Science.

Southern Cross, Volume 9, Issue 3, 20 April 1901, Page 2

Science.

* NIKOLA TESLA'S PROMISES.

M. Tesla, according to an interview published in the North American, promised a quartette of marvels for the coming year. Three, he guaranteed, would be brought out in practical form, and the fourth might be. * There is,’ he is reported to have said, £ my light, which is like daylight ; and the telegraphing and telephoning to any distance without wires ; and the automatic machine, which I shall show first in my submarine boat; and then the communication with Mars or other planets.’ Mr Hawthorne saw the light. There was a flat coil of glass tubing, eight or nine inches broad, containing no wires. The current was turned on, and a pure white light radiated the room with a natural sunshine. ' ‘ You cannot,’ Tesla remarked, ‘ see it in the sunlight, because it is sunlight itself. If you enter a room where it is burning it seems to you that it is day and not night.’ The inventor was reticent about the details of his automatic boat, which, however, he coyly described as ‘ a living creature, with intelligence, judgment, memory ; strictly obedient, and yet seemingly spontaneous in its actions ; to be trusted anywhere, for any purpose. The machine is to act in a mission of destruction against a hostile fleet, with a beautiful discrimination, sorting out this ship and that, as instructed, sparing those it is bidden to spare, and coming and going at call with an absolute certainty of control. Indeed, according to the inventor, ‘ there is no effective difference between the machine and a man, except that the former lacks an immortal soul.’ M. Tesla’s own body was admittedly his model. £ Here is the boiler,’ he said, gracefully laying his hand upon his solar plexus, £ here are the wheels,’ indicating his limbs, and so on. War, with this new machine in operation, mast speedily come to an end. The fourth discovery is a new idea for a flying machine, the principle of which M. Tesla declines, at present, to disclose If but one-half of the inventor’s promissory notes are honoured at due date, the world will be wonderfully the richer in the very dawn of the century.