Tesla on Long Life and Sleep (Mar. 28, 1897)

Philadelphia Times.

Nikola Tesla, the electrical genius, defines sleep as a sort of cumulative battery for human energy, and holds that when a man really lives he is dying hour by hour, and that when he is asleep he is in reality accumulating vital force which will make him go on living. Mr. Tesla, therefore, thinks the longer a man sleeps the longer he will remain on earth, and he believes that a man who would learn to sleep eighteen hours a day might live 200 years.

Apparently there is some comfort in this bold assertion for the sleepy-head, but Mr. Tesla, being an exceedingly industrious and active man himself, hardly means to encourage this sort of individual in his lazy ways. In fact he sets up as an example of his assertion De Lesseps and Gladstone, two of the busiest men the world has produced. Both have slept much and both have been favored with long lives. The secret of their success and long duration of life lies probably in the fact that both have been hard workers and hard sleepers. When they were awake they were wide awake and active, and when they were asleep they were sound asleep and resting. The trouble with the sleepy-head is that he is never wide awake and never fast asleep. Consequently he is never blessed with a successful career nor a long life.

The division of the day into proper periods of work, recreation and sleep is never perfect, and although there can be no question that the builing up process in man goes on while he is asleep, few will accept Mr. Tesla’s assertion that eighteen hours of sleep a day will produce the longest possible life. And even if the statement be capable of proof, who, after all, wants to live 200 years if he is compelled to sleep three-quarters of that time? We want to live all the days of our lives. Why not live seventy years and be in possession of our senses for two-thirds of that time? For seventy years, with eight hours of sleep a day, gives more than 46 years of active wakefulness, and 200 years, with eighteen hours of daily sleep, results in only 50 years of real life.