Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER EIGHT After my visit to the Herzberg Institute I continued biographical reading in an attempt to form a picture of Tesla and the way he worked at Colorado Springs. But as I went deeper into the biographies I realized that Tesla was still an enigma. The books mentioned incidents from his childhood and reported youthful conversations, but I began to ask myself: had all this actually happened? How had the biographer obtained such information? Was it a report at first hand or had it been filtered through decades of recollection and retelling? Had all the anecdotes been woven together by friends and relatives to make a 'good story'? Tesla as a boy was supposed to have been interested in machines and to have constructed ingenious inventions for his mother. But many children pass through such periods of model building and the results are acclaimed with pride by their parents; I had the cynical feeling that if Tesla had become a writer or a composer there would have been legends concerning infant storytelling or rapt attention to the church organ. As I read about Tesla's youth one remark stood out strongly. It was the suggestion that Tesla was able to receive the plans and designs for his inventions in a very direct way, right into his imagination. Even the originals of the complicated electrical machines he was later to invent appear to have been received in a flash. A device, in all its detail, would miraculously appear in his mind and he would then begin to construct the working apparatus simply by copying the design from his imagination. An inventor is generally thought to spend a great deal of time in developing his invention. Plans are redrawn, scale models built, components modified and at times drastic redesigning is needed. The final working version evolves through a long process of calculation, experimentation and revision. But in Tesla's case each invention is supposed to have appeared as fully formed and refined visions; without the need for further experimentation. 71
