Thank Heaven, Our Mr. Tesla Is Beginning to Claim Things!

We knew all along that Nikola Tesla invented the wireless method of telegraphy, that he had it patented, and that "the transmission of messages was the most inconsequential part of the general scheme." What every one feared was that Mr. Tesla's overwhelming modesty-which amounts almost to a disease in his case-would prevent him from claiming his own.

Tesla, as a matter of fact, invented everything which didn't grow. He has dragged one after another of Dame Nature's secrets from our reluctant mother and patented them. He has a blanket patent on all the wheels that go 'round and on myriads that should go 'round, 'and which will when he gets time to attend to the matter.

But what boots invention if the inventor stands idly by and allows brigands like Marconi to carry off the children of his brain and sell them to slave buying capitalists: Nothing. Nothing in the world.

Hence the community is all a-wriggle with mirth and a-beam with admiration because at last Mr. Tesla has appeared as the champion claimer of the universe and has announced that he patented the wireless transmission system, along with hundreds of more important discoveries in electrical science, so long ago he almost had forgotten them.

We knew it, because as Mr. Tesla invented everything he must have forestalled Marconi, and now that he has claimed the circumambient air and the electric fluids of Mother Earth, and the waters thereof, we join in the general rejoicing that his modesty did not lead him to commit professional suicide by refraining from speaking up like a man.

A word more. Some time ago Mr. Tesla announced, or it was announced for him, that he could stand beside the wide sea waves, looking as harmless as a wireless message in transit and, by setting in motion some hellish electrical device or current, destroy a fleet of battleships in any of the seven seas. Why didn't we do it? Well, it isn't civilized warfare. But the process is Tesla's, and all others must keep off the reservation — which is to say, off the earth — for the Wizard of Houston street has staked off the footstool, from pole to pole. And if only he would take something for his modesty and assert himself occasionally, he would silence the sneering laughter of the poor fools who affect to think his all too seldom speech smacks of narcotics.