Nikola Tesla is a fascinating character, both for his scientific achievements and the intrigue in his personal life. Now for a limited time you can download the e-book, Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time, at big discounts on Amazon.
As this goes to press there are a few hours left at $0.99. After that, the price stays discounted at $1.99 until December 4th, when it reverts to its normal price.
To give you a taste, the following is an excerpt from the beginning of the book:
“My paramount desire today, which guides me in everything I do, is an ambition to harness the forces of nature for the service of mankind.” – Nikola Tesla
The active pursuit of renewable energy sources may seem like a new phenomenon. Only in the 1970s, as a result of the oil crisis and OPEC limitation of oil exports, did the modern world begin to seriously consider the widespread use of energy derived not from coal, oil, and natural gas, but from the sun, wind, and water. Unfortunately, this surge in interest was largely abandoned in the 1980s as the country redirected investment into the military as a means of “winning” the cold war. Now, with the 21st century upon us and with an emphatic understanding that fossil fuels are causing man-made global warming, we are seriously revisiting a shift to renewable energy. We lost over thirty years of renewable energy development, but even that delay pales in comparison when considering the first recognized need for renewable energy by a man named Nikola Tesla.
In fact, Tesla was into renewable energy long before it became cool to be into renewable energy. As the header quote indicates, Tesla had sought to harness the forces of nature for the good of mankind. And he was doing this a hundred years ago.
This volume will explore the motivations of Nikola Tesla and some of his contributions that predate our current efforts to harness the power of nature. The book is intended as an overview rather than a comprehensive treatise on renewable energy then or now. The primary goal is to show that Nikola Tesla, and others, were already seeing the need for renewable resources long before the current resurgence in interest. This e-book expands on a concept briefly addressed in my earlier book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity, published by Fall River Press (2013).
Click here to download it now on Amazon.
But that’s not all. My original book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity, is also now available for pre-order directly on Amazon. Previously you could only get it at Barnes and Noble and from resellers. Now you can get it from Amazon, at BN.com, and at Barnes and Noble bookstores all over the country. A third printing of 20,000 is on order and should sell out fast like the first two printings.
David J. Kent has been a scientist for over thirty years and is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and the e-book Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time.
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Solar and wind energy, along with hydroelectric power, may seem like recent ideas, but Nikola Tesla had them in his sights a long, long time ago. As this post goes up on Science Traveler, the new 
Nikola Tesla believed that the thermo-dynamic process, i.e., the burning of fossil fuels, was “wasteful and barbarous.” He foresaw the limitations on supply and the inherent dangers to man and the environment (though even Tesla couldn’t anticipate the impacts of fossil fuels on climate change). “Whatever our resources of primary energy may be in the future,” Tesla argued, “we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material.” He believed that natural, renewable, sources of energy could “eliminate the need of coal, oil, gas or any other of the common fuels.” Two of the renewable energy sources that he investigated were hydrothermal and geothermal energy.
There are temperature differentials in the earth as well. In 1900 Tesla was already contemplating what today we call geothermal energy. In a somewhat long-winded and metaphysical treatise called “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” Tesla wrote that “it is a well-known fact that the interior portions of the globe are very hot, the temperature rising, as observations show, with the approach to the center at the rate of approximately 1 degree C. for every hundred feet of depth.”
One year ago today I left behind the first half of my life. After more than 30 years as a working scientist I had decided to give up a comfortable salary for a life of (essentially) no income. I would become a poor starving writer.
Way back in May I was contacted by a producer for a TV series for the History Channel called “10 Things You Don’t Know About,” hosted by Henry Rollins. They were interested in doing a program on the rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. I spoke with the producer and provided my thoughts on what interesting facts they could include, and although I didn’t make it into the final program, it aired on September 7, 2014.
