Margaret Cheney (1) (1921–2010)

It's strange when you lose interest in a book. I'm up to page 234/354 and feel that Margaret Cheney has lost me. I'm not sure if I want forge on and finish the book when I'm not enjoying it. It's not that Tesla isn't interesting or that I'm not interested in what ultimately happened to him. It's more that there is something missing in Cheney's portrayal of Tesla.

It could be that she is just not able to explain the intricacies of how Tesla solved AC, or radio tuning, or wireless power transmission? It could be that there seems to be no sense of the sequential nature of his discoveries? It could be that Tesla's successes become a series of unrelenting failures.

Yet such prescience: About his solar powerhouse, he wrote

... a great deal less artificial than for men to delve down into the bowels of the earth...in order to get a few handfuls of coal to run an engine for a short time (p. 156)

About radio (it could have been the internet)

Thus the entire earth will be converted into a huge brain capable of response in every one of its parts. (p. 224)

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هو والد الاتصالات اللاسلكية والتيار المتناوب وتكنولوجيا الرادار والطاقة الشمسية. ساعدت أفكار نيكولا تسلا في جعل العالم الحديث على ما هو عليه اليوم. وبينما صنع إديسون وماركوني وآخرون الملايين، مات تسلا فقيراً بمفرده ولم تعد عليه أعماله بشيء.
لكن إن أردنا إنصاف تسلا بجملة واحدة، يمكننا القول بدون مبالغة أنه هو الذي «اخترع القرن العشرين».… (mehr)