Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER THIRTEEN entists working at the frontiers of science in the early twentieth century, his predictions were confined to sensational newspaper articles only. As time passed Tesla withdrew even more from human contact. He became eccentric and developed several phobias. In 1937 he was struck by a taxi but refused to seek medical help. From that time until his death he avoided all but his closest friends and confined himself to the Hotel New Yorker and his dialogues to the flock of pigeons he enticed into his room. Increasingly feeble in mind and body, Nikola Tesla lived on into his eighties, and he died on January 7, 1943. Although Einstein's later years were fraught with scientific frustration as he worked in vain at his unified field theory, they were years of health and intellectual activity. At his death, Einstein's fame had reached every country in the world. Nikola Tesla was virtually forgotten. The boy who vowed to exceed the potential of his dead brother had known fame and then lost it. He was able to force his way onto the pages of America's newspapers but, as he reached middle age, it was not with reports of engineering triumphs but with talk of death rays and a machine which would split the earth apart like an apple. He wrote of war: But now, what is the next phase in this evolution? Not peace as yet, by any means. The next change which should naturally follow from modern developments should be the continuous diminution of the number of individuals engaged in battle. The apparatus will be one of specifically great power, but only a few individuals will be required to operate it. This evolution will bring more and more into prominence a machine or mechanism with the fewest individuals as an element of warfare, and the absolutely unavoidable consequence of this will be the abandonment of large, clumsy, slowly moving, and unmanageable units. Greatest possible speed and maximum range of energy-delivery by war apparatus will be the main object. The loss of life will become smaller and smaller, and finally, the number of individuals continuously diminishing, as merely machines will meet in contest without bloodshed, the nations being simply interested, ambitious spectators. When this happy condition is realized, peace will be assured. But, no matter to what degree of perfection rapid-fire guns, high-power cannon, explosive pro114
