Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1943-01-08

earth by any one who had the key.
While working on that, he brought
out invention after invention, from
high frequency generators to steam
turbines of radical design.
The son Of Greek clergyman and
a Serbian mother who was the
daughter of an inventor, Mr.. Tesla
was born July 10, 1857. He never
married.
He got his schooling at the Poly
technic Institute in Gratz and at
the University of Prague. In after
years such institutions as Yale, Co.
lumbia and Vienna Polytechnic load
ed him with honorary degrees.
For a time he worked at Orange,
N. j., with the late Thomas A. Edi-
son, in designing motors and gene
rators. He described Edison as "by
far the most successful and probably
the last exponent of the purely en-
pirical method of investigation"
He soon went into research on his
own, sending forth a stream of in
ventions. He conceived the first
effective method of using alternat-
ing electrical current. Four years
after landing in the United States,
he patented an induction motor,
making 1t possible to convert cleo
trical energy into mechanical energy
more efficiently and economically
than by direct current.
The principle of the rotary mag
netic field embodied in the appara-
tus used to transmit power from
Niagara Falls was his invention.
Power without Wires.
In 1924, when he was ST and famed
as a radio pioneer, he announced
the perfection of a system of trans
hitting power without wires. He
said 1t would be possible to send
power to the greatest terrestrial dis
tances.
1t could be used for ships and air
craft, illumination and-machinery,
he said, and one of its most desirable
uses would be to light isolated homes
by vacuum tubes.
The invention comprised, he ex-
planned, an electrical generator
which would deliver its energy into
the earth, whence it could be I'M
locked by any one having the proper
electrical key"
Planes, without engines, darting
through the air by dint of wirelessed
power, would come, he said at an
other interview, and wireless direct
ed force. far more powerful than the
much-diScussed death ray" would
enable battleships to snuff out every
enemy airship that appeared on the
horizon.
L have already demonstrated ex-
perimentally," he said in 1927. that
l can transmit power by wireless
nall way around the earth without
losing one-half of l per cent of it.
hope in time to put up my power
plant to give to the world my best
invention
Backed by Morgan.
Sometimes he tossed off ideas with
no apparent concern as to what be-
came of them. In 1923 he got pat
ents for an air flivver," a sort of
combined helicopter and airplane.
but he was not particularly inter-
ested in building it.
Mr.. Telsa's wireless power idea
won him the financial backing of
the late j. Pierpont Morgan.
In Colorado, in 1889, the inventor
built huge induction coil by which,
he said, he generated and sent out
wireless waves the same year that
Marconi established wireless tele-
graphic communication between
France and England. Mr.. Telsa
claimed priority in the invention of
wireless transmission of intelligence.
MY life has been so wonderful"
he used to say, that it almost sur
passes anything in fiction because
every great desire I have ever had
has invariably materialized.
When I was about years old I
used to construct little water tur-
bines in the streams that rushed
down the mountains near nv home
On one occasion I told my uncle. a
metropolitan of the Greek church.
that some day would put a water
wheel in Niagara Falls, about which
l had read. So, in 1895, when 1 saw
my turbines in action at Niagara
L