Park Benjamin is Tesla's Champion

He Protests Against the Unfair Criticism of the Electrician.

CALLS HIM A LEADING INVENTOR

Says the Main Trouble Is that the Scientist Is Ahead of His Age.

Most of the electrical periodicals, and even some of the newspapers, are just now engaged in hurling uncomplimentary adjectives at Nikola Tesla. They are calling him a dreamer and insinuating that he has not invented anything at all. He has, they say, promised much and fulfilled little.

Mr. Park Benjamin, whose prominence in the electrical world needs no exploiting, spoke warmly yesterday to a reporter for the Telegraph on this subject.

“What has Tesla done,” said Mr. Benjamin, “that the trade papers and electrical journals bark at his heels like a pack of curs? Has he declared he can do anything that is impossible? He has done much that is practical and useful and that has advanced the world in the field of electricity. But he has not come out with any claptrap scheme like the Keely motor and gone down into Wall Street to get the dollars out of people’s pockets and give them nothing in return.

“I was one of the first to fight the Keely motor, and I would be the first to fight Tesla if he came out with any such impossibility. With some others, away back in 1872, I prepared a series of mechanical tests by which Mr. Keely could demonstrate the truth of his theory. He refused to apply them, and yet Keely stock could then be bought and sold on the Street the same as any other stock.

“If Tesla was now trying to float any of his theories in the same manner, robbing the people in the name of science with an impossible, impractical scheme, I would do the same as I did then. But whom is Tesla hurting? Let his critics point out one man whose dollars Tesla is taking on false pretenses. There may be a few personal friends who are supplying money with which he can continue his experiments, but I do not know that even this is true.

“Tesla is an inventor of the first class. The only reason that I can see for these attacks upon him by the papers is that he has not done more.

“I do not believe Tesla cares for his inventions after he has evolved them. In other words, he is not in the wizard business for profit. Because Thomson and a whole lot of others spent a great deal of time on the electrical storage batteries are we to call them fools? Some of them were, no doubt, but Thomson wasn’t; and he was the chief of them all on that subject.

“Tesla is far in advance of his age. There have been others in the same position and they have been hooted at by the ablest of their contemporaries. Who was Columbus? A visionary, with the wildest dreams that were ever heard of. The whole world, as it was then, howled him down. He justified his position by his discovery. He was right all the time, but had he stopped short of land on the Western Hemisphere he would have died with the stigma of a visionary and a dreamer upon him. Galileo was forced to say the world was flat and motionless when he knew the contrary to be true. His name is bright now with the laurels he would have won only for the ignorance of his age. William Gilbert, who began the subject of electricity, and can justly be called its father, was hooted at by no less a man than Francis Bacon, because he said the earth was a big magnet. That there is an earth is no greater truth than that it is a big magnet, and yet Gilbert died amid the jeers of the foremost scientists of his day.

“Stephen Gray was another electrician who dreamed dreams and saw visions, according to the wise men of his time. He had the happiness of realizing some of his dreams and visions before he died. He discovered almost everything we know now about insulation and conductors, and he died nearly 200 years ago. Now he is recognized as one of the greatest discoverers that ever lived. He was a Charterhouse pensioner and most of his discoveries were made with the crudest appliances. After he had done all that now makes his name famous he died without the slightest recognition from the world.

“Tesla may be visionary, but nobody can prove it. He has planned things that are exceedingly improbable, but who shall say that they are impossible? Even if they be impossible, who is injured by them? He asks nobody for money; there is no Tesla stock to be boomed on Wall street; no investors have been asked to take hold of his schemes and lay out their dollars on them.

“Not so very long ago a man made the startling announcement that he could transmit the sound of the voice from one point to another over a long distance. He was laughed to scorn, and some people demonstrated the impossibility of this ‘dream.’ The laugh ceased long ago and the people use commonly the result of the ‘dream’ of this ‘visionary.’

“Look at the wild schemes that have taken money from people’s pockets, and compare them in their results with Tesla’s theories. Thousands were spent in electrical sugar, in taking gold from sea water, in the Keely motor. That was charlatanism. Who says that Tesla is a charlatan? Who can prove it if it is said?

“The worst that can be said of Tesla is that his imagination boils. And I do not say even that. He has been pressed to the extreme by the newspapers for good stories, and perhaps he has unconsciously made them too good. But what difference does it make? History affords but few examples of inventors of the first class who have not had some wild ideas in their time, but show me the man who dare say Tesla’s ideas are impossible. Improbable they may be, but the impossibility of an undemonstrated theory is what nobody can predicate. Wait ten years and then review all of Tesla’s work. See then on which side of the ledger the balance will be.

“Tesla has always been antagonized by the regular electrical crowd because he has not freely made them acquainted with his discoveries. The usual mode of procedure is to read a paper before the electrical engineers and have them discuss it. Instead of taking the regular and gregarious course Tesla has flocked by himself. When he has anything to say he puts it forth in a particular electrical paper. He used to use another, which is attacking him now.

“If Tesla had a hairbrained plan and wanted to form a stock company to exploit it he could do it with ease. If I announced the discovery of a method to make carbon burn cold in a galvanic cell, while another man announced that he could send smell by telegraph, how much chance would I have of forming a stock company? Not a particle until people had become surfeited with odors that had come a thousand miles. The people want something sensational, even if it is of no practical value.

“Tesla has made many discoveries and inventions. Among them are a regulator for rotary current motor; single circuit, self-starting synchronizing motors, change from double current to single current motors, motor with ‘current lag’ artificially secured, the magnetic lag motor, a method of obtaining difference of phase by magnetic shielding, a new system of alternating current motors and transformers, the Tesla rotating magnetic field, motors with closed conductors, rotating field transformers, modifications of the Tesla polyphase systems, utilizing familiar types of generators of the continuous current type, and many other useful things. He has patents both in this country and in Europe and has contributed largely to the good of electricity.

“‘Let him alone,’ I would say to his critics. ‘You cannot judge a man like Tesla by the ordinary rules of Wall street. Learn to draw a broad line of distinction between improbabilities and impossibilities. Tesla takes his fate in his hands when he makes new and startling propositions. Columbus took his fate in his hands when he made his startling proposition. Results are the real test. Wait for them.’

“I do not know whether Mr. Tesla is right or wrong in his newest schemes, but I do not say he is a visionary. I do not know. But I can wait.

“If I were inclined to trouble Mr. Tesla with a letter in accordance with my present feeling I am afraid I should have to say something like this:

“‘Why on earth do you worry yourself about the attacks now being made? Is it not the fate of every inventor and discoverer ahead of his time to meet just that sort of criticism? Besides, have you not sinned against the virtuous commercialism of the present age? Where are all the ’scopes and ’graphs that you ought to have evolved and thereby depleted the pockets of the gulls and incidentally filled the advertising columns of trade papers? Where is the Tesla-Jones Battery Company and the Tesla-Smith torpedo and the Tesla-Brown motor and the Tesla-Robinson electric bootjack? Have you erected a single plant in New Jersey for extracting gold from paving stones? Have you discovered a single new vibratory induction? Have you ever contrived a cradle to be operated by the howls of its inmate? Have you ever solved the great problem of transmitting smell by telegraph? Have you ever even lifted yourself one paltry inch by your boot straps? Where is any great work by you on thumb rules for electrical nursemaids? When was your invaluable handbook ever published on “All I Know About Electricity?” How many weary hours have you ever spent in trying the chemical effect of everything on everything else? Have you ever suggested any new names? Couldn’t you at least have concocted a few such as “impedisity” or “magnetance” or “ohmality?” Where are your classic contributions to the learned societies wherein you demonstrate that discoveries of vast importance can be made by juggling x from one side of creation to the other?

“‘No. Instead of rendering such great service to science as the above, you have wickedly persisted in doing your work, and occasionally telling people in your own way and in your own time what you are doing or hope to do and in maliciously getting results and trusting to heaven and future common sense for utilization of them.

“‘Now you see the consequences of that unfortunate course. I cannot offer you much consolation. How can I? If you have deliberately chosen to put yourself in the same wretched category as that of the self deluded dreamer Gilbert, that black wizard Guericke, that pestilent heretic Galileo, and that abominable old imposter Franklin, you had better not complain, but just thank heaven that this is the nineteenth century and that no stake and fagot are awaiting you in Union Square to convert you into a burnt offering amid the approving howls of the electrical journals.’”