Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney (PDF)

Description

In this “informative and delightful” (American Scientist) biography, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of Nikola Tesla, one of the twentieth century’s greatest scientists and inventors.In Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field — the basis of most alternating-current machinery — but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, unfailingly flamboyant and neurotic, Tesla was troubled by an array of compulsions and phobias and was fond of extravagant, visionary experimentations. He was also a popular man-about-town, admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties. From Tesla’s childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered — and continue to alter — the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I’m fairly recently getting into Tesla. As I mentioned in another review I’ve always known who Tesla was, his work on Turbines and the Tesla Coil, but I didn’t know too much about the man or his other inventions. When I saw the movie “The Prestige” I became far more intrigued into the person that was Tesla, so I decided to pick up a few things about the man. A great introductorion, from what I can tell, is the PBS Documentary on DVD, but it has almost no depth and is really a very brief overview of the man and his inventions. “Tesla: A Man Out of Time” on the other hand seems to be a very in depth researched overview of the man, his inventions, and his friends.For the most part I thought this was a good book and it did keep my attention. It’s not written in a manner of an engaging tale, but rather a critical analysis of the man’s life. Some people may not enjoy this kind of writing as it has almost no story-form, but I’m the type of person who can sit down and read books on Mathematics or Ancient History, where it’s a bit of a report like format. Granted “Tesla: A Man Out of Time” is not nearly as dry as some History texts I’ve come across over the years! One of the greatest misgivings for this book, however, is the way it is organized. The first half of the book seems to be organized by invention. So if we’re dealing with Tesla’s most monumental achievement for mankind, the Alternating Current, then that chapter takes us through all the years with the boons and plights of that invention. Actually a few chapters are dedicated to this. So we’re dealing with a time period of like 1893 to the 1915’s or so, if I remember the dates correctly. But Tesla invented a lot more in that time frame, such as the Tesla Coil. Granted I totally understand the approach to organizing it in this fashion, but Cheney doesn’t really let you know the beginning dates when she starts talking about an invention so it’s up to the reader to project when it is happening. This format could have worked if she was more forthcoming with some dates so people can put it in chronological order in their heads, though maybe she just didn’t want to clutter the book with too many dates, which I would normally agree with, but not in this circumstance.Some other reviewers have commented on the her lack of explaining the technology in a lay readers understanding and some technical analysis shows that she likely didn’t fully understand what Tesla’s inventions did. That being said, I must point out that Cheney is not an engineer, she’s a biographer and it says as much on the back of the book. While she does try to delve into the technical aspect, even I got confused with her explanation of Fusion and it’s relation to Plasma, and I actually have a decent grasp on how Fission and Fusion work in terms of atomic structures. So people or engineers (specifically) reading this book may want to overlook that drastic aspect and focus more on the tale she’s trying to tell about the man. I can kind of get over the technical aspect since there is very little explanation on the details and more focus on just Tesla’s inventions and what he was general interested/motivated by as a result of his inventions. There are times when the author tries to liberally project her own conclusions to the reader such as Tesla’s pre-concept of the circular “atom smasher” or cyclotron, which also lead to a premonition of Cathode Ray Tubes we’ve used in televisions and computer screens. While I think Tesla may have been on to something conceptually with the splitting of the atom, he by no means led the world to discover CRT technology as far as I can tell. However, I felt this kind of bias/commentary was in the minority overall.That being said I feel I have a better grasp of who Tesla was and what he has done for this world in the grand scheme of existence. This book is definitely more for those who want to know more about who he is, the hardships he dealt with, and what he invented over his life time. Cheney goes through great lengths to quote letters Tesla received from friends and his responses, even quoting news articles with his comments or comments from others. There is no doubt that she spent an exhaustive amount of time peering over news articles and letters from this great inventor. The book also has a grand amount of notations so you can do further reading when she abridges some of the quotes in this book. She goes over the types of people he has gone to over his lifetime and friends he’s made like Anne Morgan (J.P. Morgan’s daughter), Mark Twain, and having met Thomas Edison and worked for him. This is just a taste for who he met and worked with over his lifetime.In this book we meet a man who has practically no interest in woman and has enough obsessive compulsive quirks to astonish anyone. While I don’t think his quirky nature was fully touched upon in this book, Cheney does give us a taste of some of his phobias, like earrings for example. We meet a man who was on top of the world for a portion of his life and who seemed to be on the way to making it big in the world, but then after making rather overly generous financial decisions he could never really get out of debt’s clutches. He literally had to beg to borrow the money as the years got worse and worse over the years. Things looked up for Tesla for a while here and there, but he was also quite generous with his funds to help his friends financially during the Great Depression and his friends gave him the same treatment.Towards the end we get a portrait of a man who liked to make grandiose statements for what seems to be for the sake of being in the limelight again. It feels like Tesla simply missed the fame and attention, quite a different scope from the man who worked in seclusion and extreme secrecy. But his secrecy was intriguing and I think he liked to emerge to the public for attention every now and again. As he got on in years his claims didn’t end in much fruition for the world, which isn’t surprising since towards the end of his career and life he lived out of a hotel room without a laboratory. However, he still claimed his wirelessly transmitted electricity would work. He also ended up being wrong on quite a few things, especially when he said Einstein’s relativity was not an accurate representation of our universe. Even Einstein would have wanted to agree with him, but Einstein’s accuracy cannot be denied. Like Einstein they both died with dreams of a final theory, Tesla’s wirelessly transmitted electricity and Einstein’s Grand Unified Field theory, both of which have not been proven definitively yet. When Tesla’s life was finally over his papers and research items were confiscated by the government, because amidst the grandiose claims was high grade weapons technology like ray beams and so forth.In the end we get a portrait of a man that struggled to change the world for the better and not always at his benefit. As his life ended in debt we are all left with the great boons of his inventions. Thanks to his Alternating Current we don’t need a power station every two miles like we would need with Direct Current only systems. His research into radio which was eventually fully realized by Marconi made great leaps in that field. He was clearly a visionary more than anything else and a brilliant mind on top of that enthralled with electricity, machines, resonance, and the various waves that power and drive the like. I thought this book at times was a bit overly laudatory, but I think it did him justice. I get the feeling that Cheney felt a little bad for the man since he clearly does not get the same kind of esteemed recognition in America as Edison does. Some of the best tales of Tesla’s life was when the two bitter enemy’s fought the war of the currents, which is literally worth a book in itself. Say what you want, but in the end I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to people who want a more in depth portrait of the man behind the inventions. Truly a great inventor who should be well known in the annals of history.

⭐TESLA MAN OUT OF TIME by Margaret Cheney is a 396 page biography. The book has 16 pages of glossy black & white photos, e.g., showing Tesla’s radio controlled boat, or Tesla’s steam turbine.SEMI-FICTIONAL WRITING. Towards the beginning of the book (but not later on), there is some semi-fictional writing, apparently to stimulate interest in the book. For example, we read, “Mark Twain’s eyes sparkled in anticipation. Let’s have a show, Tesla. You know what I always say. No, what do you say, Mark, the inventor asked with a smile. Suddenly, the whole laboratory was flooded with strange, beautiful light . . . but the light show was merely a warmup for the inventor’s guests. Twain, in his usual white suit . . . was delighted. He whooped and waved his arms.” (pages 21-24) To repeat, this sort of semi-fiction only occurs near the beginning of the book.INVENTIONS. The book describes a number of inventions, some of them having a permanent impact on the global economy, e.g., AC current. Some of the inventions such as AC equipment, are provided with patent numbers, enabling the reader to acquire a high-quality account of the invention. These patent numbers include 334,823; 335,786; 335,787, and so on (see page 62). Any reader can obtain copies of these patents for free on line from the European Patent Office at espacenet, or from the United States Patent & Trademark Office (uspto.gov). Other inventions are only described in a haphazard way, e.g., a motor that runs only one wire (page 80), reduced pressure gasses that are highly conductive and that glow (precursor to fluorescent lamps) (page 79), a carbon-button lamp that was a precursor to the electron microscope or cyclotron (pages 81-84), and no patent numbers are given. Another invention, is merely the conduction of high voltages through the skin of a living human being. What is inventive is that the voltage is so high, that it does not pass through internal organs (pages 23-24, 101). Other inventions described in this book are merely phony inventions, such as a ring 100 feet off the ground, and encircling the earth, allowing travelers to hop aboard and travel at 1000 miles per hour (p. 39), or use of electricity to cure arthritis (p. 102).EARLY LIFE. We learn of Tesla’s childhood in Smiljan, Croatia, where he wrote poems and fixed a collapsed fire hose, and that Tesla’s older brother was killed by a horse. We learn of Tesla’s phobias, e.g., to earrings, the need to count steps while walking, the need to calculate the volume of soup bowls, and aversion to touching other people’s hair (page 29-30).CAREER BEGINNINGS. In 1881, Tesla got a job in a telegraph office in Hungary, and he put some effort into improving the Gramme direct current generator. A turning point came when he “hit upon the principle of the rotating magnetic field produced by 2 alternating currents out of step with each other, thus eliminating the need for a commutator or brushes (p. 40-44). We learn that Garland and Gibb had earlier invented AC current, but it was not practical until Tesla made these improvements. We learn of Tesla’s first collaborator, Charles Batchelor, who installed Edison’s first commercial lights on the S.S.Columbia (p. 47-48). Later, Tesla moved to the USA, and was hired by Edison to repair lights on the S.S.Oregon.TESLA THE ENTREPENEUR. We learn that J.P.Morgan was the wealthy backer of Edison Electric, which strung DC wires throughout Manhattan. Tesla left Edison to form his own company in Rahway, New Jersey, and later at 33 South Fifth Street in Manhattan. Tesla’s backers included none other than George Westinghouse. Tesla invented the 60 cycle AC motor, which is still the universal standard throughout the world. We learned of a massive controversy between Edison (advocate of DC current) and Tesla (advocate of AC current), and that Edison staged public executions of dogs with AC current, in order to blot out Tesla (pages 67-69).At any rate, we now watch Edison’s motion pictures run on Tesla’s AC current, today’s advocates of vinyl recordings listen to Edison’s records run on Tesla’s AC current, and we run Edison’s incandescent lights on Tesla’s AC current. Regarding radio, we learn that in 1893, Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio, though Marconi is usually given credit for doing this in 1895 (page 96). We learn that next to Tesla, Oliver Lodge was the 2nd most important radio pioneer, and we learn that Tesla’s radio patents prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court. We also learn how George Westinghouse wrangled Tesla’s patent royalties from him, though more details would have been welcome on this point (page 74).CRITIQUE. Sometimes, I wish that the book had been written by an engineer. Few of the inventions are described with any degree of specificity, or in a way that distinguishes them from the inventions of others. It would have been useful if the book had provided a list of all of Tesla’s patents, not just some of them. The author neglects to give a citation for the Sept. 1900 case heard by Judge Townsend of the U.S. Circuit Court of Connecticut. The author seems to have relied heavily on another book, PRODIGAL GENIUS by J.J. O’Neill (1944), instead of doing fact-finding from primary sources, e.g., newspapers. At any rate, the book is an engaging page-turner. Any reader interested in a skilled description of Tesla’s inventions may download Tesla’s patents for free. The U.S. patents available from espacenet have better quality images than the U.S. patents available from uspto. The opinions from the various lawsuits can be found in any law library, on LEXIS NEXIS. Law librarians will be more than glad to help the interested reader look up these things!!! If you want to learn other things about Mr.Tesla, I recommend EMPIRES OF LIGHT by Jill Jonnes. EMPIRES OF LIGHT has a more consistent theme (AC generators; AC motors) than Ms.Cheney’s book, and seems to dig deeper into details on this particular theme, for example, the partnership between Mr.Tesla and Mr.Westinghouse.As of May 21, 2010, TESLA MOTORS agreed to open up an automobile production plant in Fremont, California. Hopefully, the re-establishment of Mr.Tesla’s name in the public’s eye will stimulate more interested readers to buy Margaret Cheney’s fine book, and also Jill Jonnes’ fine book.

⭐I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would recommend to anyone.The Author has written a great book here, that speaks like someone who has digested and thought about what she has written-well. She observes Tesla’s surroundings, as well as some of the more important social happenings in his life (let alone the important and less important developments of his technical life), which is all fascinating.At times it can come across as the author has created an opinion of the subject or conclusion. This can make it easier to read and entertaining – less dry; but I do think there is plenty of discussion within these cases.It’s also a fascinating place to observe the times of Tesla, and indeed it seemed there was ample upheaval and change within that period; Sometimes connecting up with other large scale developments, to ground the idea with today and now!What’s more, for those who are not casual readers: the author has herself-helpfully recorded the resources that she relied on to compile the book.

⭐If only we could know what he was really thinking and planning. What happened to his notes and what could he have achieved if he hadn’t been so horrendously stitched up? Makes me despise money men like J P Morgan more, and Edison? What an awful man

⭐The definitive biography of the greatest inventor of his time.

⭐Reading this book was propelled through it by the incredible genius of Nikola Tesla, though in places the book itself was a little ‘dry’. It is well-researched and comprehensive, but some of the links the author makes between Tesla’s patents and modern devices seem tenuous to me.

⭐I read it and found it most illuminating.

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