Nikola Tesla - Genius or Mad Scientist?

Obscure scientist Nikola Tesla left behind a strange legacy; some fear it could lead to Russia's most potent weapon

OTTAWA (NEA) — Last March, during a cold and clear evening, a strange extra-terrestrial phenomenon occurred over Ontario. As reported by Canadian government official Andrew Michrowski, "the sky lit up with sheets of light traveling in a 360-degree circle." Michrowski says the light pulsated, in a perfect pattern, for an hour.

The Aurora Borealis? The tailings of a UFO? Michrowski says he considered every possible explanation before deciding, gravely, that the sheet lightning was man-made, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and was part of an ongoing experiment by the Russians to modify the weather for agriculture and defense purposes.

Michrowski, employed as a futurist in Canada's office of the secretary of state, had for some time suspected the Soviet Union in this regard. The sheet lightning activity sealed his opinion. He has spent the time since March trying to convince his government, and that of the U.S., that the world may be in new and imminent peril.

And he's not alone in this belief. A growing number of mostly private citizens on the American continent are increasingly worried that the USSR is behind the recent souring of global climate conditions. Theirs is at best a frustrating interest. Few scientists believe the theory, and many of its advocates are considered to be wacky.

No one doubts that, as late, the weather has indeed been odd. Last winter's record freeze on the eastern side of the U.S. and Canada was but a part of a gradual cooling of the earth since 1940. Yet no government would say this is the Russians' doing. The conventional wisdom is that the chief culprit is pollution which masks the sun.

Also, few scientists would doubt that weather modification techniques are actively coveted by superpower nations. In testimony before Congress in 1974, Dartmouth's Dr. Gordon McDonald advised that climate control would perhaps be the ultimate "covert" weapon:

"Storms, floods, droughts, earthquakes and tidal waves (are) viewed as unusual but not unexpected. (A secret climatic war) could go on for years with only (the perpetrating nation) being aware of it. The years of storms would be attributed to unkindly nature, and only after a nation was thoroughly drained would an armed takeover be attempted."

But theory is one thing, application another.

Dr. Andria Puharich, a medical researcher from Ossining, N.Y., says he has "personally seen to it that Jimmy Carter is aware" of the alleged Russian interest, but he expects no thankful action for his troubles; "Nobody is listening," he says, "nobody believes it, nobody cares."

Except the few, that is. Michrowski, Puharich and others care enough about the weather modification possibility to risk their reputations in its exposure And they seldom risk on the side of moderation. Says Dr. Pulharich: "If the Russians can affect world weather, and I believe they can, it's the most ominous development on the planet."

According to believers, the full gravity of the matter is as yet years away. Ken Killich, a Canadian technician and science activist, says the Russians are now merely learning about weather modification. In fact, Killich says, the weather that has been altered by the USSR to date has been done so through experimental error. Killich believes the Russians have set out to cultivate vast new areas of their nation, much the same as the U. S. and Canada did earlier in the century. Not wanting to create a dust bowl of their own, however, Killich says the Russians have been trying to stimulate the climate to do the biddings of ground-bound button pushers.

Instead of just influencing their own region, though, Killich says the Soviets have "lost control" and hence have affected the world. Michrowski adds the opinion that Soviet experiments in the last year were responsible for shifts in massive high pressure fronts; these shifts backfired, giving the Soviet Union "a lousy winter too."

Just what it is the Reds may be doing wrong is unknown. This is a party because no one knows what it is the nation may be working with. The only thing Russian critics do know, they say, is that the Soviet experiments are based on the work of a Yugoslav-American scientist named Nikola Tesla. Who is Tesla? That's a story in itself.

Nikola Tesla was the son of a Croatian preacher, who immigrated to America from Belgrade in 1884. On arriving in New York he had four cents in his pocket, and a vision in his mind that man was superman if only he allowed himself to be. In the next 59 years he became one of the most prolific and remarkable inventors of his time.

According to one writer, Tesla's accomplishments were like "the dreams of an intoxicated god." He was responsible for modern radio, he perfected neon and fluorescint lighting, he invented radar 40 years before World War II, and he created robots a century before Star Wars. The exact number of his patents is unknown: it is more than 125.

Nikola Tesla's greatest achievement was the discovery of the rotating magnetic field, the fundamental element of alternating current. Until Tesla, electricity was confined to direct current, a system that prevented its transmission over any but short distances. Tesla's AC was to change the whole nature of power. The change was not without its critics. No less an expert than Thomas Edison said Tesla's system was dangerous, therefore impractical. Tesla countered that anything is dangerous, if mishandled. To prove the merits of properly applied AC he gave exhibitions where he passed 1 million volts through his body, and the public was convinced.

Tesla teamed with George Westinghouse to establish the first polyphase alternating current system in America, at Niagara Falls. For the first time power was sent over a distance to feed a city, in this case Buffalo, 30 miles away. Tesla's biographer, John O'Neill, says every transmission pole in the world is a monument to that moment.

Yet if Tesla was brilliant beyond understanding, he was also suspiciously eccentric. He shunned women, was terrified of germs, and could not be in the same room with round items such as billiard balls. What's more, he talked incessantly of such things as death rays, impenetrable waves of energy and other items never produced.

Tesla said he knew how to destroy the Empire State building through electrical vibrations from a palm-sized box. He said he could create a beam of light that could send fuel to ships at sea. He actually began one effort, financed by J.P. Morgan, to create a system that would transmit energy around the world without the aid of wires.

This latter work, according to Andrew Michrowski and others, is what is being used by the Russians today to modify the weather. Tesla said the ground "is literally alive with electrical vibrations," therefore it can be used as a conductor. Tesla said electricity can be driven into the earth at one point and brought out at any other.

Tesla used a coil of his own invention to prove his hypothesis. He worked in a Frankensteinian laboratory in the Rocky Mountains, complete with regular thunderstorms from above. He reportedly was able to create his own lightning, to bounce wireless current back and forth on the globe, and to illuminate 200 bulbs via earth 26 miles away.

How does Nikola Tesla square with weather modification? Andrew Michrowski says the Russians have tapped Tesla's experiments in order to send gigantic amounts of energy in precise ways, against the elements. A cold front, therefore, may be moved by waves of Russian currents coming up in formula from the earth or sea.

Michrowski insists this is not so preposterous as it sounds. He reminds that last year much of the world's communication system was disrupted by strange forces of interference coming from the Soviet Union. The interference was so harsh that some frequency channels were rendered useless. Dozens of nations filed complaints.

"The Russians admitted they were the cause," says Michrowski, "they also said they were conducting experiments. But what kind? They wouldn't say."

Michrowski suggests the experiments were Tesla-like in nature. "The Russians admire Tesla. They revere his work. I believe they have been able to use him to great scientific advantage."