Tesla: Master of Lightning Page #4

the beautiful and wealthy

socialite Flora Dodge

and even the famous French

actress Sarah Bernhardt.

But in spite of his charisma,

Tesla was only interested in

his inventions.

He had so many phobias that

he couldn't have had

close relationships with women.

He didn't like most of the jewelry

that they wore or the perfume

and he couldn't bear to touch

hair. And these...

and in fact he didn't like

to shake hands. And so

these are all things that do tend

to discourage intimate relationships.

The inventor even claimed

that he destroyed his sexuality

at the age of 40.

A certain French actress kept

coming to me

and made it impossible for me

to concentrate.

It's a pity too, for sometimes

I feel so lonely.

Throughout the 1890s, alongside

his work on AC power technology,

Tesla was also experimenting

with high-frequency electricity.

In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell

in England

had proven mathematically that light

was electromagnetic radiation.

Light was electricity vibrating

at an extremely high frequency.

To explore this unknown world,

Tesla invented a unique device,

still known today as a Tesla coil.

The Tesla coil is an instrument

that can step up voltages

to high voltages at high frequencies

that essentially transmits

a radio signal.

Tesla invited friends and

potential investors

to late-night demonstrations

in his laboratory.

In experiments, he would

permit his guests

to pass thousands of volts of

electricity through their bodies

to light a lamp or melt

a wire in their hands.

Mark Twain was always

a willing subject.

Thunder is good.

Thunder is impressive.

But it is lightning that

does the work.

Even today it would be a little bit

scary to go into Tesla's laboratory

and, in those days, when people

didn't know anything about electricity,

it must have been terrifying.

With high frequencies,

Tesla developed

some of the first neon and

fluorescent illumination.

He also took the first X-ray

photographs.

But these discoveries quickly

paled one day in 1890

when a vacuum tube illuminated in

his hand without any wire connection.

To me, it was the first evidence

that I was transmitting energy

through the air.

This was the beginning of

Tesla's lifelong obsession:

The wireless transmission of energy.

In 1892, Tesla was invited to Europe

to present the results of his

high-frequency experiments.

In London and Paris, he amazed

scientists and engineers

with lighting and electrical effects that

looked more like magic than science.

He also announced a

remarkable new possibility.

I would say a few words on a

thought which fills my mind

and concerns the welfare of all.

I mean the transmission of

intelligence and even power

without the use of wires.

I am becoming more convinced daily

of the practicality of this scheme.

The race for radio was

about to begin.

In 1888 the German physicist

Heinrich Hertz

had demonstrated that

currents of high frequency

emit electro-magnetic waves,

or radio waves, into space.

But creating a practical means

of wireless communication

would require a quantum leap

in imagination.

Hertz created the first radio

transmitter and the first receiver.

He had shown that you could create

an electrical signal in one place

and detect it in another

place with nothing in between.

While in England, Tesla befriended

Sir William Crookes,

the discoverer of radiant matter.

Crookes was a mystic

and believed that human beings

could communicate telepathically

when they were attuned to

high-frequency brainwaves.

Tesla was skeptical.

But one night in his bed

he had a powerful and disturbing vision.

I saw a cloud carrying angelic

figures,

one of whom gradually assumed

the features of my mother.

In that instant, a certitude,

which no words can express,

came upon me that

my mother had died.

And that was true.

Tesla was convinced that he and his

mother were tuned to the same frequency.

His otherworldly experience

would soon lead him to another

revolutionary invention.

On his return to New York in 1893,

Tesla banished himself from social life

and disappeared into his new

laboratory on south Fifth Avenue.

Following his uncanny intuition

he soon discovered that Tesla coils

would transmit and receive

powerful radio signals

when they were tuned to resonate

at the same frequency.

Tuning is the key to all radio

and television transmission.

In my laboratory, I could take

in my hands a coil

tuned to my body and collect

three-quarter horsepower

anywhere in the room without

any tangible connection.

Sometimes I would produce flames

shooting out from my head,

and run a motor in my hands

or light six or eight lamps.

By early 1895,

Tesla was ready to transmit a signal

50 miles to West Point, New York.

He could now produce one million

volts with his new conical coil.

But that year, on the Ides of March,

disaster struck.

Fire broke out in the building

which housed Tesla's laboratory.

Everything was lost.

Utterly disheartened and broken

in spirit, Nikola Tesla, one of

the world's greatest electricians,

returned to his room in the Gerlach

yesterday morning and took to his bed.

He has not arisen since.

I was devastated.

What could I say?

The work of a lifetime lost in a fire

that lasted only an hour or so.

The timing could not have

been worse.

In England, a young Italian experimenter

named Guglielmo Marconi

had been hard at work and created

a device for wireless telegraphy.

Concerned that Marconi would exploit

his ideas, Tesla opened a new laboratory

and rushed to complete his own

system for wireless communication.

This patent, filed by Tesla

in September 1897,

is the fundamental technology

for radio.

But it would be 50 years before

Tesla got credit for his invention.

Various people in various

different countries

had the idea of exploiting

this as a means of communication.

But I think Tesla was the one

with the real vision, in which

he would broadcast signals on

a definite carrier frequency

and you would have a series of

antennas sensitive to one frequency

only tuned to a certain frequency,

and it would detect only one

of these signals and make an

intelligible transmission.

And, once again,

his vision describes the world

that we live in.

I was so blue and discouraged

in those days that I do not

believe I could have borne up

but for the regular treatments of

electricity which I applied to myself.

It puts into a tired body

what it needs most: life force.

Following the destruction of

his laboratory,

Tesla developed a deeper interest

in eastern thought and spiritualism.

Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about

the Vedantic prana

and akasha and the kalpas

which he claims

are the only theories

modern science can entertain.

Inspired by the Hindu teacher

Swami Vivekananda,

Tesla began to look at the universe

as a symphony of vibrations and waves.

We are whirling through endless

space with an inconceivable speed.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes