Tesla: Man Out of Time

Excellent book that explores a genius so far ahead of his time his work is still used as basic bluep

Nikola Tesla is perhaps more popular and taken more seriously now than when the great man was alive. "Tesla: Man Out Of Time" is a comprehensive biography that gives the reader a truthful picture of the man without delving much into his "mad scientist" imagery, and while Cheney does mention his bizarre personal behavior, like taking meals only when the servings were multiples of the number 3, an obsession with pigeons, and a few other oddities, her focus is a respectful one. We may recall Tesla as far as today's popular culture as the inventor of the Tesla coils, which could muster amazing amounts of electricity for the time, in the very late 1890's, and of course the much rumored but as of yet unproven or discovered "death ray" that was a possible ultimate deterrent for all war, with incredibly refined particles capable of instantly disintegrating any target within 200 miles of the device. But his accomplishments were just as phenomenal, such as proving ultimately AC current was far safer and far superior to Edison's DC current, during which the "war of the currents" were taken to absurd levels by Edison and his henchmen, who kidnapped family pets and made public displays of the poor creatures standing on a metal plate and electrocuted with as much as 1000 volts of AC current to try to scare people away from Tesla's model for what would become the modern electrical grid we know today. I came away from this book already knowing Edison was a dirtbag, who gleefully stole ideas from his employees, lied through his teeth on anything that caught his attention, and did all he could to destroy Tesla, with money his only real goal. Tesla gave the world the first wireless (radio) system, beating Marconi by a couple of years, although Marconi would be given credit for radio, and would only be exposed for the imitator of Tesla's very system after the Second World War by the U.S. Supreme Court. Sadly, this vindication was two years after Tesla had died. We discover he was ma...