Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER ONE Dr Schneider, President of Canada's National Research Council, reached forward and took a folder from his desk. He opened it and read in silence the letter at the top of the file. Then, without looking up, he asked me: 'What do you know about Nikola Tesla?" I floundered for a moment at the unexpectedness of the question. I had been surprised that morning to receive a request to visit Dr Schneider in his office, having recently resumed my work as a theoretical physicist at the Council after a year's sabbatical in London. Clutching at the only straw I could find I hazarded: 'The Tesla coil. I suppose Nikola Tesla must have invented the Tesla coil.' I think that in my position any other scientist would have answered in a similar way. Anyone who has spent time in a research laboratory which contains a vacuum system of pumps, globes, meters and glass tubes will have used a Tesla coil. It looks something like a screw driver with a heavily insulated handle and a blunt metal tip at the other end. Leading from the handle is a length of electrical flex which is plugged into the nearest socket. Once plugged in, the instrument begins to vibrate and hum, for it is a pocket-sized gadget for generating high voltages and high frequencies. A Tesla coil is used to detect leaks in vacuum apparatus. If the vacuum inside a glass tube is 'good' then a blue glow will be seen inside when the tip of the coil is placed next to the glass. With undergraduate students the coil has another use, for it can be placed close to the trouser seat of a colleague as he bends to retrieve a fallen object from under his bench. The results of this operation are quite dramatic. The utilitarian and comic aspects of the Tesla coil and the assumption that someone named Tesla must have invented it were all that I could muster in response to Schneider's question. He must have been following my thoughts for he smiled. 13
