Nikola Tesla Books
evening, that is, on February 4. What influenced Tesla's decision more - the Faraday armchair or the whisky - remains an open question.
The London Times wrote about that lecture, among other things:
If anything at all was capable of arousing enthusiasm for electricity, it was the highly significant lecture that Mr. Tesla delivered last night for a full two hours before the learned audience of the Royal Institution⦠The speaker stood within an electrostatic field so strong that it could light a lamp without wires, while the speaker himself felt nothing. He held in one hand the end of a wire from which a crackling purple stream of sparks poured forth, and in the other hand he held a lamp or a completely empty glass tube, thus allowing a current of some 50,000 volts to pass through his body. The glass tube glowed in his hand from a current so powerful that, under ordinary circumstances, one hundredth part of it would have been sufficient to end his life.
The London technical journal Engineering, one of the most renowned engineering periodicals, wrote in its issue of February 5, 1892, in connection with this lecture, among other things:
On Wednesday evening the Royal Institution hosted one of those famous meetings that made it renowned⦠Engineers crowded in to hear the lecturer, for the fame of his investigations had already spread far and wideâ¦
The lecture he subsequently delivered in Paris had the same effect as the two in London.
After the lectures in London and Paris, Tesla went to Gospic to visit his ailing mother, who died in his arms. After that, he went to Belgrade, where he was received with particular warmth and solemnity. On that occasion he also met his favorite
