| The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Thomas Commerford Martin |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Nikola Tesla |
| Publication date | 1894 |
| Pages | 512 pages |
| ISBN | 1564597113 |
| OCLC Number | 37556993 |
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla is a book compiled and edited by Thomas Commerford Martin detailing the work of Nikola Tesla.[1] The book is a comprehensive compilation of Tesla's work with many illustrations.
Written at the end of the 19th century, the book is a record of Tesla's pioneering activities, research, and works.[2] Tesla is recognized as one of the foremost electrical investigators and inventors.[3] At the time of publication , the book was the "bible" of every electrical engineer practicing the profession.[4][5] The book contains five lectures by Tesla:
Martin stated that, "No attempt whatever has been made here to emphasize the importance of his researches and discoveries".[12] The ideas and inventions are conveyed in their own way, determining their own place by intrinsic merit. But with the fact that Tesla blazed a path that electrical development would later follow for years to come,[13][14] the compiler of the book endeavored to bring together all of Tesla's work up to that point in Tesla's life.[2] Aside from indicating the range of his thought and originality of his mind,[15] the book has value as showing the scope of Tesla's early inventions.
The book includes Tesla's lectures, miscellaneous articles and discussions, and makes note of all his inventions up to the date of publication, particularly polyphase motors and the effects obtained with currents of high potential and high frequency. The book demonstrates that Tesla continued on the scientific frontier, barely pausing for an instant to work out details of utilization that may have at once been obvious to him. Wherever possible his own language was employed in the writing of the book.
On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena.
Upon securing the deal to publish the book, Thomas Commerford Martin was praised by his contemporaries as having executed a brilliant stratagem in closing the deal to publish a book which would be a landmark in the electrical sciences.[5] Martin and Tesla both profited from sales of the book, but Tesla insisted that copies had to be given out freely.[16] Tesla was unconcerned with the financial aspect of the book.[17]
Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, commented on the importance of the book and stated in the middle of the 20th century:
Who today can read a copy of The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, published before the turn-of-the-century, without being fascinated by the beauty of the experiments described and struck with admiration for Tesla's extraordinary insight into the nature of the phenomena with which he was dealing? Who now can realize the difficulties he must have had to overcome in those early days? But one can imagine the inspirational effect of the book forty years ago on a boy about to decide to study the electrical art. Its effect was both profound and decisive.[18]
Margaret Cheney, in Tesla: Man Out of Time, used the text of the book to call attention to the fact that Tesla indicated that one of the uses of the experimental equipment would be for the professional field of "harmonic and synchronous telegraphy" and that "vast possibilities are again opened up" for the radio arts of the time.[19]
In "Nikola Tesla and John Jacob Astor" by Marc J. Seifer, Seifer wites of Tesla answering what is the spark of life:
Thus, 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.[20]