Nikola Tesla is perhaps more popular and taken more seriously now than when the great man was alive. "Tesla: Man Out Of Time" is a comprehensive biography that gives the reader a truthful picture of the man without delving much into his "mad scientist" imagery, and while Cheney does mention his bizarre personal behavior, like taking meals only when the servings were multiples of the number 3, an obsession with pigeons, and a few other oddities, her focus is a respectful one.
We may recall Tesla as far as today's popular culture as the inventor of the Tesla coils, which could muster amazing amounts of electricity for the time, in the very late 1890's, and of course the much rumored but as of yet unproven or discovered "death ray" that was a possible ultimate deterrent
for all war, with incredibly refined particles capable of instantly disintegrating any target within 200 miles of the device. But his accomplishments were just as phenomenal, such as proving ultimately AC current was far safer and far superior to Edison's DC current, during which the "war of the currents" were taken to absurd levels by Edison and his henchmen, who kidnapped family pets and made public displays of the poor creatures standing on a metal plate and electrocuted with as much as 1000 volts of AC current to try to scare people away from Tesla's model for what would become the modern electrical grid we know today. I came away from this book already knowing Edison was a dirtbag, who gleefully stole ideas from his employees, lied through his teeth on anything that caught his attention, and did all he could to destroy Tesla, with money his only real goal.
Tesla gave the world the first wireless (radio) system, beating Marconi by a couple of years, although Marconi would be given credit for radio, and would only be exposed for the imitator of Tesla's very system after the Second World War by the U.S. Supreme Court. Sadly, this vindication was two years after Tesla had died.
We discover he was making the first inroads to radar, refrigeration, even haphazardly discovering what would be known as X rays before that supposed inventor Roetgen got the credit. It was astonishing how far advanced this man was, in fact so futuristic he laid the groundwork for transistors and many other important inventions. It would seem the man was indeed ahead of his own human pace, his mind working furiously at a pace Tesla had difficulty keeping up with. He failed to document many of his experiments and their results as he raced from one project to another.
While necessarily including details about his patents and working details of his invention that may be a bit tedious especially if you are not a professional in the world of electrical mechanics and other highly refined areas Tesla worked in, it is nonetheless a fine tribute to a man whom, in a society that was bursting with inventors and cutthroat competition for the financial backup of the rich and certain related industries, was seemingly trapped in a Victorian day and age while his mind was becoming one with the cosmos, although Einstein would claim correctly the nature of gravity, speed of light and other mind blowing topics through his special theory of relativity, which incidentally Tesla disagreed with, being one of the relatively few times he would be way off the mark.
This is an important well researched and written book, timely and fascinating. Now, the Discovery Channel is supposedly going to air a mini-series on Tesla and his legendary if not verified "death ray", and conspiracy theories that suggest he was murdered and his papers and designs that were of military global importance stolen. The man who basically gave us the blueprint for sonar among so much more died at 86 in 1943, so it would seem that murdering the very ill lonely man would be totally unnecessary. In the meantime, his real work is plenty to get your neurons firing.
- Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Login now
- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
