“HAS INVENTED MACHINE THAT CAN START REAL EARTHQUAKE.”
Scientist Nikola Tesla’s birthday revelation that he started an earthquake alarmed a downtown ghetto today.
Most immediate reaction to the famous inventor’s announcement of three “revolutionary discoveries” has startled curiosity about the location of his secret laboratory, which supposedly still houses his earthquake machine.
Tesla refused pointedly to disclose where he works–the world’s weirdest spot in popular mind today. In addition to the mysterious “quake maker” he puckishly described during a scientific upset intended for Albert Einstein and others. Tesla workshop has revealed as containing also a new kind of motor driven by “cosmic particles” from the sun, and a mechanism that sends vibrations rippling through the earth as a new form of communication.
The inventor, whose 700 basic patents include widely used methods of large-scale distribution of electricity, assumed on his 78th birthday the aspect of a sinister wizard, when he confessed that in his bony, wedge-shaped head started the Houston street earthquake of 37 years ago.
One day violent tremors shock a neighborhood. They centered mysteriously, in one building. People were thrown into panic. Firemen and police responded to alarms.
Suddenly the vibrations stopped. Tesla said the “quake” ceased when he snatched up a hammer and knocked a gadget from the wall of his laboratory. His workshop then was in the most affected building. Where it is now he refused to reveal.
The gadget he said, was a vibration amplifying mechanism set to harmonise with the building’s vibrations. He said a small quake maker could shake a whole city to pieces.
The inventor already has in his laboratory a “cosmic” machine, he disclosed. He said it was driven by “cosmic particles” which strike the earth at speeds 50 times greater than light. He contended that such machines, if perfected, will supply enough power for New York city from cosmic particles striking one square foot.
The relativists theory holds that light, traveling 182,000 miles a second, is the greatest velocity. Tesla said the theory is a “mass of errors,” and that science had overlooked cosmic particles by concentrating upon cosmic rays.
Tesla’s second announcement was of perfection of an electrical generator—"something that engineers since Faraday have agreed could not be done.“
But he was proudest of all of his “tele-geo-dynamics.” This he described as a method of transmitting mechanical energy through the earth. It will traverse the globe, he said with vibration waves much as radio sends sound waves. It will, he said, permit a new form of communication, guide ships at sea, discover new ore deposits, and otherwise “radically affect everyday life.” The waves sent through the earth tell what properties they pass through, revealing ore yet undiscovered, he explained.
This discover, he said, has the backing of “a wealthy man” and may be put to practical use within a year.
(The Zanesville Signal, Zanesville, Ohio, page 5. Friday Evening, July 12, 1935.)
Dr. Nikola Tesla