Nikola Tesla Books
at great distances, Pupin and his friends tried to disrupt that lecture with whistling.
In the Detroit News Sunday, on May 17, 1931, Tesla stated, among other things, the following:
... I am certain that in about ten years, new sources of energy will open up, which will be available everywhere to everyone in unlimited quantities. In this sense, I have made a discovery which I hope to be able to publish soon, as soon as I develop a special theory and create designs for its practical application...
I am convinced that atomic energy will never be a source of energy. It is an illusion against which I have been fighting for years.
One of the strangest things in the last twenty-five years is the complete deviation of scientific thought. At that time, the theory of relativity, the theory of electrons, the quantum theory, the theory of radioactivity, and other theories were developed to a high degree. No less than 90% of all this, which is taken today as a proven scientific fact, is nothing more than an unrealizable dream...
The idea of an atom, consisting of protons and electrons orbiting protons like miniature planets around the Sun, is merely an imagination that has no connection to the real nature of matter...
Although such statements can be partly attributed to the onset of senility, they nevertheless cannot diminish Tesla's significance for the development of human culture and civilization. A great man can have great flaws, which would hinder an ordinary person in society, but in great men, these fade away in comparison to their merits.
This stance of Tesla's towards modern science strongly reminds us of the stance of Cavendish, Priestley, and Scheele towards Lavoisier's science of combustion and oxidation, which marked the beginning of modern chemical science. Although it was precisely they who, through their work, provided Lavoisier with the main foundation to establish his theory, particularly
