Interesting Visitors Here

Officers and Directors of the Cataract Construction Company Arrived This Morning
And so Did Nickola Tesla
The Great Electrical Expert Couldn't Talked Though Well Attacked by Newspaper Men - The Visitors Are to Attend The Great Power Banquet In Buffalo This Evening

A very interesting party of visitors arrived in the city this morning on a special car from New York over the New York Central Railroad which reached the Falls Street station at 9 o'clock. They are men who furnished the money and enterprise that has made the great power development here a success.

Then there were as guests Nickola Tesla, the famous electrical expert and inventor...A small knot of newspaper men waited at the Prospect House to see the most interesting of electrical experts, Nickola Tesla, who was being specially entertained by President Adams of the Power Company, and when this tall slim figure appeared from the breakfast room he was rapidly surrounded. Mr. Tesla smiled when he saw his captors and threw up his hands in fright.

“Oh, I can't talk to you now; you will have to excuse me this time,” he said with playful pleading.

“Just a moment, Mr. Tesla,” said one of the newspaper men. “Is your visit here in any way connected with further improvements in the transmission of power?”

“I can't say anything at all,” said Mr. Tesla. “I cannot talk.”

At this point President Adams came up and took charge of his guest and pulled him over to the coat-room, telling him he must hurry; but the newspapermen followed and called out, “Mr. Tesla, have you made any recent discoveries in the way of electrical science?”

“Lots of them,” he replied, with a smile, “but I cannot tell you anything now.”

A half-dozen other questions were rained upon the good-natured visitor, but by that time he had pulled on his coat and was hurried to the door and into a carriage.

(Editor's note: The above newspaper article is an excerpt from the January 12, 1897 issue of the Niagara Falls (NY) Gazette. I have made an attempt to make it appear as it originally did in 1897 - even to the point of misspelling Tesla's first name. It seems that newspaper reporters were continually misspelling his name. An earlier issue of the same newspaper misspelled his last name as Telsa.)

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* As of Nov. 1, 1996