 "Good history of Tesla" | 2008-08-16 |
| - Reviewed By ac7ir2 |
Found this to be an excellent review of his life, and what he had gone through. The book is very readable, and does not put you to sleep like others. It does not go into details on his inventions, but does mention many of them, and the battles he had to go through with others at that time, and how most of his work was ahead of his time, and disregarded at that time.
Well worth the price. |
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 "Interesting depiction of Tesla's Life, yet not fully satifying" | 2008-07-02 |
| - Reviewed By koosterah |
| 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. |
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| "Electrifying Read!" | 2008-06-20 |
| - Reviewed By grndzro |
For some odd reason, there are not very many books out there on Tesla. This one is all it takes.
The way he could visualize an invention with such focus that he could even make changes to it based on how he saw it operating in his mind, without ever fabricating an actual model, was pretty wild. Some of the concepts he was working on almost 100 years ago still cannot be duplicated. Too bad he couldn't channel some of that genius toward his finances.
The book has a good mix of his technical inventions as well as the personal aspects of this fascinating inventor's life. |
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| "Absolutely mind-boggling" | 2008-05-24 |
| - Reviewed By oakshaman |
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 benefitted 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 occured 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 indistrial scale), cryogenics, flourescent lights, radio-control, robotics, logic circuits, x-rays, radar, aeronautics, bladeless 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 pennyless 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 iceburg. 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 altuistic personality. He did not subscibe 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 pss 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 revewable 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."
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 "Tesla, one of the world's greatest inventors" | 2008-05-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3E68QNSCABRVW |
I'm fairly recently getting into Tesla. As I mentioned in another review I've always known who Tesla was, his work on Turbines and the Tesla Coil, but I didn't know too much about the man or his other inventions. When I saw the movie "The Prestige" I became far more intrigued into the person that was Tesla, so I decided to pick up a few things about the man. A great introductory, from what I can tell, is the PBS Documentary on DVD, but it has almost no depth and is really a very brief overview of the man and his inventions. "Tesla: A Man Out of Time" on the other hand seems to be a very in depth researched overview of the man, his inventions, and his friends.
For the most part I thought this was a good book and it did keep my attention. It's not written in a manner of an engaging tale, but rather a critical analysis of the man's life. Some people may not enjoy this kind of writing as it has almost no story-form, but I'm the type of person who can sit down and read books on Mathematics or Ancient History, where it's a bit of a report like format. Granted "Tesla: A Man Out of Time" is not nearly as dry as some History texts I've come across over the years! One of the greatest misgivings for this book, however, is the way it is organized. The first half of the book seems to be organized by invention. So if we're dealing with Tesla's most monumental achievement for mankind, the Alternating Current, then that chapter takes us through all the years with the boons and plights of that invention. Actually a few chapters are dedicated to this. So we're dealing with a time period of like 1893 to the 1915's or so, if I remember the dates correctly. But Tesla invented a lot more in that time frame, such as the Tesla Coil. Granted I totally understand the approach to organizing it in this fashion, but Cheney doesn't really let you know the beginning dates when she starts talking about an invention so it's up to the reader to project when it is happening. This format could have worked if she was more forthcoming with some dates so people can put it in chronological order in their heads, though maybe she just didn't want to clutter the book with too many dates, which I would normally agree with, but not in this circumstance.
Some other reviewers have commented on the her lack of explaining the technology in a lay readers understanding and some technical analysis shows that she likely didn't fully understand what Tesla's inventions did. That being said, I must point out that Cheney is not an engineer, she's a biographer and it says as much on the back of the book. While she does try to delve into the technical aspect, even I got confused with her explanation of Fusion and it's relation to Plasma, and I actually have a decent grasp on how Fission and Fusion work in terms of atomic structures. So people or engineers (specifically) reading this book may want to overlook that drastic aspect and focus more on the tale she's trying to tell about the man. I can kind of get over the technical aspect since there is very little explanation on the details and more focus on just Tesla's inventions and what he was general interested/motivated by as a result of his inventions. There are times when the author tries to liberally project her own conclusions to the reader such as Tesla's pre-concept of the circular "atom smasher" or cyclotron, which also lead to a premonition of Cathode Ray Tubes we've used in televisions and computer screens. While I think Tesla may have been on to something conceptually with the splitting of the atom, he by no means led the world to discover CRT technology as far as I can tell. However, I felt this kind of bias/commentary was in the minority overall.
That being said I feel I have a better grasp of who Tesla was and what he has done for this world in the grand scheme of existence. This book is definitely more for those who want to know more about who he is, the hardships he dealt with, and what he invented over his life time. Cheney goes through great lengths to quote letters Tesla received from friends and his responses, even quoting news articles with his comments or comments from others. There is no doubt that she spent an exhaustive amount of time peering over news articles and letters from this great inventor. The book also has a grand amount of notations so you can do further reading when she abridges some of the quotes in this book. She goes over the types of people he has gone to over his lifetime and friends he's made like Anne Morgan (J.P. Morgan's daughter), Mark Twain, and having met Thomas Edison and worked for him. This is just a taste for who he met and worked with over his lifetime.
In this book we meet a man who has practically no interest in woman and has enough obsessive compulsive quirks to astonish anyone. While I don't think his quirky nature was fully touched upon in this book, Cheney does give us a taste of some of his phobias, like earrings for example. We meet a man who was on top of the world for a portion of his life and who seemed to be on the way to making it big in the world, but then after making rather overly generous financial decisions he could never really get out of debt's clutches. He literally had to beg to borrow the money as the years got worse and worse over the years. Things looked up for Tesla for a while here and there, but he was also quite generous with his funds to help his friends financially during the Great Depression and his friends gave him the same treatment.
Towards the end we get a portrait of a man who liked to make grandiose statements for what seems to be for the sake of being in the limelight again. It feels like Tesla simply missed the fame and attention, quite a different scope from the man who worked in seclusion and extreme secrecy. But his secrecy was intriguing and I think he liked to emerge to the public for attention every now and again. As he got on in years his claims didn't end in much fruition for the world, which isn't surprising since towards the end of his career and life he lived out of a hotel room without a laboratory. However, he still claimed his wirelessly transmitted electricity would work. He also ended up being wrong on quite a few things, especially when he said Einstein's relativity was not an accurate representation of our universe. Even Einstein would have wanted to agree with him, but Einstein's accuracy cannot be denied. Like Einstein they both died with dreams of a final theory, Tesla's wirelessly transmitted electricity and Einstein's Grand Unified Field theory, both of which have not been proven definitively yet. When Tesla's life was finally over his papers and research items were confiscated by the government, because amidst the grandiose claims was high grade weapons technology like ray beams and so forth.
In the end we get a portrait of a man that struggled to change the world for the better and not always at his benefit. As his life ended in debt we are all left with the great boons of his inventions. Thanks to his Alternating Current we don't need a power station every two miles like we would need with Direct Current only systems. His research into radio which was eventually fully realized by Marconi made great leaps in that field. He was clearly a visionary more than anything else and a brilliant mind on top of that enthralled with electricity, machines, resonance, and the various waves that power and drive the like. I thought this book at times was a bit overly laudatory, but I think it did him justice. I get the feeling that Cheney felt a little bad for the man since he clearly does not get the same kind of esteemed recognition in America as Edison does. Some of the best tales of Tesla's life was when the two bitter enemy's fought the war of the currents, which is literally worth a book in itself. Say what you want, but in the end I enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to people who want a more in depth portrait of the man behind the inventions. Truly a great inventor who should be well known in the annals of history. |
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| "Tesla: Man Out of Time" | 2008-05-14 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2FIP3GJT47AZ3 |
| One of the better biographies on Nikola Tesla. My husband is a teacher and uses this for one of his text books. |
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| "BIG BRAIN" | 2008-04-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1MC7MB9K2JLVC |
| This is a story of a big talent. About a 100 years ago Tesla invented numerous things that we use until now and actually take for granted - alternating electric current, radio, radar, you name it... Big BRAIN! |
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| "The definitive biography of Tesla" | 2008-04-08 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3IIAEIVEA9ZNR |
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. |
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| "Tesla Dichotomy" | 2008-03-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2G3U6AM951P6D |
Even 65 years after his death, Tesla still stirs such intense emotions that he seems less a scientist than a spiritual leader. Some consider him the greatest mind in science with near-mythical powers of observation and ratiocination; others dismiss him as a fuzzy-minded thinker who envisioned great things but executed on few of them. This sharp disconnect clouds Cheney's biography, which introduces the reader to both sides of Tesla but clearly leans toward the worshipful respect and the dismissal of critics as conspiratorial cranks.
Bare facts: Tesla's ideas were instrumental in the invention and practical application of AC electric power generation, transmission, and distribution, and of wireless radio broadcasting (confirmed by the U. S. Supreme Court shortly after he died). He bested Edison technically in proving the superior benefit of AC (vs DC) power.
He announced ground-breaking theories in many other areas, but was both perennially short of funds and psychologically unprepared to do the research and development to bring these ideas to practical fruition. From this monetary misery and method of madness arises much of the dichotomy of feelings about Tesla's place in science. Those who worship Tesla place the blame for these unfulfilled theories on parsimonious money men unwilling to fund the future or on shadowy conspiratorial enemies (governments or competing monopolies) who wanted to live in the past. Those who take a more traditional view of science credit Tesla for his theories, but are disappointed by his failures to experiment and to publish and present his ideas in traditional professional scientific refereed venues.
What to do? Many of Tesla's wildest ideas have since been proven out and implemented by others. Some of his documented experiments have yet to be replicated, indicating that he was a thinker ahead of his time. The idea of wireless transmission of electricity seemed fantastic on the face of it, until I googled it and found this web site from June 2007 reporting on a successful test of "witricity" (a name Tesla would have loved):
http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/07/mits-wireless-electricity-demoed-dubbed-witricity/
On the other hand, especially as he advanced in years, his amazing mental powers seemed to diminish to the point that his unexamined ideas appeared to be less valid theories than frantic ravings of an old man obviously losing his ability to reason. Communications to and from Mars and death Rays that could surround the borders of the United States and melt enemy World War II planes in mid air have yet and are likely never to be taken seriously.
Much is made of the disappearance of his papers after his death in 1943. Cheney considers options, but makes the mistake of crediting conspiracy in the absence of firm knowledge.
In any case, Tesla was an amazing individual, whose life, even in the most even-handed of tellings, seems as fantastic as his craziest ideas. He was truly a "man out of time" in all its possible meanings--a man who belonged to the ages like Lincoln, a man ahead of his time like Da Vinci, a man who ran out of time to finish so much of what he started.
See my review of the new novel The Invention of Everything Else that adds a fictional gloss on many of the events from Tesla's life that Cheney documents here. I was surprised, having read the novel first, how much I thought was fantasy turned out to factually based; while it adds nothing new to the biography, the novel does capture the mind of Tesla and the way he affected the world he created. |
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| "Tesla" | 2008-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By michael51292 |
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. |
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