Tesla's Revision of Dynamics

Nikola Tesla, the great inventor, has discovered something that will revolutionize dynamics. "The ultimate use of the wireless system," he says, "will be the supplying of power sufficient to run machinery in London with the power created in Niagara Falls." To a great volume of the population which unfortunately remains in ignorance of the wonders that have been wrought by Tesla this announcement will not be so big with significance as it appears to be when the inventor's achievements are reviewed. It is commonly believed by those who read the public prints hastily that most of the great electrical accomplishments of twenty-five years past have been those of Edison, Westinghouse, Brush, Hertz and Marconi; but they who are wise know this is not so. Perhaps the Wizard of the Waldorf has not actually invented the incandescent or the arc light or the telephone, in the sense that he has not patented them, but he thought of the ideas long before the famous men who get the credit for them but who have only followed the paths he blazed. It is supposed that Marconi invented wireless telegraphy, but really it was Tesla who did. Marconi may have sent the first messages, but Tesla, if he does himself justice, will be written down as the true discoverer.

If what Mr. Tesla says he has done may be taken as earnest of that which he shall do, historians would better halt, armies best mark time, navies ride at anchor and diplomatists take a holiday while he perfects his overwhelmingly important discovery for projecting power over thousands of miles by means of Hertzian waves. If ocean liners are to be run this way we shall be flying across seas in half the time we now occupy, and coal hardly will be worth mining except for heating purposes. All the Powers shall need new navies, for builders of battleships can throw out all calculation for coal bunkers and steam engines, mount more guns and go abroad to change the map of the world without bothering about a coaling station. We can sell Tutuila and Guam, Hawaii and the Danish West Indies and immediately, on acquiring Tesla's rights, become mistress of the wave.

Far down the Caribbean, away off in the Pacific, the ring of the jingle bell for "full steam ahead" will give way on the Oregon of the new navy to a push of a wireless telegraph button signifying in the power house at Niagara, "Three knots more, enemy in sight"; "Ten knots more, enemy attempting to escape," and the thing is done more easily than it was accomplished in Manila Bay. Our armies afield, provided with war cars equipped with the Tesla apparatus, will catch the Hertzian rays from the power house where sits the general commanding and hurl themselves against the legions opposing, crushing them out in days where now it would take years and the process of attrition to win the war. The American Flag would be planted quickly on the North Pole, for with the power waves propelled to the ship of discovery the fuel problem, that has baffled all explorers, would be set at naught. The Democracy will have to get a new issue, for with such a resistless agent the question of expansion would be settled by extending benevolent assimilation to all nations and putting all the world under our rule.

It is devoutly to be hoped that Mr. Tesla will not be disappointed in this stupendous discovery. If he has gotten his wires crossed in his sleep and mixed up his dream book, mistaking this marvel for a new way of frying eggs on an electric stove, the shock will almost kill us.