Nikola Tesla's Work - Wonders He Has Accomplished and Others He Promises

His Achievements in Electrical Research - Endless Possibilities of Problems He Is Now at Work Upon - ls Experiments with the Roentgen Rays - His Personality

Nikola Tesla is a man about whom the general public knows very little. There have been magazine articles about him and books about him, and, since Prof. Roentgen made known his discoveries in X-ray photography and Tesla followed up the discoveries with experiments of his own, the papers from time to time have told how Tesla had "seen the human heart" and had "photographed the human brain" and done other wonderful things. His name has been on the tongues of many people, but not one man in a hundred could tell what Tesla had done for science, or very little if anything about him personally.

Tesla himself is responsible for the lack of popular knowledge of himself. He isn't one of the kind to hide his light under a bushel, but he lets the light shine and hides himself. He doesn't like to see his name in print. He doesn't like to be praised for what he has done or is doing. He wants, more than anything else, to be let alone. He discourages notoriety of any sort. When newspaper men call on him to ask him questions he is the quintessence of courtesy and politeness. He is willing to tell them anything they want to know about electricity or any of the other subjects on which he is well informed, but on one subject — Tesla — he is silent. When The Sun reporter called on him early last week and told him that he had been instructed to write a story about Tesla and his inventions, the inventor said:

"Don't; there has been too much already." and he said it in a way that showed he meant it. It was only after a second visit and much earnest urging that he would consent to the publication of anything, and he surrounded his consent with conditions.

He was asked to tell which of his many inventions he considered the most useful and satisfactory to him, and he replied that first in the list was the transmission of power with the help of wires. This power was the alternating electric current now in use. Next he mentioned the motor that made possible the transmission of power with only a single wire. It used to be supposed that two wires were necessary to complete a circuit, one for the electricity to come back on. This motor does away with the extra wire, and lessens the expense and the waste. Third, he mentioned the thing which he hoped to accomplish: Doing away with that wire altogether, and using the earth. In a lecture delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1891, Tesla said:

"We are whirling through endless space with an inconceivable speed. All around us everything is spinning. Everything is moving. Everywhere is energy. There must bo some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly. With the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with giant strides. The mere contemplation of these magnificent possibilities expands our minds, strengthens our hopes and fills our hearts with extreme delight."

He had this third thing in mind when he delivered the lecture. He has been working now ten years to accomplish it, and he has had encouraging success with his experiments.

Of his inventions, In this talk with The Sun reporter, he mentioned fourth the perfecting of an apparatus for the production of electric vibrations; fifth, the production of light without any carbon such as is required in the ordinary incandescent lamp. Light is produced by the help of electrical vibration. By the method proposed 200 times the light can be had with the same power. Sixth, he mentioned the evolution of the oscillator, a work on which he has been engaged five or six years and which is about ready to be put into general use. Tesla says:

"Of the energy that goes to the making of electric light 95 per cent. is wasted. The oscillator saves energy. It is the steam engine and the dynamo combined and in use it means the saving of the energy that is now wasted."

Of the problems he has worked on Tesla said:

"They affect humanity as a whole." The energy that is wasted must be saved, he said. He spoke of the utilization of the power of Niagara Falls and of its possibilities and the possibilities in nature elsewhere. He said the existing faults of society could be reformed only by producing more energy; that energy was in nature and the problem of getting control of it and of utilizing it was the problem on which he worked. He cared nothing for ordinary invention. He thought only of the great problems. He believed that they would be mastered and the whole world would benefit.

Tesla is a man of striking personality. He is unusually tall and is thin. His head is large and is crowned with jet-black hair. His manner is quick and impulsive. In speech he is earnest. He wastes few words. His whole bearing impresses one with the fact that he is a man of action, He is only 30 years old. He was born in Smiljan, Lika, a borderland region of Austria-Hungary, of the Serbian race. His father was a clergyman in the Greek Church. His mother was a genius with a knack of invention. Tesla got his early education at Gospich in a public school, and later spent three years in the Higher Real Schule at Carlstadt, Croatia. He saw his first steam engine while at the latter school. He inherited his mother's knack of invention, and when he left school in 1873 he went to experimenting with electricity against the wish of his father, who wanted him to enter the ministry. That was out of the question, and then his father wanted him to become a college professor of mathematics and physics and with that purpose sent him to the Polytechnic School at Gratz.

In this school there was a gramme dynamo, and Tesla got the notion into his head that a dynamo could be operated without commutator or brushes, such as this one was equipped with, and he began work then and there on the ideas that later developed one of his great inventions, a rotating field motor.

The idea of becoming a professor vanished, and he took up the engineering curriculum. For the next few years he kept up his studies, and succeeded in inventing several things in connection with the telephone. Then he went to Paris, where he saw a wider field. After a few years there in the course of which he met many Americans, who told him of opportunities in his field of Investigation here, he came to America. He hunted out Thomas A. Edison, and went to work in his laboratory. In Thomas Commerford Martin's book, "The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Tesla," Tesla's connection with Edison is mentioned, and the author says:

"It was impossible, however, that with his own ideas to carry out, and his own inventions to develop, Mr. Tesla could long remain in even the most delightful employ; and his work now attracting attention he left the Edison ranks to join a company intended to make and sell an are lighting system based on some of his inventions in that branch of the art. With unceasing diligence he brought the system to perfection, and saw it placed on the market. But the thing which most occupied his time and thoughts, however, all through this period was his old discovery of the rotating field principle for alternating current work, and the application of it in motors that have now become known the world over."

Up to this time tho alternating current wasn't in favor with electrical engineers. They knew little about it and did not realize its value. It wasn't until 1886 that Tesla himself succeeded in putting into practical operation the idea he had conceived when he was a student at the Polytechnic Institute. It is the completion and practical working of this invention that will enable the Niagara Falls Power Company to transmit its power far from the falls where it is generated with the aid of the forces of nature,

But before telling what Tesla has done, more may be told about Tesla himself and where and how he works. He is a man of very regular habits, wherein he differs from Edison, who works fifty or seventy-five hours at a stretch, sometimes longer, when he has on hand something that interests him. Tesla is up every morning at 6 o'clock. He has a lot of gymnastic exercises that he goes through with regularly. He has a light breakfast and then he loses little time getting to his work. He takes an hour for his luncheon in the middle of the day and the afternoon is devoted to hard work. He usually works until 8 o'clock in the evening, but often it is until midnight. His laboratory is at 46 East Houston street.

He has a clerk who attends to visitors, keeps away cranks, keeps a scrapbook, and sees that everybody who has real business with the inventor is provided with the latest copy of some scientific paper until Mr. Tesla is disengaged. He also has a dozen or more mechanics who are as loyal to him as Edison's men are to him; but the nature of his work and the magnitude of the problems he sets himself to solve do not permit of their rendering him the same sort of assistance that the Wizard's men furnish to their employer. A friend of Tesla's was asked what was the most interesting trait of his character. He replied:

"His love of humanity and his friendship for young men who are ambitious to succeed and willing to work. Tesla wants things accomplished. He is jealous of no man. I believe if he worked on a problem twenty years, and was about realizing success just as another succeeded, he would be as happy as if he had succeeded himself. His interest in his work is entirely a desire to advance the science for the benefit of all mankind. I think this is shown by the fact that he is not a rich man. He could have been a millionaire if he had had any desire to be so."

If he had devoted his time and energies and his inventive genius to money making there is no question but that he would be rich to-day. Tesla can invent anything. Tell him what you want and he will work at it until he accomplishes it. But if he devoted his time to inventions of that sort, the broader propositions and problems would go by the board. He would have no time for them. It is to solve them that he delights to work."

Now, to take some of the things Tesla has done. It may be said. to start with, that to talk about Tesla's inventions leads one into a maze of electrical terms that defy the under standing of the mind not educated in electricity; and anything like a description of the technicalities of his work, his discoveries, and his inventions here would be about as valuable as a column of Hebrew jargon. Hence, all that will be attempted is to tell what he has accomplished. First, take the transmission of power.

When Tesla came into the field in America, as stated before, little was known of the alternating current. The single alternating current was used, but for the purpose of lighting only. The continuous current was used almost exclusively.

The continuous current system is very good for short line work, but with it energy cannot be delivered successfully at any great distance at high pressure. To deliver the continuous current at high pressure at a distance would require the use of wires so heavy that they would be cumbersome and entirely impracticable for use. Tesla made an alternating current motor that permitted the transmission of energy long distances at high pressure over thin wires, the delivery being made at the same pressure or at a lower or a higher pressure, whichever was desired, by means of a transformer. Thus the bridling of the power in Niagara was made possible, and natural forces everywhere can be similarly harnessed and made to do the work that has heretofore been done at great cost by other forms of force and energy. A great many smaller inventions are included in this great one. It's possibilities are just now beginning to be realized. Tesla's discoveries in connection with this motor, it is said, were the prime cause of the recent consolidation of the Edison and the Westinghouse Electric Companies.

In this motor two wires were used for the transmission of the current, Tesla believed that the extra wire was a useless expense; that all the work could be done with one, and no return circuit was necessary. So he set himself about the work of finding a way to accomplish this. He did accomplish it, and now it is possible through his invention to transmit the energy with the aid of only one wire. This invention, however, has not been of the same practical use as the other. It is merely a step In the direction of accomplishing the third thing that Tesla is aiming at. That is the transmission of power and intelligence without any wires, by means of the earth itself. If such a thing can be accomplished the human mind can hardly conceive of the possibilities. Tesla believes that it can be accomplished. The fact that he believes it is proved by the ten years of work he has devoted to experimenting on that line.

Next in order, as Tesla mentioned them, is the perfection of an apparatus for the production of electrical vibrations. Electrostatics is the science of electricity at rest. Tesla demonstrated that for the production of light primarily, electrostatic effects must be brought into play, and he formed the opinion that all electrical and magnetic effects may be referred to electrostatic molecular forces. In a glass bulb filled with electrostatically charged molecules he found that by agitating them, causing them to vibrate, to strike against each other, brilliant light was produced. No carbon was required, such as is used in the ordinary incandescent light. There was nothing but the glass bulb. Tesla's accomplishment was the making of apparatus to stir up the molecules which don't cost anything and are ever present, while the carbon heretofore needed is expensive. This apparatus is nearing perfection now, and lamps which furnish light without carbon are in sight. The saving in the cost of electric lighting will be tremendous, and, as measured by Tesla, 200 times the light can be produced with the same energy that is now used in the production of the ordinary incandescent lights. This will mean more light with less power and less expense, because there will be no expensive carbons required.

Last on Tesla's list is the oscillator, now perfected and ready to be put on the market. It is estimated that nine-tenths of all the dynamos in the world are operated by steam power. Every step in the production of electricity by steam power is attended with waste and loss of force and energy. The problem Tesla set out to solve was the saving of the 93 per cent. of energy that was wasted. Actual tests showed that only 5 per cent. of the energy used in making incandescent lights manifested itself as light. The 95 per cent. was lost. There was loss in every step from the putting of the coal into the furnace to the delivery of the electricity. Tesla has combined an engine and a dynamo. Steam is forced into the engine at high pressure, which produces rapid vibration of a steel rod, and this rod or piston is so adapted to a set of magnets that the mechanical energy of the vibration is converted into electricity. Fly wheels and governing balls and eccentrics and valves and all the rest of the complicated mechanism required for the purpose of control or regulation are done away with.

The steam cylinder with its piston is the only thing that does the work about a steam engine. All the rest take energy, but produce nothing, so if they can be done away with the energy that it takes to run them is saved. Tesla's oscillator does away with them. The oscillator converts the energy of steam into electricity directly. It would appear that this invention, if it does all that it promises, will revolutionize all business that requires energy in the form of steam or electric force to operate it. The machine doesn't take up one-tenth of the room needed by an ordinary engine and dynamo.

Probably the oscillator and the new system of lighting would both have been in use long ago had it not been for the destruction of Tesla's laboratory last year. He had these and other inventions very near completion, He had in his workshop the result of years of work. He had many models of machinery that he could not replace. All the work that had been done in making these things had to be done over again. He said himself at the time that a million dollars could not repay the loss.

Tesla's work with the Roentgen ray photography and the results he has accomplished have been more interesting than the work and results done and accomplished by any other experimenter. His first published statement of what he had been doing was months after the discovery of the photography. He had experimented in the meantime incessantly. His picture and his statement were printed in the Electrical Review. He succeeded in taking the picture of the shoulder of a man showing tho ribs and shoulder and upper arm bones. It was taken through clothing and a board partition at a distance of four feet. His experiments extended over a wide range. In his paper he said:

"The bony structure of birds, rabbits, and the like is shown within the least detail, and even the hollow of the bones is clearly visible. In a plate of a rabbit, under exposure of an hour, not only every detail of the skeleton is visible, but likewise a clear outline of the abdominal cavity and the location of the lungs, the fur, and many other features. Prints of even large birds show the feathers quite distinctly.

"Clear shadows of the bones of human are obtained by exposures ranging from a quarter of an hour to an hour, and some plates have shown such an amount of detail that it is almost impossible to believe that we have to deal with shadows only. For instance, a picture of a foot with a shoe on it was taken, and every fold of the leather, trousers, stocking, &c., is visible, while the flesh and bones stand out sharply. Through the body of the experimenter the shadows of small buttons and like objects are quickly obtained, while with an exposure of from one to one and a half hour the ribs, shoulder bones, and the bones of the upper arm appear clearly, as is shown in the annexed print. It is now demonstrated beyond any doubt that small metallic objects or bony or chalky deposits can be infallibly detected any part of the body.

"An outline of the skull is easily obtained with an exposure of twenty to forty minutes. In one instance an exposure of forty minutes gave clearly not only the outline, but the cavity of the eye, the chin, and cheek and nasal bones, the lower jaw and connections to the upper one, the vertebral column and connections to the skull, the flesh, and even the hair. By exposing the head to a powerful radiation strange effects have been noted. For instance, I find that there is a tendency to sleep, and the time seems to pass away quickly. There is a general soothing effect, and I have felt a sensation of warmth in the upper part of the head. An assistant independently confirmed the tendency to sleep and a quick lapse of time. Should these remarkable effects be verified by men with keener sense of observation, I shall still more firmly believe the existence of material streams penetrate the skull. Thus it may be possible by these strange appliances to project a suitable chemical into any part of the body.

"Roentgen advanced modestly his results, warning against too much hope. Fortunately his apprehensions were groundless, for, although we have to all appearance to deal with mere shadow projections, the possibilities of the application of his discovery are vast. I am happy to have contributed to the development of the great art he has created."

Tesla prepared five papers since this one, in each of which he has told something about some branch of the new photography that had heretofore been unknown. Some of the pictures he has obtained are wonderful. The last and the one that created the most talk is a picture of a man which shows, among other things, the outline of the heart. Tesla showed this picture to The Sun reporter, together with a picture a leg and foot, both of them remarkable specimens of the work of the Roentgen photography.

Tesla was once asked if he was well off. His reply was:

"If every man who uses my machine in electro-therapy alone would give me a quarter I would be a very wealthy man. I never received a dollar for it, and there is no way in which I could. I receive a small income from my invention in the rotating field, and I have a small income from home. All this I spend here."

Regarding the future he has said:

"I expect to live to be able to set a machine in the middle of this room and move it by the energy of no other agency than the medium in motion around us."