corvus_corone's review against another edition
4.0
The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla is filled to the brim with great source material that includes some of Tesla's speeches, articles about him from his life time, patents and diagrams, and interviews with his contemporaries.
Due to the dating of some of the concepts and the language it can be a difficult read at times, but overall enjoyable and informative. It gives a better understanding of some of the concerns of the period and I absolutely adored the transcripts of Tesla's speeches.
Due to the dating of some of the concepts and the language it can be a difficult read at times, but overall enjoyable and informative. It gives a better understanding of some of the concerns of the period and I absolutely adored the transcripts of Tesla's speeches.
realbooks4ever's review
2.0
Aren't there any good books written about Nikola Tesla?? This is the second one I've read, and both have been below par. "Fantastic Inventions" has entire chapters consisting of Tesla's patent drawings, none of which I can understand, being that I know nothing about how electricity works. But even if I did, there are no explanations accompanying the drawings, so what good are they? Other chapters seem to be lectures or articles he wrote. The Appendix is a partial transcript of a trial -just the part where witnesses are trying to describe the conditions of Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower before it was demolished. Some reprints of newspaper articles and photographs of the laboratories liven things up, but this books was very disappointing overall.
I took out of this two things of interest; One, that in his article of March 5, 1904 (Electrical World and Engineer) he states "... A cheap and simple device, which might be carried in one's pocket, may then be set up somewhere on sea or land, and it will record the world's news or such special messages as may be intended for it. Thus the entire earth will be converted into a huge brain, as it were, capable of response in every one of its parts." (Sounds like cell phones w/Internet access to me!) Two, that the mad scientist in the very first Max Fletcher "Superman" cartoons of the early 1940's were most likely patterned after Tesla, who believed that he had created a "Death-Beam" in 1934.
I took out of this two things of interest; One, that in his article of March 5, 1904 (Electrical World and Engineer) he states "... A cheap and simple device, which might be carried in one's pocket, may then be set up somewhere on sea or land, and it will record the world's news or such special messages as may be intended for it. Thus the entire earth will be converted into a huge brain, as it were, capable of response in every one of its parts." (Sounds like cell phones w/Internet access to me!) Two, that the mad scientist in the very first Max Fletcher "Superman" cartoons of the early 1940's were most likely patterned after Tesla, who believed that he had created a "Death-Beam" in 1934.
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