Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-12-17

neering department. where he invented sew
era1 improvements. From there he went to
Paris to be engineer of a large lighting
company. and thence to the United States,
where he was employed by Thomas Edison
in his laboratory. His next position was
that of electrician to the Tesla Electric
Light Company. and at the same time he
established the Tesla laboratory here from
which his great inventions have come
Tesla the Inventor.
During my chat with Mr. Tesla I asked
him when he first realized that he had
the inventive faculty and he told me he
had always been inventing something or
other. When he was quite a small boy
he made toy guns, which would shoot
birds, and as he was the only one who
could make them he supplied the boys of
his neighborhood. He made clocks at eight
or nine years and began to dabble in cleo
tricity before he was in his teens His
first determination to devote his life to
invention came shortly after he went to-
London to deliver lecture before a scien-
tific society there. AT this lecture he met
Lord Rayleigh, the great physicist. and
showed him the results of some of his ex-
periments. Rayleigh said that he had, UNI
doubtedly. the faculty of discovery and that
he would succeed an inventor.
Shortly after this my mother died" said
Mr.. Tesla, land l concluded to exert this
faculty. Lord Rayleigh had said possessed
1t and, upon examining myself, l believed
L.. l.
powers on small things and 1 decided to
strive toward something that would benefit
humanity. Lam working on an invention
for the transmission Of force. This inven-
ton will, l believe, revolutioniZe the world
of labor. l am also working on electricity
and / cannot remember when l was not
working more or less in the direction of a
successful flying machine. My idea as to
that is along different lines than any yet
proposed and / expect to see it realized.
Indeed, we shall eventually have flying ma
chimes that will be large enough to carry
crowds through the air. They must be
large in order to succeed.
These words were uttered by Mr. Tesla
nine years ago. Today he says he has
completed his force transmission invention.
will be seen in my interview, which fol-
lows. He has also done other things which
he proposed in that interview. Remember
it was before the time of the wireless tel
egraph, but he then said to me the follow
ing:
Il tell you. We are on the threshold of a
new era. We have only begun to master
the great forces of nature, and the inven-
tons of the next few decades will be far
superior to any of the past. What would
you think of standing on the shore and
telephoning to your friends in midocean?
What of being in the center of room
and making your whole body blaze with
light? What of sending power to and fro
over the earth at will and making it do its
work anywhere and almost anyhow
How Tesla Works.
AS to Mr.. Tesla himself, there is no hard
er worker known. He told me that he sell
dom slept more than four hours of night.
and during some periods not more than
three. When in the thick of new nven-
ton it IS hard to sleep. His work is al
ways with him and he says that his mind
sometimes works in his sleep. He awakes
in the morning to find that the problem
which had worried him when he went, to
bed has been practically solved over night.
He has always been a light sleeper. His
mother died at seventy and she never took
more than four hours sleep. His father
was light sleeper.
Tesla is q peculiar worker. Failures do
not trouble him. After he undertakes a
thing and decides that it should come out
certain way, he keeps on experimenting
and experimenting, believing in his success.
He says that ii he doubted his ability 1t
would make him crazy. He seems to have
a dual mind. He told me that he often
found himself carrying on two trains of
thought at the same time, and said that
while he was talking to me he could see
the figures of some of his calculations be-
hind me and could carry them on at the
same time. He is always figuring. His
scrap basket is filed with the calculations
which he has torn up and thrown away.