POINTS FROM LETTERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 303, 23 December 1933, Page 10

POINTS FROM LETTERS

DR. TESLA'S DISCOVERY,

Professor Laby's recent criticism of Dr. Tesla's latest discovery of a principle by which power for driving the machinery of the world may be derived from the cosmic energy which operates the universe, is a piece of presumption, especially when he states that such claims had been made through the ages, like claims to the discovery of perpetual motion, and so far with little success. Professor Laby says that there is no more reason to believe that success has been attained this time than on previous occasions, but he admits that there is a tremendous amount of cosmic energy is space generally. The amount which reaches the earth is very small —most of it is absorbed in the atmosphere. Dr. Tesla, in a signed statement, announced the discovery of the principle which taps the source of power which is "everywhere present in unlimited quantities." I would like to enlighten Professor Laby on Dr. Tesla's capability. Dr. A. B. Behrend has summed up strikingly Dr. Tesla's immense service to our industrial world in his famous book on the alternating current induction motor. "Were we to eliminate from our industrial world the results of Dr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric trains and cars would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills dead and idle. So far reaching is this work that it has become the warp and wOof of industry." Dr. Tesla knows the principle of electricity, and has checked his knowledge in practice. He is able to speak with certainty about' electricity, not only of to-day, but also of tomorrow. His forecast of the electrical future is not of an imaginative "philosopher," but of an experimenter and calculator. During the year 1888 (when only 27 years of age), Tesla discovered the rotary principle, and then attempts have been made from different sides to belittle also the great merits of Tesla for the induction motor and the polyphase currents. The Italian, Professor Ferraris; at Turin, in 1888, published a small pamphlet, in which he explained in theory the rotary field, and mentions that with the aid. of this principle electro-motors could be constructed; he further stated that he had built such a motor in 1885 already, but such motors would have a sphere of action of 50 per cent at best, and he did not believe, therefore, that this, his invention, could have any practical value. And so it goes. The Professor Laby, of Melbourne University, smiles an unbelieving smile, but Tesla's master mind invariably sets the electrical world right. E. MANDICH.