Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tesla: Man Out of Time
Book Review: Observations and Criticism's of "Tesla: Man Out Of Time"
Summary: 4 Stars
"Tesla: Man Out Of Time" by Margaret Cheney is a rather lengthy account of a brilliant inventor's rewarding and troublesome life. Nikola Tesla, who developed the alternating current (AC) was a most eccentric man who led a life of constant experimentation and development in the field of electricity. Although afflicted with many phobias ( he couldn't stand jewelry), Tesla was also gifted with photographic memory which he used to his advantage as he needed very little diagrams and blue prints to build his inventions, which were drawn in his head.
Cheney describes Tesla's childhood as a sickly but curious boy who was recognized by his professors to be a very gifted child who was going to accomplish many great things.
She tells how Tesla traveled to America and worked for Thomas Edison for a time, but eventually left because Edison would never allow Tesla to improve his eletrical machines with alternating current.
He silenced all opposition when his AC electricity system was used to light the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Many had believed before that AC current was very deadly and dangerous, including Thomas Edison, Tesls's greatest rival. Edison and Tesla would have many court battles over who had invented what first. While Edison was a better marketing man, Tesla was a much better thinking man.
Tesla was also the inventor of hundreds of other inventions, including many radio devices and several remote-controlled devices that he tried in vain to convince the military to purchase from him.
He ran a very erratic social life and was constantly in debt. Cheney brings to life the emotional conversations that Tesla and Alexandra Johnson, wife of Robert Johnson, associate editor of 'Century' magazine, had back and forth and how Tesla was always asked to come and visit and almost always declined.
For a man who was so intelligent, Tesla lacked the skills needed to maintain a balanced checkbook and Cheney recounts the many pleading letters Tesla sent to JP Morgan, George Westinghouse and others asking for capital. He also enjoyed living the life of a dapper man about Manhattan and this showed from his residence at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and his frequent dining at expensice restaurants and clubs with the wealthy New York '400'.
As much as Tesla was a complicated man, Cheney gives a thorough and complete account of his life, from the experiments and ideas to the parties and social letters.
Cheney fully brings to life the life of one the greatest minds and inventors that ever lived. If you are an avid Tesla enthusiast or just someone curious about one of America's greatest inventors, then pick up a copy of this book today!
Book Review: On the Shoulders of Giants
Summary: 3 Stars
It is hard to imagine that there is anyone who does not know the names Edison and Einstein. The same should be true of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the alternating current motor, radio, X-rays, radar and more, yet somehow Tesla's name has slipped into history, largely forgotten. As Margaret Cheney reveals in "Tesla: Man Out of Time", there are several reasons that Tesla's legacy has suffered: he didn't market himself as well as Edison, and he left no wife or children to promote his interests after his death. Although a naturalized American citizen, his ashes were returned to Croatia, the land of his birth, as were also his papers and writings. A world war and a cold war later entombed his memory.
Bizarrely enigmatic yet definitely brilliant, Nikola Tesla is one of the giants of science. He was an under-educated inventor who explored the nature and properties of electricity with a rare vision and trial and error. He was lauded in his time, an on-and-off national hero, but could do little as his patents were raided by other inventors. His life is fascinating and worthy of study. Margaret Cheney took the initiative to pull together all the separate, obscure treatises on his life and weave them together into one complete narrative, but her delivery is dry and her narrative devices stumble. She, for instance, tries to create suspense and expectation by presenting portions of Tesla's life out of sequence, by referencing back to journal entries or setting up cause and effect relationships between present and past events. These devices don't work and leave the reader confused as to why, suddenly, a decade or more has passed in Tesla's life. She also laces the narrative with Tesla's science--the properties of electricity--with no explanation at all. Why were alternating current motors so important? Just what the heck WAS a Tesla coil? What does electricity jumping an air gap do? If you do not already know the answers to these questions, this book will not answer them for you. But even though the narrative is clumsy and dry, "Tesla: Man Out of Time" still stands as a good, single-volume study of Tesla's life.
Book Review: Serbia's Got Talent
Summary: 4 Stars
Tesla
Look up Nikola Tesla on Google (the internet, or something like it, was something he was probably working on at one point and the cathode ray tube would have been impossible without him) and you'll find thousands of hits. Born in Serbia in 1856, largely self-educated; fluent in eight languages; a confidante of Mark Twain and bitter rival of Thomas Edison; obsessive-compulsive, feeder of pigeons in the park when he himself was hungry; owner of 700 patents... the list goes on and on.
Biographies of Tesla tend to fall into one of two categories: one is the H.G. Wells scenario: " it was a dark and dreary night as blue sparks flew from the mad scientist's laboratory while a dwarfish assistant cranked up the generator. "; and the other concentrating on his scientific accomplishments and business problems.
Margaret Cheney's "Tesla: Man out of Time" does a pretty serviceable job of addressing both sides of his life. Tesla kept meticulous diaries and notes, many of which disappeared after his death at age 86 during World War II.
What happened to those notes is an open question: did the FBI or OSS get to them before the Nazi's could, thereby preserving the so- called "Death Ray" from the Germans? Or were they destroyed by loyal assistants and secretaries? Or are they preserved in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade?
(Ironically, Ronald Reagan tried to implement the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars," in the 1980's. It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now.Which isn't surprising since Reagan didn't know the difference between Tesla and Teflon.
His epic battle with Marconi over the rights to radio ended with a Supreme Court decision awarding the invention of radio to Tesla, but by then Marconi had already won the Nobel Prize and gotten the fame and fortune. Edison was fixated on direct current and frustrated that it could not travel over distances efficiently. Tesla developed alternating current and in a flash of true genius, the induction motor. George Westinghouse was another key figure: he saw dollar signs in Tesla's inventions and offered money, but always with strings attached. Tesla was as bad with money as he was good with science.
Although he could be testy and short with people, Tesla also could be an engaging and generous friend. With his Slavic good looks, he adorned the cover of Time magazine and popular publications. He could have been a matinee idol, like another eccentric genius, Howard Hughes. Like Hughes Tesla lived alone in a suite of hotel rooms in New York (their numbers always divisible by three); had a pathological fear of germs and human contact; and had highly developed auditory and visual senses. His contribution to modern science and technology, long underrated, are finally beginning to get the credit he deserved during his lifetime. The scientific notation for magnetic field induction is named the Tesla in his honor.
Further Reading:
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John O'Neill
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius (Citadel Press Book)The Nikola Tesla Treasury
The Prestige
Book Review: Shame it's not on Kindle
Summary: 4 Stars
By all accounts, it seems like a great read. As a new Kindle fan however, I'm a little miffed that the book isn't yet available on the Kindle.....Come on Amazon, haven't consumed any forest since purchasing my Kindle, and I don't want to break that!!Book Review: Solid and serviceable biography.
Summary: 4 Stars
This has been sitting on my to-read shelf for some time. Cheney has written a solid and serviceable biography of Tesla. I realize this is faint praise. There's nothing wrong with the book, and quite a bit really right. I think I missed some kind of (no pun intended) spark-- mostly around the science. I learned a lot about the man, but really-- think about it-- what these men were doing was really amazing. I got the facts, but missed the madness.
(I did like her view on Edison. The more I read about the man, the more I'm pretty sure he was awful.)
None of this should dissuade you from reading the Tesla: Man Out of Time if you are looking for a good introduction to the subject.