Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future

Description

Nikola Tesla was a bundle of contradictions – a consummate showman and a private recluse; a man of science addicted to self-promotion; a prolific inventor of technologies that made other people’s fortunes. Tesla made giant leaps in the technology of electrical supply, X-rays, radio remote control, and wireless electrical transmission. He embodied the aspirations and the contradictions of an age of innovation that seemed to have the future firmly in its grasp. Then as now, he attracted cranks and visionaries in equal number. His restless speculations and experiments about the way tomorrow would look helped to inaugurate a new way of trying to understand the future. More than just a biography of Tesla, this book takes the inventor as its guide and follows him through the cut-throat entrepreneurial culture of late Victorian and Edwardian electrical invention. The book will explore the electrical future that Tesla helped create and the raw materials from which that future was forged. Title Page Epigraph Contents Prologue Part 1: The Electrical Century Chapter 1: A Child of the Storm Chapter 2: Electric Power Chapter 3: Working Electricity Part 2: Battle of the Systems Chapter 4: A New World Chapter 5: The Wizard of Menlo Park Chapter 6: AC/DC Chapter 7: Building Tomorrow Part 3: Scientific Showman Chapter 8: The Business of Invention Chapter 9: Electrical Landscapes Chapter 10: Harnessing Nature Chapter 11: The Greatest Show on Earth Part 4: Selling the Future Chapter 12: In the Ether Chapter 13: The Pursuit of Power Chapter 14: Other Worlds Chapter 15: Wardenclyffe Part 5: Visions of Tomorrow Chapter 16: Inventing the Future Chapter 17: Projections Chapter 18: The Afterlives of Nikola Tesla Bibliography Acknowledgements Index About the Author Copyright