Nikola Tesla's Eighty-Fifth Birthday

While there's life there's hope. But Nikola Tesla's eighty-fifth birthday finds his death ray still in the blueprint stage. The great inventor - one of the greatest of his age - says he could build a few plants, at a cost of $2,000,000 each, within three months, and melt the engine of any approaching plane at a distance of hundreds of miles. But the Government isn't listening and the few millions are lacking. The years crowd in on Mr. Tesla and his death ray.

The immigrant youth had discovered the rotary magnetic field, which made possible alternating current motors, before he arrived here in 1884, from a village in Czecho-Slovakia. He helped harness Niagara, turned in numerous inventions which became historic contributions to power transmission, was an associate of Thomas A. Edison, won the 1915 Nobel physics prize and now holds 700 patents. When he grows too old to dream, he'll have this to remember. And he also may remember that many of his earlier dreams caused amusement - as when he said it would soon be possible to telephone around the world.

Alone in his room in the Hotel New Yorker, he still delves deep in the hidden chambers of electro-mechanics, his deep-set eyes eager and intense under their bushy brows. Wireless transmission of power is still one of his many deep preoccupations.