NIKOLA TESLA AND THE ELECTRICAL FUTURE
A fascinating journey into the mind of an icon
Author iwan rhys Morus Publisher icon Books Price £12.99 Released Out now
As an enigmatic man of science and one of the star names of the 19th century’s electrical pioneers, Nikola Tesla has been the subject of numerous biographies, novels and films since his death in 1943, including the recently released The Current War. Now this compact new non-fiction book by Iwan Rhys Morus, professor of history at Aberystwyth University, seeks to set Tesla’s life and career inside the context of an era in which electricity was an exciting arbiter of the modern world that was to come, a world that found itself the subject of feverish speculation and fantasy in the minds of inventors, writers and the wider public. As Tesla sought to establish himself, the public-at-large were being wowed by the showmanship of electrical inventors such as Thomas Edison at the world conventions inspired by the success of Britain’s Great Exhibition of 1851. Such events were
covered in great detail by the newspapers and specialist electricity magazines that lapped up the exhibitions demonstrating everything from huge displays of incandescent lamps to electric fountains and arc lights. Tesla quickly realised that he needed to emulate the success of Edison and other inventors in crafting their public image, and he spun his own persona of an outsider genius that still dominates today. Hyperbole eventually fused with reality, meaning it can be difficult to decipher how much Tesla believed of his own hype, and how much he was simply playing up to the media. Nevertheless, it’s clear that this very mystery has been key to Tesla’s weighty cultural resonance. Morus’ book is a compelling account of the inventor’s impact on a rapidly changing world for which electricity was the spark of countless imaginations and the key to a new modern way of life.