Nikola Tesla FBI Files - Page 63

the soft is w In November 1828, Teslaannounced that he could abolish war. The inventor had designed a small, inexpensive, radio-controlled boat which, through its supposed ability to destroy the biggest battleships, would make great navies useless. Not many years later, he was talking of another super-weapon a "death ray which would annihilate whole armies. Yet Tesla never suspected that the real super-weapon of the funne would come from atomic fission For Finstein's basic notion which ded to smashing the atom, he had only ridicule. Alone in his middle age, he had fallen out of step with the world's great thinker. Not all Tesla's later inventions were fantastic. Some, like his induction coils and oscillators, and pioneer work on "tuned" electrical circuits, were highly important. Though he nev succeeded in transmitting power without wires or a big scale, he did prove that a single wire is enough. And some of his brilliant prophecies inspired the more plodding scientists to work out the practical problems of induction heating, radio-telephone, radar and many other electronic marvels of today. But as he grew older, he with dresunther and further with In selt His sinne propher res sounded like a voice from another planer. For corapangonip now, the old man had only his die uns, and they grew Stranger with the years. Completely alone at Last, a stooped, g unt figure with thin, Sat very hair, he used to dip troni his hotel room, buy a bag of find d and trudge slowly over to a park where hundreds of påse mns awaited him These were his friends. They needed him, though the world did not. When he grew too ill to go out, each day he sent a Western Union messenger to the pack ing the birds, the boy wis instructed to see if any of the secand sick If so, he was to bring them back to Tesla's room where the inventar would nurse them gently back to health. JUNE 1955 Power Perhaps this sad little labor of love showed that the man who changed the world had, at last, discovered a great troch Perhaps he knew now that the mere for good lies not in lonely thought but in a fumman heart pulsating like his own "tuned circuits" tune with the hearts of his fellowmen. Or did fiè ever know You could never be sure about Tesla. Winnie Wit IN IN THE FARLY 1920s, when Winston Churchill had offended both his own supporters and the political opposition, the late George Bernard Shaw wrote him: "I enclose two vouchers for the première of my new play, for yourself and a friend if any. Back to the playwright promptly came the theater checks with this note from "Winme": "I regret I am unable to attend the première of your new play. Please send me two vouchers for the second performance if any." MA and New 119 63