Nikola Tesla at 80

At 80 Tesla dreams of the generation and transmission of energy in ways that must seem fantastic to engineers who build great central stations and send electricity 300 miles. Away with these wires, away with the cumbrous apparatus, is his cry. Let the planet itself be your conductor and inductor. China drawing its energy from Muscle Shoals — why not?

These visions come from a man who helped to create this electrical age. He was not the only one to propose the generation and transmission of alternating current — the kind we use nowadays most widely — for great distances. But he was certainly the first to demonstrate the practicability, and this in the face of the powerful opposition of Edison in this country and Lord Kelvin abroad. If we now use alternating current motors to drive all kinds of machinery, from electric fans to railway trains, we have Tesla to thank. And so it is with the high-frequency currents that have been a blessing in the practice of medicine. It was he who investigated them, he who designed the apparatus that made it possible for any therapist to apply them. From this it was but a step to wireless, a branch of engineering to which he made contributions of historic value.

Prophecy — it has been Tesla's specialty. If our motors, our therapeutic apparatus, our broadcasting are partly the result of his past divinations, let him tell us more of a planet vibrating with energy that any community may tap. Who knows but men will yet wonder how it was possible for Tesla in 1936 to conceive the technical realities of 2036?