Product Description

In Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field -- the basis of most alternating-current machinery -- but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, unfailingly flamboyant and neurotic, Tesla was troubled by an array of compulsions and phobias and was fond of extravagant, visionary experimentations. He was also a popular man-about-town, admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties.

From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered -- and continue to alter -- the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24483 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Discover A dramatic and poignant portrait.

American ScientistExcellent...a significant contribution to the recent history of science...informative and delightful to read.

Publishers WeeklyWell documented, sympathetic, and engaging.

ChoiceCheney's excellent biography of one of the most idiosyncratic and truly enigmatic "scientists" is both comprehensive and well written...very warmly recommended.

The Sunday Times, LondonUncommonly colorful...absorbing.

Ingram
Portrays the trailblazing nineteenth-century inventor, the man who introduced the fundamentals of robotry and computer and missile science and who harnessed the alternating electrical current used today. Reprint.

About the Author
Margaret Cheney is a biographer of unusual versatility. In addition to her two major studies of Tesla (most recently Tesla: Master of Lightning, with Robert Uth), she has written Midnight at Mabel's, a biography of the great cabaret singer and song stylist Mabel Mercer. Cheney is also the author of Meanwhile Farm and Why: The Serial Killer in America. She lives in California.

Customer Reviews

Had to put it down.
Ms Cheney should clearly have stuck to the historical aspects of Tesla's life and his inventions instead of trying to write about the technical. After reading several of her speculations about Tesla's inventions, and explainations of how they worked, I had to stop reading the book becuase of her glaring ignorance on these matters. Examples are her asserations that capacitors discharge with "several hundred million oscilations a second" (they can, but it depends on the external circuit), and her comparison of the skin effect with superconductivity (currents flowing on the "skin" or surface of a conductor because of high frequencies cause the conductor to be MORE resistive, not less). She suggest that Tesla was the true inventor of radio (by her analysis, the first person who measured a magnetically induced signal of any kind should be) and the particle accelerator (again by her analysis, it should be the first person who observed that an electic field can accelerate a charged particle). On a side note about accelerators, or as she calls them "atom smashers", a cyclotron cause particles to have a spiral, not circular, orbit as she says. Finally she delved into the paranormal, at which point I stopped reading. As someone who has spent a career working with high voltage, high current, and high frequency electronics, I found this book an embarrassment to the genius of Tesla's work. A word of advice to MS Cheney, get a technical editor.

competent biography
During my research the name of Tesla often came up and each time I read his name and the encompanying tales I was fascinated and had to have a book specificaly written about this man. It would seem that any book about Tesla would be an exciting read as "Lightning in his Hand" proved to be.[..even though this author dispels some of the errors in that book.]
So when I got this book I felt I had found great spoil, as Tesla books seem eternaly hard to find in second hand book stores. I sat down then suddenly realized that this book was written by a woman. If you know Tesla, it seems to me the two don't mix too well. I found myself rereading promo on the covers and such wondering if I had made a bad buy. But I read.
Cheney does a pretty good job of research and does dispel a few myths and corrects some missinformation, so as a research peice it does the job satisfactorily. This is a good and well researched book that rarely shows typical "feminine" traits in the writing and is pretty "all business".
However in retrospect, I realized that there was something missing. When reading about Tesla in other sources, the imaginations soared, and the gears worked over time. Visions of possabilities just kept coming whenever this man was mentioned anywhere. Tesla is a man that inspires us even today. But I found that this promting to imagination and inspiration somehow lacking in this work as this may have been more of a clinical look at Tesla, that somehow left his essence somehow missing or not as fully described as one might expect.
This is a good introduction to Tesla But I would recommend reading other Tesla books to get a sence of this mans's mystery. Perhaps some have made more of Tesla then is reality and this book may bring us crashing to earth so to speak, but I think we all need inspiration to explore the unknown, and somehow this book is nominal at best in this catagory.

You may be shocked by this remarkable account of Tesla's life
Nikola Tesla was an inventor who lived around a hundred years ago. He was perhaps the foremost electrical genius of his time. Everybody remembers Tommy Edison better, but the truth is that Tesla was probably the smarter man. While he has been forgotten, his inventions are all around us. The AM radio you listen to when driving to work? Tesla. The alternating current (AC) electrical system that you plug things into at your house? Not possible without a host of inventions from Tesla. The fluorescent lighting in your office? Tesla helped develop them. The toy radio controlled boat you play with on Saturdays? Tesla built the first one. He even laid out a design for radar decades before the first one was built. One his best remembered inventions was the "Tesla Coil." He actually designed a number of different versions of these devices which are used take electricity and increase the frequency and voltage.

Tesla had several ideas about how the coil could be used that included radio signals and wireless power transmission. When a Tesla coil is running it can produce impressive electrical show with sparks, and corona discharges. A giant coil built at Tesla's Colorado laboratory was capable of creating sparks 135 feet in length. As Tesla aged his inventions seem to become less and less practical. One of Tesla's last ideas was a charged particle beam. Such as "death ray," if built, would have been capable of downing airplanes or destroying objects at a distance. Though no death ray was ever built during Tesla's lifetime, both the U.S. and the USSR spent quit a bit of money trying to get it to work during the cold war. Tesla: Man Out Of Time by Margaret Cheney captures the legacy and accounts of a brilliant inventor's rewarding and troublesome life. Margaret Cheney gives a thorough and complete account of his life, from the experiments and ideas to the parties and social letters. A excellent book for anyone who isn't familiar with the scientific aspects of modern electrical engineering and wants a accurate explanation of Tesla's works.

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