I found this book both interesting and disturbing. To me Tesla was an enigmatic background figure I knew very little about, bar references to photographs of strange sparking coils [
plus the crazy one of fields of planted 'lit' light bulbs] and his name being assigned to a unit of scientific measurement (for magnetic fields). The fact Elon Musk named a car after him is an interesting footnote. The disturbing aspect to me was drawn from the time period (mid-nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century) in which he lived and the attitudes that permeated societies, the scandalous battles of patents and sharp business practices (see below, the Serbian genius, the father of the polyphase AC current and whose full impact on science is still shrouded in mystery [the mystery of the missing Tesla papers]):
A brilliant original inventor who could make remarkable prototypes but who again as often as not, could not bring a viable product to market (but others used his technology to do so and the consequently costly litigation of patent law battles ensues [Marconi implementing something]). Who knows how history will truly judge Tesla, were it for not the US dropping their suite against Marconi because of the first world world war his precedence might have been. Dying as a recluse, "all" were keen to see the material he was working on in his latter days.
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