Tesla: Man Out of Time

Tesla, at least, seemed perfectly satisfied with what he had achieved in Colorado. He had made lightning dance at his command; he had used the whole Earth as a piece of laboratory equipment; and he had received messages from the stars. Now he was in a hurry to get on with the future.

Gök gürültüsü iyidir, etkileyicidir ama asıl iş gören şimşektir" Mark Twain

A man always has two reasons for the things he does—a good one and the real one.

other lightning passing through the fireball’s nucleus. For him fireballs were merely a fascinating nuisance, yet he took the time to follow this apparently useless research wherever it might lead—and in the process claimed that he had learned how to create the phenomenon at will.15 Modern scientists, using the most powerful nuclear accelerators, have tried and failed to replicate his achievement (although the fascinating, and potentially valuable, nuisance still occurs unasked).

Dr. B. A. Behrend, commenting on the presentation, said, “Not since the appearance of Faraday’s ‘Experimental Researches in Electricity’ has a great experimental truth been voiced so simply and so clearly…. He left nothing to be done by those who followed him. His paper contained the skeleton even of the mathematical theory.”3

From the electrical-engineering editor Thomas Commerford Martin came eloquent support: “Mr. Tesla has been held a visionary, deceived by the flash of casual shooting stars; but the growing conviction of his professional brethren is that because he saw farther, he saw first the low lights flickering on tangible new continents of science. . . .

since his paycheck barely sustained him. As he wryly observed, “the last twenty-nine days of the month were the hardest.