Genius at Work - Dr. Nikola Tesla (July 4, 1956)

By Adam Sudetic Member, Lodge 519

DETROIT, Mich. — Here are more of the virtually countless tributes paid the late Dr. Nikola Tesla in 1932 on the occasion of the inventor's 75th birthday.

S. M. Kintner, Vice President of Westinghouse Electric Corporation:

"Tesla's marvelous imagination led him to attempts at distant communications without connecting wires. Many of the instrumentalities developed by him were found to be of inestimable value to the later investigators in the Radio art. In many instances, Tesla's early experiments can be distinguished from those of later successful investigators in Radio, only by most painstaking examinations."

E. F. Northrup, Vice President and Technical Advisor of the Ajax Electrotermig Corporation:

"There was just one step to be taken to start melting metal by an entirely new method. This step was to transform the volume down and the current up, using what is universally known as the "Tesla Oscillatory Current Circuit."

Comparisons Odious

B. A. Behrend, Consulting Engineer, Fellow A.I.E.E., American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member A.S.C.E., A.S.M.E.:

"I am one of the humblest, but perhaps the last engineer whose good fortune it has been to design literally millions of horsepower of motors and generators of the Tesla System.

"And though one should think that such monuments to your great inventive genius be sufficient to fill the world with the fame of the name you bear it must be recorded that such would be the case had it not been for the world's usual ingratitude toward its benefactors.

"To those of us who have lived through the anxious and fascinating period of the development of alternating current power transmission there is not a scintilla of doubt that the name of Tesla is as great as the name of Faraday is in the discovery of the phenomena underlying all electrical work.

"Comparisons are odious and at the moment, while we are grateful that you have lived to see your great ideas realized far beyond your own dreams, it is perhaps bad taste to point out that the popular inventor of the incandescent lamp has had to look to your discoveries and inventions, and to our generating equipment designed with your ideas, for the generation of the electric energy without which his inventions would have remained lifeless.

"As there is so much popular misunderstanding on this subject I think these lines may help to adjudicate where fame should be, and where praise should fall."

We can go on and on, but I think this will suffice to show what serious minded people, true lovers of the facts and truth, unbiased and unprejudiced, thought of Dr. Tesla during his life.

They were not afraid to tell the God's truth as they knew it and saw it. They gladly acknowledged the greatness of Dr. Tesla's genius and they thanked him for what he did for humanity.