The Last Tesla Discovery

Nikola Tesla is a bright young man, and he has made some invaluable discoveries in applied electricity. But he mistakes theory for facts accomplished, as he did in his idea of a wireless telegraph. That an impulse can be given to the ether that fills space, so named, by even the slightest discharge of the electric current seems no more doubtful than that the fall of a pebble in a pool will create an ever-widening circle of disturbance whose extent cannot be known.

A pebble dropped into the middle of the Pacific Ocean might cause some disturbance thousands of miles away, though unappreciable to man. But, the law tha' governs all motion is so rigid, that the breaking of a gigantic wave would overcome any effect caused by dropping a pebble.

Mr. Tesla's latest idea is that the impulse needed to fire a ship's batteries can be communicated by some operation in a laboratory thousands of miles distant. This is declared to be an utterly abeurd idea. The theory is probably well enough, if only the circumstances and proper conditions can be provided. As they cannot be provided, the idea is absurd, because the theory upon which it is founded, or upon which it depends, is wholly impracticable.

Marvelous as the advance in science is, mau knows very little more about the secret springs of the energies that pervade the universe than he did 100 years ago. The mission of the scientific man relates to the application of the energies of nature to the betterment of man in associated life, and in so far as science does that it is a boon to the race. The scientific explorer must keep his head.