World Famous Electrical Genius Dies

Nikola Tesla, 86, world famous electrical genius in the field of radio and television, did much of his work in Colorado Springs. He died Thursday in a New York City hotel. Said to have been failing in health the last two years.

In scientific circles his name has long been associated with Thomas Alva Edison and Dr. Charles Steinmetz. Long before radio communication became commonplace, Tesla knew its secrets. Television still is something regarded with awe, but Tesla knew all about it at least as long ago as 1935.

An Associated Press dispatch from New York Friday night described him as an “electrical inventor, noted for his development of systems of alternating current power transmission and distribution of electrical energy.”

Some called him a “dark, slim foreigner” when in the late 1890s he was in Colorado Springs working with what people then regarded as “crazy contraptions.” He had a large barnlike structure on Nob Hill and there secretly conducted electrical experiments much to the mystification of the neighbors. Visitors were not allowed inside his laboratory. One day he left suddenly — a prophet without honor in his own country. New York welcomed him as a genius.

Skipping Edison, scientific societies hailed him as a genius, next only to Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia, the city in which Franklin carried on most of his scientific work, welcomed him partly because of his resemblance to Connie Mack, perennial manager of the Athletics.

Tesla’s early work in Colorado Springs was carried on with the financial assistance of the late Leonard E. Curtis and the Colorado Springs Electric Co. As early as 1904 he wrote from there to the Electrical World and Engineer: “Not only is it practicable to send telegraphic messages to any distance without wires, but also to impress upon the entire globe the faintest modulations of the human voice.”

Tesla further predicted at that time that it was possible to transmit power in unlimited amounts to any terrestrial distance and almost without any loss. The late J. Pierpont Morgan gave Tesla financial assistance to erect a transmitting tower and laboratory for world-wide telegraphy near Riverhead, L.I.

Tesla is dead, but radio is commonplace today, and television, according to the top disciples of the scientist who did his research work in Colorado Springs, will be commonplace tomorrow.