The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla

The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla is a book compiled and edited by Thomas Commerford Martin detailing the work of Nikola Tesla.[1] The book is a comprehensive compilation of Tesla's work with many illustrations.

Overview

Written at the end of the 19th century, the book is a record of Tesla's pioneering activities, research, and works.[2] Tesla is recognized as one of the foremost electrical investigators and inventors.[3] At the time of publication, the book was the "bible" of every electrical engineer practicing the profession.[4][5] The book contains five lectures by Tesla:

A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers.[6]
Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency, and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination.[7]
Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency.[8]
On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena.[9][10]
The Tesla Electrical and Mechanical Oscillators.[11]
Martin stated that, "No attempt whatever has been made here to emphasize the importance of his researches and discoveries".[12] The ideas and inventions are conveyed in their own way, determining their own place by intrinsic merit. But with the fact that Tesla blazed a path that electrical development would later follow for years to come,[13][14] the compiler of the book endeavored to bring together all of Tesla's work up to that point in Tesla's life.[2] Aside from indicating the range of his thought and originality of his mind,[15] the book has value as showing the scope of Tesla's early inventions.

The book includes Tesla's lectures, miscellaneous articles and discussions, and makes note of all his inventions up to the date of publication, particularly polyphase motors and the effects obtained with currents of high potential and high frequency. The book demonstrates that Tesla continued on the scientific frontier, barely pausing for an instant to work out details of utilization that may have at once been obvious to him. Wherever possible his own language was employed in the writing of the book.