The Achievements of Nikola Tesla

Perhaps the most daring of the experimenters of the latest decade of the nineteenth century is Nikola Tesla, who was unknown to the scientific world five or six years ago, but who to-day is regarded as a second Edison, and who has achieved more magnificent results than any half-dozen of his contemporaries combined.

To sum up his achievements in a few words is impossible, says Paper and Press. He has discovered, or, rather, demonstrated, the possibility of illumination without wires or globules in almost exact imitation of daylight. This lot he can vary to order, and although he has not been able to bring it to what he termed a commercial basis, he has advanced so far in the direction that comparatively little remains to be done before the public can buy daylight by the room instead of by the lamp or light. And this is but one of his marvels. He has produced a flame which does not consume and which gives out no heat whatever, and has thus laid the foundation for untold developments in every phase of electrical work. In the production of ozone by electricity he has also scored a distinct triumph. He has shown that nearly all sanitary problems can be solved by the aid of electricity, and he has also made immense strides in the direction of solving the problem of parceling out electrical force and enabling it to be applied to manual labor in every possible direction.

He was invited to visit London and explain his experiments on the very spot made immortal by Faraday. He went, and was received by the Royal Institution with due honors. The moment his fingers grasped his long glass tubes they glowed with a softened splendor, and when he waved them over his head they gleamed with a radiance which was described as weird, if not ghostly. He manufactured flames which appeared dangerous in the extreme, and then placed them in a wooden box, which was absolutely unaffected by them. He repeated these experiments, with several others, while the guest of the National Electric Convention in St. Louis, at the end of February, and he also explained the details somewhat more fully.