PREFACEThe surfacing of the transcr

PREFACE
The surfacing of the transcript for this pre-hearing interview with Nikola Tesla by his legal counsel in 1916 resulted from
an intensive search in archives of legal firms, some now defunct and others later acquired by contemporary interests.
The interview was precipitated by numerous pending court cases as the fledgling radio industry entered a period of fierce
competition. Tesla's counsel believed the interview necessary not only in order to prepare for the pressing of his own
claims against the Marconi Company, but also to protect his own patent interests when called to give expert-witness
testimony in the upcoming litigation foray pitting a plethora of new communication companies and their captive radio
pioneers as adversaries.
A case prompting this interview, one of dozens to reach judicial review, was "Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of
America v. Atlantic Communication Company, et al." Atlantic owned and operated the large radio station at Sayville,
Long Island. The proceedings opened in 1915 with the calling of expert witnesses including Ferdinand Braun and Nikola
Tesla. The specter of war had cast its shadow over Europe, and Count George von Arco, who had also been called, was
detained because of services to the German Army in the use of asphyxiating gases and other deadly inventions
perfected by him.
The text of this interview was, of course, never intended for publication. Counsel, concerned primarily with the protection
of Tesla's patent interests, ask questions almost exclusively relating to the priority of his patents and their application.
Tesla candidly discusses his contenders while presenting a thorough history of his work with alternating currents as
applied to wireless transmission. In this document, he describes experimental methods, techniques, and apparatus used
in his laboratories at New York City, Colorado Springs, and Long Island.
Most of the photographs accompanying this interview are in good condition, but those of schematic and mechanical
drawings have suffered some decay with time. These may be the only form of the drawings extant and are reproduced
with as much fidelity as possible. For better clarity, five illustrations are reprinted from the February and May, 1913
issues of the Electrical Experimenter magazine, Copyright Gernsback Publications, where they subsequently appeared.
These are Figures 66, 67, 79, 81 and 82.
Although the interview spanned several days, it is presented in this work as though it was given at one time; all
references to interruptions and resumptions have been removed. The text is printed in standard typewriter pica type,
unjustified, in the style of hearing proceedings of that period. No alterations have been made in Tesla's remarks except
for 'clean-up' additions, typically references to photographs and diagrams, and fill-in words necessitated by occasional
rambling and incomplete sentence structure. These additions are provided in brackets [ ]. Helpful notes are also cued to
the text in brackets.
L.I.A., 1992
INTRODUCTION
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Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents
What I am going to show you, step by step, is how I proceeded until I finally realized my dream. Nikola Tesla
You are holding in your hands one of the most remarkable documents in the history of electrical science. Seldom, in
technical research, has such a treasure of descriptive commentary and historical documentation been discovered. This
book is a veritable Rosetta stone for deciphering and tracing the technical thoughts of one of the world's most
distinguished engineering scientists since Archimedes. It describes electrical experiments which took place nearly 100
years ago--but have yet to be replicated. So astonishing are its contents that it takes one's breath away!
Here, in Tesla's own words, are interpretations (couched in the language of 19th century physics) for electrical
phenomena which even today lack satisfactory explanations in the language of modern technical analysis. Oh, it won't
tell you how to wire up "the magnifying transmitter" (that arcane instrument for global wireless power transmission),* but
it will tell you what instruments Tesla was employing, what his thoughts were, how he conceptualized things, how he
proceeded, where he performed his historic experiments, when key results were obtained, and how he reached his
conclusions. * It may just be that there is enough information present to solve the puzzle of the magnifying transmitter.
The reader will have to dig for himself.
Tesla, himself, was awe-struck with the results of his scientific endeavor. He expressed astonishment then at what he
later asserts is experimentally demonstrable. Listen to the words he uses in this interview to describe the electrical
phenomena to his attorney: "magnificent," "it was a marvelous sight," "a wonderful thing," "practically the lamp of
Aladdin," "a tremendous display," "glorious," "so marvelous that one would be almost afraid to talk about them. . . ." An
Edmund Spencer or a John Milton could be no more eloquent. One of Shakespeare's characters once said, "Bid me
discourse, and I will enchant thine ear." Tesla does no less, even in a legal briefing. He weaves the gossamer web of
enchantment, which yet thrills our technical imagination and lures us in, nearly 80 years after a stenographer recorded
these spoken words!
Who was Nikola Tesla?
In 1896, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Lord Kelvin said, "Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than
any man up to his time." After showering words of praise upon the inventor before a meeting of the Royal Society in
London in 1892, Lord Rayleigh declared that Tesla possessed a great gift for electrical discovery. Fortunately, the text of
Tesla's speech has been preserved and republished.1,2,3 He was one of the earliest scientists to understand the
distinction between lumped and distributed resonance and the first to patent voltage magnification by standing waves.
The unit of magnetic induction is named in honor of Tesla. It is commonly understood by power engineers that he was
the inventor of the induction motor utilizing the rotating magnetic field and the AC polyphase power distribution system
currently used throughout the civilized world.* However, most electrical engineers are unaware that, as late as 1943, he
(not Marconi**) was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as having priority in the invention of "radio." Even fewer
computer scientists are aware that, when certain computer manufacturers attempted to patent digital logic gates after
World War II, the U.S. Parent Office asserted Tesla's turn-of-the-century priority in the electrical implementation of logic
gates for secure communications, control systems, and robotics. As a result, a monopoly on digital logic gates was
unable to be secured in the 1950s.
* Charles E Scott, past president of the AIEE has said, "The evolution of electric power from the discovery of Faraday in
1831 to the initial great installation of the Tesla polyphase system in 1896 [at Niagara Falls] is undoubtedly the most
tremendous event in all engineering history. [Electrical Engineering, August, 1943 (Vol. 62, No. 8), pp. 351-355.] **
Although it took the courts several decades to figure this out, the facts were well understood by impartial technical men
of the day. Robert H. Marriott, the first president of the IRE, once said that Marconi had ". . . played the part of a
demonstrator and sales engineer. A money getting company was formed, which in attempting to obtain a monopoly, set
out to advertise to everybody that Marconi was the inventor and that they owned that patent on wireless which entitled
them to a monopoly." [Radio Broadcast, December, 1925 (Vol. 8, No. 2), pp. 159-162.]
Tesla served the electrical engineering profession in its highest offices. In the early 1890s, he was elected as vicehttp