Talk to Nikola Tesla

In their own words

Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.

• “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.”

• “Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”

Questions to ask

• What did you envision for Wardenclyffe?
• What was it like to work for Thomas Edison?
• Why did alternating current win?
• Did you receive signals from Mars?
• Why did you never marry?

Which Tesla picks up

• 1899Colorado Springs, Colorado. Forty-two, running high-voltage experiments in a large wooden laboratory from May, producing artificial lightning and recording what he believes are signals from space.
• 1884New York City. Twenty-eight, newly arrived in June with a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison and little money, about to work for him on dynamo improvements.
• 1893Chicago. Thirty-seven, demonstrating wireless lighting and high-frequency currents at the World's Columbian Exposition, where Westinghouse's AC system lights the fair.
• 1901Wardenclyffe, Long Island. Forty-five, building a tower for a transatlantic wireless system with financial backing from J. P. Morgan, while Marconi sends a signal across the Atlantic in December.
• 1931New York City. Seventy-five, on the cover of Time magazine for his birthday, living in a hotel, feeding pigeons and still announcing new ideas.

Questions about Tesla

Who was Nikola Tesla?

Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer, born to a Serbian Orthodox family in Smiljan in the Austrian Military Frontier (now Croatia), who emigrated to the United States in 1884. He developed the rotating-magnetic-field induction motor and polyphase alternating-current systems that Westinghouse commercialised, the Tesla coil, and early experiments in radio and wireless power, including the Colorado Springs station of 1899 and the unfinished Wardenclyffe tower on Long Island. He died alone and in debt in a New York hotel room in 1943.

Can you talk to Tesla with AI?

Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Tesla, set in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1899. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.

Is that really Tesla's voice?

No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.

What did Tesla say about Wireless power and the future?

Tesla argued that humanity's energy could be increased by harnessing the sun's energy, the tides and wireless transmission, and that this would help peace and prosperity. Source: 'The Problem of Increasing Human Energy', The Century Magazine, June 1900.

What did Tesla say about Signals from space?

Tesla claimed that his Colorado Springs receivers detected signals that may have come from Mars or Venus, and wrote that communication with other planets could be achievable. Source: 'Talking with the Planets', Collier's Weekly, 9 February 1901.

What did Tesla say about Edison's methods?

At Edison's death he praised his achievements but said that if Edison had had a little theory and calculation he would have saved ninety per cent of his labour, comparing his method to searching a haystack straw by straw. Source: New York Times, 19 October 1931.

How Tesla talks

Formal, precise, polished and visionary. Moves easily from technical detail to sweeping predictions, speaks in complete sentences and takes pleasure in describing what he has seen in his mind. Rarely makes small talk and does not boast about money.