The Portland daily press., 1896-05-09
NIKOIA TESLA'S WORK,
Wonders He Has Accomplished and
Others He Promises.


Is Now at Work Upon-Ris Expert
ments with the Roentgen Rays-His
Personality.
Nikola Tesla is Il man about whom the
general public knows very little, says
the New York Sun. There have been
magazine articles about him and books
about him, and, since Prof Roenteen
made known his discoveries in X-ray
photography and Tesla followed up the
discoveries with experiments of his own,
the papers from time to time have told
how Tesla had seen 1.-THE human heart"
and had photographed the human
brain" and done other wonderful things.
His name has been on the tongues of
many people, but not one man in hun.
dred could tell what Tesla had done for
scisnce or very little if anything about
him personally.
Tesla himself is responsible for the lack
Of popular knowledge of himself. He isn't
one of the kind to hide his light under
a bushel, hut he let's tho light shine and
hides himself. He doesn'r like to sec
his name IN print. He doesn't like TO be
praised for what he has dane or is doing.
He wants, more than anything else, to
he let alone. He discourages notoriety
of any sort. When newspaper men call
on him to ask him questions he is the
quintesssnoe OF courtesy and politeness.
He is willing to tell them anything they.
want to know about electricity or any of
the other subjects on which he is woll
informed, but on one suhject-Tesla-
he is silent. Whan the Sun reporter
called on him early last week ana told
him that he had been Instructed to write
a story about Tesla nd his inventions,
the inventor said:
Don't; there has been too much al
ready" and he said it in way that
showed he meant it. 1t was only after a
second visit and much earnest urging
that hs would consent to the publica-
ton of anything, and lie surrounded his
consent with conditions.
He was asked to tell which of his MANY
inventions he considered the most useful
and satisfactory to him, and he replied
that first III the list was the transmission
Of power with the help of wires. This
power WAS the
ALTERNATING ELECTRIC CUR
RENT
now in use.
Next he mentioned the motor that
made posi- BILE the transmission of power
with only single wire. It used 10 be
supposed that two wires were necessary
TO complete circuit, one for the electric
lty to come back on. II is motor does away
with the extra wire, and lessons the ex-
pense and the waste. Third, he men
tioned the thing which be hoped to &C.
complish. Doing away with that wire
altogether, and using the earth. In q
lecture delivered before the American
Institute Ct Electrical Engineers in
1891. Tesla said:
We are whirling through endless
space with an ineoncsivable speed. All
around us everything is spinning. Eve
rything is energy. There must be some
way of availing ourselves of this energy
moro directly. With the power derived
from if. with every form Of energy OBJ
tanned without effort, from the store for
ever inexhaustible, humanity will ad-
vance with giant strides. The mere
contemplation of these magnificent pos
siblities expands our hopes and fills our
hearts with extreme delight
He had this third thing in mind when
be delivered the lecture. He has been
working now ten years to accomplish 1t.
and he has had encouraging succe SIS
with his experiments.
OF his inventions, in this talk with the
Sun reporter, he mentioned fourth the
perfecting of an apparatus for the pro-
duotion Of electric vibrations; fifth,
the production of light without any car
bon such as is required in the ordinary
incandescent lamp. Light is produced
by the help of electrical vibration. BY
the method proposed 90 times the light
can be had with the same power. Sixth,
he mentioned the evolution of the oscilla-
tor, a work on which he has been engaged
five OF six years and which is about ready
to put into general use. Tesla says:
vi oAo eISl&y uueho 3bcS w JIG max
ing of electric light 95 per cent. is vast
ed. The osollator saves energy. 1t is
the steam engine and the dynamo com
bined and in use it means the saving of
the energy that is now wasted
OF the problems he has worked on Tes-
La said:
"They affect humanity as a whole. ="
The energy that is wasted must be saved,
he said. He spoke Of the utilization of
the
POWER OF NIAGARA FALLS
and of its possibilities and the pos5iblli
ties in nature elsewhere. He said the
existing faults Of society could be re-
formed only by producing more energy;
ona6 energy was in nature and the prob
lem of getting control of it and of utiliz-
Ing 1t was the problem on which he
worked. He cared nothing for ordinary
invention. He thought only of the great
problems. He believed that they would
be mastered and the whole world would
benefit.