The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla
INTRODUCTION
By Timothy Green Beckley
There is a teacher named John W. Wagner who thinks that the SmithsonianInstitute is playing favorites. After studying the remarkable life of Nikola Tesla,Wagner, along with his third grade class, started a campaign to educate the worldabout the obscure electrical genius from Yugoslavia.
Wagner and his class wrote many letters to important people asking for theirsupport. A former student persuaded her father, an accomplished sculptor, tocreate a bust of Tesla for their class.
A Third Grade requirement is to learn cursive handwriting, so their class work now had a purpose...writing letters to raise money for their Tesla bust.Unfortunately, most people had never heard of Nikola Tesla. And those who had,seemed not to want to listen.
In fact, when the bust of Tesla was finished, Wagner and his class of eagerstudents offered it to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Dr. BernardS. Finn, (Curator of the Division of Electricity and Modern Physics) refused,claiming he had no use for the bust.
They could not understand why the Smithsonian would have no use for a$6,000 bust of such a great American and world-class scientist. After all, Tesla wasno slouch. Much of our modern technology owes its beginnings to Tesla. In 1882he made the discovery that changed the world ! harnessing the awesome powerof Alternating Current (AC).
In 1888 Tesla obtained U.S. patents covering an entire system of polyphase ACthat remains unchanged in principle today. Tesla then promptly sold all of hispatents to George Westinghouse, an acquisition that made the WestinghouseCompany the giant it is today.
Westinghouse and Tesla were consummate friends, but after Westinghouse diedin 1913, the company forgot about its chief benefactor and Tesla fell victim to hardtimes. Tesla died January 7, 1943, alone, and all but forgotten, in a New York hotel room, paid for by a meager stipend provided by the Yugoslaviangovernment.
Today, industries prosper and flourish, the world surges from the power hisfertile mind created, radios blare with news and music, their transmission madepossible by his great intellect, all telling us that the forgotten genius, Nikola Tesla,was here.
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