Albany Telegram
February 25, 1923
A Giant Eye to See Around the World
How Nikola Tesla's Newest Invention Is to Enable Us to See the Struggles of the
Arctic Explorer, the Clash of Battles and the Fantastic Lives of Unknown
Millions.
Think of it, a great mechanical eye, created of finest tempered steel, endowed
with electric power and seeing to all parts of the earth' "Science, in the
person of Nikola Tesla announces it as a realized achievement. It affords a
fantastic picture, a superb imaginative flight for the mechanical orb will
follow in principle the exquisite and flawless construction of the human eye.
Tesla, the creator, is a Nobel prize winner and the man who harnessed Niagara
Falls. He describes his all-seeing eye as follows:
"My electrical eye comes as the result of years of study and experiment.
Three stages mark its construction and the first two and most difficult have
already been completed. I am certain that Man will soon possess this machine in
completed form and will be able to see at will to any part of the earth. In
planning its construction I have taken the human eye as a model and have
followed the principles which nature used in developing the human eye. My
mechanical eye will be one of a group of associated machines, just as the human
eye is part of the body and can only function in cooperation with other parts of
the body."
Recently wireless telephony became a fact from one side of the Atlantic to the
other and soon man will be able to send his voice around the earth by wireless.
The arrival of Tesla's mechanical eye will mean that the man in New York can see
his business associate in Shanghai as he talks to him by wireless. The eye
resting on a pivot, will be swung about and brought to bear on the explorer,
fighting his way over the frozen wastes of the Arctic circle; the fiery interior
of the earth will give up its secrets to the eye, and the battles of men will be
revealed to all other men in their cruelty and savagery.
The eye will teach Man to understand Man. When you hear that your neighbor has
been run over and injured by an automobile you express sympathy because you know
him. The death of a famous film star touches the hearts of millions because they
know him. But 50,000 men, women and children may starve to death in China, while
newspaper readers in New York, Youngstown, Ohio, and Phoenix, Arizona, remain
unmoved because the victims are only numbers. The advent of the all-seeing eye
will change all that, Tesla believes. He has labored in the hope that the
revealing of the secret places of the earth will unlock the secret places of the
heart and help to bring mankind together in understanding and consideration.
To understand the mechanical eye and the work that has preceded it you must know
something of Tesla. This tall, gaunt electrical wizard, who has made so many
fantastic dreams come true, is as strange as some of his inventions.
He lives on one of the top floors of the St. Regis, one of New York's most
exclusive hotels. There he has his workrooms, mysterious places never visited by
outsiders. There the eye machine rests, waiting for the day, soon to come, when
Tesla asserts he will vivify it and turn it over to his fellow-men for
operation.
Tesla sleeps only two hours a night and eats only two very light meals a day.
Almost all his time and energy go into the creation of electrical
inventions. He has discovered and invented a system of arc lighting, a system of
alternating current power transmission, the Tesla coil or transformer, a system
of transmission of power without wires, a system of wireless telegraphy and
numerous other modern wonders.
Tesla believes absolutely in his mechanical eye and its workability. In planning
it he has patented the same methods that have turned out so successfully with
other inventions; that is, he has worked out his machine in his mind to the last
detail, without planning it on paper or by means of a model.
"As in the case of my other inventions," he explained, "there was
a long period of incubation during which I turned over in my mind the idea of
creating a mechanical eye. As I came to an obstruction, I would stop, put the
idea away in my subconscious mind, and return to it later. Bit by bit ways of
reaching the different steps of the solution were reached. They would flash
suddenly from my subconscious mind, just as all my ideas for inventions have
done.
"It stands to reason that man must create in time some means of seeing
through substances and to any distances. He has annihilated distance in other
ways and the creation of my eye will be just a part of the large plan for
bringing mankind closer together."
It is interesting to note that at about the same time that Dr. Tesla announced
his invention of the mechanical eye an electrical engineer in Pasadena,
California, asserted that he was able to make metals, rocks, or any opaque
material luminous by means of an electrical ray, the most powerful known to man.
He made no claims that the ray would penetrate great distances into the earth,
but the principle is very similar to the one on which Tesla is working.
The Tesla experiments on the giant mechanical eye are thought to date back to
the days when he built his mystery tower and workhouse at Shoreham, Long Island,
60 miles from New York. The tower was constructed about 20 years ago. J.
Pierpont Morgan, Sr., backing Tesla in the experiment.
The tower had a circular top and had shafts running 100 feet into the earth.
Near it was an experimental station filled with strange machinery. For a long
period Tesla visited the station each day and had a small army of workmen at his
beck and call. It was whispered that he was struggling with the problem of
interplanetary communication, among other things.
This was not verified, however, and scientists and the general public could only
guess the reason for the mystery tower. Then Tesla and his workmen departed one
day as suddenly as they had come. A watchman stood guard over the tower and
workshop for a year, then he, too, went away and the plant became known as
"Tesla's million dollar folly." Neighborhood boys played up and down
the ladder and steps of the mystery tower and finally it was sold. During the
war it was torn down when the government thought there was danger of it being
used as a secret wireless station by enemies of the country. Now it is believed
the mystery tower not only meant an attempt on Tesla's part to communicate with
Mars, but also saw his first experiments with the mechanical eye.
Tesla will not venture to predict whether the mechanical eye will carry
sufficient power to pierce the atmosphere so that man can obtain a good view of
life on Mars. He believes that Mars is inhabited and that the Martians are
struggling desperately to communicate with the earth.
"I have a deep conviction," he said, "that highly intelligent
beings exist on Mars. I believe they have reached a mechanical stage of
civilization much more advanced than ours. However, it is quite likely that all
racial distinctions and ideals have been extinguished there and life has become
simply a desperate struggle for existence. The population may have been reduced
to a few highly specialized individuals.
"Twenty-two years ago, while experimenting in Colorado with a wireless
power plant, I obtained extraordinary experimental evidence of the existence of
life on Mars. I had perfected a wireless receiver of extraordinary
sensitiveness, far beyond anything known, and I caught signals which I
interpreted as meaning 1--2--3--4. I believe the Martians used numbers for
communication because numbers are universal.
"My discovery was announced at the time and I am living in the hope that my
vision was true and will be confirmed by future generations. The use of the
mechanical eye to pierce matter and distance may hasten that day."
Dr. Tesla believes that man has stored within him the creative genius for
anything he requires and that after a certain period of incubation and when the
need is great enough the invention for a given need suddenly appears.
"I know," he explained, "that I can create any machine necessary
for my needs simply by putting my mind to the problem. It is easy once Nature
has given you the gift for creative work. I have been able to create a system of
wireless telegraphy, and wireless telephony is now a fact."
It is also his belief, and the belief of many other famous scientists, that the
sources of electrical power and light have been only scratched so far. Not only
light to pierce the earth, but wireless power to govern agriculture and to
obtain chemicals and even food from the air will come in the future, he
predicts.
"The human being is an automatic heat machine," he explains,
"requiring for its daily functioning a supply of fuel which it takes in the
form of animal and vegetable food. Now all plants and animals are directly or
indirectly nourished by the soil; hence man draws his energy from the soil.
"As population increases more and more of the fuel must be supplied. And we
may therefore conclude with certitude that as time goes on this precious supply
will be steadily increased by intensive cultivation of every available spot.
Electricity will be instrumental in this development in many ways, and power
will be transmitted for tilling the ground and performing all sorts of
agricultural work. Man when he goes to far corners of the earth will carry
compact instruments to provide him with heat and power and with telegraphic
communication.
"Electrical power will be used for accelerating many things on which we are
more or less dependent; fertilizers will be obtained from the atmosphere in
great quantities and all sorts of chemicals will be manufactured electrically
from primary elements. But some time, after a lapse of years, a limit may be
reached.
"Artificial food, manufactured by the sun's power, may then afford relief,
but it is difficult to foresee just how far the human race can make itself
independent of the products of the soil. We are the results of ages of
adaptation to the environment and our organs would have to be profoundly changed
to enable us to exist on artificial food alone.
"However, that is a problem for the distant future. At present man has
enough to do in unveiling nature's mysteries so he can transmit power by
wireless and communicate swiftly with distant parts of the earth by voice, eye
and written word."