As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influehat shape our destinies. An i of my youth may serve to illustrate. One winter''s day I mao climb a steep mountain, in pany with other boys. The snow was quite deep and a warm southerly wind made it just suitable for our purpose. We amused ourselves by throwing balls which would roll down a certain distance, gathering more or less snow, aried to outdo one another in this exg sport. Suddenly a ball was seen to go beyond the limit, swelling to enormous proportions until it became as big as a house and pluhundering into the valley below with a force that made the ground tremble. I looked on spellbound, incapable of uanding what had happened. For weeks afterward the picture of the avalanche was before my eyes and I wondered how anything so small could grow to su immense size. Ever sihat time the magnification of feeble as fasated me, and when, years later, I took up the experimental study of meical arical resonance, I was keenly ied from the very start. Possibly, had it not been for that early powerful impression, I might not have followed up the little spark I obtained with my coil and never developed my best iion, the true history of which I''ll tell here for the first time.
Not a few teical men, very able in their special departments, but dominated by a pedantic spirit and nearsighted, have asserted that excepting the induotor I have given to the world little of practical use. This is a grievous mistake. A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results. My alternating system of power transmission came at a psychological moment, as a long-sought ao pressing industrial questions, and altho siderable resistance had to be overe and opposing is reciled, as usual, the ercial introdu could not be long delayed. Now, pare this situation with that fronting my turbine, for example. One should think that so simple aiful an iion, possessing maures of an ideal motor, should be adopted at ond, undoubtedly, it would under similar ditions. But the prospective effect of the rotating field was not to render worthless existing maery; on the trary, it was to give it additional value. The system lent itself to erprise as well as to improvement of the old. My turbine is an advance of a character entirely different. It is a radical departure in the sehat its success would mean the abando of the antiquated types of prime movers on which billions of dollars have bee. Under such circumstahe progress must needs be sloerhaps the greatest impediment is entered in the prejudicial opinions created in the minds of experts by anized opposition.
Only the other day I had a disheartening experience when I met my friend and former assistant, Charles F. Scott, now professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale. I had not seen him for a long time and was glad to have an opportunity for a little chat at my office. Our versation naturally enough drifted on my turbine and I became heated to a high degree. "Scott," I exclaimed, carried away by the vision of a glorious future, "my turbine will scrap all the heat-engines in the world." Scott stroked his and looked away thoughtfully, as though making a mental calculation. "That will make quite a pile of scrap," he said, a without another word!
These and other iions of mine, however, were nothing more than steps forward iain dires. In evolving them I simply followed the inborn seo improve the present devices without any special thought