Tesla: Man Out of Time

a good and informative read. well written and very interesting without recourse to technological bamboozlement. there are other books available with a more technical bent if that's what you're interested in, however if you want a portrait of the man himself then this is as good a place as any to look. the kind of book that will encourage further study.

Telsa's life is very interesting, but I did not like her writing style, she jumped around in time, not sequential. I was hoping for a coherent linear narrative about Tesla's life, which this book is not.

I, like many others, have heard the name of Tesla and knew that he was far-sighted and a great inventor. Many rock fans will remember the group "Tesla" and their album "The Great Radio Controversy". I only mention this because I feel it opened the door for a great many young people to have an interest in Tesla.
This book was engrossing from start to finish. The number of patents, the ideas he presented so far ahead of his time and the inventions he brought forth literally changed the world. He does not get credit for most of what he did. He was just recently added to the Smithsonian Museum for his invention of the radio which many still believe was invented by Marconi. And children are still taught in school that "Thomas Edison invented electricity" but in fact the type of of electrity we use today was put forth by Tesla.
His awesome intelligence invented so many components of micro technology that inventors for years after did not comprehend. For instance, this book brings for the facts that "Inventors of modern computer technology in the last half of the twentieth century repeatedly have been surprised, when seeking patents, to encounter Tesla's basic ones, already on file."
To list Nikola Tesla's ideas, discoveries and inventions would take an entire book in itself but some included the Atom Smasher, X-Rays, Radio, electro-magnetic power, AC electricity, Solar Heating, Vacuum Tubes, Remote Control Vehicles, Torpedoes, Force Fields, Microwave Transmissions, Diathormy, High Voltage Conducters, Wireless Communications, World Wide Broadcasting Systems, Flying Saucers, Transisters, The Atomic Clock, Cosmic Rays, Phosphorescent Lighting, The Heating Pat, Robots, Liquid Oxygen, Under Ground Power LInes, Cryogenics, Radar, Guided Missiles, Automobile Speedometer, Highway Systems, Parking Garages, Interplanetary Communications, Laser Beams, Death Rays, Modern Warfare, Geothermal Steam Plants, and the list can go on and on. He once produced an earth quake in New York City and blew out electric plants in Colorado with his experiments. He was so far ahead of his time that the US Air Force is still researching his ideas and the US Government, in posession of his papers, denies that they have any of his notes. What they did acknowledge they had is still classified.
Nikola Tesla was a dapper man who spoke eight languages fluently and onced signed away riches for the benefit of a friend (George Westinghouse) who had supported him in the past. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen and this he considered his greatest accomplishement. His experiments through most of his life were constanty in need of funds and he approached the US Government several times. One can only wonder what might have come of his knowledge if the government had agreed to fund him. Thankfully his devotion was to the United States because both Russia and Germany approached him and he turned them down. As it turns out the US Government expressed much more interest in his experiments after his death than when he was alive. Apparently taking his notes and classifying them and also moving forward in his ideas.
This book presents a great overview with a little insight into his experiments. It covers the man, the experiments, his friends and his times. It's a great introduction to Nikola Tesla and I highly recommend it to anyone who is searching for the truth about historic inventions. Big companies and powerful men continued to keep Tesla's inventions either ignored, ridiculed (until later knowledge proved them right) or stolen so he could not profit to the full extent that he should have. A study in the down side of capitalism.
Buy this book, open your ideas, enjoy history and think about what you have been taught. Fascinating!

I read the Tesla book and finished it two weeks ago. I thought it was like a greek tragedy in some ways. His idea of transmitting electricity through the atmosphere sounded rather dangerous and impractical. He should have received more recognition than he did. If he was a little better businessman, he would have been wealthy beyond imagination.

It began really interesting. I was pleased to be reading a well written, (holds my interest), story about Tesla's life. After a few chapters the book went into long descriptions of lectures made. At first these were also interesting as I am Tesla fan. But it goes on and on. Real plowing material. I gave up and went to a different book. Although I do intend to return to see if the story eventually continues.

This details some of the life of this extraordinary genius. It doesn't cover many of his accomplishments, including his invention of an engine that made the Combustion Engine obsolete. It ran on air and used vacum tubes and could go 90 miles an hour. This data and patent has been conveniently buried.

References to other well known biographical documentation, historical data and documented and observed personal interactions were incredibly well researched. The author uses beautiful descriptions to clearly make the reader understand the message. She obviously took great time and learned a great deal about the science behind the man. Anyone with a passion for history and/or engineering will love this read. This was onyour list for research and became one of theosteoporosis pleasurable books I've ever read.

Gave me a decent perspective on the contributions of Tesla. The author does a good job of covering the man and his technical work. Her writing style lost me a couple s, but overall a worthwhile treatment of Tesla.

Reading this book made me kinda feel like tesla himself. Kinda innocent child who absolutely loved what he did. The fact the Tesla's work is not emphysized in modern educational systems worries me..

READ IT!

I stopped reading the book in chapter 9 but should have stopped earlier. There is no indication that the author can offer novel insights into Tesla, his inventions and contributions to the science and industry of his time. The writing is dry and unimaginative. It is also pretty clear that the author has no deep understanding of electric forces and the devices that harness them. I would love to find a good scholarly biography of Tesla. This book is far from that.

Margaret Cheney has taken a biographical look at a now generally forgotten inventor, Nikola Tesla, who was a hero to millions in Victorian times. Depending on how much of Tesla's self-promotional speeches and conspiracy theories you believe, Tesla either developed, contemplated, or imaged almost every new device of 20th century, including radio, television, space travel, fluorescent lighting, x-rays, nuclear fusion, particle beams, and the sabers from Star Wars.

It is true that he pioneered alternating current, leading Westinghouse to a technical leadership position ahead of General Electric and Edison. Unfortunately having the best mousetrap only lasts so long, especially when patents are violated, and neither Westinghouse nor Tesla profited in the long run. Tesla is sometimes remembered for his work in illuminating Chicago for the World's Fair and building power plants at Niagara Falls and location out West to support remote mining operations.

Tesla grew up in Balkan poverty, but was quickly identified for his unbelievable intellect. After some practical experience in Europe he came to America to meet Edison. The jealousy and rivalry took root nearly from the start and Tesla quickly moved on to Westinghouse which was not as invested in the direct current power systems.

At his core Tesla was an inventor. He seldom completed a project before moving on to the next big idea, much to the concern of his investment bankers, friends, and employers. Unfortunately his really big idea, wireless power, was never developed. We could use it now.

Cheney's book is very unusual in the writing style, it is really a compilation of quotes, anecdotes, speculation, gossip, and hard to follow streams of technical jargon. Some of this is necessary due to Tesla's character. He was a bachelor and loner, always working in a laboratory, running experiments in secrecy throughout the night, breaking only for meals at luxury hotels and midnight sojourns to feed and mend Manhattan's pigeons.

This book contains a lot of information about Nikola's personal life, his trials and tribulations of being an idea man; not a money man. There are plenty of confirmed cases where Tesla's inventions were not patented and other "Inventors" ended up stealing his ideas for their own monetary gain. Through out the course of this book, you will learn the true difference between an idea man; Tesla; and an opportunist; Thomas Edison.

There are parts throughout the book where the author makes the decision to jump around in dates, locations and themes. This, at times, can get extremely frustrating when the desired information is there; you only need to read "through" her novice literary skills.

Reading the book in its entirety, you get a good feel for who Tesla was as a person. The final days on his death bed, a man that loved to feed the pigeons on his window sill, intimate stories told from his helper, all very important pieces of information to help you connect with a man long gone.

When a non-scientist sets out to write a book about a scientist, especially one as eccentric and ground-breaking as Nicola Tesla, the results can be uneven. Margaret Cheney makes a valiant attempt to bring Tesla to the masses in "Tesla: Man Out of Time", and much can be forgiven a writer so enthused by her subject. However, it is really impossible to discuss Tesla's inventions without actually understanding the scientific foundations of electricity, magnetism, or physics. Ms. Cheney does an admirable job of fleshing out the very human, very creative man who enthralled the likes of Mark Twain with his seemingly magical command of electric fire. But when it comes to describing the actual machines he built, the patents he filed, or the concepts he developed, the best she can do is list them. Even understanding that she is writing for a lay audience, not a science symposium, she fails to make clear exactly what it was that Tesla was doing. While Tesla may have been so far advanced that his peers could not understand his lectures, such is certainly not the case today, more than 100 years after his inventions changed the world. This book does a very good job of making Tesla the man both sympathetic and fascinating; however, it does not do as good a job of describing Tesla the genius and inventor. Her accolades, therefore, must be taken on faith, because she is unable to make clear what, exactly, his genius consisted of.

Nikola Tesla, for the uninitiated, made wireless transmission (radio) a reality. He also perfected alternating current which was, up until then, merely a concept. During W.W.I he proposed using radio waves to find German U-boats in a method we now call 'triangulation'. He also envisioned a time when electricity and radio waves would be used to transmit data and images between various persons or agencies, ie; the wireless internet. This was at a time when the telephone was still viewed as a novelty. I haven't even gotten to his envisioning of geo-synchronous satellites. Oh yeah, this man died in 1942.

Any one of these accomplishments would merit the highest of accolades from the scientific community yet the name Nikola Tesla is greeted, more often than not, with questions. "Who? I thought Marconi invented the radio..."

Nikola Tesla was, quite simply, the most important figure of the twentieth century but he made the mistake of angering Thomas Edison by doing what Edison said couldn't be done (perfecting alternating current) and thus a Stalin-esque media campaign championed by Edison was born to impune the imperious Serb (Tesla). The inertia of the campaign continues to this day - The People's Almanac Vol. 2 credits Marconi with inventing radio...

The chapters detailing Tesla's interaction with Edison are alone worth the price of the book. Sadly, it reads like a soap opera as Edison was a spiteful old man. It's a pity that Mr. Edison's ego prevented him from seeing the importance of Mr. Tesla.

This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. Like so many others, I was taught that Marconi invented the radio but this book addresses that issue in a chapter entitled 'The Great Radio Controversy'. This book also describes the many expirements with electricity conducted by Mr. Tesla. How different life would have been for Henry Ford if he'd been unable to build and operate his assembly lines due to a lack of sustainable power. Tesla's research into mechanical resonance still leaves me in awe - he generated earthquakes with a little gizmo he cooked up in his lab.

The implications are numerous. Maybe someone would have come along to invent these devices but I can find no one person who had such a wide field of vision for the potential of electricity. Tesla proposed ways to use electric impulses as a weapon of war before W.W.II. In the 1970's computer designers were surprised to learn that some of their patent applications were denied because such devices had already existed for decades. Guess who?!

I have only scratched the surface here. Nikola Tesla is one of the most important figures of the last five hundred years. Margaret Cheney has written a superb book that reads like a science fiction novel - surely no one man could have been so brilliant but Nikola Tesla was truly that brilliant.

BUY THIS BOOK.

Tesla operated at a time of famous scientists doing great, public work that captured the public's imagination. He was a scientific genius and also understood the value of good PR. He tinkered, thought deep thoughts, hobnobbed with high society in the form of the New York rich and Mark Twain, and dabbled in the politics of his homeland. For a reader like me who did not understand the scientific concepts behind Tesla's work, I was still fascinated by his personality. He immigrated to the US to work for Thomas Edison and became his arch-competitor. As his career went on, his work became more theoretical as he had more and more trouble getting funding. He captured the public's imagination with electrical tricks, a secretive stay in Colorado Springs, and with the alternating current which was proven more effective than Edison's direct current. The true extent of his accomplishments is still somewhat unknown. As the author explains in what amounts to an extended epilogue, many of Tesla's papers were lost.

If you are like me and find the elusive figure of Tesla fascinating, you will enjoy this book even if, also like me, you do not really understand all the work Tesla was doing.

Nicola Tesla was a revolutionary inventor who gets little credit for his dramatic contributions to modern society. Tesla stood up to and won over Edison in the battle between direct current and alternating current which proved the practical choice. Tesla held the patents that first powered the Chicago World Exhibition and transformed Niagra Falls into energy to light Buffalo, NY. No one but Tesla knew when they threw the switch at Niagra that the new process would work at all. He held the patents for wireless communications before Marconi, used x-ray photography prior to Roentgen, and created the first prototypes of continuous cycle motors and transformers that are in common use today. He envisioned radio, television, and even defensive particle beam weapons before anyone else even thought they were remote possibilities.

Tesla's ideas go way beyond the technology of his time. Tesla had rare gifts to visualize, design, and test ideas in his mind, so when he tooled a device it wasn't a process of trial and error. His rare gift allowed him to envision ideas that challenge scientists today. But because he was always ahead of himself, Tesla didn't stay still long enough to see his ideas come into fruition for the last half of his life. We still wonder if it's possible, as he pondered, to send power wirelessly, to use standing waves in the earth and atmosphere to provide free power anywhere.

Margaret Cheney tells Tesla's life with a richness of detail that brings him into focus as a revolutionary thinker. Tesla's compulsive obsession with his ideas precluded romance and normalcy, but it set him apart as a figure who changed the world. A predominant figure in early 20th Century America, Tesla influenced the way we live today. You'll be enriched for learning about his fascinating life.

"Tesla: Man Out of Time", by Margaret Cheney, Prentice-Hall, Inc., NJ 1981. ISBN 0-13-906858-7, HC 320/290 pages includes Contents, Intro., Bibliog. Essay, Ref. Notes 15 pgs., Postscript, Index 10 pgs., 26 B&W glossy photos, 9 1/4" x 6 1/4".

Authoring two prior 2 books, this is well-researched bibliographic portrait of the World's most highly acclaimed contributing scientist born in Croatia Jul. 9, 1856 & dying New York City, American citizen, Jan 7, 1943 at age 86. There are 30 chapters, given some prolixity, containing that gamut of details providing solid characterization to a mysterious, impeccably dressed loner, a dedicated inventor of 1st magnitude, and whose legacy lay in his inventions as AC motors, generators & transmission lines, radio, Tesla coil, & founding principles for guided missiles, submarines, odometers, turbines, and the like.

This period of history saw many present-day electro-mechanical devices invented, perfected and placed into use for transportation, communication and manufacturing, largely machinery affording efficiency - but also a time for several wars, economic downturns and fierce competition, -- as that between Thomas Edison and Tesla. The author succinctly describes the period, the people and emerging problems of early 20th Century America and intellectual greatness, and unique charm of Tesla, who, in his later years, speculated on scientific matters that continue to baffle experts, with a chapter on a search and evaluation of/for his missing papers upon his death. He had some OCD, and was particularly fond of pigeons, especially a white one with silver-gray wing tips he communicated with.

After reading divers books on Tesla, I detected modestly unobtrusive reiteration, recital and quoting of events implying a totality of factual data has been exhaustively chronicled or reclaimed - notwithstanding, this is the finest definitive review I've unearthed, and having to choose one, this would be it.

Pond: "Looks like Marconi got the jump on you."

Tesla: "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." (161)

*

I'm not sure we will ever understand Tesla. First, he was head and shoulders above everyone else, we are like puppy dogs trying to keep up with his great strides. One biographer suggested that Tesla was the avatar of an alien from Venus (p. xiii). The problem with that theory is that it is almost believable!

The second problem is that Tesla was a classic introvert. (The first observation is the cause of the second.) As a classic introvert, he had a chronic case of the Da Vinci Syndrome. He was so smart, his internal world was far more exciting than the humdrum external world--the world of politics, back-stabbing, no finaces, and the ever-cascading trifles and trivia.

The difference is that we can read Da Vinci's notebooks and try to reconstruct his mind, much as we can read all of the Lost Tales of Middle-Earth (Tolkien also had Da Vinci syndrome) and think about what could have been. However, with Tesla he was not a note keeper. On top of that we have the problem of the missing Tesla papers. Thirdly, if we even had the papers, could we make sense of them?

Cheney's masterwork is worthy of her subject. It is readable, balances the hard science with the human-interest, and when you are done, you know you have read a beautiful tragicomedy. This book has converted me to Tesla, and I suspect it will do the same for you.

Like most information about Tesla, useful information can be gleaned from this book, but not all is revealed. The more information that one has about Tesla and his inventions, all interact to educate the reader/technician/inventor. This is necessary because most technical Tesla components have to be made and fashioned on the spot, and then tuned and calibrated to perform the desired function (it's not like you can go to Radio Shack and buy key Tesla components off the shelf).

Indeed, Tesla spent a lot more time making and trying out certain key components, than making the overall end invention of his tinkering. There is some debate that Tesla was Autistic, and through quirks of nature, was able to focus on ideas and thoughts in ways most of the rest of us cannot. He probably was able to build the whole thing inside his head, and his challenges were not so much to know what would happen, but rather, how to make a physical model that would work as well as the intellectual model of whatever goal or interactive unit worked inside of his head.

Through the use and making of very complex components, Tesla later found that many of the end results, intended or not, were 'simple' oversights or side bars of his experiments, and these 'simple' technologies assumed a life all their own; sometimes overshadowing the more complex and intricate workings of the previously envisioned result. He seemed to be extremely distracted by sidebars. Working on something would spark interest in a side note or reaction, and there he would go, off on another trail. Started 100 things, finished maybe 5. but gathered data that only added to his catalog of possibilities that obviously, no one but he could comprehend.

Here we are, amateurs and novices (compared with the Master Tesla), attempting to pick up the pieces from obscure notes and diagrams, and reproducing 'simple' actions, which are anything but simple. This, the legacy of a true inventor, rather than a tinkerer, as was Edison.

Lest anyone think about journals and writings of Tesla becoming readily available, most acredited sources believe that 80% or more of his technical notes and works ended up in Belgrade, and with the last Croatian/Serbian war, their continued existence is doubtful.
Yet, with what few notes we have, our quest for knowledge and witness to the vast fields of thought and technology unmasked by Tesla is simply unfathomable to the informed. If psychic contact and all that stuff really worked, how is it that no one has taken notes and academics from Tesla? It sort of makes you wish that Some other gifted autistic would focus on electronics, rather than piano.

Good luck in your quest, and be open to purchasing all you can about Tesla, the Genius Inventor.

"Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field".... this is false.

It was Faraday who discovered the connections between magnetism and electricity... including light.... all through exhaustive experimentation and research. Maxwell then came along and put it in the language of mathematics in his "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism."

This book reads more like a very long feature article for a newspaper than a biography. Nikola Tesla is fascinating because of his revolutionary and fantastical ideas. He never became rich and powerful because he was too busy racking up incredible new ideas, and never converted his ideas to commercial use (like his nemesis Thomas Edison). Tesla invented alternating current, and had a chance to make royalties from each and every use of AC by the public (potentially worth billions), but signed the royalties away to preserve his friendships with industrial titans. He discovered most of the concepts of radio, but lost a messy war of words and patent lawsuits with Marconi and Edison. He invented remote control and key aspects of robotics, and envisioned (in the late 1800's) a worldwide wireless communications system that companies are still trying to develop to this day. In fact, modern scientists often "discover" new phenomena that Tesla brought up so long ago that nobody remembers his work and fails to give him credit. This is why Tesla continues to be so under-appreciated. On the more outlandish side, Tesla theorized that he could utilize the electrical charges in the Earth's atmosphere to turn the entire planet into a giant fluorescent light bulb; and with his concept of mechanical resonance he theorized that he could create vibrations to destroy buildings or even split the Earth in two. He could electrify the Earth itself and make the soil crackle for miles around. This was when people started calling him a madman. Another interesting aspect of Tesla was his participation is high society, as he spent much of his life schmoozing rich benefactors for capital. Few scientists of his caliber today would be such social climbers.
Now what kind of a mind would lead to such a fascinating personality and such incredible ideas? You still can't tell, because Margaret Cheney fails to illuminate Tesla the man in this book. This biography is essentially the work of a reporter who has rehashed freely available information into the form of a special interest article in a local newspaper. There is more focus on Tesla's social calls and financial transactions than his ideas or personality. The book often digresses into useless detective work on the handling of Tesla's papers by various government agencies after his death, or descriptions of the current use of his ideas that read more like bizarre advertisements for the modern companies involved. One of the few attempts to provide insight into his personality is a completely ridiculous treatise stating that Tesla's hobby of caring for pigeons is related to a lack of breastfeeding as a baby. Of course, more information on how Tesla came up with his amazing ideas, and the workings of his unusual mind, is probably impossible to obtain, and this is not Cheney's fault. However, this biography is not very useful without it.

Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant to America, was a strange man. He was frequently referred to in the press as a 'mad genius', and previous biographies have been sensational, rather than informative.
Tesla thought in pictures rather than words (like Einstein) and had a photographic memory until well into his adult life. At least three of his senses, hearing, sight and touch, were sufficiently over-developed that they caused him physical discomfort. He was an intuitive thinker: he grasped concepts as a whole, and then worked backwards, painfully and not always successfully, to realize the practical details that would utilize his grand ideas. He was able to model and test equipment in his head, rotating it as needed and putting it through its paces, so that when the equipment was finally built, it worked perfectly the first time.
The problem, admitted by biographer Cheney, is that an inventor who goes directly from mental concept to patent papers leaves a thin trail behind him as to his thought processes. The constant need to obtain funding for his experiments and the legal ramifications of being first to patent new ideas, meant that Tesla -- already a loner by nature -- was driven to keep his work as secret as possible. Cheney finally located his private papers in a government department, out of sight under lock and key.
Tesla was more of a scientist than the purely practical Edison, his main competitor for funding. Although some of his more famous patents -- the Tesla coil and 'polyphase' (i.e. alternating current) electricity -- became the foundation of American engineering before World War II, other patents were filed and not followed up on as Tesla lost interest in them. He filed patents for a transistor and for wireless broadcasting. But it was Shockley et al who build the first working modern computers (and received the Nobel prize) and Marconi who transmitted the first long-distance wireless messages and is generally recognized as the founder of modern broadcasting.
Biographer Cheney has presented as much of the material on Tesla's life as seems currently available except, of course, for the patents themselves, which are publicly available. It is up to us, the readers, to try and understand how the mind of this inventive genius worked based on our own knowledge of both science and psychology. That doesn't seem an unreasonable chore on behalf of a man who once said:
"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success."

Tesla

Look up Nikola Tesla on Google (the internet, or something like it, was something he was probably working on at one point and the cathode ray tube would have been impossible without him) and you'll find thousands of hits. Born in Serbia in 1856, largely self-educated; fluent in eight languages; a confidante of Mark Twain and bitter rival of Thomas Edison; obsessive-compulsive, feeder of pigeons in the park when he himself was hungry; owner of 700 patents... the list goes on and on.
Biographies of Tesla tend to fall into one of two categories: one is the H.G. Wells scenario: " it was a dark and dreary night as blue sparks flew from the mad scientist's laboratory while a dwarfish assistant cranked up the generator. "; and the other concentrating on his scientific accomplishments and business problems.

Margaret Cheney's "Tesla: Man out of Time" does a pretty serviceable job of addressing both sides of his life. Tesla kept meticulous diaries and notes, many of which disappeared after his death at age 86 during World War II.
What happened to those notes is an open question: did the FBI or OSS get to them before the Nazi's could, thereby preserving the so- called "Death Ray" from the Germans? Or were they destroyed by loyal assistants and secretaries? Or are they preserved in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade?
(Ironically, Ronald Reagan tried to implement the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars," in the 1980's. It didn't work then and it wouldn't work now.Which isn't surprising since Reagan didn't know the difference between Tesla and Teflon.

His epic battle with Marconi over the rights to radio ended with a Supreme Court decision awarding the invention of radio to Tesla, but by then Marconi had already won the Nobel Prize and gotten the fame and fortune. Edison was fixated on direct current and frustrated that it could not travel over distances efficiently. Tesla developed alternating current and in a flash of true genius, the induction motor. George Westinghouse was another key figure: he saw dollar signs in Tesla's inventions and offered money, but always with strings attached. Tesla was as bad with money as he was good with science.

Although he could be testy and short with people, Tesla also could be an engaging and generous friend. With his Slavic good looks, he adorned the cover of Time magazine and popular publications. He could have been a matinee idol, like another eccentric genius, Howard Hughes. Like Hughes Tesla lived alone in a suite of hotel rooms in New York (their numbers always divisible by three); had a pathological fear of germs and human contact; and had highly developed auditory and visual senses. His contribution to modern science and technology, long underrated, are finally beginning to get the credit he deserved during his lifetime. The scientific notation for magnetic field induction is named the Tesla in his honor.
Further Reading:
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John O'Neill
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius (Citadel Press Book)The Nikola Tesla Treasury
The Prestige

I agree with what the other reviewer wrote. About the Tesla book as not focusing on Tesla very much. However, I felt that Cheney was trying to tell us that Tesla didn't 'want' to be known at all. The times that Tesla opened up to america, were to see american corporations clamp down on him and his ideas.... so Tesla became even more the introvert than before.... While yes, his letters to people are opening a little bit, they are quite sad, how he came to love pigeons more than people at the end of his life. Animals never tried to hurt him emotionally or finacially, so he spent all his time with them.
The science could have been deeper but I was not a science major so it was at a perfect level for me as a reader of literature. Perhaps it could have had a middle chapter titled, "Deep science" and most readers could be given the heads up about it, so they could skip it if they wished to. However the main thrust of the book was to enlighten the reader as to how recluse Tesla was and how sad his letters got even though he changed the face of american science more so than Edison did. I was shocked when the US Military did not take his genius and put him to work in some hidden base somewhere. But then they probably had a less budget then compared to today.
Anyway, it was a great read on the long drive to Baja Mexico from Idaho.
Jonathan M

The author is a good writer who has chosen a towering, almost out of reach, subject. My only quibble is a bit of meandering in the structure of the book, a faint tone of confusion (perhaps due to the enormity of the "genius") and a slightly too bedazzled attitude on the part of the biographer. Good job, but one day Tesla will get a really talented, penetrating biographer and the resulting book will blow the tops of people's heads off. What he did, fooled around with, patented, and so on was entirely incomrephensible to most during his lifetime and still remains spooky to most people today.

Until a few months ago, I knew very little about Tesla's fascinating life and accomplishments. I saw a documentary on the man, and descided to learn more about him. When we were assigned our physics paper, I thought that the most interesting person to write about in the field of physics was Tesla. I ended up choosing this book because as I flipped through some of the pages, I realized that I would be able to understand the complicated aspects of Tesla's theories since they were so well explained. I read this book with ease and enjoyment, and it gave me good insight on Tesla's life. One thing I learned from this book was how vicious the fight was between physicists to dominate the field of electricity. Who would have guessed that Thomas Edison was such a stubborn and hated rival of Tesla? I thought that these great minds would have tried to collaborate with each other in order to craft technological advances. I was also suprised when I learned how hard it was for Tesla to get work and shelter even though he had a great mind.

I definitevely recomend this book to anyone who isn't too familiar with the scientific aspects of modern electrical engineering and wants a simple but accurate explanation of Tesla's works, and anyone who wants to learn how Tesla's rose from a small town in Croatia to one of the leading physicists in the world.

That's what my initial assessment of Nikola Tesla had been prior to reading this marvelous account of his life. I had only viewed him as most of probably still do...as mere "footnote" in the annals of the Industrial Revolution.

Such could not be farther from the truth!

Margaret Cheney does a superb job of mastering not only the scientific aspects of Tesla's life, but the social nuances as well with her biography of this amazing gentleman.

Nikola Tesla was (and most likely still is in many circles) considered one of the world's greatest inventors, and also, one fo the most enigmatic. Most all of his inventions were so far beyond the public, that even today, we have a difficult time grasping just how important they really were.

Think Marconi invented the radio?

Think again.

Think Westinghouse was behind alternating current?

Wrong!

Power generators for the Niagra Falls hydro-electric plant?

You're getting warmer.

These (and so much more) were invented by this man from Yugoslavia...that's right...he was an IMMIGRANT (with a passion for feeding pigeons)...imagine that!

This is one book that begs NOT to be put down!

Many of Tesla's patents are still hidden away, collecting dust, and have never been further contemplated by even today's scientists.

Truly, this man was far ahead of his (or even our) time!

Tesla was an intuitive genius who tinkered his way to scientific success in so many areas.

One wonders if in his later years, his lack of sleep contributed to his erratic behavior ... not getting enough REM sleep. Although many geniuses often got by on on five hours or less.

Anyone interested in Tesla and others who made such major contributions should consider reading books about the woman inventor, Hedy Lamarr, who always had an electronic design studio in her house. She and her design partner, George Antheil, hold patents on spread-spectrum single sideband radio transmissions. She was not credited until decades later when her ideas became widely adopted [and after her patents expired]. People are distracted by her "day job" as a movie actress.

This has been sitting on my to-read shelf for some time. Cheney has written a solid and serviceable biography of Tesla. I realize this is faint praise. There's nothing wrong with the book, and quite a bit really right. I think I missed some kind of (no pun intended) spark-- mostly around the science. I learned a lot about the man, but really-- think about it-- what these men were doing was really amazing. I got the facts, but missed the madness.

(I did like her view on Edison. The more I read about the man, the more I'm pretty sure he was awful.)

None of this should dissuade you from reading the Tesla: Man Out of Time if you are looking for a good introduction to the subject.

Nicola Tesla is one of the wonders of recent centuries. A more complex and mysterious man can hardly be imagined. He is known to have invented things like Alternate Current (AC), robots, guided missles, and the radio, among many other things. During his later years he was constantly broke and had no funds to purchase the equipment he needed to test his theories, and it is rumored that he invented a way to transmit energy wirelessly, a type of electic force field that could encircle an entire country and prevent it from being invaded, a death-ray that killed with highly concentrated energy beams, and a way to light the earth at night by stimulating the chemicals present in the atmosphere. He is also known to have invented an oscillator which he could fit into his pocket with which he could destroy buildings and once accidentally used to start a small earthquake in New York.

In addition to his imaginitive and innovative inventions, Tesla himself was an exceedingly interesting man. He was plauged by what sounds to me to be Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (though the book never called it that). He had to do things in groups of three (for example, if he walked around a block he had to do it three times), his apartment or hotel room number had to be divisible by three or he could not stay there, he had to calculate the cubic volume of his food before he ate it, etc. He also could not touch or be touched by other human beings and was excessively afraid of human hair. In addition to all this, he became obsessed with pigeons in his later years, and would take them into his rented room. He aquired many pigeons, and was kicked out of his hotel because of it. He moved about to other places and his pigeons followed him. If he could not make it to the park to feed the pigeons, he hired someone to do it for him, and when he went through a particularly sparce period when he was nearly bankrupt, he lived on crackers so that he could buy bird feed for his pigeons.

Needless to say, this is not a boring book at all. It discusses two things: Nicola Tesla and his inventions. Both Telsa himself and his inventions are some of the most interesting things that you will ever read about (as you can tell from the above paragraphs). You may have read fictional accounts of mad scientists, but Tesla is the only real one that I know of. I highly recommend reading about Tesla, and this book is as good a place to start as any that I know of.

Many who have heard of Tesla have heard about him mainly in the form of conspiracy theories. His strange inventions and even stranger claims in his old age, combined with his excessively eccentric personality have made him the center of any number of consipracy theories, and the dissapearance of his papers into the hands of the government and the government's subsequent denial of their possession of the papers only heightens feelings of curiousity and suspicion about him. Thankfully, Cheney takes the road less traveled and does not devote her book to conspiracies and extravagant claims. Most of her claims are backed up by citations from Tesla's works, newspapers, or those who knew him personally. When she does discuss controversial and unproven theories she makes sure to mention that they are controversial and she leans heavily toward disbelieving the conspiracy theories surrounding Tesla. In short, this is a very well researched book, providing the information needed to do more research if you feel inspired to do so after reading it. It is not a conspiracy theory book, unlike most of the other books I have seen about Tesla. Definitely a book worth reading.

Overall grade: A

About a month ago, I was introduced to the life of this brilliant man, Nikola Tesla, and all of his inventions that he conjured up, by a good friend of mine. When this friend mentioned that Tesla was creating wireless communication and remote control-- during the late 1800's into the early 1900's (!!), I at first did not believe him. So, I decided to do some research myself and began to look through different articles dealing with Tesla and his inventions. Sure enough, Tesla did invent remote control, flourescent lights, robotics, wireless communication, and many other mind-blowing inventions--during the time that people were still traveling pretty much by way of HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES!!!!! This man was, in effect, 2001: A Space Odyssey on two legs--He was definately light-years ahead of his time. And wouldn't you know it? His inventions are still being taken seriously today--by scientists and military personel alike. This book is perhaps one of the most definative and fascinating biographies I have ever read. Easy to read, yet quite an in depth look into the genius who lit the world by his discovery of AC electric current. A highly recommended biography, in my opinion. Well worth the time and money.

While there are many books on the life of Tesla, few come close to the quality of Man Out of Time. Margaret Cheney has created a well balanced book that tells both the positive and negative aspects of Tesla, without bias. Not only does she cover the history of the man, but explains the relevance of each event in his life in a way that is entertaining, fluid and engaging.

I have read a great deal of books on Tesla, but this is the only one I buy to give to others. It isn't a laundry list of every invention, it is instead about the journey of the man through life, his relationships with industry leaders like Westinghouse, Edison and others. No other book explains the man himself like this one.

Nikola Tesla succeeded to be remembered through the course of the 20th century and beyound and become an important part of human history , a feat which the band Baggalutur failed to accomplish , and thus became a forgotten part of Icelandic , and not world - wide history , unlike Tesla , who had already become quite legendary worldwide during the latter days of his lifetime as a genius inventor.
Tesla remains undouptedly one of the most important persons to have appeared on the scene in the entire history of science. Like Iceland , Tesla has been somewhat of an island in the Atlantic of the vast ocean that is history itself.

Ms. Cheney introduces the legendary inventor through stories from his life. Later on, the book focuses more on the technical aspects of his life (e.g. patents).
The book is complete with several photographs of the inventor and related material, and it lends itself wonderfully to any reader's understanding and awe.
I believe it is imperative for anyone who wishes to know the real stories of radio, alternating current, and the induction motor to read about how these marvellous developments sprung out of Nikola Tesla's creative mind.
"TESLA: Man Out of Time" is quite current, and the fascinating information therein is objective, allowing the reader to form his own opinions.
Indeed, everyone I know who was read this book wants to hear more of the man who invented the 20th century!

Nikola Tesla was a bachelor. Born in 1856, he died at age eighty-six in 1943. He was a prolific inventor. Addressing the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Tesla introduced a new scientific principle. He hit upon the notion of a rotating magnetic field produced by two or more alternating currents out of step with each other to make his induction machine. Obsession plagued his life. He excelled in languages but starred in math at school. He had an abnormal ability to visualize and retain images. He was introduced to physics at age ten and was enthralled.

Tesla continued his studies at a school in Karstadt, (the family was Servian but lived in Croatia). In 1875 he was enrolled at the Austrian Polytechnic School in Graz. He sought to complete two years of work in one. In the second year, Nikola Tesla toyed with the idea of an alternative to direct current machines. His financial circumstances were grim. He had to become a school drop-out. He was basically self-taught.

From a telegraph office in Germany, Tesla moved to a telephone office in Paris in 1883. He travelled to America in 1884, the year of the panic. He gained employment with Thomas Edison on his first day. There were personality differences. Edison had a vested interest in direct current machines. Tesla redesigned the Edison dynamos. He thought he had been promised fifty thousand dollars for the work of a year. When it was not forthcoming he resigned.

Tesla made a deal with George Westinghouse for an alternating current system. The public was confused by Edison's propaganda and G.E.'s efforts to contest Tesla's priority of invention. It was never fully understood even by engineers that the system almost universally adopted was Tesla's. When Westinghouse faced a financial calamity, Tesla signed over his patents for the polyphase system to Westinghouse. The first commercial use of Tesla's system was undertaken in Telluride, Colorado, in 1891. Tesla gave demonstrations of light sources in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair.

Milikan was inspired by Tesla's claim of cosmic rays and Compton, too, expressed his debt to his Victorian predecessor. Tesla anticipated the electron microscope and the atom smasher. Marconi and Tesla wrangled over priority in the matter of radio patents, although neither man originated the law suits. The polyphase system was used by the Niagra Falls Power Co. and it laid the groundwork for all the electricity service systems in the United States.

In 1895 there was a fire at Tesla's New York City laboratory. Everything was destroyed. The fire took place amid the happiest and most productive decade of Tesla's life. Newspapers reported that the fruits of genius had been swept away. His researches included radio, energy transmission, guided vehicles, liquid oxygen and X rays. A new lab was located on East Houston Street. Tesla accepted money from a financier, start-up funds, but to his material detriment rejected an alliance with the House of Morgan.

Because his work was interrupted, Tesla was bested by Linde in developing the commercial breakthrough to produce liquified oxygen. Tesla demonstrated a radio-controlled robot boat at Madison Square Garden in 1898. Tesla's laboratory was moved to Colorado Springs in 1899. He had an experimental lab built to his specifications. He returned to New York City in 1990 and in 1901 one of Tesla's patents specifically addressed the issue of supercooling conductors.

In 1943, after his death, the United States Supreme Court held that Tesla had anticipated all other contenders with his fundamental radio patents. Nikoa Tesla was ahead of his time and mistaken for a dreamer. In 1975 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. This is a wonderful book.

I found this book to be absolutely mind-boggling. It is incredible that one man could be a pioneer in so many separate fields of technology. Moreover, it is incredible that one man can be traced back to be the originator of practically all of our global power and information infrastrucure- yet he benefited so little for it in terms of either credit or wealth.

Nikola Tesla was the single genius behind the the entire modern polyphase and single phase system for generating, transmitting, and utilizing electrical current. He was no mere theorist- he actually designed the dynamos, motors (the FIRST AC motors- when all the "experts" said that it was impossible), transformers, and automatic controls. It all occurred to him in a flash in the 1880's. This alone should have made him the greatest of modern inventors, yet it was only a tiny part of his genius. Tesla also invented wireless communication (Marconi used his patents and lied about it.) Now combine this with his seminal work in superconductivity (he had to invent the technology to produce liquid oxygen on an industrial scale), cryogenics, fluorescent lights, radio-control, robotics, logic circuits, x-rays, radar, aeronautics, blade less turbines, etc. He didn't merely predict the developments in these fields- if you look he held the original U.S. patents backed by detailed drawings and models (this book does an excellent job in tracing those patents.) Much of it dated from the 19th century- before the "electron" had been discovered or named.

Yet, he received so little in credit or financial reward. After his time working for Edison (who cheated him him out of his promised fee for redesigning his DC dynamos), and after starting up and being forced out of his own arc lighting company, he was actually penniless and forced to work as a street gang laborer during the recession of of 1886. He barely survived. In fact he often found it difficult to even pay his room rent during his life. One is stunned to find that this greatest of minds could be so poorly treated by society- it truly puts one own misfortunes into perspective...

Those people who only associate the inventor with high frequency, high voltage stage spectaculars only see the tip of the iceberg. The only reason that Tesla even put on such theatrical displays was to try to attract investment capital from ignorant but wealthy men that did not understand his real work.

Personally, Tesla was an enigma. He held that human beings were fundamentally no more than "meat machines." Yet there has seldom been a more altruistic personality. He did not subscribe to the rule of the jungle and the social Darwinism of his times. In fact, he essentially gave away his royalty rights to Westinghouse just to see that his superior system would actually be given to the world. Plus, there is the fact that Tesla experienced many instances of ESP and precognition in his life- yet he seemed to pass this off as a type of "mental radio" not yet explained. However, he never did come to grips as to how he could predict events in the future...

One result of my reading the is book was that I grew ashamed that I kept a picture of Thomas Edison over my drawing board for years. Edison was a petty little man who behaved shamefully, especially concerning Tesla. Tesla was by far the greater innovator, plus a polished gentleman, linguist, and poet. One thing stuck out forcefully- Tesla was a great believer in developing solar, wind, geothermal, and ocean power as well as other forms of renewable energy. On the other hand, Edison held that such methods would not be needed for 50,000 years because just chopping down the South American jungles would provide us with that much fuel...

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid by night;
God said, Let Tesla be, and all was light."

Cheney has a very pleasant writing style and she keeps the story moving well. But it seems clear that she didn't really understand Tesla's inventions and had a hard time distinguishing between what he did and what he said he did. It also appears that Cheney gives credibility to ESP and auras and I am not sure that this is the best way of thinking when doing a biography of someone like Tesla. This somewhat diminished my enjoyment of the book but it was still worth reading and is an excellent starting point in exploring Tesla's life.

Tesla was shoulder to shoulder with Newton, leibniz and Einstein. This one man was responsible for the 20th century. Wireless, as in internet, the radio, Alternating Current, Neon and fluorescent light, energy transmission without wires - this guy seems like he came from another world. Margaret obviously loves Tesla and it is hard to blame her. After the idiot Edison did every horrible thing he could do to destroy Tesla because of Edison's rival Direct Current, including, possibly having Tesla's lab burnt down amongst other devious acts. When Margaret wrote this book, Tesla wasn't wildly popular as he is in
the oughts. There are more coherent books out there on Tesla, but this book is a work of love. Good going Margaret.

What a disappointing read! I honestly struggled to finish this biography after starting it with such high hopes.

Tesla is a fascinating character. His early work laid the groundwork for much of the modern alternating-current-based electrical grid. Later on he made major discoveries in wireless communications but was unable to capitalize on either. The later part of his life is marked by grand proclamations but little actual experimentation. He's something of a controversial figure and the jury is still out on many of his inventions, including whether or not he actually made various discoveries or if he was just deluding himself.

Cheney does a remarkable job of turning this fascinating story into a dry, boring slog. While generally her writing is technically fine it just doesn't flow. She also has some very annoying habits:
1. She provides very few hard dates and skips forwards and backwards in time, making it very hard to understand the ordering of major events.
2. She provides almost no technical details on anything engineering-related.
3. She clearly has no understanding of most of the scientific principles involved and takes all of his ramblings at face value.
4. She breathlessly mentions how some of Tesla's work explains various paranormal activity which she seems to accept as fact, and at the end of the book implies that there's a huge conspiracy involving the US government to keep all of later inventions, including his "death ray", under wraps.

If you're interested in learning more about Tesla, avoid this book - it will just crush your curiosity.

"Tesla: Man Out of Time" succeeds only in making the life of an extraordinary man a lifeless and frustratingly shallow story.

Prior to reading this book, I was only aware of Tesla as a mysterious genius and some kind of cult figure. And I had read a brief but intriguing description of Tesla's paranormal experiences. I read this biography anxious to dive into the life and times of this fascinating man. Unfortunately, I would STILL like to be fascinated by the story of Tesla, because this book skims over the most interesting aspects of this ingenious and troubled inventor and engineer.

The book brings attention to countless captivating things about Tesla, confirming that he deserves a quality biographical study, but fails to deliver much more than a sketch of the events in his life. It seems like most of the pages are wasted on describing Tesla's lab equipment. I say "wasted" because even after countless tiresome descriptions of Tesla's experiments, I still have no idea about how his inventions were supposed to work or the basic theories behind them. I still don't know which of his ideas, if any, were revolutionary, or if any of his unattained goals have been achieved by any inventor-scientist after Tesla. The author should have (even briefly) explained some basic electrical concepts in order to make the writing about his experiments meaningful, or better, she should have minimized the descriptions of his devices and concentrated on the man - his odd talents, his relationships, his obsessive-compulsive behavior, why he failed in his business enterprises, and why he seemingly became an outrageous liar and huckster.

I now know who Nikola Tesla was and what he did. Two stars for that much.

Although, the countries of Serbia and Croatia are on everyone's minds as war-torn, depopulated, and religiously segregated, they were not always so. They had, and still have, high universities and arts, sufficient to produce the likes of Nikola Tesla. This is the biography of the man who invented the A/C motor, flourescent light bulbs, electric starters(tesla coil), RADIO, wireless power, telemetry(something near and dear to every spaceman and submariner), x-rays ( known as shadow graphs ), electro-therapy and on and on. He made possible the Niagara Fall Power Plant, cellular telephony as well as nearly every household appliance. Marconi, who is thought by many, and in some circles mistakenly celebrated, as having invented radio, did not. He usurped Tesla's demonstrated and patented work. In 1947, the US threw out Marconi's patents as infringing on Tesla's, restoring credit to Tesla. Originally an employee and later the nemesis of Alvin Edison. He held over 700 patents; the flourescent light bulb and the shadow graph he did not patent. Oddly enough, based on Tesla's shadow graphs Roetgen went on to receive the Nobel Prize for what he termed the X-Ray. Tesla is the most under-appreciated, unrecognized hero of the late 19th and early 20th century. America and the world owe him more than can ever be repaid.

This has been for many years the best Nikola Tesla biography out there. It is highly readable and full of information. Notwithstanding, the way the material is presented can be a bit confusing at times because it does not follow a strict chronological order. That is why I did not give the book five stars. Upon reading the book you will find out how fascinating was Tesla's life. Mr. Tesla accomplished a lot and we, present generations, are highly indebted to him. The breadth and the scope of his discoveries are breathtaking thus making him a "man out of time".

There's no disputing that Nikola Tesla was a genius of the first order, who lived a very fascinating life. Writing biographies of everyday people is quite easy; writing biographies of prodigies can be quite a challenge.

Every biography of a prodigy suffers under this fact, but this biography of Tesla suffers so much more than most. The reason I am not that enthusiastic about this book, is that it is written in the style generally used in biographies of political leaders and athletes; they glide from victory to victory, and, of course, suffer the occasional defeat. However at the end of the day the "big pictures" of their lives are generally largely interchangeable. Not so the life of Nikola Tesla; his contributions were sui generis, and deserve a more thoughtful and exhausting examination. Some would argue that Babe Ruth was the best baseball player of all time, but nobody claims that after Babe Ruth, baseball players could swat baseballs five times as far. Nobody, on the other hand, disputes that Tesla completely rewrote the books in the fields he touched. I believe that describing these different lives requires different approaches. The names and dates in this book are right, but you don't get an understanding of the importance and ramifications of his work, which to my mind is far more valuable than mere names and dates.

I wouldn't recommend this book except to high school students and those who seek a superficial introductory biography of Tesla.

Margaret Cheney's "Tesla: Man Out of Time" is a solid overview for anyone seeking an introduction to the life of Nikola Tesla, the brillian inventor and polymath who originated huge swaths of the technology that make our modern world possible, including alternating current, radio, remote control and many others. Well documented and engaging, the book presents the technical aspects of its subject at a layman's level, and does a solid job of providing the context for Tesla's personal and professional life.

Well written and a fascinating look into the life of another man that changed life on earth yet (in my opinion) is greatly overlooked. Call him a genius, inventor, madman or completely insane it doesn't matter. His achievements and inventions impact our lives today and will for centuries to come. I read it in two days because I couldn't put it down. The connection to Telsa and so many things we use everyday may even leave you a bit stunned. I know I'll be reading it again soon.

I have read the German version of Margaret Cheney's book " Tesla - Man out of time". Surprisingly, besides my personal impression that the quality of translation is rather poor, I found more data on the time and people who met Tesla than on Tesla himself. There are no precise scientific descriptions of his inventions throughout the text and several chapters predominantly focus on the industrial development during that time often without being directly relevant to Tesla and his work. The author jumps back and forth in time such that it is difficult to find a clear organization of the text. In the middle of the book there are some nice black and white pictures showing Tesla, some of his friends, some of his inventions and even some title pages of magazines that published articles on him and his work. Summarizing this, I would say that this book supplies sufficient information to give the reader a good impression of the time during that Tesla lived and to the problems he had to face during his life. Some extraordinary curiosities concerning his character are also presented (for me the main reason to give the two stars rating). However, this book is not recommended to readers who like to get detailed technical information on his inventions or to those who expect a book emphasizing Teslas SCIENTIFIC work.

Cheney provides a lot of in depth information about Tesla's personal life, which at times is interesting. She refers often to his personal letters, which is information that is often hard to find in other biographies. However, there are a lot of lackings in the book as well. First, for anyone with a scientific or engineering background it is unsatisfying. Cheney's reiteration of Tesla's language when referring to his inventions is often archaic and unclear. I'm not sure her educational background, but she does not seem to be able to convey the engineering significance of his ideas. Secondly, she seems to almost be "defending" Tesla throughout the book. It doesn't necessarily detract from the book, but it comes across as desperate. Finally, it seems like the book's a little long. I feel like some information could be left behind. Nevertheless, for a compelte biography of all aspects of Tesla's life, this is the one for you--just be ready to focus more on his social interactions than his inventions.

If you read just one book about a quirky genius, this should be the one. Tesla was an unusual man. This book features Tesla's friendships both real and imagined. One of his real friends was Mark Twain. Twain himself commented once that Tesla was closer to his imaginery friends then most of his real ones.

Tesla's patents changed the way the world works. He is the stuff that great stories are made of.

This quote should tell you all you need to know regarding the quality of work in this "Biography".

"But today, now that science has begun to take an interest in little understood biological phenomena, Tesla's strange vacuum tube may hold new interest. It could, for example, have application in the control of autonomic functions of the body through biofeedback techniques. Or perhaps it might help us to understand the mysterious Kirlian effect. Kirlian photography, used in conjunction with high-frequency voltages of a Tesla coil, has created scientific interest in the human aura by disclosing to ordinary vision what may always have been apparent to psychics. Tesla's 1890's research showed that high-frequency currents move on or near the surface of conducting materials, similarly to the phenomenon of superconductivity. It has been speculated that coronas appearing in Kirlian photographs may be the modulation of some kind of "carrier field" surrounding life forms. (Acupuncture points also may be related to such force fields.) It is thus possible to entertain the suggestion of a contemporary electrical engineer that Tesla's hypersensitive vacuum tube might make an excellent detector not only of Kirlian auras but of other so-called paranormal phenomena, including the entities commonly called ghosts."

...Seriously?

Excellent introductory work on one of the most brilliant scientists of the 19-th and 20-th Centuries.
Nikola Tesla is a fellow who gave us the System of Electrical Power (Generators, Motors, High-Tension Transmission Lines, Fluorescent Light) that lights our homes, runs our factories, trains, cars, our hydro power plants.
He opened our eyes and gave us pointers to follow with his basic patents in Radio, Robotics, Energy utilization, Communication, High-Energy and Plasma Physics, and many other areas of science and technology.
In addition to the above, as it was not enough, Tesla's genius ventured into many other fields. Over 400 US and Foreign Patents bear his name in the fields as diverse as "AND Gate" without our computers would not work, Bladeless Turbine with high efficiency, High-Frequency Heating Pads used in medical treatment of cancer, High-Voltage Coils that spark our gasoline powered car engines, and ... Please read the book!
Mrs. Cheyenne did excellent job in researching the material used to write the book. Someone in the field of electrical engineering might think that she graduated in Electrical Engineering, or Physics. For an amateur scientist reader the book is a very good source of references for further reading and study.
This book is a very good material for a high-school student that wants to enter the Electrical Engineering or Physics World.

Tesla: Man Out of Time, by Margaret Cheney, is a comprehensive view into physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla's life. It documents his birth into a brilliant family in Croatia and his coming to America where his life seemed to alternate from complete success to utter poverty. He dreamt big and some saw him as an utter head case (although they probably were encouraged to come to this conclusion after witnessing several of Tesla's personality quirks) while other saw him as the greatest inventor of all time. The author supports Tesla in every way, however, which takes a bit away from the objectivity I expected. Surprisingly, Edison takes a shocking role as Telsa's antagonist. Even though today Edison is seen as one of the biggest visionaries of the period in the book he comes across as a grumpy man who only was looking to protect his assets in the electricity market. Tesla lived most of his life in debt even though he should have been one of the richest men in the world. Several of his projects fell through due to budget shortcomings and the withdrawal of support from financial backers. The author does do a good job demonstrating how brilliant he was, even if the reader does have to sift through some of her one-sidedness.

The bottom line is Nikola Tesla was a brilliant, interesting man and this book will give you a great insight to his life.

I'm not interested in inventions, but read a blurb about Tesla years ago which piqued my curiosity and led me to buy this book. Tesla was an extra-ordinary soul who was addicted to inventing and definitely a "man out of time".......one would think him to be an extraterrestrial or being of higher intelligence. This book blew my mind and I think anyone would enjoy reading it.

"Tesla: Man Out Of Time" by Margaret Cheney is a rather lengthy account of a brilliant inventor's rewarding and troublesome life. Nikola Tesla, who developed the alternating current (AC) was a most eccentric man who led a life of constant experimentation and development in the field of electricity. Although afflicted with many phobias ( he couldn't stand jewelry), Tesla was also gifted with photographic memory which he used to his advantage as he needed very little diagrams and blue prints to build his inventions, which were drawn in his head.

Cheney describes Tesla's childhood as a sickly but curious boy who was recognized by his professors to be a very gifted child who was going to accomplish many great things.

She tells how Tesla traveled to America and worked for Thomas Edison for a time, but eventually left because Edison would never allow Tesla to improve his eletrical machines with alternating current.

He silenced all opposition when his AC electricity system was used to light the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Many had believed before that AC current was very deadly and dangerous, including Thomas Edison, Tesls's greatest rival. Edison and Tesla would have many court battles over who had invented what first. While Edison was a better marketing man, Tesla was a much better thinking man.

Tesla was also the inventor of hundreds of other inventions, including many radio devices and several remote-controlled devices that he tried in vain to convince the military to purchase from him.

He ran a very erratic social life and was constantly in debt. Cheney brings to life the emotional conversations that Tesla and Alexandra Johnson, wife of Robert Johnson, associate editor of 'Century' magazine, had back and forth and how Tesla was always asked to come and visit and almost always declined.

For a man who was so intelligent, Tesla lacked the skills needed to maintain a balanced checkbook and Cheney recounts the many pleading letters Tesla sent to JP Morgan, George Westinghouse and others asking for capital. He also enjoyed living the life of a dapper man about Manhattan and this showed from his residence at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and his frequent dining at expensice restaurants and clubs with the wealthy New York '400'.

As much as Tesla was a complicated man, Cheney gives a thorough and complete account of his life, from the experiments and ideas to the parties and social letters.

Cheney fully brings to life the life of one the greatest minds and inventors that ever lived. If you are an avid Tesla enthusiast or just someone curious about one of America's greatest inventors, then pick up a copy of this book today!

The whole story of the emergence of our electric age cannot be told without the story of Tesla. So, read on, and I am sure you'll get a charge out of this book.

It needs to be put alongside the best biographies of the big rivals George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, as well as those lesser known luminaries (such as Benjamin Lamme and his sister - the world's first female electrical engineer, Bertha) whose energies brought the world we know into being...the world of electric power and light.

This is one of those books you finish in a short time because you just can't put it down. Sure with a subject as fascinating as Tesla it's probably not that hard to make an entertaining book but the author does a good job imo. Don't let the subject scare you into thinking it's going to be some dense boring book. It's not. It reads very easily and draws you right in.

This is clearly not a scientific expose. It is a recounting of the mans life. The naysayers who vote low clearly should have just read Tesla's own papers on his discoveries and ventures. The author is descriptive, though not brief, and I thoroughly enjoyed the style of writing (extremely detailed) and the effort that went in to this book.

In Margaret Cheney's Tesla: Man Out of Time, the uncommonly heard of inventor's life is magnificently revealed in the most enjoyable manner. However remarkable her story recounting abilities are, Nikola Tesla's genius and interesting past surely also catches readers' attentions. He was well loved by the aristocrats from the late nineteenth century and well despised by every competitor he beat in claiming patents, but his creations of the alternating current system, which powered the homes of thousands, and his fundamental research on modern technology such as computers, war machines, and robotics, earned him respect from all those who fortunately benefited from his inventions. Although he is well acclaimed and credited now, Tesla often encountered criticism and doubt about his inventions, which were far too complicated and advanced for the people during his lifetime. Margaret Cheney's wonderful talent as a writer allows for a seemingly first person witnessing of Tesla's struggles and successes as a great contributor to today's technologically dependent society.

This was a fascinating read for me, and I was astonished to learn he had original patents for VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) and other things you might not expect from the genius, Dr. Tesla. Since I had heard about him inventing practically everything, I was excited to learn he really did impact every technological invention used today. This book brought him to life and inspired me to learn more in my field with computer science.
If you're looking for a lot of technical drawings, you won't find them in this book. This book is a detailed account of his life, accomplishments, and struggles, as well as insight into what happened to his unpublished documents after his death in 1943. Again, a fascinating and inspiring read.

Simply stated, this is a superb biography on one of the most brilliant (and not very well known) minds in history. Cheney has done a great job of not only researching Nikola Tesla, but also presenting his struggles, experiences, obsessions, and eccentricities in a very readable narrative.
This was a fascinating read.

I have read several articles about Tesla in the past and was eager to learn more about the man himself, not just his inventions and experiments. Margaret Cheney delivers this and more. Her style is engaging and does not drag even when the things she talks about (how electricity works and such)may be out of your realm of knowledge. Tesla was and is still a fascinating man with high profile friends and enemies. For a man destined for church work, according to his family's wishes, I'm glad he chose science.

Tesla was such a fascinating scientist -- trailblazing, mysterious and quirky -- that it would be hard to write a boring book about him. Cheney's bio, however, makes a valiant attempt.
Her material is poorly organized. She jumps back and forth in time, from the young Tesla to the old Tesla, with no warning or pattern. She jumps around in subjects almost as willfully. Her treatment of Tesla is reverent and laudatory one minute, dismissive and belittling the next.
She gives almost no firm dates, so I found myself often bewildered about exactly which Tesla was being discussed. Her description of Tesla's science makes it clear that she was no scientist herself, and in fact makes Tesla's accomplishments all the harder to decipher. And most damning of all, she alludes to Tesla's odd habits and personal quirks, but never once comes right out and describes them.
Tesla's story makes for a fascinating biography, but Cheney's may not be it.

I recommed this book on Nikola Tesla to anyone who knows very little about this amazing scientist. The book gives a concise overview on his life and some of his scientific achivements. Ms. Cheney also brings into view some of the political events that were going on at the turn of the century and the impact that major personalities of the times had on these events. Ms. Cheney wrote the book in a way which is easy to read and understand and at the same time whets the reader desire for further reading and information about Nikola Tesla.

I liked the book, but found myself constantly wanting to see a more modern take on Tesla. With all the advances we have made in science since 1981 (when this book was written), I wonder what someone who knows more about science than I do would make of the inventions and ideas of Nikola Tesla.
Otherwise it's a good, neutral overview of the life of a man who contributed to our society in big ways, and was very eccentric as well.

This book is, without doubt, the most complete and concise biography on Nikola Tesla. You will be able to save yourself hundreds of dollars by purchasing this book, prior to any other book on the man. The only place this works is in describing specific details about Nikola's experiments, but it is a biography, not a book of notes or diagrams of inventions. There are several good books out there if you want to reproduce his experiments, but no one book will tell you more about the man, himself.

The best biography written on one of the most amazing men of the 20th century, or perhaps of all-time.

Nikola Tesla was one of the world's greatest inventors, and definitely its most mysterious. To say that Telsa was ahead of his time is putting it rather mildly. Most of his inventions were so advanced that the public had a difficult time grasping just how important they really were.

Although Marconi is often credited with the invention of radio, the real credit goes entirely to Tesla. A long-running battle between the two ended when American courts essentially invalidated Marconi's radio patent, and awarded credit for the invention to Nikola Telsla.

In addition to radio, Tesla also invented Alternating Current (AC), which is the form of electricity used to deliver power to most homes and businesses on earth. He also patented hundreds of other inventions, many of which are in use today. Others are yet to be understood by modern scientists.

Probably just as fascinating as Tesla's inventions was Telsa himself though. He was the original, real-life "mad scientist", and often discussed his invention of the "death ray" with the popular press. The world has never seen an inventor the likes of Nikola Tesla, and may never see one again. This book is a fascinating look at an amazing individual.

This is the best book on Nikola Tesla you will ever read. Written extremely well. Shocked there are no more reviews! *This is the first book ever written on Tesla and you will not be disappointed. Author/Cheney did a spectacular job!

An avid reader of scientist biographies, I was bound to reach Nikola Tesla and Man out of Time, by Cheney. It was a good read and had some very interesting insights into the life of Nikola Tesla; however, I think it is the epitome of a good biography to keep focus on the man/woman. This, Cheney did not. There was quite a few passages with very vague, if any, connections to Tesla and his personal life. Yet, perhaps it is because of the esoteric nature of Nikola Tesla that the book resorted to drawing in so many extra-personal anecdotes.

A touching and compelling portrait of an under-appreciated, eccentric inventive genius; Tesla was truly born a century too soon. Who knows how far he could have reached with today's technology and proper corporate financial support?

When a biographer chooses to write about science and/or a scientist one would presume the writer is going to be read by those who are interested in such matters. Those readers are likely to be at least somewhat put off by less than scrupulous dating and order of events. TESLA: Man Out of Time falls short in that area.

However Tesla is of such preternatural and enduring fascination that I was only nit-picking. This book is a fine read, especially as an introduction to the great inventor and visionary.

Ms Cheney should clearly have stuck to the historical aspects of Tesla's life and his inventions instead of trying to write about the technical. After reading several of her speculations about Tesla's inventions, and explainations of how they worked, I had to stop reading the book becuase of her glaring ignorance on these matters. Examples are her asserations that capacitors discharge with "several hundred million oscilations a second" (they can, but it depends on the external circuit), and her comparison of the skin effect with superconductivity (currents flowing on the "skin" or surface of a conductor because of high frequencies cause the conductor to be MORE resistive, not less). She suggest that Tesla was the true inventor of radio (by her analysis, the first person who measured a magnetically induced signal of any kind should be) and the particle accelerator (again by her analysis, it should be the first person who observed that an electic field can accelerate a charged particle). On a side note about accelerators, or as she calls them "atom smashers", a cyclotron cause particles to have a spiral, not circular, orbit as she says. Finally she delved into the paranormal, at which point I stopped reading. As someone who has spent a career working with high voltage, high current, and high frequency electronics, I found this book an embarrassment to the genius of Tesla's work. A word of advice to MS Cheney, get a technical editor.

This book provides great insight into one of the greatest minds since Atlantis! It reveals Tesla as idealist and inventor, as humanitarian and eccentric. He was genius 100 years ahead of his time.

This book fired a quest in me to discover more about Nikola Tesla. I researched Tesla on the WWW and joined the Tesla Engine Buiders Assoc. as I was reading this book. A "must read".

This is superb biography writing in a way that gives the impression to be a fictionary novel, when in reality is real. Ms. Cheney has done a superb job is researching the like of Mr. Tesla and presenting it in a narrative way that is captivating. I did not know the man, now I do and thank you Ms. Cheney for so much knowledge that I have acquired and having fun simultaneously.
Jimmie

. . . and I'm looking for them. I picked up this book while browsing biographies in the library, and was just appalled at the writing when I opened it to start reading. Though it seemed to be grammatically correct, it was, as previously noted, dry, lifeless, and, in short, a drudge to read. With Tesla's brilliance and eccentricities, there is no reason not to have a lively book . . . apparently the author thought the subject matter would carry the day. It didn't.

Tesla: Man Out of Time is obviously very well-researched and the author does her best to bring a bit of literary flair into the book, but it still falls just a bit short of 4 stars. While I agree with a great deal of the propositions made about Tesla in the book, and COMPLETELY agree about the radio patent debacle, Ms. Cheney spends a bit too much time overstating the scope of Tesla's work and overemphasizing its significance. A test in which Tesla noted something that might be called plasma != creating plasma physics, for example.

Anyway, it was still definitely worth reading, so I'd recommend it.

I love Tesla, he is one of my favorite scientists and this book is a great, detailed account of his life. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning about Tesla, anyone else interested in Tesla, or even just science, this is worth reading.

"It is thus possible to entertain the suggestion of a contemporary electrical engineer that Tesla's hypersensitive vacuum tube might make an excellent detector not only of Kirlian auras but of other so called paranormal phenomena, including the entities commonly called ghosts."
Enough said.

The author is scientifically illiterate and doesnt know how to write. She is a ridiculously biased cheerleader for tesla and distorts the facts and logic to credit Tesla with everything from inventing television to the cyclotron. Even when Tesla foolishly abandons his entire claim to royalties for his ingenius AC power system, the author blames everyone but Tesla himself.

The author credits Tesla with the "early work" in the development of the cyclotron because Tesla did some experiments on RF discharges in evacuated bulbs. This is complete nonsense. They are only distantly related. The fact that the author makes this silly argument is a direct result of her scientific illiteracy.

The book was also poorly written. The author frequently uses quotes to set forth dialogue. This is inappropriate unless the author knows for a fact the exact exchanges she is quoting. At times the book surely degenerates into a work of fiction, but its not clear where the author steps over this boundary.

There are also significant events that are ignored or not fully explained. For example, the book is silent regarding the reasons behind the failure of he Wardenclyffe tower project.

The most embarrassing mistake the author made was in the section discussing the tesla turbine. In defense of the (flawed) tesla turbine, the author quotes MARK GOLDIS (sic, correct spelling is "Goldes") of Sebastopol CA who says that his company is working on an improved version of the tesla turbine. Well, Mark Goldes is a con man and fraudster who makes his living selling fraudulent investments in his phony companies. Goldes claims to have solved every major engineering and physics challenge of the 20th century, including free energy, zero-point energy, room temperature superconductors and the like. Goldes is a scientific fraud and investment criminal but the author does not have the basic understanding of science necessary to figure this out.

We live today in comfort thanks to Tesla.
We have AC electricity today thanks to Tesla.
This man was a genius.
And this book renders him justice.
A great book suitable to all.
Great addition to any library.
Buy it!

Having not known much about Tesla I thought I would read up on the man. I choose this book completely at random. Unfortunately I can not rate this book. I found it tedious to read after a while. This was because the book didn't seem to brighten the man and his works. I also found that the author has a much unbiased opinion of Tesla. I am not sure what the truth is about his life and inventions, but I did feel that though the middle of the book that the author was rooting for him all the way and so I felt I was reading opinion more than fact.

Cheney paints a rich portrait of the character of Nikola Tesla, Mad Scientist---or at least Eccentric Inventor, providing ample detail of his bizarre manners, his proficiency at gambling and billiards, his astonishing hubris, his society appearances, and his (putative) unrequited love.

However, Tesla was foremost an inventor, not an eccentric, and so the content and context of his inventions should be foremost in any biography of him. It's clear that despite this being Cheney's second book on Tesla, she simply does not understand the technical content of Tesla's work. For the reader, this is merely unfortunate. What is inexcusable, and intellectually dishonest, is that Cheney plagiarizes the writings of Tesla himself---unattributed verbatim copying---to provide explanations where she herself is unable. And not even good ones, at that.

Here are two examples. The first appears on page 37 and refers to Tesla's bladeless turbine:

---
What he built was a cylinder freely rotatable on two bearings and partly surrounded by a rectangular trough which fit it perfectly. The open side of the trough was closed by a partition and the cylindrical segment divided into two compartments entirely separated from each other by airtight sliding joints. One of these compartments being sealed and exhausted of air, the other remaining open, perpetual rotation of the cylinder would result---or so the inventor thought.
---

This paragraph was lifted verbatim from "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla (Filiquarian, 2006; p. 32) without attribution. (In the original, the last words were "at least, I thought so".) The latter work by Tesla, a brief autobiography only recently published, does not appear to have been available in print when Cheney's book was written; perhaps Cheney was assuming none of her readers also had access to the manuscript.

The second example is even stranger. In an explanation of Tesla's "magnifying transmitter" appearing on page 147, Cheney writes:

---
He considered the ultimate design to be a transformer having a secondary in which the parts, charged to a high potential, were of considerable area and arranged in space along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, thereby insuring a small electric surface density everywhere. Thus no leak could occur even if the conductor were bare.
---

I read this impenetrable paragraph half a dozen times before finally giving up trying to make sense of it. I wasn't sure if it was my lack of physics expertise, or Cheney's lack of explicatory clarity that was to blame. When I reached page 175, I was in no doubt. Cheney writes:

---
"Well, then, in the first place", he wrote, "it is a resonant transformer with a secondary in which the parts, charged to a high potential, are of considerable area and arranged in space along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, and at proper distances from one another, thereby insuring a small electric surface density everywhere so that no leak can occur even if the conductor is bare."
---

What is astonishing here is not only that Cheney so wantonly plagiarizes Tesla's writing, but that she also (correctly) characterizes his explanation as "tantalizingly vague"---having shamelessly used the exact same explanation herself only 30 pages earlier.

In his introduction, Leland Anderson asks why anyone should wish to undertake another biography of Tesla after John J. O'Neill's "Prodigal Genius" (1943). He concludes that O'Neill's biography was "authoritative" but "thin with regard to his interactions with personal associates". Perhaps Cheney's "Man out of Time" might fill that particular gap, but it is certainly not authoritative, and her (and her publisher's) sloppiness are embarrassing.

I recommend that readers with a technical interest in Tesla's work look elsewhere.

I had never heard of this individual before reading this book. He was truly a brilliant man who was motivated not by money, but by the longing for discovery.

Nikola Tesla contributed much more than just high voltage instruments like the Tesla coil.

I was looking forward to the book. Downloaded the Kindle Version for my Kindle Fire. As I started to read I noticed that often when I turned pages it was like I was missing some of the words from the end of the prior sentence. I started changing the kindle orientation from portrait to landscape (which changed where pagination occurred) and sure enough, it was dropping out words. It was sporadic and after a few pages of constantly fiddling trying to find out what words it was somehow dropping on page turns, I returned the book. I have no idea if the book content is any good. I have read probably 50 books on the kindle thus far and never had this problem. This book, for whatever reason, is simply "glitchy" on the Kindle Fire. Very disappointed.