Paradigm Lost: Nikola Tesla's True Wireless Page 6

it there, or, as seems likely, on his own after college, he would have encountered textbooks that sought to treat this discipline using analogies drawn from hydraulics — a much older and better-understood subject.¹² It was not uncommon then to use the word “pressure,” taken from fluid mechanics, where we now use “voltage” or “electrical potential.” Such analogies, which might employ water wheels to represent inductors and elastic diaphragms as proxies for capacitors, convey only an intuitive feeling for AC circuits and are of no use for communication systems employing electromagnetic waves.¹³

Thus, Tesla attempted to apply a dubious electric circuit approach where it had no validity. In fact, one wonders why no one asked him if the return wire in the circuit could be eliminated, then why not also the wire that carries the current that is outgoing from the generator. Had he taken that radical step, he might have been on his way to understanding communication between two antennas in the absence of any earth.¹⁴

In criticizing Tesla for his wrong-headed model, are we in fact guilty of what has become known as Whig history? The term Whig history was introduced by the distinguished English historian Sir Herbert Butterfield in 1931. It can refer to an unfair judgment of historical figures and their actions that are based on our present