Nikola Tesla Books
guarded. Communication was difficult and slow and mutual understanding between widely separated investigators hard to reach. Then again, men of those times had no thought of the practical, they lived and fought for abstract principles, creeds, traditions and ideals. Humanity did not change much in Gilbertâs time but his clear teachings had a telling effect on the minds of the learned. Friction machines were produced in rapid succession and experiments and observations multiplied. Gradually fear and superstition gave way to scientific in-sight and in 1745 the world was thrilled with the news that Kleist and Leyden had succeeded in imprisoning the uncanny agent in a phial from which it escaped with an angry snap and destructive force. This was the birth of the condenser, perhaps the most marvelous electrical device ever invented.
Two tremendous leaps were made in the succeeding forty years. One was when Franklin demonstrated the identity between the gentle soul of amber and the awe-inspiring bolt of Jupiter; the other when Galvany and Volta brought out the contact and chemical battery, from which the magic fluid could be drawn in unlimited quantities. The succeeding forty years bore still greater fruit. Oersted made a significant advance in deflecting a magnetic needle by an electric current, Arago produced the electro-magnet, Seebeck the thermo-pile and in 1831, as the crowning achievement of all, Faraday announced that he had obtained electricity from a magnet, thus discovering the principle of that wonderful engine - the dynamo, and inaugurating a new era both in scientific research and practical applicant on. From that time on inventions of inestimable value have followed one another at a bewildering rate. The telegraph, telephone, phonograph and incandescent lamp, the induction motor, oscillatory transformer, Roentgen ray, Radium, wireless and numerous other revolutionary advances have been made and all conditions of existence profoundly modified. In the eighty-four years which have since elapsed, the subtle agents dwelling in the living amber and loadstone have been transformed into cyclopean forces turning the wheels of human progress with ever increasing speed. This, in brief, is the fairy tale of electricity from Thales to the present day. The impossible has happened, the wildest dreams have been surpassed and the astounded world is asking, What is coming next?
Facsimiles of Teslaâs signature in Latin and Cyrillic letters
