Coping: A Short Story About Tesla

Woo-Woo?  We commence “down time” with an interesting discussion about Nikola Tesla.

Was he a great inventor?  Yes.

But, is he also being deified by the simple-mind social mobs of the Internet?  Yes, I’m  afraid so.  In this, however, lies a tale of mental acuity that we can all learn from.  Or, not.

(Continues Below)

 

Let me back-up to the beginning:  Got an email middle of the week from a reader.

I love this quote from Telsa

I don’t mind someone taking my ideas, what worries me is they don’t have any of their own.”

At first, I was just going to pass it off as more “murmur-mongering” on the web – which it’s full of, if you hadn’t noticed.  But, there will come a time when maintaining the questioning mind and a keen ability to “call BS” may turn into a high art.  So I replied to the sender:

There is the cult of personality.  So I must ask for a source (book or interview) as a source for this.  Otherwise, just more fake stuff on the web… Sorry –

George Ure – grinch at large”

To his great credit, the sender went looking – a good first step:

Hi again George below I found the quote, I have however no
way to prove it.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/278.Nikola_Tesla

Except, that doesn’t prove anything, since Tesla has been undergoing a YUGE deification process sponsored by a number of factions which (other than a small automaker) includes the free energy crowd and those anxious to break out of the limits to the Laws of Physics.

Lest you doubt me on this, take a quick read of “Debunking the Tesla Myth” over here.  You will learn, among other things, that Tesla did NOT invent alternating current electricity, nor did he invent the induction coil or the transformer.  Nor the loudspeaker, nor the fluorescent light.

This is not to take anything away from his invention skills where were in fact prodigious.  I have all his patents on DVD.  I’ve had copies of Tesla’s purported involvement with the PX (still available here), for a long time, too.  People just have a hard time accepting the statistically probable, lol.

But, what bothered me was that the statement attributed to Tesla in the email, didn’t have the “ring of Truth” to my ear.  Since I’ve recently been in the ‘be very picky’ mode writing my latest book, I wasn’t about to put up with a “soft answer” like “here’s a link to…

Links to a “source” are often not what they purport to be.

So, off I went on my quest.  Thank God for Google: I was able to trace back to this….and notice the word “fiction” which is how Google indexed the material in Google Books:

Tesla’s Venusian kin-folk?  Yeah, that’d be fiction in my world.

Still, it was only a good start.  Did Matthews in 1973 have a
direct line” to Tesla?  Since Tesla died in 1943, this is looked fairly suspect.

I had run into several Tesla references when working on “Dimensions Next Door: Hacking Space-time” because of his purported involvement in The Philadelphia Experiment.  As I have mentioned before, there were actually three ships bandied about as being the experimental platform for the invisibility project during World War II: the USS Eldrige, the USS Timmerman (after the war) and the USS Martha’s Vineyard, also referred to as the IX-97.

There is a report (that I gave some creds to in the book) that Tesla may have been peripherally involved in 1941-1942 and possibly up until his death.

But, that gets us back to the question where did Matthews get his source material in 1973 if Tesla had been dead for 30-years?

More research and we find that much of what is attributed to Tesla may be dated to a series of a half-dozen articles published in 1919 in Electrical Experimenter Magazine.

And in one of those wonderful moments of “Oh how cool!” that comes to researchers (not often enough), it turns out there is a whole page offered by Twenty First Century Books that allows us to date back to the earliest autobiographical remarks (in those six parts from 1919) and then conduct a linguistic comparison with the 1973 Matthews work cited in Google Books.

When you use “Search page” functions in a browser, you can make quick-work of slicing through hours of ponderous research:  We find, almost instantly, that the often-quoted part about Tesla’s affection for books is apparently quite real.

Not that it was the red-flag…it didn’t strike me as out-of-place.

On the other hand, the specific quote I flagged in the email didn’t seem to be included in the 1919 Electrical Experimenter.

So, as an amateur physics sleuth, it seems to me “most likely” that the quote in question was added (ginned-up) to bulk out the Matthews book.  Because it certainly sounded much more egoic than the personality I had been tracking in my own work on point.

Is this what I meant by an interesting discussion about Tesla?

No.

You see, it’s really an interesting discussion about several much more pressing and contemporary issues:

  1. When doing research or “hitching your beliefs” to a human personality, always go back as close to source as you can.
  2. Beware that especially in books, a story told once is likely to “hair” when told again.  And in Tesla’s case, again, and again, and…
  3. One of these days, we expect the Social Sciences to wake up and report that Social Media and Computer Use is dangerous.  Because it provides for easily disseminating partial truths and even untruths on the web.

This is all “right next door” to the whole Fake News discussion that comes and goes with the waxing and waning of headlines.

Next time you see a fancy quote, check the attribution closely.  When a lie is presented in the close company of truth, the lie often goes along for a free-ride.

And in that certain fact is the reason why eventually, like Citizens Band Radio, the Internet may be setting itself up for Chinese-style regulation worldwide.

Especially for those of us who will be relegated to the “slow lanes” because we can’t outbid corporate interests.  Which, as a study of pesticides, wars, and pharmaceuticals will demonstrate, are the most effective liars of all.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net

author avatar
George Ure
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/George-Ure/e/B0098M3VY8%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share UrbanSurvival Bio: https://urbansurvival.com/about-george-ure/

14 thoughts on “Coping: A Short Story About Tesla”

  1. Ok, not to be the fly in the ointment or the monkey in the wrench, I have never, ever bought into the preposterous “Montauk Project” and the cult that has grown up around that bit of folklore. I am equally skeptical about “The Philadelphia Experiment”. Are there some sources for these two urban myths that I can check into?

  2. Personally I think of Tesla (the man) as a good inventor whose work has been subsumed by ‘crypto-science’, mostly unfortunate – but this has injected energy into what might have been left to history. Many people ignore ‘the history of science’.

    While crypto-science is held in low esteem by many, occasionally such theories are valid – look at Wegener and the movement of continents – first thought ‘crazy’, now a standard fact.

  3. George, please never “thank God for Google”, it springs from a much lower deity. You’ll know him by his forked tongue, pitchfork & tail.
    BTW I heard a rumor the wife bought your new book as an Xmas present; looking forward to reading in 1st Q 2018!

  4. 10 habits of unsuccessful people. 1. They are always distracted. 2. They only talk the talk. 3. They spend time with losers. 4. They hate everything. 5. They procrastinate. 6. They don’t listen to others. 7. They are lazy. 8. They don’t learn. 9. They are not nice. 10. They are quitters.

    • Hahahahaha… you just described ninety nine percent of all american men LOL LOL just ask any wife.. ( when are going to… )

      • Do we know ECS’ gender?

        But, then again, who are we allowing to define “success” for our us? One more reason I don’t have many neighbors … in sight.

  5. Since were talking about famous quotes and deification, cant the same be said about Jesus and the bible? How many years was it after his death and resurrection (something that’s never been repeated except in other super heros folklore- boy am I going to get beat up now) did the bible begin to be written? But somehow nobody ever challenges those quotes. Just saying. Ok beat me up now.

    • exactly or the writings of the bible altogether.. even in some countries now.. the stories of the elders were passed on through the ages which later are written out hundreds and thousands of years after the actual events.. Many times the writings of these events are elaborated on to fit the vision those people had for their communities at that time. and many times sections left out or destroyed because it didn’t fit in their vision.

  6. what a great subject.. about the falsehoods that pass for truth. who did what.. the laws of physics.. when did the spark start.. I personally think that we should look at the boundaries of physics like Thales of miletus did when he refused to accept the explanations of the day and was he the first or did he get his spark to question things from someone that existed previously to inspire him . who invented the light was it Edison or Swan or did it come from a time thousands of years before.
    The laws of physics.. boy.. that is a loaded deep subject .all in all depending on how you look at it, our existence, the existence of the universe the existence of existence is beyond the laws of physics that we currently consider absolute.. the great scientists before and the great scientists today all have one thing in common in my opinion. which is They sat back and wondered what IF..
    are the laws of physics just accidents. most of us assume that everything is in an ordered rational and intelligent manor, Instead what if it is just an accident derived from chaos.
    What I tell my kids when they ask me is that they should question everything explore the what if of everything. two hundred years ago if someone would have said they could put the knoweledge of the world on a few grains of sand or send an image of someone on a vibration through the air to someone thousands of miles away they would have been laughed at.. they should sit back look at a situation everything has a reason cause and affect.
    One teacher told my grand daughter that I was full of it when I told her that by looking at an egg if you visualize that object you can see a balancing point. she came back and said grandpa he says it can’t be done. so I balanced an egg for her.. she video tapped it on her phone and took it to school.. the same thing with melting stone the fumes are flammable everything is energy. Most of the time what I see is people trying to drive a six penny nail using a sledge hammer when they should be looking at the board rather than the nail and hammer to determine just how much force it will take.
    In my mind I think that The great scientists of today and tomorrow are the ones that are inspired by the great thinkers of the present and the past that questioned the probability of something they were told wasn’t true that stirred their imaginations sparked curiosity and wonder what if I did this..
    are the laws of physics rigid..in my way of thinking there isn’t one set of laws that can describe the universe at anyone time that depending on the events of a situation the laws change to adapt to that situation.. but then heck who am I. I definitely am not someone great just some hick that loves to garden and wonder..

  7. Hi George,
    When you have a free moment, Google (or duckduckgo) a kid named Max Loughan. He built a device to light up a string of LED lights using energy from the air/household materials. After comparing two videos about him, I believe he is using a Tesla schematic (in reverse) that was making the rounds on Youtube a few years ago.
    I ran it by a couple of engineers: one said it couldnt work, and the other said it would if she “tweaked” it.
    I am still waiting for the “tweak” before attempting.

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