Paradigm Lost: Nikola Tesla's True Wireless Page 1

We examine an article written by Nikola Tesla entitled “The True Wireless,” which appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in May of 1919. His essay is analyzed as an example of the inability of a scientist or inventor to assimilate a paradigm shift in his discipline, and we use the language and thought of Thomas Kuhn in this discussion. The paradigm shift in question was created by Maxwell and Hertz in the latter third of the 19th century, a shift that explained the existence and generation of electromagnetic waves—the basis for wireless telegraphy and eventually radio. We also focus on the magazine in which Tesla’s piece appeared and consider why the article might have been written and accepted for publication.

“The Hertz wave theory of wireless transmission may be kept up for a while, but I do not hesitate to say that in a short time it will be recognized as one of the most remarkable and inexplicable aberrations of the scientific mind which has ever been recorded in history.”
— Nikola Tesla, “The True Wireless” 1919

“… the man who continues to resist after his whole profession has been converted has ipso facto ceased to be a scientist.”
— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 1962

The Paradigm

For historians of radio and the wireless telegraph, one of the strangest documents they are apt to encounter is an article entitled “The True Wireless” that was published in the May 1919 issue of the popular magazine, the Electrical Experimenter. The author was the renowned Serbian-born inventor, Nikola Tesla (1856–1943). Tesla spent most of his professional life in the United States, and by 1919 he was just past the peak of his fame — a man as nearly well known to the general public as Edison. He was a contributor to the Sunday supplements of newspapers, where he described his latest proposed inventions such as a weapon that would make war obsolete by creating an enormous tidal wave.¹

Although his reputation as an inventor may have faded, he persists today as a cult figure. A web search will lead to sites proclaiming that he invented radio, radar, x-rays, alternating current, the laser, the transistor, and limitless free energy. His name also endures as the brand of a pioneering high-priced electrical automobile.