Nikola Tesla in Active Competition

Nikola Tesla is in the active competition for new conceits and novelties in the line of electrical experiments and devices which shall attract attention and incidentally coin money. He gives forth that for some time he has been noticing disturbances that had a peculiar effect upon his instruments, and he has become firmly convinced that “they are the results of an attempt by some human beings, not of our world, to speak to us by signals.” These he thinks are not from terrestrial beings, nor caused by the sun or moon, and hence he is forced to believe that they come from some other planet. He concludes that there are inhabitants of other planets besides this earth, and he reasons out that probably the attempts to signal the earth’s people are from people on the planet Venus or Mars. Consequently he has undertaken to devise apparatus that will answer these signals. He operates on the theory that a vibratory method of opening up communication may succeed; to this object he is devoting his genius and efforts. His operations are being conducted from a favorable point near Flagstaff, an observation point in the Arizona mountains. Tesla has come to be regarded as visionary and unreliable, because he has promised and predicted so many extraordinary things that never have come to pass. Astronomers take with great allowance whatever he puts forth, and this new and sensational statement by him is discredited and ridiculed by the scientific men who have said anything about it. The idea of communicating with the planets is an old one. Thomas Dick, an English philosopher, wrote a book on “Celestial Scenery” half a century ago, in which he exploited the Tesla theory of this time. Nothing new on the subject has since been developed. While Tesla is recognized as a genius, and his work in electricity has great value, he is not recognized by scientific men as a reliable authority.