Spark of Genius Page 1

Nikola Tesla could have gone down in history as the man who invented the 20th century. Instead his theories were ridiculed and he died alone in a hotel bedroom. Robert Lomas recalls the lost prophet of electrical science

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze." – Nikola Tesla.

Back in the Sixties, all young electrical engineers habitually walked around with one hand placed in their pocket. This was not because they were slovenly or making an anti-establishment statement, but because of a warning they were always given in the first practice labs they attended: "If you get an electric shock across your chest, it will kill you; get the same shock down one side of your body and it will just give you a jolt." Thanks to this advice, electrical engineers who want to stay alive, automatically put one hand in their pocket whenever they are near live electricity.

Nikola Tesla's notes reveal that he was the first engineer to advise this safe working practice and, as a result, many electrical engineers owe him their lives. In fact, the quality of our modern life depends on a constant supply of electricity and it was Tesla's vision that made this possible. He also invented the speedometer, the mechanical rev counter, radio broadcasting, AC power and the bladeless turbine.

How was such a versatile, talented man – whose inventions make our modern civilisation possible – forgotten? The names of many of his contemporaries – Edison, Marconi, Westinghouse and even JP Morgan – all became legends and live on, but Nikola Tesla – who was born in Serbia on 10 July 1856 – is largely unknown to a public which still benefits from his works. The scientific community has honoured him, and his name has been given to a unit for measuring magnetism. In one way, this is a fitting memorial, because he has been placed in the same hall of fame as Volta, Ampère, Gilbert, Henry, Hertz, Ohm and Faraday, great scientists who have all had electromagnetic units named after them. But, although he has achieved this recognition by the well-informed, I can't help thinking that he would also have liked a more popular accolade. Yes, some engineers know his name, are taught it as a unit for measuring magnetic flux, but few know the story of the man who invented our 20th century, and most hardly remember our debt to him.

My generation was the first to take electricity for granted

I was a small boy, fascinated by electricity and desperately wanting my own wireless set, when I first heard about Nikola Tesla in the Fifties. I didn't want just any old wireless, I wanted an ex-navy AR88 radio receiver and spent many Saturday afternoons haunting the numerous second-hand radio shops of Manchester, searching for this coveted instrument. I had friends who had their own wireless sets and was sometimes allowed to use my parents' large radiogram in the sitting room, but that was not the same as having my own set. Tuning the radiogram to the very bottom of its tuning dial, right down below Radio Luxembourg, I could hear people who had their own wireless stations, talking to each other about the vast distances their radio short waves could go and bragging about the distant operators they could talk to. I wanted to know more – and curiosity drove my quest for an affordable short-wave radio of my own. Wandering from shop to shop, carefully guarding the pocket that held my small savings, I sifted through pile after pile of junk and spent hours looking longingly at unaffordable new radios. Late in the day of one Saturday's unsuccessful search, I saw something that looked out of place on a dusty shelf – a gleaming polished lid of a wooden box which I just had to open and investigate. And this was how I came to spend all of my carefully hoarded pocket money on a Tesla Therapeutic Electrotherapy Machine.

As I opened the lid, an accumulation of dust tickled my nostrils and made me sneeze. Looking inside, the machine – protected by a red velvet lining – seemed to be complete. There was a gleaming coil of enamelled wire, two copper cylinders connected to flexible wire leads, a brass switch and the empty space where a big battery should have been. The faded label on the underside of the lid praised the virtues of the high-frequency currents that this strange contraption had obviously once produced: "The currents furnished by this apparatus are an ideal tonic for the human nervous system. They promote heart action and digestion, induce healthful sleep, rid the skin of destructive exudations and cure colds and fever by the warmth they create. They vivify atrophied or paralysed parts of the body, allay suffering and save annually thousands of lives."

The wireless set, I decided, could wait a while. Here was a real piece of electrical magic. Riding home with it on the electric train, I dreamt of the experiments I would do and, in the event, that crude but effective electric-shock machine was the source of much childish satisfaction. Once I had a new battery, a large six-volt lantern battery that had to be specially ordered at the local radio shop, the coil buzzed and sparked in a spectacularly satisfactory manner, and, holding the copper cylinders, one in each hand, produced a strange tingling.

Enthusiastic about the benefit of Mr Tesla's high-frequency therapeutic currents, I persuaded some of my friends to form a circle. We all then linked hands with the two copper electrodes of the machine closing our loop. The electric tingling spread from hand to hand round the ring, evoking squeals of surprise as it passed through our twitching limbs.

This early success was the start of my life-long interest in the hidden workings of all things electric. Electricity, which has only become important to society fairly recently, is still a comparatively new thing. My generation was probably the first to take it for granted. For instance, in the southwest of Ireland there is a small valley still known today as the Black Valley because, until a few years ago, it was the only place left in Ireland without a public electricity supply. Only 100 years ago, the simplicity of lighting our homes by pressing a switch would have seemed impossible magic.

Ask any well-informed person "Who invented electricity?" and they will probably answer "Michael Faraday". Visit any power station and do the