Tesla the Visionary (Dec. 8, 1899)

There is a great difference between the two modern wizards, Thomas A. Edison and Nikola Tesla, the one is practical and the other theoretical. Edison promises wonders, and they are duly developed, but Tesla is patterned after the fanciful type, he is a visionary and his announcements are on a par with a fairy tale. In grandiloquent style he informs the world that he would soon be able to perfect the long distance telephone so that we should be in communication with the sun, the moon and the stars. Then our houses were to be illuminated with natural and artificial sunlight, the latter at most economical rates, and that we were to have telegraphic communication on sea and land without the aid of wires. All these promised wonders are at present but the cobwebs of Nikola Tesla's imagination, as a marketable article being of the same intrinsic value as that wonderful lamp of Aladdin. Nikola Tesla, however, has capped the climax of his yellow prognostications and hallucinations by the astounding declaration that he has invented a battleship that will perform its duties faithfully and effectively without the assistance of that generally acknowledged necessity — officers and crew. It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back, and in this latest extravagant announcement Nikola Tesla is only adding to the reputation he is achieving of being considered in vulgar parlance — a humbug. Nikola has unquestionably the skill of an accomplished electrician, but the public has no use for prophetic inventions; this is too practical an age for dreamers, and if Nikola Tesla has a desire to redeem himself in the eyes of the world, he will say nothing about his marvels until he has brought them to that state of perfection, when he can give practical demonstration of his ability to produce his phenomena.