Is amazing really. He was talking about wireless power and image transmission in 1900 and the closest his peers could get was radio. If not for lack of funding he might have done it too. To quote that NY Times article referring to why Tesla’s only major contributer J.P. Morgan pulled his funding;
“Margaret Cheney, a Tesla biographer, observed that Tesla had seriously misjudged his wealthy patron, a man deeply committed to the profit motive. “The prospect of beaming electricity to penniless Zulus or Pygmies,” she wrote, must have left the financier less than enthusiastic.”
Capitalism wins another one. And the systems of control fall into place around it. Tesla’s dream of free electricity for the world was crushed by opposition, those with the control, Edison and the power companies. His reputation, and hence his ability to get funding, was damaged by smear campaigns by said parties. Even today the system would meet mighty opposition from those in the economies of energy. Unfortunate indeed.
…Great article on a really promising technology. Here’s a related article about Tesla’s lab on Long Island that I dug up from the New York Times archive: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html
Tesla was working at the height of Foucault’s disciplinary…
