Tesla, The Visionary

If Tesla would do just one of the innumerable things he promises to do, and cease talking about the remainder, we would have some respect for him. Instead, he continues to add to his list of promises, until those who place the slightest importance upon what he says must regard him somewhat in the light of a Chinese god. The Leader has paid its respects to Tesla before; we have forgotten upon what occasion, unless it was at the time he "talked" about harnessing the Niagara Falls and applying the power to any desired point in the country for manufacturing purposes, but as that scheme seems possible, it could not have been a cherished hope of Tesla's, and, on second thought, we recall that Tesla's idea was not to transmit electricity generated at Niagara to the Paris exposition, there, presumably, to turn colored wheels, and, incidentally, to light the grounds and buildings.

Tesla has just spent a day in Chicago, on his way to Colorado; he was a "mark" for the Chicago reporters. The Times-Herald heads its interview with him in a way that gives an inkling to its contents. It reads: "Tesla's Task of Taming Air, The Inventor's Hopes of Building Fame on the Establishment of a New Art, Great Force His Toy, Talks of Signaling Mars. Transmission of Intelligence Feasible Assuming Equal Conditions Exist on the Other Planets."

Now that last declaration sounds like Tesla himself. It is in brief what he said on this subject. "Signaling to Mars?" he said, "I have an apparatus which can accomplish it beyond question. (We might note that the dollar sign was by mistake used for "I," making the sentence read "dollars have apparatus" &c., but we doubt the power of money in that particular.)

The bragging Tesla makes a perfect "show" of himself in the interview mentioned, but it is as a "performer" that he appears at his best. He should be on the vaudeville stage, announced as the wizard who will give a continuous performance made up of startling discoveries every one of which will involve a new art, and be disposed of to the satisfaction of academic learning in fifteen minutes. While in Chicago Talker Tesla lectured. Of this entertainment the Chicago Journal says:

"For a long time Mr. Tesla made people believe great things of him, but lately some persons have begun to doubt his general utility. His principal skill seems to be in the art of self-advertisement. He is an expert in sensational physics, and is at his best when in his laboratory making artificial lightning and electric pinwheels for the reporters of some New York Sunday paper who have been order to work him up into illustrated padding for a colored supplement. Just what Mr. Tesla has ever thought, said, or done that entitles him to rank as one of the great physicists of our country, or even as one of the great utilitarian inventors, will probably escape you if you try to recall it. What has been called "the nickel-in-the-slot ingenuity of Edison" far surpasses in usefulness, even in petty usefulness, the real performances of Mr. Tesla."

Men of learning have long since come to the conclusion that Tesla is a spectacular creature and they do not envy his scientific information. We would suggest while Tesla is in Colorado that he go up Pike's Peak and see if he can jump to Mars, to ascertain whether the people there have any intelligence approximately similar to his, which by the way, is the hole Tesla left to crawl into when he is asked to "ring off," or else talk to Mars, for he made the proviso that "the intelligence be approximately similar" in the course of his interview on the subject of communicating with Mars.