 PART 1  THE
TESLA INTERVIEW PART 1 Seeker: From the Tesla archives we have obtained an interview with you from The New York Times July 11, 1933 where it states, and I quote, "Inventor says his health and mind are better than ever -- expects to live beyond 140." You were born in Croatia in 1856 and were 77 at the time. How does it feel to have been on this planet for so long? Tesla: I never think of my age. Really, you know, even now, I'm still a youngster. Knowing that I have descended from a people who came from the mountains of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia who lived to 110 or 120 -- we even had one relative who made it to 140, -- I began from the start with the plan to outlive each of them. I feel mentally stronger and more fit than ever. Seeker: How do you do it? Tesla: First of all, it is not as uncommon as you think. Humans are a simply machines who must follow natural law. An individual who is an offender of the law is a machine that has been degraded so that its responses are no longer accurate and death ensues at an earlier age. The recent story about that French lady who the media said was the oldest living person who died at the age of 120 was poppycock. There are many people today living in mountain villages in Europe and South America who are easily 140. I believe that aging is caused by bacteria on the skin. These can be eradicated by taking electrical baths, which I do daily. Seeker: An electric bath? Tesla: I step aboard a special platform which can transmits millions of volts through my body. This is at a very low power, but very high frequency, as much as 80 million oscillations a second. The electricity, for the most part, travels around the surface throwing off unwanted molecules with extreme vigor. I believe that electrotherapy can also be used to cure numerous ills, particularly cancer. The idea would be to find a resonant frequency for the corresponding virus or tumor and rattle it with such a high intensity that its molecular structure would be shattered asunder. Seeker: All one needs is an electrical bath, and that's it, you live to 140? Tesla: That's a key component. For my ancestors and those others who have survived well past 100 who are not bombarded by the disease one finds in the urban environment, there are other factors which include exercise, I walk ten miles a day, pure thoughts, abstinence, hard work, an occasional glass of wine, and a strict diet of a product I call factor actus. Seeker: Which is? Tesla: It's a simple health potion
equivalent to the protein value of a dozen eggs, made from twelve vegetables
including white leeks, cabbage hearts, flower of cauliflower, white
turnips and lettuce hearts. The product can be eaten warm in a soup
or as a powdered substance added to purified water. I also recommend
fish, stewed prunes marinated in honey and fresh oranges. Seeker: What about sleep? Tesla: Oh, I don't sleep. Sleep is a racial habit growing out of the fact that humans spend half their life in darkness due to the rotation of the earth. Sometimes I doze for an hour or so, and once in a long while, perhaps once in a year, I have a long sleep of five, six or seven hours. When I awake from that I am so full of energy that I have to work it off! Seeker: What about naps. Tesla: That was Tom Edison's trick. He used to stay awake around the clock until he nodded out, and then he would sleep on a problem. Tom used to hold two rocks in his hands and sleep over a bucket. And if he got the answer he was looking for in his sleep, he would drop the rocks, and the racket would wake him up. I admit I also doze during the day when I get tired, but that is mainly to recharge my batteries. Unlike Edison, I do my work while I'm conscious. Seeker: You are credited with a long list of inventions. We've even heard you developed waterwheels at age five. Can you give us an easy summary of the inventions you lay claim to? Tesla: I didn't invent anything. I discovered and created. Below is a modest list of some of my achievements: 1. Rotating magnetic field. Seeker: That's quite a list. How do you think it compares with Edison. Tesla: Edison invented. I discovered. Seeker: If you had it to do all over again, would you forgo working with Edison? Tesla: Of course not. Edison had the most advanced electrical operations at that time. It was an invaluable experience. Seeker: What was it like to meet him? Tesla: My first encounter was a memorable event. He was at that time, the most famous man in the world, known then as the Napoleon of Invention. I was amazed at this wonderful man who without early advantage or scientific training had accomplished so much. But after working with him, round the clock, day in and day out, I became frustrated. If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where the needle might be, but rather, would examine every straw, straw after straw like a diligent bee until he found the object of his search. It was almost sad to watch him at these times, when with a little theory and mathematical calculation, he would have saved 90% of his labor. Seeker: Why did you leave his employ? Tesla: Let's just say we had a misunder-standing. Edison was simply incapable of comprehending my alternating current electrical system. At the time, he had over 1,000 small direct current power stations dotted around the country. I tried to show him that by using AC, all of those stations could be scrapped, and electricity could be sent from one central source. He would hear none of it. The invention was too new. I had no publications on it. So I pulled back and suggested I redesign his DC system instead. I knew I could increase its efficiency at least 15%. The manager said "There's $50,000 in it if you succeed." And when I did, and tried to collect, Edison laughed and said it was a joke, that I didn't understand American humor. That was the last time we worked together. And pretty soon after that, my AC system became the standard, and Edison's DC system went the way of the passenger pigeon. Seeker: Is it true that he electrocuted cats and dogs in order to win the battle of the currents? Tesla: Most definitely, and a cow and even a rogue elephant! The problem at the time was how to harness a current that changed its direction of flow at many times per second into a unidirectional flow. No one could do it before me, so the electricians of the day simply eliminated the up flow and only used the downflow current. This became known as direct current. The advantage of direct current was that electricity could now be harnessed to light bulbs and run electrical equipment, but at a great price of efficiency. What I did was figure out how to eliminate the commutator which caused the current to go direct, and use alternating current in its natural state. Seeker: What was the difference in outcome? Tesla: With Edison's system, and a similar system that the Westinghouse company was using, one would need a power station for every mile of lighting. So, for instance, if one wanted to light the city of New York, one would need a dozen or more electrical plants for every square mile of homes, and even then, the power dropped off with distance. Thus, if a home was near the plant, it's lightbulbs shone brightly, but if you lived, say three quarters of a mile away, your bulbs were dim. And, what's more, this systems could only be used for lighting, not for running machinery. Seeker: Then how did they power factories in those days? Tesla: By being close to a power source which usually was a river. In the early 1890's during the height of the battle of the currents, the great industries of the day were all planning on moving to the banks of the Niagara, because that is where the power was. Edison was upset that we had a competing system, as I had already sold the system to Westinghouse, so he got a man on death row sentenced to die by alternating current. It was Edison's hope that the public would be so afraid of my AC system that they would keep his DC instead. Seeker: What happened? Tesla: Well, the first thing I did was figure out how to send AC through breathing organisms without gaining injury. I toured the world explaining my system and at the same time sent hundreds of thousands of volts through my own body without harming myself. By increasing the frequency and dropping the power to a whisper, it became child's play. Nevertheless, the current was still strong enough to illuminate wireless cold lamps which I held in my hand. That was another reason why Edison was so upset with me. Seeker: Because the lamps were cold? Tesla: Yes. I had removed his precious filament. You see the common electric light wastes 95% of its energy in heat. Try touching an Edison bulb when it is on, and you will see what I mean. I realized that the vacuum in the bulb was more important than the filament. It's one of my most important discoveries, namely, that when electro-magnetism reaches a certain high frequency it creates light. Now almost all major buildings are lit by my fluorescent lights. They use less power, are cold to the touch, and the bulbs almost never have to be changed. Seeker: People have said that the war of the currents is similar today to the war between Microsoft and Apple Computer. Would you agree? Tesla: There are similarities, but
I think it would be best to first point out the advantage of my AC system
over Edison's DC. As stated above, with the Edison system, electricity
could only be transmitted about a mile, and then only for lighting homes.
The upshot was, that if Edison had won the battle of the currents, the
entire country would have been dotted at every mile with direct current
generators harnessed mostly by coal. One can imagine the amount of air
pollution that was being created in the late 1880's and early 1890's
when there was already nearly 3000 smoking plants -- and that was just
the start. With my AC system, however, one needed only one clean energy
producing station at Niagara Falls, and with that, the entire northeast
could be illuminated. By the turn of the century, harnessing my system
through the Westinghouse Corporation, we transmitted electrical power
from Niagara to Chicago, Toronto, Boston and New York. Now factories
could stay in their respective states. They did not have to all line
up along rivers or way up at Niagara Falls. It also meant that housewives
for the first time, could run electrical appliances in their homes.
They couldn't do that with Edison's DC system. Seeker: Playboy (July 1994)? Tesla: Perhaps, I only had the article,
Gates said, and I quote, "Actually, [our DOS] would have been obsolete
some time ago if we hadn't come along with Windows and sort of built
it on top of DOS to renew its capabilities.... [And] believe me, it
would have been a lot easier to write Windows so it didn't run DOS applications."
What Gates was really saying, of course, was that he should have scrapped
the Microsoft DOS because it was inferior, and adopted the Macintosh
DOS instead, but it risked great market share, so he took the expedient
route at the cost of ultimate efficiency. Seeker: Then why did you give up your royalty clause? Tesla: Because Westinghouse, like
Edison, had over 1000 of his own small power plants providing electricity
for lighting to a few hundred homes a piece, and these plants were making
money. My system threatened this profitable scheme, so I had conflicts
with some of their engineers. I told Westinghouse that money was not
the issue. They had to change over to my system, and to make my point,
I ripped up the royalty clause. In the long run it hurt me financially,
but I wouldn't feel the effects for nearly a decade, as I was still
receiving compensation on the invention, and revenues from other patents
I had. Tesla: Not the whole system, but the means for transmitting electrical power over long distances was obsolete. Look what happened with that ice storm a few winters back in the northeast in Maine and Canada. The power lines broke and tens of thousands of people were without power for weeks in the dead of winter. My idea was to do away with long-distance power lines entirely. Seeker: Is that really possible? Tesla: Of course. I had built my first wireless power transmission station in Colorado Springs in 1899 to study the principle, and then I moved back to New York and erected my second station out on Long Island. Seeker: Wardenclyffe. Tesla: Yes. The idea was to erect a large transmission tower which could do a variety of things. For instance, if a similar tower were placed in England, which was my plan, than energy could be jumped from the Long Island plant over the Atlantic to the receiving tower in England. From there the electricity could be transmitted either by means of wireless to the local dwellings or by conventional means, that is, but using wires. Mostly, the idea would be to locate receiving plants at distant places that were not near sources of power. Seeker: But Wardenclyffe was not near a water fall. Tesla: True enough. But this was really an experimental station. My full plan involved the erection of a source plant at Niagara, and I had designs with both the American and Canadian power companies to put this in but other complications prevented me. Seeker: You claimed in 1900 that you had a wireless telephone? Tesla: That was nothing new. I also had facsimile machines. All of the principles to what today is called the cellular phone is in my patents. I told Morgan at the time.... Seeker: J. P. Morgan? Tesla: J.P. Morgan was the son. This was J. Pierpont Morgan, the father, that I could create an unlimited number of separate wireless channels, but he didn't believe me. Seeker: Was that because Marconi sent his message across the Atlantic before you got the chance? Tesla: That was part of it. I told Mr. Morgan that the microbe was using outmoded equipment based in large measure on the work of Heireich Hertz, even if he did pirate my oscillators, and that he was merely trying to send Morse code, dots and dashes across the seas, where I was going to transmit voice, light, pictures and power. I had already calculated that Hertz' system was not conducive. That is why I invented a continu-ous wave oscillator because that was the only way to go. Today, no-one uses Hertzian frequencies to transmit radio, wireless television and cellular conversations, they all use Tesla waves. Seeker: How did you create an unlimited number of separate wireless channels? Tesla: By using what John Hays Hammond Jr. called my prophetic genius patent. This was achieved by combining frequencies. Let me give you an example. Say you have an oscillator which produces ten frequencies. You then have ten channels. Do you see? Seeker: Yes. Tesla: Then how do you create more channels? Seeker: Hey, who's asking the questions! I don't know. How? Tesla: By inventing a receiver that is receptive to a combination of frequencies. If the receiver works when it is activated by two separate frequencies, then you have 10 times 10 or 100 channels. If it is three frequencies, there are 1000 possible channels, and so on. In reality, we are already starting off with thousands of channels, so when you multiply the frequencies, you see that there are a virtually unlimited number of possible stations. That is how every person on the planet can have their own cellular phone, and that is my invention. Seeker: How do we know that is true? Tesla: First of all, it is in my patents, but also, I displayed this principle in my remote controlled boat which I showed at Madison Square Garden in 1898. Seeker: So, you invented remote control as well? Tesla: And selective tuning and telautomatics. The whole idea of thinking machines can be traced back to my boat whose patents I displayed in the electrical journals at that time. Now we see this applications in dozens of ways, such as in beepers, garage door openers, remote controlled toy cars, airplanes and boats, the television remote, and so on, all based on that patent. One can also see that telephone scramblers and computer encryption devices, cable and satellite station blockers are also based on this simple principle of using multiple frequencies. Seeker: And you say humans are simply biological automatons too? Tesla: Essentially, yes. Man, however, is not an ordinary mass consisting of spinning atoms and molecules and containing merely heat-energy. He is a mass possessed of certain higher qualities by reason of the creative principle of life which he is endowed. His mass, as the water in an ocean wave, is being continuously exchanged, new taking the place of the old. Seeker: Would you say this concept is analogous to the modern day idea of artificial intelligence. Tesla: I do not believe that intelligence is artificial, but rather a property of matter. I have, by every thought and every act of mine, demonstrated and do so daily, to my absolute satisfaction that like these machines, I am nothing more than an automaton endowed with a power of movement, which merely responds to external stimuli beating upon my sense organs, and thinks and acts accordingly. I remember only one or two cases in all my life which I was unable to locate the first impression which prompted a movement, or a thought, or even a dream. Seeker: Wasn't one of those two instances the intuitive flash you received which gave you the insight to realize that a solution to the AC problem was possible. Tesla: Yes. Seeker: And you mention dreams. You do not believe in Carl Jung's idea that dreams can be prompted from something inside like genetic memories, which he called archetypes. You say that dreams only come from something external. Tesla: I don't want to get too far afield. But even if Jung's idea was correct, it would still prove my point that information ultimately was derived from a reaction to something from the environment, even if it was in the environment of our ancestors. Seeker: Implanted into the DNA? Tesla: DNA is merely a special arrangement
of particular atoms. Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead,
responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle
within. Take a crystal, for instance. Certainly its growth and structure
gives evidence of this animating principle. DNA, much like the crystal,
is made up of matter, just five elements arranged in a peculiar fashion:
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and phosphorous. Everything that
exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus
from the outside. There is no gap between, no break in continuity, no
special and distinguishing vital agent. The momentous question of Spencer,
What is it that causes inorganic matter to run into organic forms? has
been answered. It is the sun's heat and light. Wherever they are there
is life. Seeker: So, this was the basis for the robot you invented? Tesla: I prefer the term automaton,
or telautomaton, because it was activated by remote control. Long ago
I conceived the idea of constructing such a machine which would mechanically
represent me, and which would respond, as I do myself, but of course,
in a much more primitive manner to external influences. Such an automaton
evidently had to have motive power, organs for locomotion, directive
organs and one or more sensitive organs so adapted as to be excited
by external stimuli. Whether the automaton be of flesh and bone, or
of wood and steel, it mattered little, provided it could provide all
the duties required of it like an intelligent being. Seeker: What do you think of these modern thinking machines such as Big Blue which recently beat Kasparov in a chess match. Tesla: I am impressed but only so far as its applications to more important problems. Big Blue has the advantage of storing tens of thousands of games and hundreds of thousands of chess moves that are reversed in the machine for inevitable conclusions. The real question was if Big Blue had reflective capabilities, and I don't believe that Big Blue achieved this level of thought. The big difference between these thinking machines, and, to use your term, the robots is in motivation. Humans are motivated to live and to improve themselves. Machines have no motivation. This is what must be instilled in order to train the machine to want to think for itself. That is why I laid out the plan to inspire my future automatons to want to reproduce. Seeker: What would you use to motivate a machine? Tesla: I don't know. Maybe an extra zap of juice! (laughs) if it came up with a new thought. The idea of creating computers that would program themselves, however, is not new. There are many articles on this concept. Seeker: You mention in your writings the possibility of weather control and the creation of artificial lighting. Tesla: Yes. Wardenclyffe was set up to do a variety of things. I had realized long ago that cloud bursts and rain showers were often triggered by lightning. This whole El Nino thing could have been averted if my system of weather control had been in place. Seeker: Really? Tesla: Of course. I knew that if I could change the electrical matrix in the skies I could generate clouds and create rain or do the reverse and diminish a weather storm's capacity. I was also planning on lighting up shipping lanes over the high seas so that ships would be able to see at night. Seeker: I'm not quite sure what you mean? Tesla: Aren't you listening man? I would use my giant Tesla coil, which I called my magnifying transmitter, to beam up frequencies, say, between New York and England, over the seas, and these vibrations, much like the Northern Lights, would create luminescence so that ships could see where they were going at night. Had I finished my plans, that is, if I had not run out of money, then my good friend Colonel John Jacob Astor, and his friend Benjamin Guggenheim would not have died during that awful mess when the Titanic sank. The captain would have seen the iceberg, the event happened at night, and 1500 lives would have been saved. Seeker: So, is it your belief that had Wardenclyffe been completed, the Titanic would not have sank. Tesla: The lighting of the shipping lanes was the back-up plan. My main invention would have been an efficient world telegraphy system. Had that been in operation in 1912, and it should have been, the Titanic would have been able to radio a half dozen nearby ships who could have come and rescued the remaining passengers. The problem was that the dolt Marconi, had placed his inferior dot and dash system on board the Titanic. The range and capabilities of that system was woefully inadequate. My system of what today is called mass communications, was more efficient then in its final form than the wireless system of even today. The Titanic would have had instant access to all neighboring ships and these people would have been rescued. Seeker: Have you seen the recent movie Titanic? Tesla: Yes, I have. Seeker: And what did you think of it? Tesla: I liked the one with Clifton Webb better. Seeker: Why was that? Tesla: Because the story line of this one was too narrow. I thought the love story was inspirational, I'll give the director, Mr. Cameron, that, and I tip my hat off on the special effects on the sinking of the ship, and the pointing out the idiocy of letting the ship go to sea without enough life boats, but his depiction of Mr. Guggenheim and Colonel Astor was simply dredful. An insult to the intelligence of anyone who knew these find gentleman. There were mere cardboard cutouts and cowards in Cameron's picture. The real men were men of substance, who gave their lives so that women and children could be saved in their stead. Don't you think a man of Astor's stature, who at that time was worth probably four or five times what Bill Gates is worth today, could have had the means to get himself onto one of the lifeboats? He was a gentleman as was Guggenheim. Astor had donated his ship thirteen years before that during the Spanish American War and he went down to Cuba to help Teddy Roosevelt and the Roughriders. He was helping me fund my flying machine when he died. Seeker: You had a flying machine? Tesla: Several. I had designed a hovercraft for Astor to travel over the Hudson, much like the hydrofoil of today. It worked like a charm. I had a dirigible jet, you know, a Zeppelin, lighter than air ship that was propelled by a jet engine. And later, I had my famous flivver plane, which was a small aircraft that took off vertically, like a helicopter and then the propeller was rotated into the airplane position to fly like a conventional craft. Seeker: Much like today's military plane the Osprey tilt-roter? Tesla: Precisely. But the cost would not have been 40 million dollars a piece as the Osprey is. My plan was to construct small flivver planes that could fly five or six people. They were being priced right before the crash of '29, at about $1000 a piece. I was negotiating with Henry Ford. But then the Depression came. This vehicle was going to compete with the automobile. Each home would need a small helipad, or there could be helipad centers every few blocks. I'm not sure that the flivver plane would have worked in densely populated areas, such as New York City, but in the suburbs they would have been fine, particulary for trips between cities and states. Seeker: In 1970, there was a book written by Arthur Matthews about you entitled Wall of Light: Nikola Tesla and the Venusian Spaceship, which stated that you were still alive at that time living on a space ship that came from Venus. Tesla: I can neither confirm nor deny that book. However, I will say that Venus is much too hot to live on. Seeker: You had some fundamental issues with Einstein's theories when they first came into the scientific noosphere. Today, however, they are widely accepted. Do you feel you owe the quantum physics community an apology. Tesla: You neglected to mention that Einstein, himself, never accepted the premise of indetermancy that lies at the basis of quantum physics, and we have yet to hear him apologize. Einstein was a pad and pencil scientist who deduced mathematical equations instead of constructing physical devices which would have proved or disproved his lofty cerebrations. There is, however, one area where we are in agreement and that is the notion that "God doesn't play dice," the idea that the world operates like a great machine, where everything is interconnected. Seeker: Surely you see now that you were in error about atomic energy. Tesla: You know what they say about hindsight. In retrospect I realize that we had been talking about different parts of the atom. You see, I had split atoms hundreds of times through extremely high voltages, but never released the kind of energy Einstein talked about. The problem was that he was discussing the splitting of the nucleus of the atom, and I was discussing the disintegration of its larger structure which involved the breaking down of the electron orbits, and the changing of one element into another, not the demolition of the inner workings of the components of the nucleus. Either he did not make that point clear in the 1930's when I voiced my disapproval, or somehow I missed it. Seeker: You split atoms? Tesla: Many times. It only takes about one million volts to vaporize carbon and about four million volts to change it into helium, but this process does not involve the destruction of the nucleus. Seeker: You also say lightspeed can be transcended? Tesla: So do the physicists, and I'm not talking about tachyons although that idea bears some merit. I'm talking about the problem of trying to apply relativity to the structure of the atom. Read Gamow's book Thirty Years that Shook Physics. He tells us that the orthorotational speed of the electron is 1.37 times the speed of light. That violated relativity so the quantum phycists did some fancy mathematical footwork and somehow skipped this real problem entirely. But it remains one of the key reasons we don't have, as yet, a unified field theory. They can't completely combine quantum physics with relativity. My magnifying transmitter, is another instance of violatiing relativity. In this device, I created electrical waves that travelled one and a half times the speed of light. Seeker: That is on a whole different order, and as I understand classical physics, this just can't be possible. Tesla: Let me ask you a question. How big around is the earth? Seeker: 25,000 miles? Tesla: Right. Now, light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Let's round that off to 200,000 miles per second to make the mathematics more easily understood. Seeker: OK. Tesla: So, that means that it takes light approximately 1/8 of a second to travel around the earth. Do you agree? Seeker: Yes. Tesla: Now, let me ask you another question. How long do you think it takes the electrical field of the North pole to interact with the electrical field of the South pole? Seeker: What do you mean? Tesla: Will you agree that it has to be a lot faster than 1/8 of a second? Seeker: I can't tell. Tesla: You're missing the point.
The earth is a single entity. So obviously it is instantane-ously connected
to itself. The field of the North pole is connected the field of the
South pole instantaneously. And if that is true, that violates relativity.
Let's take it one step further. Jupiter's diameter is about 10 times
that of the earth, or, in round numbers approximately 250,000 miles
around. Thus, it would take light well over a second to travel around
Jupiter. There simply must be forces involved that exceed the speed
of light as one end of Jupiter is obviously connected to its other end.
Now, if we apply this same concept to the solar system as a single unit
or to the galaxy as a whole, which is many millions of light years long,
we see how absolutely silly it is to think that nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light. The angular momentum of the galaxy, caused
by its spin, can be measured. Owing to the immense charge of the sun,
it alone produces cosmic rays that travel 50 times that of the speed
of light. Seeker: And you have proof? Tesla: Naturally. I am presently working on a interplanetary tube that will send signals at twice the speed of light. Seeker: Can you describe how this tube will function. Tesla: This device should be ready sometime next year, and at that time I will demonstrate it and explain its principles in detail. Seeker: Are you talking about hyperspatial dimensions? Tesla: No. The physicists went wrong when they abandoned the ether theory. If you read Einstein carefully, he never said the ether did not exist, what he said was that it could not be detected. There must be something between the stars and galaxies and I prefer to call that something the ether. And this is easily proved. In fact, it is self evident. Seeker: What do you mean. Tesla: Take any point in space, say somewhere millions of lightyears between galaxies. Seeker: OK. Now what? Tesla: Will you agree that if you were situated at that point and had a telescope, you would see millions of stars and some galaxies. Seeker: Yes. Tesla: So, we see that every point in space contains the intersecting light from millions and millions of stars and galaxies. And that is only part of the story. The ether exists and has threshold values associated with its various properties. Certainly lightspeed is one such threshold. Rather than call the next level hyperspace, I prefer to link it to frequencies or oscillations that exceed that of light. Hyperspace implies popping in and out of dimensions, travelling back and forth in time and so on, and I for one, will not accept such views. My idea is much more simple. Certain cosmic rays vibrate and travel through the ether at frequencies that exceed lightspeed. Seeker: You also disagree with Einstein concerning his idea that space is curved. Tesla: It's nonsense. How can "nothing" be curved. Seeker: Then how do you explain how light bends around large objects such as planets and stars. Tesla: The light is bent by a force-field. All of this will be explained when I publish my theory on gravity. And for that matter, I also do not agree with Stephen Hawkings and his ideas on black holes in space. You read about these black holes in all the science magazines as if they are real things. They are not. They are theoretical constructs that do not exist in the real world. Seeker: Since your work is so important, why is it that you are so little known by the general public? Tesla: There are a number of reasons. The first is that once I sold my patents to Westinghouse on the AC polyphase system, this then became known as the Westinghouse system. Of course Steinmetz didn't help either. Seeker: Why is that? Tesla: Because he left my name out of his textbooks on my system! Same thing in wireless, as I alluded to earlier, once my Tesla coil and oscillators became part and parcel of any workable wireless system, such as the radio, one would think that the term Tesla waves would come into vogue. But no, the people in power referred to them as Hertzian waves, which are a myth. Intelligent information cannot be transmitted with Hertz's system, but can only be transmitted by my system, which I displayed before societies in England, France and America one, two and three years before Marconi even began his studies in the field. And then, of course, the conspiracy continues to this day. Seeker: Is this just philosophizing or do you have proof? Tesla: Proof?! Take Scientific American. Is that big enough for you. April 1997 -- there's a big three-page article on me and my work so what do they do, they say that Sebastian Ferranti invented the AC polyphase system in England in 1889. I write the editor, some young whippersnapper with a haughty grin, sticks his picture on the inside of every cover, and I show him my letter from Gisbert Kapp dated in 1888 where he thanks me for allowing him to publish my lecture so that engineers in England could begin to build my apparatus. And lo and behold, the following year Ferranti makes good. Do you think Scientific American would correct its story. NO! They ignored me even when I gave them signed proof! Not only that, this editor never even wrote me back! And then there is Nature. They actually said in their July 1997 issue that I had no mathematical skills! I had to threaten them with a lawsuit before they finally printed a retraction, which was done the following year! Seeker: What about Morgan? Tesla: What about Morgan? Seeker: Do you think he sabotaged your work on wireless because of his holdings in copper, timber and rubber? Tesla: Not a disparaging thing can be said about him. Mr. Morgan adhered to our contract to the letter. Seeker: Well, do you think he played any role in diminishing your fame? Tesla: Certainly not. I can only laugh when I hear people criticize Mr. Morgan. He was a nobleman of the highest order and towered above the Wall Street people like Samson over the Philistines. Seeker: So, why is it that you failed? Tesla: The world wasn't ready. Certain
devices can be great advances, but if the time is not right, society
does not integrate the invention into its markets.
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It was a warm winter morning in the new millennium.
The seeker hailed a cab for the New York Public Library, strolled over
to Bryant Park and waited as he was told. It was not too long before
he noticed a tall, exceedingly thin gentleman feeding pigeons at a nearby
bench. The man wore a long black coat, colorful scarf, and a derby hat
with ear flaps. With a gleam in his eye, he looked over. "Seeker?"
he asked, and the initiate nodded. "Come," the wizard motioned.
There could be no doubt, it was Tesla. Considering the hobble to his
gait and his advanced age, there still was a perceptible bounce to his
stride. Nodding to an elderly couple who seemed to know him, the wizard
grabbed two segues, exited the park and led his visitor down 5th Avenue
to the Hotel St. Regis. Motoring up a ramp, they parked their vehicles
and entered the foyer, taking their seats beneath a painting of John
Jacob Astor where Part I of this interview took place.