Science: Tesla's Ray

He has produced nothing tangible for a long time, but he still remains one of the foremost living inventors of electrical apparatus. His day comes once a year. On his birthday Manhattan newshawks seek him out in some hotel, listen closely to his words. Wearing an outmoded brown suit, he received the Press one day last week in a Hotel New Yorker reception room. That day Nikola Tesla was 78.

The first thing Nikola Tesla invented was a hook for catching frogs. That was not long after he learned to talk, in the Croatian hamlet of Smiljan where he was born. He studied physics and mathematics at two universities, got into telegraph engineering, went to Budapest, to Paris, to the U. S. in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. Soon he had a research laboratory of his own. Four years later he patented the induction motor, first effective utilization of alternating current. He discovered the rotary magnetic field principle used today in the hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls. He invented dynamos, transformers, induction coils, condensers, arc and incandescent lamps. He was acclaimed a great genius.

All that was long ago and Tesla has lingered on into a twilight of semiobscurity. His hotel room is now his only laboratory, his brain his only tool. When callers importune him he takes a bath or goes to bed. When he talks about his work his deep-set blue eyes burn with an icy fire. He walks prodigious distances through the city streets. His most valued friends are the New York Public Library's somnolent pigeons. A life-long bachelor, Dr. Tesla is tall, spare, erect, parchment-skinned, beak-nosed. The mustache he once wore is gone.