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"Let me say that has nothing to do with releasing so-called atomic energy. There is no such energy in the sense usually meant. With my currents, using pressures as high as 15,000,000 volts, the highest ever used, I have split atoms—but no energy was released. I confess that before I made this experiment I was in some fear. I said to my assistants. I do not know what will happen. If the conclusions of certain scientists are right, the release of energy from (he splitting of an atom may mean an explosion which would wreck our apparatus and perhaps kill someone. Is that understood?'
"My assistants urged me to perform the experiment and I did so. I shattered atoms again and again. But no appreciable energy was released."
Badgered to reveal his own secret "source of energy," Genius Tesla politely evaded all questions, promised a definitive statement "in a few months, or a few years."
Yet he already has conceived "a means that will make it possible for man to transmit energy in large amounts, thousands of horsepower, from one planet to another, absolutely regardless of distance.
"I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day. and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself."
When?
"I have been leading a secluded life, I one of continuous, concentrated thought I and deep meditation. Naturally enough I have accumulated a great number of ideas. The question is whether my physical I powers will be adequate to working them out and giving them to the world. . . ."
He received birthday greetings from Sir Oliver Lodge, Ernst Frederik Werner Alexanderson, Lee De Forest, John Hays Hammond Jr., Robert Andrews Millikan, Secretary of Commerce Robert Patterson Lament, Henry Herman Westinghouse, and many another. Their greetings indicate the hope if not the confidence that "in a few months" or "a few years" the flame of Nikola Tesla's genius will weld one more astounding new device for mankind.
It is improbable that he will ever design such a device on paper, let alone in a machine shop, although before his mind's eye he may see it in every detail, motion, and defect. He is a great visualizer.
His first invention—before he was six and living at his native Smiljan. a Croatian village, in what is now Jugoslavia— was something the like of which he had never actually seen. He pictured it curved, pointed at one end, fastened to a string at the other. The child modeled a piece of iron according to his vision and thus had the hook which he needed to catch frogs. Similarly he completely visualized his induction motor, his coils and transformers, all his inventions, before he sketched and constructed them. He has unlimited confidence in his visual inventiveness. He no longer bothers to build, seldom bothers to make notes. He simply reclines and cerebrates.