DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



325 



rection. Of course the whole notion 

 that the 'velocity' of the human 'mass,' 

 i.e. the space it traverses in a given 

 time, has any connection with human 

 progress or is of any value to anybody 

 or anything, is absurd. 



Mr. Tesla has enjoyed considerable, 

 excellent repute as a gifted student of 

 certain electrical phenomena and one ex- 

 pects a good deal from his "electrical 

 experiments, now first published." Mr. 

 Tesla, too, expects a good deal from 

 them. It would take too long to even 

 note here all the important scientific 

 discoveries which Mr. Tesla expects to 

 make or all the benefits which he ex- 

 pects to thereby confer upon mankind 

 in general and in particular upon 

 those who exploit his inventions. Some 

 samples may be given. War will be 

 rendered harmless by being reduced to 

 a sort of game between 'telautaumata,' 

 machines which behave "just like a 

 blind-folded person obeying instructions 

 received through the ear," any one of 

 which is "enabled to move and to per- 

 form all its operations with reason and 

 intelligence." 



Says Mr. Tesla: "I purpose to show 

 that, however impossible it may now 

 seem, an automaton may be- contrived 

 which will have its 'own mind.' and by 

 this I mean that it will be able, inde- 

 pendent of any operator, left entirely to 

 itself, to perform, in response to ex- 

 ternal influences affecting its sensitive 

 organs, a great variety of acts and 

 operations as if it had intelligence. It 

 will be able to follow a course laid out 

 or to obey orders given far in advance; 

 it will be capable of distinguishing be- 

 tween what it ought and what it ought 

 not to do, and of making experiences or, 

 otherwise stated, of recording impres- 

 sions which will definitely affect its 

 subsequent actions. In fact, I have al- 

 ready conceived such a plan." 



Inasmuch as the interest in this 

 telautomatic warfare is to be purely 

 aesthetic, it would seem as if inter- 

 national bull-fights or kite-flying or 

 spelling matches or potato-races might 

 do as w r ellj and have the added ad- 



vantage of leaving Mr. Tesla's expecta- 

 tions free to wander among the follow- 

 ing prospective discoveries. 



New sources of energy, Mr. Tesla 

 thinks, may be opened up, such as a 

 wheel which shall perform work without 

 any further effort on our part than that 

 of constructing it. "Imagine a disc of 

 some homogeneous material turned per- 

 fectly true and arranged to turn in 

 frictionless bearings on a horizontal 

 shaft above the ground. This disk, be- 

 ing under the above conditions per- 

 fectly balanced, would rest in any posi- 

 tion. Now, it is possible that we may 

 learn how to make such a disk rotate 

 continuously and perform work by the 

 force of gravity without any further ef- 

 fort on our part To make 



the disk rotate by the force of gravity 

 we have only to invent a screen against 

 this force. By such a screen we could 

 prevent this force from acting on one 

 half of the disk, and the rotation of the 

 latter would follow." 



Into further particulars concerning 

 the nature of such a screen Mr. Tesla 

 does not enter, though it would seem a 

 matter well fitted to engage his peculiar 

 gifts. The 'screen against gravity' idea 

 has already entered into a popular 

 story, but scientific men have probably 

 not given it much consideration. 



By producing a 'sink' or reservoir 

 of a low temperature, thereby inducing 

 the heat of the ambient medium to 

 transform itself in part into other forms 

 of energy (e.g. electrical), Mr. Tesla 

 hopes to "get any amount of energy 

 without further effort" beyond the 

 amount needed to create the 'sink.' We 

 should thus employ "an ideal way of ob- 

 taining motor power," and incidentally 

 rebuke the narrow-minded physics of 

 Carnot and Lord Kelvin. 



By means of his electrical oscillator 

 Mr. Tesla has satisfied himself that he 

 can transmit electrical energy in large 

 quantities without wires. He expects 

 that this can be done to great economic 

 advantage. Then would come the gold- 

 en age. "Men could settle down every- 

 where, fertilize and irrigate the soil 



