Nikola Tesla Books
IN SEARCH OF NIKOLA TESLA bination of insight and deduction, yet it remained only an idea, a brilliant proposal and an educated estimation of possibilities. To be taken further than speculation, Tesla would have had to build a working system, publish details of its construction, give accounts of the various experiments he performed and allow the result to come under scientific scrutiny. Alternatively, he could have published a detailed account of the 'theory of radar', discussing the mechanism of scattering and reflection, presenting calculations of the magnitude of effects and showing exactly how such apparatus could be built. But, as with so many of Tesla's intuitive predictions, the idea was never taken far enough. Possibly an example may emphasize the point I'm making. Over the past ten years I have investigated the foundations of quantum theory and its unification with general relativity. During that period, I have developed a number of insights, worked at several theoretical approaches and accumulated masses of notes and calculations on various aspects of the problem. It would not be too difficult for me to make a number of intuitive predictions as to how physics will evolve in the twenty-first century. If these speculations turned out to be correct, I would not expect to be hailed as the genius who invented or discovered these breakthroughs. For the real work lies in starting with an insight and then building it into a full theory. This is what Albert Einstein did in each of his papers on relativity. Beginning with a clearly stated hypothesis and proceeding in logically connected steps he was able to derive mathematical formulae and use them to make concrete predictions. Although Einstein's work on cosmology and relativity is highly imaginative, the mathematics is crystal clear and can be checked by any scientist who reads the paper. In addition, the predictions are unambiguous and can be tested by experiment. Tesla, for his part, and despite his many predictions, was not a scientist in the sense of Einstein, Planck or Heisenberg. He was an inventor and experimenter with a gift of intuition which amounted to genius. But onc his financial backers played shy and he could no longer work in his laboratory Tesla was lost. This energetic inventor simply did not possess the temperament and, in all probability, the mathematical background to develop his intuitions on paper. Instead of becoming one of the leading sci113
