Margaret Cheney - Tesla: Man Out of Time

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The airplane on the facing page, patented in the 1920s by Tesla, was intended to operate much like the vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) aircraft being considered in the 1980s by the U.S. Navy as a subsonic aircraft for the 1990s. The latter is a jet aircraft with sophisticated electronic equipment, but the basic concept is the same. Teslas plane was never built.

TOUCHSTONE

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Copyright 1981 by Margaret Cheney

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone edition 2001

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cheney, Margaret.

Tesla : man out of time / Margaret Cheney. First Touchstone ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Tesla, Nikola, 18561943. 2. Electrical engineers

United StatesBiography. 3. InventorsUnited StatesBiography.

TK140.T4 C47 2001

621.3092dc21

[B]

2001037808

ISBN 978-0-7432-1536-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-7486-6 (ebook)

For Barbara Nelson and Allen Davidson

To aid in the pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian names:

I wish particularly to thank:

Leland Anderson, one of the founders of the Tesla Society, a coauthor of the annotated Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography (San Carlos, Ca., Ragusan Press, 1979), and author of the monograph, Priority in the Invention of RadioTesla v. Marconi. Mr. Andersons research and scholarly works on Tesla have been a major interest of his life. An electrical engineer and former computer consultant, he reviewed my manuscript and generously shared his collection of Tesliana, including many previously unpublished materials and photographs.

Maurice Stahl, a physicist formerly with the Hoover Company and now a consultant for the McKinley Historical Museum in Ohio (featuring a Tesla exhibit), also reviewed the manuscript and advised on technical aspects.

Dr. Bogdan Raditsa, who served under President Tito of Yugoslavia in the early days of his administration, clarified and amplified Yugoslav-Allied politics during World War II as it affected Tesla. He has lived in America for many years, writes books and articles, and teaches Balkan history at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Dr. Lauriston S. Taylor, a radiological physics consultant and recent past president of the NCRP, is an authority on the pioneers of X ray and, as such, read and commented on Teslas contributions in this field.

Lambert Dolphin, assistant director of the Radio Physics Laboratory, SRI International, analyzed Teslas research in ball lightning, particle-beam weapons, radio communication, and alternating current.

Dr. James R. Wait, formerly senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration environmental research laboratories at Boulder, Colorado, and an authority on wave propagation, commented on Teslas concept of electromagnetic energy being transmitted through the Earth, as did Mr. Anderson.

Professor Warren D. Rice of Arizona State University, a leading researcher on the Tesla turbine, also analyzed Teslas theories of terrestrial-heat power plants and ocean thermal energy conversion plants against the foreground of contemporary work.

I am indebted to radio pioneer Commander E. J. Quinby (USN Ret.), who contributed his personal reminiscences of Teslas early work in radio and robotry; to Dr. Albert J. Phillips, former research director of ASARCO, for memories of working with Tesla on a research project; and to Dr. William M. Mueller, Colorado School of Mines, Department of Metallurgy, who gave his analysis of the ASARCO experiment.

Of Teslas many loyal admirers in America, few have worked as tirelessly to see justice done to his memory as Nick Basura. He guided me to useful sources at the beginning of my research, for which I am grateful.

Harry Goldman, a Tesla scholar and writer-photographer, provided valuable information and special services in the enhancing of old photographic prints, as well as contributing photos from his private collection.

I am grateful to Eleanor Treibek of Volunteers in Action, the Language Bank, Monterey, California, for translation assistance; to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, for photographs and for the letters of Katharine Johnson, and of Michael Pupin, A. J. Fleming, Sir William Crookes, Richmond P. Hobson, and other tributes to Nikola Tesla; to Professor Philip S. Callahan for permission to use his photograph of Teslas birthplace; to the Butler Library at Columbia University for photographs and the letters of Robert and Katharine Johnson, George Scherff, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, Major Edwin Armstrong, and Leland Anderson; to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress for the microfilm letters of Nikola Tesla, Robert Johnson, Mark Twain, B. F. Meissner, George Scherff, George Westinghouse, J. Pierpont Morgan, J. P. Morgan, and others; to Archivist J. R. K. Kantor of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, for access to the Julian Hawthorne Papers, and to the universitys History of Science and Technology Project; to the reference staffs of the John Steinbeck Library at Salinas, the New York Public Library, and the libraries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; to the librarian of Special Collections, Purdue University; to Mr. Elliot N. Sivowitch and the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, to the Westinghouse Corporation, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, RCA, and Niagara Mohawkfor photographs; to Robert Golka for information on Project Tesla.

I wish also to thank the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of the Navy, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Archives and Record Service, the technical librarian of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Office of Alien Property, and the Office of the Medical Examiner, City of New York.