BY JOHN J. O'NEILL
A Must Read for Electrical Engineering Professors and Students
4 stars out of 5 stars
This is a remarkable biography in several aspects. First, the author knew Tesla, and had interviewed Tesla directly, as well as running into each other in their night walks on New York’s Fifth Avenue, which was deserted in those hours. Of the many biographies I have read, this is one of the very few that the author and subject had met. Of the many biographies I read, this is one of the very few that the author and subject had met.
Second, the characters in the narrative included not only another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, but also business magnates George Westinghouse and John Pierpont Morgan, as well as the humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens, commonly known as Mark Twain.
Third, the author, a journalist and writer by profession, not only documented the numerous inventions of Telsa but also explained the principles behind the working of every one of them mentioned in the book. The explanations are difficult to follow even for someone with a major in electrical engineering. How a journalist can do this is a mystery to this reader.
While the author’s explanations of Tesla’s inventions are valuable, they also render a good portion of the book rough going for the reader. Fortunately, technical descriptions aside, there are plenty of interesting accounts of Tesla’s life which more than compensate for the difficult passages. Below are several examples:
- Tesla, at a young age, had decided that he would be an electrical engineer. His father opposed this and wanted him to go into ministry, which was the tradition of the family. At age 17, while still recovering from malaria, he contracted cholera. He was seriously ill and the thought that not being able to study electrical engineering gave him little incentive to recover. As his condition continued to deteriorate, his father, who had already lost a son, desperately wanted Tesla to recover. He whispered in Telsa’s ear that he promised to send him to study electrical engineering and begged him to recover. Upon hearing this, Tesla, although totally lacking energy, began to show a smile and indeed went on to recover.
- While Thomas Edison did not believe Tesla’s idea of using alternating current for the designs of motors, generators, transformers and transmission lines, George Westinghouse was an admirer of Tesla and appreciated his genius. However, he cheated Tesla by not honoring the royalty part of the contract when he acquired the rights to Tesla’s patents. Despite this injustice, Tesla never held any grudge against Westinghouse.
- Interesting relations between Tesla and J P Morgan as well as Mark Twain.
- The story about Tesla’s affection for pigeons was touching. Tesla fed the pigeons for many years. There was one that he was particularly fond of, and the pigeon was fond of him. When the pigeon was sick, Tesla nursed her back to health. One night, the pigeon flew into his room and stood on his desk. Tesla could tell from her eyes that she was telling him that she was dying. Tesla told the author, when they met in one of their night walks, that “When that pigeon died, something went out of my life.”
Tesla was selected to receive the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1917. Tesla’s friend, B. A. Behrend, was Chairman of the Edison Medal Committee. In his speech at the opening of the ceremony, Behrend paraphrased the Pope’s lines on Newton:
“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in sight: God said, Let Tesla be, and all was light.”
Commenting on this, the author made the following remark which very much resonates with this reviewer, who majored in electrical engineering and spent his whole career in engineering education and research:
“It is doubtful if anyone in the audience, or on the stage, grasped the full significance of Behrend’s words….And fewer still were the members of the Institute who had any conception of the extent or importance of Tesla’s contribution to their science. His major inventions had been announced thirty years before. The majority of the engineers present belonged to the younger generation; and they had been taught from textbooks that almost completely omitted mention of Tesla’s work”.
I would urge all electrical engineering professors and students, as well as authors of EE textbooks, to take the above quote to heart.
Finally, some negative observations about the printing and layout of the paper version of the book. The print is light and in very small type. The page numbers at the top and bottom of the pages are almost invisible. The twenty sections (chapters?) have no titles. There is no index, making it very difficult to look anything up.
Link to Amazon Review:
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