Category: Book

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Nikola Tesla Chapter 1 is in the can

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Tesla radio stained glass window“In the can” in the sense of wrapping up a film, as opposed to in the circular filing cabinet (or worse, the room with a view of the bidet).  Just wanted to clarify that.  In any case, with a September 1st deadline to deliver the Nikola Tesla book to the publisher I have to finish a chapter a week for the next two months.  Chapter 1 – A Scientific Rock Star is Born –  is now done.

“Done,” of course, doesn’t mean actually done.  I will still need to do significant editing, pull out sidebar quotes (it will be a very visually appealing book), and obtain the photos to be used.  But the substance is complete.

And Chapter 1 isn’t the only part of the book that is written.  I recently completed a short preface that sets the stage for Tesla’s contributions, peculiarities, and legacies.  I also have pieces of other chapters, an appendix, and ideas for how to incorporate some of his writings.

Next step is to scope out Chapter 2 – Coming of Age in Europe.  By this time next week I hope to be putting the finishing touches on the chapter. Wish me luck.

BTW, the photo is of a stained glass window in the Passage Světozor (a shopping mall) in Prague, Czech Republic. Courtesy of Wiki Commons.

More on my Nikola Tesla book.

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Thoughts on Nikola Tesla from Google’s Larry Page

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Nikola TeslaGoogle co-founder and CEO Larry Page calls Nikola Tesla his hero, but says it is better to be like Edison than Tesla.  Page read Tesla’s autobiography “My Inventions” when he was 12 years old and was fascinated by his amazing inventions.  Tesla’s problem, however, was that he didn’t know how to make money off of those inventions. In fact, Edison and Marconi got credit for a lot of things that were actually thought up by Tesla.    In a 2008 interview with Fortune magazine Page said:

You also need some leadership skills. You don’t want to be Tesla. He was one of the greatest inventors, but it’s a sad, sad story. He couldn’t commercialize anything, he could barely fund his own research. You’d want to be more like Edison. If you invent something, that doesn’t necessarily help anybody. You’ve got to actually get it into the world; you’ve got to produce, make money doing it so you can fund it.

So Page says that Google is, in essence, a response to that failure.  Innovate, but also sell it to the public so you can afford to innovate some more.  With this in mind Google has brought us a wide variety of inventions beyond its initial search engine – Android, the Chrome browser, Google Earth, Gmail –  just to name a few.  Not everything Google invented became a hit of course, but enough of them did to keep the innovation rolling.

Page describes the influence Tesla had on his desire to become an inventor.

That desire to combine the inventiveness of Tesla with the commercial marketing savvy of Edison has grown beyond Google into other investments.  Both Larry Page and co-founder Sergey Brin have invested in something else that pays homage to Nikola Tesla – Tesla Motors.  Exploiting several unique innovations in harnessing the power of electricity, the Tesla Roadster can go from 0 to 60 in under 4 seconds while also achieving 100 miles per gallon.  Now that is a high-performance sports car.

All you need is $100,000 to start (not counting options), or a friend named Larry Page.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Nikola Tesla and the Ugly Aunts

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Nikola TeslaAs my book on Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity  continues to grow in volume and excitement I’ve had a chance to explore Tesla’s early life and family.  He adored his mother’s intellectual abilities, at one point declaring that she was “an inventor of the first order.”  And as might be expected from the son of a clergyman, his feelings for his father were a mixture of admiration, awe, and fear.  But overall, Tesla had an immense respect and esteem for his family.

Tesla’s memories of other relatives are not so admiring.  In fact, he tells a story of his two aunts that is downright irreverent. These two aunts were, well, not exactly the local beauty queens.  They were old, at least in young Nikola’s eyes, and quite wrinkled in their faces.  One of them had “two teeth protruding like the tusks of an elephant.”  That vision must have been ghastly enough, but she had a habit of burying these tusks in Tesla’s cheek every time she kissed him.  Which in traditional Serbian culture is a lot.  Certainly too often for Nikola’s liking.  Being quite affectionate and adoring of their young nephew the aunts kissed and hugged to their heart’s content.  To Tesla this was a fate worse than death.  “Nothing could scare me more,” Tesla later said, “than the prospect of being hugged by these as affectionate as unattractive relatives.”

One day an occasion arrived that likely brought Tesla’s family more than a modicum of embarrassment.  Tesla’s mother Duka was carrying Tesla in her arms, and perhaps not anticipating the lack of political correctness of the young lad, unfortunately decided to ask Tesla which of the two aunts he thought was prettier.  Already the diligent observer that would later became the famous inventor, Tesla studied the faces of the two aunts intently.  After careful thought he pointed to one of them and proudly declared, “This here is not as ugly as the other.”

While we don’t know their reactions, we can assume young Nikola was not so warmly hugged after that.

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Nikola Tesla chapter outline is now in the publisher’s hands!

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Nikola TeslaMy book chapter outline is contractually due May 1st and so I’m diligently adding the finishing touches so I can send it to the editor.  Meanwhile, the contract is finally finished and the first installment of the advance should arrive within 30 days. (Yay!)

Here’s a preview:

Chapter 1:           A Scientific Rock Star is Born

Chapter 2:           Coming of Age in Europe

Chapter 3:           The Odd Mr. Tesla

Chapter 4:           Of Edison and Westinghouse

Chapter 5:           A Man Always at War

Chapter 6:           Wireless and Wardenclyffe

Chapter 7:           Taking on Einstein

Chapter 8:           Beyond the Grave – Conspiracies and Pop Culture

Chapter 9:           A Lasting Legacy

It’s in!!  I sent the Chapter Outline in to my editor at Sterling Press tonight.  The signed contract gets put into snail mail tomorrow (yeah, snail mail, go figure).

Now back to the writing…

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Nikola Tesla – A Life Lived and Died

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Nikola TeslaAs the Nikola Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity book slowly springs to life (and sometimes to a life of its own), it became necessary to put together a rolling timeline of major events from birth to death.  Tesla’s life, of course, is interwoven with other key players in the development of alternating current, radio, wireless transmission, remote control guided weapons, and a few other exciting inventions to be named later.  As the timeline develops I’ll add some of the peculiar oddities that Tesla engaged in, as well as non-inventor folks like Mark Twain and Robert Underwood Johnson, but for now the following hints at some of the key scientific events.

1856    Born

1861    Brother killed

1862    Family moves to Gospic

1870s   Cholera

1875    Enters Graz for electrical engineering

1878    Leaves Graz w/o degree; breaks off relations with family

1881    Employed as assistant engineer in Marburg for 1 year; has nervous breakdown

1880    Attends University in Prague for summer term; father dies so leaves University

1880-1881   Moves to Budapest to work for Puskas in a telegraph company

1882    Moves to Paris to work for Continental Edison with Batchelor; conceived of induction motor and rotating magnetic fields patents

1884    Arrives in US w/letter of introduction from Batchelor to Edison

1885    Quits Edison feeling like cheated by him

1885    Digs ditches; works on polyphase system design; gets first patent

1886    Forms Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing company

1887    Constructed initial AC induction motor; began investigating what would later be called x-rays

1888    Demonstrates to IEEE; develops principles for Tesla coil; begins work with G. Westinghouse

1891    Early demonstration of wireless energy transmission

1891    Becomes naturalized American citizen

1891    Invents Tesla coil

1893    First wireless transmission; Columbian Exhibition (Chicago)

1895    Lab burns down

1896    Electrical generation from Niagara Falls using his AC system

1898    Moves into Waldorf-Astoria hotel

1899    Moves to Colorado Springs

1900    Returns to NYC

1901    Signs contract with J.P. Morgan; construction on Wardenclyffe begins

1906    Invents bladeless turbine

1917    Wardenclyffe demolished; awarded Edison Medal

1931    On cover of Time magazine for seventy-fifth birthday

1943    Dies on January 8 in Hotel New Yorker; government seizes estate

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Nikola Tesla is Born, Danilo Tesla is Killed – Who is Nikola Tesla?

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As my book on Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity slowly took shape, the question was begged – Who is Nikola Tesla? Of course, you’ll have to buy the book to find out all the interesting history of the man, but here’s a teaser to get you started. Nikola begins his life, and his brother loses his life.

Born in the small village of Smiljan in what was then the Austrian Empire but now is part of present day Croatia, Tesla was born “precisely at midnight” as July 9th rolled into July 10th in 1856. This led to some uncertainty as to what date his birthday should be celebrated, but in practice his birthdays rarely were celebrated much at all, at least until his later years when he was world famous.  Then his birthdays became celebrated affairs complete with press coverage. But that was much later.  For now the young Nikola lived the rather mundane life of the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest.

The fourth of five children, Nikola became the only male heir after the rather mysterious death of his older brother, Danilo. As Tesla later tells it, Danilo met his end at the hands, or rather the hoofs, of the family horse. The horse itself had actually been a favorite of the Tesla family as it had supposedly “saved my father’s life under remarkable circumstances.” A “magnificent” Arabian breed, Telsa relates the story:

“My father had been called one winter night to perform an urgent duty and while crossing the mountains, infested by wolves, the horse became frightened and ran away, throwing him violently to the ground. It arrived home bleeding and exhausted, but after the alarm was sounded immediately dashed off again, returning to the spot, and before the searching party were far on the way they were met by my father, who had recovered consciousness and remounted, not realizing he had been lying in the snow for several hours.”

And so his father was saved by the horse. Brother Danilo was not so lucky. Again according to Tesla, “this horse was responsible for my brother’s injuries from which he died.” Worse yet, young Nikola “witnessed the tragic scene” and the “visual impression of it has lost none of its force” over the 50+ years that had elapsed.

Others suggest that Nikola may not have been such an innocent bystander.

[More about Nikola Tesla]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

Follow me by subscribing by email on the home page. Share with your friends using the buttons below.

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Nikola Tesla book update – Meeting with the Editor

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If you haven’t already, check out the story behind the book I’m writing on Nikola Tesla.  Today I had my first meeting – a call actually – with the editor of the book.  Chris Barsanti is a senior editor at Fall River Press, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble.  Today we discussed the vision for the book, timeline for completion, and quite a bit of book publishing technical logistics for which I will gladly spare you the pain of reading.

In a wonderful alignment of the stars (or planets or what have you), the vision of Sterling Publishing is exactly the vision that I had for the book.  As I had planned, the book will be written for the general reader in mind, so we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that it isn’t going to be some dry, technicalese, treatise that only a techie junkie could love (though I hope that they will love it too).  The goal is to bring the character of Nikola Tesla to the people in a way that everyone can appreciate.

And he was quite a character.  Besides the usual eccentricities of genius, Tesla had quite a few, um, let’s say, personality elements that made him interesting. I’ll get into details as time passes, but be sure that I’ll cover both his inventive side and his “interesting” side.  Chris and I envision a book that is highly readable with many photos and drawings, sidebars to bring out interesting morsels to wet your tastes, and quotable quotes.

And we’ve already discussed the cover photo.  Trust me, if we can pull it off it will definitely earn the working title of “Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star.” (Shh, secrets to be revealed later).

The next step is for me to provide Chris and the publisher with a Chapter Outline within the next two weeks. I have a working framework already and now that the editor and I have discussed the book, I’ll be able to flesh it out shortly.

Keep coming back for periodic updates!

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Tesla Book is Good to Go!

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The book on Nikola Tesla is a go!

I agreed this week to write the book on Nikola Tesla.  We’re finalizing the contract and the due dates, so start thinking about those Christmas present opportunities.

More details on my updated Nikola Tesla page.

My thanks to my literary agent, Marilyn Allen of Allen O’Shea Literary Agency LLC, for bringing me this amazing opportunity.  I also want to thank my senior editor, Chris Barsanti of Fall River Press, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

More updates periodically as the project progresses.

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Nikola Tesla book Update – Opportunity of Inventions

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I mentioned a while back that I was talking to an agent and a publisher about writing a book about Nikola Telsa, the great man of invention. Not the electric cars (though somehow it seems possible that he was behind the Tesla S model), but radio, alternating current (AC), the “Tesla coil,” guided missiles, wireless transmissions, polyphase power systems, a “death ray,” or two.  You know, the usual science geek stuff.  Add in his friendships with famous poets, business titans like George Westinghouse, and writers like Mark Twain…not to mention a few weird quirks about multiples of three and pigeons (long story)…and you have an eccentric genius of science.

Perfect topic for me to write about.

Today I received the initial offer from the publisher and agent to write the book about Tesla.  More details to come once they are finalized, but suffice to say that things have progressed quite nicely, thank you very much.  I’ll be getting back to the agent shortly and defining the book, the timing, and the all-important advance over the next few days or week.  Then it’s all about researching and writing.  Oh, and more researching and writing.

 

Did I mention writing.  🙂

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Nikola Tesla – The Book

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Nikola Tesla[Update: The book is coming out in spring 2013. The following was written in February 2012.]

I’m currently in discussions with a literary agent and a publisher regarding the writing of a book on Nikola Tesla.

The story is an interesting one. In late December I came across an announcement for a writer’s conference in New York City, to be held in January.  On a lark I decided to pay the rather steep registration fee and hotel costs to attend.  And that’s when the fun started.

In attendance were about 450 writers and writers-wannabes.  There were keynote speakers and sessions over the course of two and a half days on what turned out to be a freak snowy weekend.  But the highlight was the “pitch slam.”

The best way to describe the pitch slam is to say it is speed dating for agents.  About 50 or so literary agents were spread around several large rooms, each with their little tables stretched menacingly between them and you.  Hoards of us lined up to give our pitch, and when it was our turn we had a grand total of 90 seconds to make the agent beg to represent you.  Another 90 seconds was allotted for Q&A (or to be sent packing if your pitch failed to impress).

What the heck.  Let’s give it a shot.  I have my Lincoln book in mind so let me pitch it and see what kind of feedback I get.  Of the five agents I pitched, five asked me to send them a proposal.  But more on that later.  This piece is about Tesla.

To my surprise the second agent I pitched not only liked my Lincoln book idea but asked if I knew anyone that would be interested in writing a book about Nikola Tesla, the great inventor.  Or better yet, she added, would I be interested? Hmmm.  I’ll think about it, I said, feeling more than a little impressed with myself but nonetheless skeptical.  Two days passed and I receive a call from the agent’s office – am I interested? They have a publisher who is champing at the bit to have someone write a book on Tesla.  And quick.  Can I send them a brief proposal and a bio? How about a writing sample?

Two more weeks pass. My skepticism kicks back in. Hard.  And then – “The publisher loved your proposals and is working up the financials for an offer. We should have something in the next few days.”

That was yesterday. Then I went to an Indian buffet for lunch, and wouldn’t you know it there is a new Tesla electric automobile showroom that just opened up two blocks from my office in downtown DC.

Kismet?