Nikola Tesla on His Inventions

My Inventions by Nikola Tesla
London: Arcturus Publishing, 2020
ISBN 978-1-78950-078-3

(page 17) When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In 20 years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise?
[Tesla’s imagination and Einstein’s thought experiments. Did they ever meet?]

(21) The sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit but I was fascinated with the glitter of crystals or objests with sharp edges and plane surfaces. I would not touch the hair of other people except, perhaps, at the point of a revolver. I would get a fever by looking at a peach and if a piece of camphor was anywhere in the house it caused me the keenest discomfort.
[Do I dare to eat a peach? from the Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Tesla would have been interested in qi gong.]

(32) I am ambidextrous now but then I was left-handed and had comparatively little strength in my right arm.
[Tesla taught himself to be ambidextrous. A Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain exercise is to draw with the non-dominant hand and see what that does. I like to play stringed instruments with the non-dominant as well as dominant hand in my practice.]

(52-53) In 1899, when I was past 40 and carrying on my experiments in Colorado, I could hear very distinctly thunderclaps at a distance of 550 miles. The limit of audition for my young assistants was scarcely more than 150 miles. My ear was over 13 times more sensitive. Yet at that time I was, so to speak, stone deaf in comparison with the acuteness of my hearing while under the nervous strain. In Budapest I could hear the ticking of a watch three rooms between me and the time-piece. A fly alighting on a table in the room would cause a dull thud in my ear. A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body. The whistle of a locomotive 20 or 30 miles away made the bench or chair on which I sat vibrate so strongly that the pain was unbearable. The ground under my feet trembled continuously. I had to support my bed on rubber cushions to get any rest at all. The roaring noises form near and far often produced the effect of spoken words which would have frightened me had I not been able to resolve them into their accidental components. The sun’s rays, when periodically interrupted, would cause blows of such force on my brain that they would stun me. I had to sumopn all my willpower to pass under a bridge or other structure as I experienced a crushing pressure on the skull. In the dark I had the sense of a bat and could detect the presence of an object at a distance of 12 feet by a peculiar creepy sensation on the forehead. My pulse varied from a few to 260 beats and all the tissues of the body quivered with twitches and tremors which was perhaps the hardest to bear.

(67) I rejected the inductor type, fearing that it might not yield perfect sine waves which were so important to resonant action.

(73-74) One day, as I was roaming in the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightning flash and a few moments after a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of lightning being much like that of a sensitive trigger.

Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever derived, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man.

(80) ‘The Terrestrial Stationary Waves.’ This wonderful discovery, popularly explained means that the Earth is responsive to electrical vibrations of definite pitch just as a tuning fork to certain waves of sound.
[what would a world where Tesla’s World System works look like?]

(103) We are automata entirely controlled by the forces of the medium being tossed about like corks on the surface of the water, but mistaking the resultant of the impulses from the outside for free will. The movements and other actions we perform are always life preservative and though seemingly quite independent from one another, we are connected by invisible links.

(108) The proposed League [of Nations, My Inventions was first published in 1919] is not a remedy but on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit.