The Burning of Tesla's Laboratory

Now that a little time has elapsed since the disaster which overwhelmed Nikola Tesla's laboratory, it is possible to sum up the significance of the event. Our sympathies have been with this unfortunate physicist from the first, and for good reasons. But the average newspaper man, who, by the way, was mostly extravagant with his commisseration, would probably hesitate to venture upon an answer were he asked to explain definitely what he was grieving about. The thing was terribly overdone at the time it happened, and, in illustration of this, we believe it to be a fact that one vivid young lady of the transatlantic press, in her anxiety to be instructive as well as "alive" in her descriptions, went so far as to depict herself undergoing a brilliant electrical ordeal, that is possible only with the body in puris naturalibus! For Tesla's future we have no fear. He is young and indomitable. It took Thomas Carlyle four weeks to quiet his mind after that miserable accident in which John Stuart Mill was concerned, which entailed the destruction of the first volume of the unprinted "French Revolution." But, in spite of sensational reports, we know it to be a fact that Tesla was at work again with clenched determination while the ashes of his hopes are still hot. No! The loss falls least heavily upon the loser. Like many another tireless experimenter, he hoped to give the scientific world the report of his failures as well as of his discoveries; he had not counted upon the casual distruction of his memorabilia and apparatus by fire. The loss falls most heavily upon those scientists who are at work upon the phenomena of high-frequency currents, of insulation, induction, impedance, and resonance, and the problems of obtaining cheap electricity by means of oscillators. In time, Tesla will doubtless reproduce all that was of value in those unfortunate notes and papers. In his own immediate work their loss will scarcely be felt, for his memory is all right, and flashes upon any experience of the past with the revealing power of a search-light. But the years of toil which his work might have saved experimenters by indicating the paths which are open as well as those which are blind, are gone forever.

- London Electrical Review.