Nikola Tesla Books
IN SEARCH OF NIKOLA TESLA jectiles, torpedo-boats, or other implements of war may be brought, no matter how destructive they may be made, that condition can never be reached through any such development. All such implements require men for their operation; men are indispensable parts of the machinery. Their object is to kill and destroy. Their power resides in their capacity for doing well. So long as men meet in battle, there will be bloodshed. Bloodshed will ever keep up barbarous passion. To break this fierce spirit, a radical departure must be made, an entirely new principle must be introduced, something that never existed before in warfare - a principle which will forcibly, unavoidably, turn battle into mere spectacle, a play, a contest without loss of blood. To bring this result men must be dispensed with: machine must fight machine. But how to accomplish that which seems impossible? The answer is simple enough: produce a machine capable of acting as though it were part of a human being no mere mechanical contrivance, comprising levers, screws, wheels, clutches, and nothing more, but a machine embodying a higher principle which will enable it to perform its duties as though it had intelligence, experience, reason, judgement, a mind! This conclusion is the result of my thoughts and observations which have extended through virtually my whole life. How curious; the tragedy of warfare was to be eliminated by robots. To be truly successful, such a robot would have to experience vicarious suffering on our behalf-a - a scapegoat of considerable sophistication. The automatons so far constructed had 'borrowed minds', so to speak, as each merely formed part of the distant operator who conveyed to it his intelligent orders; but this art is only the beginning. I propose to show that, however impossible it may now seem, an automaton may be contrived which will have its 'own mind', and by this I mean that it will be able, independent of any operator, left entirely to itself, to perform, in response to external influences affecting its sensitive organs, a great variety of acts and operations as if it had intelligence. It will be able to follow a course laid out or obey orders given far in advance; it will be capable of distinguishing between what it ought and what it ought not 115
