The World Loses

NIKOLA TESLA'S ELECTRICAL LABORATORY BURNED.

WORK OF YEARS GONE

MUCH NEW AND IMPORTANT APPARATUS BURNED.

ALMOST INCONSOLABLE

The Celebrated Electrician Had Nearly Completed Inventions Which Would Have Greatly Advanced the Art — His Apparatus for Saving the Energy of Coal.

Special dispatch to the Democrat and Chronicle

New York, March 13. — By a fire which almost completely gutted the six-story and basement building at Nos. 33 and 35 South Fifth avenue early this morning, Nikola Tesla, the electrician, lost all of the apparatus with which he has been carrying on his professional experiments.

Among the things destroyed were several nearly completed inventions which were intended to revolutionize electric lighting. Mr. Tesla occupied the entire fourth floor. When the floor gave way his apparatus fell to the second floor, where it lies in unrecognizable ruin. It was not insured. Gillis & Geoghegan, manufacturers of steam fitters' supplies, who occupied the rest of the building, lost their entire stock, valued at $63,000. They were insured for $50,000. The building, which belongs to Mrs. Matilda W. Bruce, was damaged to the extent of $40,000, which is also covered by insurance. The fire was discovered at 2:30 o'clock. John Mahoney, the watchman employed by Gillis & Geoghegan, had left the office on the ground floor just before that hour to bank the fire in the sub-cellar, leaving a single gas jet burning. In about ten minutes he returned and found flames running along the floor and up the sides of the partition of the office. Mahoney yelled for a policeman.

Policeman Haggerty ran to the watchman's assistance. Mahoney had closed the office door and was pouring buckets of water on the flames. Seeing that this did no good he told the policeman to turn in an alarm. A moment later he was driven into the street by great tongues of flames which shot through the floor. From top to bottom the building was saturated with machine oils, and this ignited with great rapidity. Three alarms were sent in and soon a dozen engines and trucks were on the scene. The Touren's lodging house stands next door at No. 37 South Fifth avenue. The firemen turned its 150 men occupants into the street and carried their hose to the roof of the building. The occupants of the Italian tenement houses in the vicinity were also turned out of their homes. The firemen fought the flames for fully three hours before they were under control. The Sixth avenue elevated road was blocked in the meantime, the firemen using its structure to work from.

Inventor Tesla, who lives at the Gerlach hotel, was almost prostrated when he heard the news shortly before breakfast time. He has been for some time in a state of nervousness bordering on exhaustion, because of overwork. He would not at first believe the messenger who brought the news. When convinced of its truth he slammed the door of his room shut and remained buried in thought for an hour. Then he dashed down stairs and went to the scene of the conflagration, where he gazed mournfully up at the fourth floor of the building. Later, in company with a fireman, he went up to the second floor and looked at the ruins of his work. He came out of the building much affected. He paid hardly any attention to the sympathy expressed by his fellow tenants, so absorbed was he in the thought of his loss. After a light lunch at Delmonico's he retired to his apartments and denied himself to all callers, saying that he felt too badly to see anybody. He is regarded as a very eccentric man at the Gerlach, and soon the clerk would not even send up notes from the many friends of the inventor who called.

Nikola Tesla is a Serbian. He came to this country ten years ago and was associated for a short time with Thomas A. Edison. He has received honorary degrees from Yale and Columbia Colleges, and is the controlling electrical engineer to the Niagara Power Company and many other concerns. Since he has been in the building in South Fifth avenue he has worked with about a dozen assistants in a very secretive manner. It was understood that he was working on inventions intended to save much of the energy now lost in electric lighting. It is well known to electricians that about 96 per cent. of the energy used to produce incandescent lights now goes to waste, and he has said that he hopes to save one-third of the loss.