary chairman of the Tesla Memorial Society.

The proceedings of the symposium will be published by the New York-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, the world's largest such society.

The committee says conventional histories all too often dismiss Tesla in a few paragraphs. Indeed, the usual story is
quite short.

Tesla was born in 1856 in Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and soon showed a talent for invention
and tinkering. In 1884, he took a ship to New York and immediately went to work for Thomas Alva Edison. But the two
quickly parted ways after a dispute over an invention.

Going into business for himself, Tesla soon developed the basis for the alternating-current system in worldwide use
today. He realized that direct current can be transported over wires for only a few miles, whereas high-voltage alternating
current can go on almost forever without sustaining great losses of power. To make the new system practical, he invented and
patented a variety of alternating- current generators, transformers and motors.
 Edison backed direct current as the perfect electrical source of the future, and the two men fought a heated battle over
the best system. It went down in science history as the ''war of the currents'' - a contest Tesla won.

Conceived Futuristic Devices So much for Tesla's conventional history. The Centennial Committee says he went on to do
much more than just spark the age of electricity - envisioning and inventing a dazzling array of futuristic devices.

''All the literature says Marconi invented the radio,'' Mr. Grotz said in an interview. ''But long before Marconi had a
patent, Tesla was demonstrating a radio-controlled model boat and talking about transmitting electrical power across the
Atlantic. Compare that to Marconi's S-O-S.''

Indeed, in 1943 the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Marconi's patent because they found
it had been preceded by Tesla's practical achievements in radio transmission.

Another example is radar, which employs short wavelength radio signals that can be reflected back from solid objects. As
early as 1900, members of the centennial committee note, Tesla suggested that these wavelengths could be used for locating
ships at sea.

Many of the 27 speakers at the Tesla symposium, held this month at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, put their
emphasis on Tesla's most spectacular experiments of all, which occurred at a laboratory not far from the symposium site.
There, at the turn of the century, Tesla built enormous coils that generated 10 million to 12 million volts of electricity and
sent bolts of artificial lightning flashing 135 feet through the air, a feat that has never been equaled.

Work Shrouded in Mystery

To this day, scientists debate what Tesla accomplished in Colorado, for much of the work was shrouded in mystery. Dr.
Robert W. Bass, an electrical engineer with Litton Industries, said at the symposium that one of Tesla's more controversial
claims - that he had created ball lightning - was probably true and he cited contemporary theories of physics to explain how
Tesla could reproduce such a rare natural phenomonon.

Tesla's laboratory in Colorado Springs was a barn-like structure that sat atop a hill on the prairie and was crowned by an
80-foot tower and beyond that a 122-foot mast. The tall fence surrounding it carried signs reading: ''Keep Out - Great
Danger.'' The claps of thunder from his bolts of artificial lightning could be heard for miles.

According to Charles Wright, a retired engineer formerly with the Public Service Company of Colorado, the laboratory
was filled with a host of inventions including high-voltage transformers, dynamos, coils, capacitor- discharge devices, oil-
insulated capacitors and a large metered control panel.

In Colorado Tesla hit upon what he thought was a revolutionary way to send electricity through the air. ''Not only was it
practicable to send telegraphic messages to any distance without wires,'' he wrote of the insight, ''but also to impress upon the
entire globe the faint modulations of the human voice, far more still, to transmit power, in unlimited amounts, to any
terrestrial distance and almost without any loss.''

Financed by J. P. Morgan
 With the financial backing of J. P. Morgan, Tesla embarked upon a plan to commercialize the discovery, building a 200-
foot tower at Shoreham on Long Island. By 1905, however, Morgan had abandoned the project and the tower was never
completed.

Tesla, especially in later years, was a man of extraordinary idiosyncrasies and boastful declarations that sometimes sent
his science peers into a rage. His ideas for power transmission through air were dismissed by many as pure fantasy.

With a pocket-size vibrator, he once told reporters, he could generate resonant tremors that would split the earth in two.
He gave its resonant frequency as one hour and 49 minutes. Whatever the plausibility of his earth- splitting scheme, the
rather precise estimate of the earth's frequency turned out to be close to the mark, as was demonstrated during the great
Chilean earthquake of 1960, when geophysicists were able to measure the time it took waves to travel back and forth through
the Earth.

At the symposium some of Tesla's advocates seemed to try to outdo the master's knack for hyperbole as they conjured
visions of death rays and futuristic weapons. In a paper entitled ''Star Wars Now!'' Thomas E. Bearden, a retired nuclear
engineer and Army war games analyst, noted what he said were a number of designs for making weapons based on Tesla's
more exotic ideas. The hypothetical devices included what he termed a Tesla howitzer and a Tesla shield that could allegedly
stop Soviet missiles.

Proposed Death Rays

Tesla suggested in 1940 that the United States military could build a system of death rays that would melt enemy
airplanes at a distance of 250 miles. The War Department looked into the idea and said politely, no thanks.

''With Tesla you're always going to get the fringe,'' said Robert K. Golka, a physicist who spoke at the symposium. ''It's
hard to tell what is real and what is not. Tesla will always attract guys with ideas about perpetual motion.''

Indeed, Tesla himself was something of a character, according to Margaret Cheney, whose book, ''Tesla, Man Out of
Time,'' details some of the eccentricities. At the height of his fame, while eating dinner in the Palm Room of the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel, he would polish the already sparkling sliver and crystal using exactly 18 napkins. He had a phobia about germs
and a love of numbers divisible by three.

The New York Times reported in a front-page article in 1915 that Tesla was to share that year's Nobel Prize in physics
with Edison. But he never got the award. One biographer said that Tesla had refused to share it with his old rival. Another
version has it that Tesla rejected the prize because it had been given in 1909 to Marconi.

After the death of his mother, Tesla became increasingly eccentric and withdrawn. He vigorously disagreed with theories
put forward by great scientists of his day including James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. He never married. Nearly every
day he would go to Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library and feed his friends, the pigeons. Late in life he
announced that he had received signals from distant planets, a claim that was greeted with some skepticism.

Waldemar B. Kaempffert, a science editor of The New York Times in the first half of the century, once described Tesla as
''an intellectual boa constrictor'' and a ''medieval practitioner of black arts.''
 Attracts Following of Fanatics

Tesla's closest living relative, Mr. Terbo, says that four basic types of people are attracted to Tesla - serious scientists,
Yugoslavs proud of his achievements, pseudoscientists who pursue some of his wackier ideas and cultists who worship him as
an extraterrestrial.

''There are religious fanatics in Pasadena who say he came down on a space ship from Venus,'' said Dr. Terbo, adding,
''It's no small group.''

Although Tesla is only belatedly being recognized for the wide-ranging brilliance of his achievements, one testimonial to
his genius did come in 1917 from B. A. Behrend, an engineer who had an inkling of the mark Tesla would make on Western
civilization.

''Were we to eliminate from our industrial world the results of his work,'' he told a banquet in Tesla's honor, ''the wheels
of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead
and idle. His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science. From his work has sprung a revolution.''

drawings; photo of Nikola Tesla

 New York Times
January 22nd, 1943
Type:
Newspaper

Tesla Left No Will

Nephew Says Only Estate Consists of Research Data, Models
Nikola Tesla, electrical inventor and designer, who developed the inventions that
became the bases of modern hydroelectric power, left no will and no estate except
research data and models, according to papers filed yesterday in Surrogate's Court. Letters
of administration were granted to Dr. Tesla's nephew, Sava N. Kosanovich of 112 Central
Park South. Mr. Kosanovich is a national of Yugoslavia, although Dr. Tesla, who died Jan. 7 at
the age of 86, was a United States citizen.
In his petition, the nephew listed the estate as of value unknown, and set forth that a
search had disclosed no will, and that several years will be required in cataloguing,
indexing and examining papers and data to ascertain the scope, meaning and significance
thereof.
Besides Mr. Kosanovich, the papers listed as heirs five other nephews and nieces, all
residing in Yugoslavia except Nikola Trbojevich of the Hotel Secor, Toledo, Ohio.
 New York Times

July 11th, 1934

Page numbers:

18

Type:

Newspaper

Tesla, at 78, Bares New 'Death-Beam'

Invention Powerful Enough to Destroy 10,000 Planes at 250 Miles Away,

He Asserts.
DEFENSIVE WEAPON ONLY
Scientist, in Interview, Tells of Apparatus That He Says Will Kill Without
Trace.

Nikola Tesla, father of modern methods of generation and distribution of electrical

energy, who was 78 years old yesterday, announced a new invention, or inventions, which
he said, he considered the most important of the 700 made by him so far.

He has perfected a method and apparatus, Dr. Tesla said yesterday in an interview at the
Hotel New Yorker, which will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of
such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a
distance of 250 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies of millions to
drop dead in their tracks.

Death-Beam is Silent.

This death-beam, Dr. Tesla said, will operate silently but effectively at distances as far
as a telescope could see an object on the ground and as far as the curvature of the earth
would permit it. It will be invisible and will leave no marks behind it beyond its evidence of
destruction.

An army of 1,000,000 dead, annihilated in an instant, he said, would not reveal even
under the most powerful microscope just what catastrophe had caused its destruction.
 When put in operation Dr. Tesla said this latest invention of his would make war
impossible. This death-beam, he asserted, would surround each country like an invisible
Chinese wall, only a million times more impenetrable. It would make every nation
impregnable against attack by airplanes or by large invading armies.

But while it will make every nation safe against any attack by a would-be invader, Dr.
Tesla added, the death-beam by its nature could not be employed similarly as a weapon for
offense. For this death-beam, he explained, could be generated only from large, stationary
and immovable power plants, stationed in the manner of old-time forts at various strategic
distances from each country's border. They could not be moved for the purposes of attack.

An exception, however, he added, must be made in the case of battleships, which, he

said, would be able to equip themselves with smaller plants for generating the death-beam,
with enough power to destroy any airplane approaching for attack from the air.

Battleships to Be Supreme.

The net result of the latter, Dr. Tesla said, will be to establish the supremacy of the
battleship over the airplane, and to make the nation with the largest and best equipped
battleships supreme over the seas. Submarines would become obsolete, he asserted, as
methods for detecting them are so perfected that no advantage is gained by submerging.
And once found, he added, the death-beam could be employed to do its work of destruction
under water, though not as effectively as in the air.

The production of the death-beam, Dr. Tesla said, involves four new inventions, which
have not been announced by him. The scientific details of these inventions are to be given
out by him before the proper scientific bodies in the near future. In the meantime he gave
out a general statement outlining their nature.

The first invention, he said, comprises a method and apparatus for producing rays and
other manifestations of energy in free air, eliminating the high vacuum necessary at present
for the production of such rays and beams.

The second is a method and process for producing very great electrical force.

The third is a method for amplifying this process in the second invention. The fourth, he
said, is a new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force.

The voltages to be employed in propelling the death-beam to their objective, Dr. Tesla
said, will attain the lightning-like potential of 50,000,000 volts. With this enormous voltage,
hitherto unattained by manmade means, microscopic particles of matter will be catapulted
on their mission of defensive destruction, Dr. Tesla asserted.
 New York Times
September 29th, 1895
Type:
Newspaper

In the World of Electricity

Since the reports reached Servia as to the work Mr. Tesla was doing, and the startling
economies that he hoped to bring about in the production of power, several of his young
fellow-countrymen have taken it for granted that he himself was to be the recipient of
these many millions. The result of this misapprehension is that some of the more ardent
of the Servian patriots have written to him with the burning eloquence that only a Slav
can command, urging him to devote a little of this money to paying off the Servian
national debt. These enthusiastic correspondents assume that the money is readily
available, and is, in fact, already lying in bank awaiting disbursement. It is, of course, a
pity that they should be disappointed, but even if Mr. Tesla were in possession of this
dazzling pile it is a question whether he would use it to wipe out the burden incurred by
the Heliogablian extravagances of King Milan instead of employing it in the furtherance
of some of the many interesting experiments that he would carry out tomorrow if he only
had the wherewithal. One of the first requirements of modern science is that it shall be
self-supporting, and, as a general thing, the money that an inventor makes out of one
idea he is inclined to expend in the trial of something else, which may or may not be a
success. Mr. Tesla is peculiarly constituted this way, and is one of the Palissy type of
men, so it is to be feared his Servian compatriots will not be gratified with any letters of
credit on the Rothschilds for $10,000,000 or $20,000,000.

New York Times

March 26th, 1907
Page numbers:
8
Type:
Newspaper

Wireless on Railroads
by
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla Says It Is Perfectly Practical and Will Soon Be In Use.

To the Editor of The New York Times:

No argument is needed to show that the railroads offer opportunities for
advantageous use of a practical wireless system. Without question, its widest field
of application is the conveyance to the trains of such general information as is
indispensable for keeping the traveler in touch with the world. In the near future a
telegraphic printer of news, a stock ticker, a telephone, and other kindred
appliances will form parts of the regular wireless equipment of a railroad train.
Success in this sphere is all the more certain, as the new is not antagonistic, but, on
the contrary, very helpful to the old. The technical difficulties are minimized by the
employment of a transmitter the effectiveness of which is unimpaired by distance.
In view of the great losses of life and property, improved safety devices on the
cars are urgently needed. But upon careful investigation it will be found that the
outlook in this direction is not very promising for the wireless art. In the first place
the railroads are rapidly changing to electric motive power, and in all such cases the
lines become available for the operation of all sorts of signaling apparatus, of which
the telephone is by far the most important. This valuable improvement is due to
Prof. J. Paley, who introduced it in Germany eight years ago. By enabling the
engineer or conductor of any train to call up any other train or station along the
track and obtain full and unmistakable information, the liability of collisions and
other accidents will be greatly reduced. Public opinion should compel the immediate
adoption of this invention.
Those roads which do not contemplate this transformation might avail
themselves of wireless transmission for similar purposes, but inasmuch as every
train will require in addition to a complete outfit an expert operator, many roads
may prefer to use a wire, unless a wireless telephone can be offered to them.
Nikola Tesla
New York, March 25, 1907