Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1108538 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-01
• Format: Special Edition
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

The Man Who Invented The Twentieth Century

Nikola Tesla, for the uninitiated, made wireless transmission (radio) a reality. He also perfected alternating current which was, up until then, merely a concept. During W.W.I he proposed using radio waves to find German U-boats in a method we now call 'triangulation'. He also envisioned a time when electricity and radio waves would be used to transmit data and images between various persons or agencies, ie; the wireless internet. This was at a time when the telephone was still viewed as a novelty. I haven't even gotten to his envisioning of geo-synchronous satellites. Oh yeah, this man died in 1942.

Any one of these accomplishments would merit the highest of accolades from the scientific community yet the name Nikola Tesla is greeted, more often than not, with questions. "Who? I thought Marconi invented the radio..."

Nikola Tesla was, quite simply, the most important figure of the twentieth century but he made the mistake of angering Thomas Edison by doing what Edison said couldn't be done (perfecting alternating current) and thus a Stalin-esque media campaign championed by Edison was born to impune the imperious Serb (Tesla). The inertia of the campaign continues to this day - The People's Almanac Vol. 2 credits Marconi with inventing radio...

The chapters detailing Tesla's interaction with Edison are alone worth the price of the book. Sadly, it reads like a soap opera as Edison was a spiteful old man. It's a pity that Mr. Edison's ego prevented him from seeing the importance of Mr. Tesla.

This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. Like so many others, I was taught that Marconi invented the radio but this book addresses that issue in a chapter entitled 'The Great Radio Controversy'. This book also describes the many expirements with electricity conducted by Mr. Tesla. How different life would have been for Henry Ford if he'd been unable to build and operate his assembly lines due to a lack of sustainable power. Tesla's research into mechanical resonance still leaves me in awe - he generated earthquakes with a little gizmo he cooked up in his lab.

The implications are numerous. Maybe someone would have come along to invent these devices but I can find no one person who had such a wide field of vision for the potential of electricity. Tesla proposed ways to use electric impulses as a weapon of war before W.W.II. In the 1970's computer designers were surprised to learn that some of their patent applications were denied because such devices had already existed for decades. Guess who?!

I have only scratched the surface here. Nikola Tesla is one of the most important figures of the last five hundred years. Margaret Cheney has written a superb book that reads like a science fiction novel - surely no one man could have been so brilliant but Nikola Tesla was truly that brilliant.


BUY THIS BOOK.

A new "Da Vinci"!
Pond: "Looks like Marconi got the jump on you."
Tesla: "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." (161)

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I'm not sure we will ever understand Tesla. First, he was head and shoulders above everyone else, we are like puppy dogs trying to keep up with his great strides. One biographer suggested that Tesla was the avatar of an alien from Venus (p. xiii). The problem with that theory is that it is almost believable!

The second problem is that Tesla was a classic introvert. (The first observation is the cause of the second.) As a classic introvert, he had a chronic case of the Da Vinci Syndrome. He was so smart, his internal world was far more exciting than the humdrum external world--the world of politics, back-stabbing, no finaces, and the ever-cascading trifles and trivia.

The difference is that we can read Da Vinci's notebooks and try to reconstruct his mind, much as we can read all of the Lost Tales of Middle-Earth (Tolkien also had Da Vinci syndrome) and think about what could have been. However, with Tesla he was not a note keeper. On top of that we have the problem of the missing Tesla papers. Thirdly, if we even had the papers, could we make sense of them?

Cheney's masterwork is worthy of her subject. It is readable, balances the hard science with the human-interest, and when you are done, you know you have read a beautiful tragicomedy. This book has converted me to Tesla, and I suspect it will do the same for you.

Solid, Insightful Biography
With the recent birthday of Nicola Tesla, the Yugoslavian-born inventor, I picked up a copy of Margaret Cheney's biography of this astonishing genius. Cheney does more than a great job of summarizing Tesla's career, where he pushed the boundaries of electrical engineering after discovering the rotating magnetic field central to most alternating current (AC) machinery.

The author further shows where the ripples of Tesla's genius extended, laying the groundwork for the development of computers, radar, robotics and missile science. Viewed as a celebrity by such peers as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, a dandy and favored by the powerful and rich, Tesla was also a great rival to Thomas Edison, who advocated DC over AC.

I enjoyed Cheney's ability to manage the complex narrative of Tesla's life, and how she peered under the skull cap to examine the neuroses and compulsive behavior that lived hand in glove with his flashes of genius.

A solid biography, filled with insightful glimpses into the mind of a seminal inventor who continues to shape our electronic world, Man out of Time brings Tesla to life.