Nikola Tesla, Electric Inventor, and His Personality

Tesla, the Electrician.

Harking back to electrical matters for a moment, a word about Tesla, the inventor, may be in order. Like the layers of the undertrolley and the fair women who are the chief purchasers of holiday goods, he has been as hard at work as ever through all the political excitement—was, indeed, as devoted to the perfection of his ingenious harnessings of the mystic fluid while the Spanish war was on as at any other period of his life.

This was clearly shown almost two weeks in advance of this election day when one of the electrical papers came out with a somewhat detailed exposition of his scheme for transmitting power over long distances without wire. Compared with this invention wireless telegraphy sinks into something very like insignificance, but there is no conceivable reason why both should not prove practicable if either may be accomplished. Tesla has long believed in the possibility of both, and that their practical development will be wrought out before the next century is many years old, as he has told the writer more than once. It may be added that he is actively engaged in developing still more marvelous electrical inventions.

In some respects Nikola Tesla is one of the most remarkable men living in New York today. Tall, olive skinned and attenuated by reason of his never ceasing activities, his large dark eyes flash and glow as he talks in a way that is strangely suggestive of the mysterious form of force to the study of which he has dedicated his life’s energies. A native of a small province in southern Europe under the rulership of the Emperor Franz Josef, the inventor has never yet found time thoroughly to master the English tongue, and his speech is peculiar not only for its piquant accent, utterly untransferable to the printed page, but also for the quaint idioms by means of which he indicates his thought to the listener. Yet, despite both these things, his talk is ever entertaining, even when he is discoursing on the most abstruse electrical topics with a person entirely ignorant of electrical principles, for he manages somehow to impart the most difficult facts with a simplicity of diction that makes everything clear and plain.

Wrapped Up In His Calling.

So absorbed in his calling is Nikola Tesla that you can persuade him to talk about subjects other than electrical with the greatest difficulty only, and when he does consent to speak on general topics he finds his memory constantly playing him false as to facts and dates, especially the latter.

But whenever he can be induced to relate his reminiscences of boyhood as he lived it in his wild south European home or to tell of the adventures he passed through as a young man on the strange heights that overlook the Adriatic sea the listener is treated to a series of tales that are singularly entertaining, and there is a conviction that had Tesla not turned his attention to electricity he might have been a narrative writer of exceptional grace and unusual power.

DEXTER MARSHALL.