Tesla: Man Out of Time
Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Nikola Tesla is a fascinating person, so ahead of his time that people have actually wondered aloud whether he was from another planet entirely. His inventions are many - notably, he paved the way for things like the light bulb and radio, to name just a few. Why do we not think of him immediately when we think of great inventors? This book aims to tell his story. And, it's a pretty compelling one.
Where the book falls short is that it turns out to be sort of hard to describe a lot of Tesla's thinking, patents and inventions to someone who isn't interested in physics and science in great specificity about what he's done. Here's just ONE of many examples, not nearly the most complex:
With the turbine he had invented a valvular conduit that enabled it to be used with combustible fuel. This unique conduit, with no moving parts, has recently been used in fluid logic elements, in which context it is referred to as a fluid diode.
Um. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that means Tesla invented something in the late 1800's or early 1900's that we now use regularly but I'm not really sure at all what it is or why it's important.
That's kind of the biggest flaw with the book for me. In fact, I read this book largely based on the knowledge that Tesla was this mystery man, an inventor light years ahead of his time - and this book helped solidify that. I largely knew that anecdotally, but also because of this cartoon, of all things, by The Oatmeal. (Warning: Language is decidedly NSFW.) I'm not entirely sure that I got any more from this book that the cartoon didn't tell me. That's kind of a problem.
Regardless, this IS a very good biography of a fascinating man and if you have a bit more of a base knowledge about science than I do, it may very well be a great biography. As for Tesla? His words about himself ring true, compared to folks like Edison and Marconi who had reached fame and fortune by capitalizing on Tesla's inventions:
"Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs, the future, for which I really worked, is mine."
Rating: 6.5/10.0