Tesla - Man of Mystery - Was Death Ray Perfected by His Genius?

Was Death Ray Machine Perfected By His Genius?

By Gaston Burridge

Nikola Tesla was a man of mystery. He possessed one of the strangest minds history has ever known. In many respects, today's Science can still marvel at his accomplishments. Some feel he was a mystic. There is good basis for this feeling, but if he were alive, Tesla probably would disagree violently.

Some say Dr. Tesla disbelieved in anything psychical. He would not even discuss such matters with anyone, closest friends included. Yet, he encountered a number of experiences which contained strong evidence these phenomena knew his life. One came with the death of his sister, Angelina.

He sent the following cable from New York to Yugoslavia: "I had a vision Angelina was rising and disappearing. I sensed all is not well." Tesla received information that Angelina had died shortly before he sent his cablegram!

In the 1890's Tesla gave a dinner party for a number of close friends. They were to depart after his party on a late train for Philadelphia. Tesla had a premonition. Ill adventure would befall them. He contrived to detain them so they would miss their train. They missed it. The train met with a terrible accident resulting in many casualties.

Sunset 'Vision'

One of the most dramatic of these psychical experiences came to Tesla when he was a young man working on his invention of the rotary field induction motor. He had perfected the fundamentals of his idea but was stumped as to how these ideas could be applied electrically and mechanically. In other words, how he could build a machine which would operate under his new theories. The complete arrangement came to him out of a glowing sunset. In the fiery colors of a February twilight, after a quiet afternoon spent with a friend in a Budapest park, it leaped before Tesla's eyes in a marvelous, transparent picture which he alone seems to have been able to receive. Tesla knew instantly he "had it!"

The proverbial elephant's memory was a mouse's compared to Tesla's. This genius of the force we call electricity, not only could work complete mathematical problems in his head, but he "thought out" entire machines so thoroughly he could build them, part at a time, and the parts would fit together perfectly when assembled. All this without one line on a drawing board!

There have been many individuals with brains of great stature in America's electrical development. Charles P. Steinmetz had one. Mathematically, probably Steinmetz's brain equaled Tesla's, perhaps outshone it in certain respects. But Tesla had the uncanny ability of being able to see things as a whole, totally, in his mind, before even one piece of material of actual construction had been shaped, before one line had been drafted.

Tesla could read a page, quickly — any page — and repeat it verbatim. Not only could he recite it immediately after reading it, but he could recall it almost letter perfect years afterward! It is said he could quote scores of books from memory. This applied to poetry, of which he was very fond, and prose, as well as scientific material.

Never Forgot!

Tesla's mind was like a photographic machine. Anything exposed to it was indelibly filed forever. He had no use for a research library — after the first time! Complicated formulae, equations, or any item in the table of logarithms were at his fingertips when he needed them because of his extraordinary brain.

Tesla's early work fathered today's fluorescent lighting. His carbon button lamp, which gave more light for much less current than any lighting means known, has never been put on the market. It was Tesla who invented and developed the "alternating current system" almost universally used today. By perfecting many new kinds of generators, transformers and motors, which allowed electrical energy to be transmitted and used over long distances with comparatively little loss, he made the development of Niagara Falls possible as a power source.

Tesla invented and developed a new form of steam turbine. It was — and is — highly efficient. This turbine was radically different than any design of its day — or today. He was a little late in launching it, although the idea had been in his mind for years.

Turbines of a design used today were already developed and manufactured. Frequently commercial concerns do not care to incur the expense of changing a production item. Hence, Tesla's turbine was never really "born" commercially though tests proved models highly satisfactory.

When Tesla arrived in this country, he obtained a job in the Edison laboratories. But Thomas and Nikola did not get along well. Edison was a "direct current man," Tesla an "alternating current man." As great an inventor as Edison was, he was a "cut and try" inventor. Tesla, on the other hand, worked everything out in his head first. History has proved Edison did not grasp the significance of Tesla's alternating current induction motor and thereby missed one of the greatest opportunities the world has ever known! Yet again, toward the close of his life, Tesla had plans in his head — for a direct current system, which if he had been able to carry forward in "iron, copper and aluminum," might have been as revolutionary as was his alternating current system at the turn of the century!

Father of Wireless

Tesla generated alternating electrical currents to pressures of one hundred fifty million volts! This took place at Colorado Springs, Colorado, from 1898 to 1906. Tesla had dreamed of transmitting electrical energy without wires. His Colorado experiments with man-made lightning, proved to him such transmission was possible. In fact, he lit a bank of 25 100-watt lamps more than 25 miles from his power source with no connection between the two save the air and the earth! He delivered this power at better than 95% efficiency — something which is not done today with wires!

While Tesla was in Colorado he had excellent opportunities to study Nature's lightning. He learned this lightning was sometimes liberated from the earth into the clouds — the reverse of its then generally believed procedure. When Tesla's lightning machine was working, the earth around his laboratory glowed with tiny emissions. It was a huge lavender beetle! When one walked over this earth, its discharge sounded like the crunch of snow under foot on a cold winter morning!

Because of his vast experience with high potential, high frequency currents, had Dr. Tesla discovered fundamentals of a Death Ray machine? That he HAD, was persistently rumored ten years before his death. These rumors are whispered today whenever discussion of Tesla takes place. In interviews during his later years, Tesla himself, hinted he had perfected such a device at least theoretically. But these hints came after he had become a living legend, a recluse. By then, in many minds, Tesla was almost a fantastic. Too, he was poor! Anyone wishing to be skeptical could be so. They knew he had no money or means to build models to PROVE his claims.

But death brought additional evidence Tesla may have arrived at definite conclusions regarding a death ray machine. Both the Alien Property Custodian's Office and the Office of Public Relations, Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, admit certain papers were taken from Tesla's safe after his death and photostated! What became of these papers and their contents? No satisfactory information is available from either place — even after all this time! Present authority at Wright Field tells me the papers were burned and no one remembers what they contained!

Possible Disaster

But Tesla was interested in other kinds of vibrations. His researches into mechanical vibrations nearly cost the City of New York a major disaster! If Tesla's quick thinking had not been aided by a well placed blow from a handy sledge hammer, a generous portion of New York might have been rubble a few minutes later. It happened this way.

Tesla was experimenting with a device capable of producing mechanical vibrations higher pitched than any then known. He was studying their resonances and their affects. He had fastened one of his new machines to a large steel post which held the roof of his loft laboratory on Houston Street. This post was connected directly to the earth. He set the apparatus in operation by means of compressed air. The compressor pumped into a storage tank, the air was piped from the tank to the device. There was no valve between the device and the storage tank! The machine was working perfectly.

As the device built up resonance, Tesla heard different parts of the building respond to its vibrations. His satisfaction was considerable. The windows zinged briefly. The building quivered at intervals. Some of his own heavy machinery thumped the floor a time or two in spite of generous tiebolts holding them down. Yes, things were working well, and Tesla wore a smile of satisfaction.

They were working better than Tesla knew! In the rest of the neighborhood windows were crashing out. Buildings were shaking as if an earthquake approached. People flocked into the streets bewildered.

There was a precinct police station around the corner from Tesla's laboratory. The vibrations were working there too. The Captain in charge yelled some orders. They were to the effect that somebody better "get over to that crazy, blankety-blank inventor's place and see what ____ he was up to now!"

Just as the police broke through Tesla's door they saw him swing a heavy sledge against something attached to the steel post. It broke into smithereens. The vibrations stopped. If Tesla had not smashed the little machine one could put in a derby hat, it would have leveled a goodly portion of the adjacent city. It is only a guess how great a disaster might have developed. There is no record of what that experiment cost Tesla in repair bills!

In the late 1800's George Westinghouse, founder of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. of Pittsburgh, is often said to have paid Tesla one million dollars for the patents covering his alternating current system. Had it not been for an honorarium of $7200 a year paid Tesla by the Government of Yugoslavia, Tesla would have been a charity charge the latter part of his life!

Spent A Million!

Tesla was a fastidious man. In his flush years, he wore a collar but one time. He never had a collar laundered. It was discarded! The same applied to his white gloves. His handkerchiefs were the same. Tesla only used a table napkin once. Next time he wished to wipe his lips it had to be on a fresh laundered one! Yes, during the same meal. Thus, one can understand why the million dollars Westinghouse is said to have paid Tesla did not last too well.

The great electrician was not a woman hater, though he never married. Several ladies "set their caps for him" in his younger days, but he remained uncaught. Not that he loved women less, but he loved his work more. He was far from anti-social — he just didn't have time. He could do without the inconsequence of men — and women — but not without trying to solve the mysteries of electricity. Nature had wound his life with a golden electrical thread, so ductile it could not be broken, so tough it could not be cut. Nikola Tesla was a dedicated man, a priest of pertinences, a pope of the parenthetic.

Tesla died as he had lived — alone. In a small, cheap hotel room his body was found by a chamber maid. The New York police took over. They opened Tesla's big steel safe. ALL they found in it, and took from it, has never been revealed by the Alien Property Custodian — or anyone else!

July 10th, 1956, marked the 100th anniversary of Tesla's birth. Many industrial organizations and individuals throughout the world honored that day. In this country, several electrical engineering societies planned an adequate permanent memorial for this great man. It has been proposed a commemorative postage stamp be issued in his honor.

Tesla Space Station

Many other ideas were suggested to honor Tesla. One of the most unique, and one which I feel would have pleased Tesla no end, were he alive, was made by Mr. Edward S. Schultz, a research consultant of Buffalo, New York, who knew Tesla in his early career. Mr. Schultz asks, "Why not name our first Space Station after the great electrician?"

This would indeed honor one who foresaw majestically. It would also be attaching to one of man's greatest dreams the name of a man who was an early developer of the electronic robot — which the Space Station will simulate.

Should Mr. Schultz's proposal be adopted it would immediately establish Tesla, not only as an International figure, as he should be, but as a celestial one also!

For several years after his death in 1943, Tesla's name seemed destined for the oblivion which absorbs most men's work and lives. The war years tended to dim Tesla's previous record. The explosion of the first and subsequent atomic bombs was a mushroom which temporarily hooded this man's imaginative concepts. It clouded his memory in other men's minds — as it has clouded much else since. Atomic power captured the front page of other men's minds.

Slowly, traces of saneness have returned. As the pressure of vapor has leaked away, some men have begun picking up the pieces of those things which had been dropped when the bugle sounded. Among them was Mr. Leland I. Anderson. He founded the Tesla Society. Anderson began collecting Teslana from all over the world, but especially in the United States. His efforts came none too soon. Already some Tesla material had gathered time's verdigris. The great dissolver has already begun nibbling at the edges.

Tesla Memorial

Even now, the Society's accomplishments are most noteworthy. An extensive bibliography of Tesla's lectures and writings has been published. This includes a list of his 115 U.S. patents with their numbers. It also includes a catalog of articles written about Tesla. A file of Tesla photographs, and those of his laboratories and equipment is being arranged. Coordination of similar efforts with several Societies in Europe is reaching fulfillment.

Dr. Nikola Tesla was a phenomenon — as well as phenomenal. He lighted the world but loved the night. He toiled long hours that his fellows might not have to toil so long. If anyone put America on wheels, it was Tesla. His polyphase alternating current system made the small, powerful electric motors which turn our modern machine tools possible. Without them mass-produced goods could not exist.

The world owes much to Nikola Tesla — much more than it can ever repay. America wasn't too kind to him during his later years. It will be small interest on a large debt for us not to forget him on the 10th of any July!