Master of Electricity

It is strange that a young man employed as an assistant in Edison's workshop should have surpassed the great inventor himself, and become almost at a single bound, the bright, particular star in the electrical world. That is what Nikola Tesla has done, and his achievement reads like a romance; but it is more than a romance, because his work opens a new age in electricity.

Tesla is only 36 years old. He was born in Serbia, where, to quote the words of Mr. Martin, in the sketch of Tesla in the Century for February, "a great Slav orator has publicly reproached bis 120,000,000 fellows in Eastern Europe with their utter inability to invent even a mousetrap." His father was a clergyman; his mother a brilliant woman with the inventive faculty. Nikola was intended for the Church, but his inventive disposition took him in a more congenial direction. He mastered mathematics and mechanics, and learned six languages, and then his career began. He was connected with the telegraph service. He drifted to Paris, and finally met an associate of Edison, with the result of a prompt voyage to America.

What he has done here is the wonder and admiration of the scientific world. It is he who has shown the possibilities of the alternating current in electricity. It is his invention which enables electricity to be transmitted more than 100 miles in Germany, and which will transmit the power of Niagara Falls to the cities of Western New York, and in the course of time to New York City, and possibly farther. He has shown the comparative harmlessness of these alternating currents. Mr. Martin writes: "It has been supposed that ordinary currents of 1,000 or 2,000 volts' potential would surely kill, but Mr. Tesla has been seen receiving through his hands currents at a potential of more than 200,000 volts, vibrating a million times per second, and manifesting themselves in dazzling streams of light."

It is said that after this test Mr. Tesla's body and clothing have continued for some time to emit fine glimmers or halos of splintered light, and it is further declared that "Mr. Tesla expects some day to envelope himself in a complete sheet of lambent fire that will leave him quite uninjured." Such currents as he now uses, he says, "would keep a naked man warm at the North Pole." One effect of Mr. Tesla's inventions will be to do without many of the wires now used.

These are only a few of the wonderful things he is doing. That he is a great genius is universally acknowledged, and it is safe to expect from him marvelous developments in electrical invention.