Tesla: Man Out of Time (Book Review)

Tesla: Man Out of Time
By Margaret Cheney. Prentice-Hall. 320
pages, illustrated. $16.95.

It is difficult to think of a scientist-inventor of the past century more fascinating and enigmatic than Nikola Tesla. He was not universally admired. Waldemar Kaempffert, a former science editor of this newspaper, described him as "an intellectual boa constrictor," a "medieval practitioner of black arts... as vague as an oriental mystic."

Yet Tesla is widely credited with inventing the technology of alternating current systems that now dominate electrical technology. He won financial backing from such figures as J. P. Morgan.

So far, no professional historian of science and technology has sought to document Tesla's turbulent life, separating the facts from the grandiose claims made on his behalf, particularly by some Tesla admirers who share his Croatian origins. He has been credited with outshining Edison as an inventor and being the true discoverer of vacuum tubes and of wireless telegraphy — accomplishments usually credited to others.

Margaret Cheney, a California writer and journalist, became interested in Tesla's story in the 1950's and joined in formation of the Tesla Society, since disbanded, to help celebrate the centennial of his birth in 1856. In preparing this book she has delved into a rich collection of source material and, in spite of her obvious admiration for her subject, she spells out the extraordinary idiosyncrasies and boastful declarations that infuriated contemporary scientists.

With a pocket-size vibrator, he told reporters, he could generate resonant tremors that would collapse such large structures as the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. He said he could split the earth "as a boy would split an apple" and gave its resonant frequency as one hour and 49 minutes.

Whatever the basis for this rather precise estimate, he was not very far off the true resonance period, as was demonstrated by the great Chilean earthquake of 1960. The book is informative and highly entertaining, but it still remains for a science historian to place Tesla in his rightful place among the geniuses of the past century.

WALTER SULLIVAN