Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER THIRTEEN During the following weeks I heard little about Nikola Tesla and my interests turned to other matters. Dave Schrum called me from Sudbury but I had nothing to tell him. One thing could not rest at the back of my mind and that was the way in which Tesla's life had changed from the success of the Niagara Falls Power Project to the recluse of later life. For, from that point, Tesla's life should have grown from strength to strength. The 1890s began well, for the inventor took lecture tours in Europe and the United States, where he was honoured by many learned societies. At the same time, Tesla was thinking about the new field of high-frequency currents and much of his time was spent in his New York laboratory. His latest experiments led him to speculate about radio transmissions and automated control, and, fifty years before the development of the fluorescent lamp, Tesla had built phosphor-coated globes for lighting. His interest in the phenomena of resonance continued and he built a large mechanical vibrator to study the effects of oscillations on various structures. This experiment proved so effective that Tesla was able to set up mechanical resonances in nearby buildings. His experiments were stopped by the police before the whole street collapsed! When it came to high-frequency current, Tesla was as inventive as ever. He first designed a series of alternators which could generate current at thirty-three thousand cycles then, reaching the limit of this approach, he began to develop the Tesla coil. But this ivory tower of research did not protect its inhabitant for long. On returning from a European lecture tour Tesla discovered that the Westinghouse operation was in severe financial difficulties. Orders continued to flood in but the corporation itself was undercapitalized and verging on bankruptcy. Tesla's reaction was immediate; he was grateful to 110
