Russia is a country of hope. California Round Table Society. Appearance of Sweezy. It's time to look back. Albert Einstein - Nicole Tesle.

And he worked again. Is it possible to improve the design of its steam and gas turbines? Or speedometers, invented by him in 1916 and installed now on all vehicles? Or a jet car that owns the future? Can his proposal for a helicopter, the patent for which he received recently, be useful? Do people need in his thoughts about new types of energy? Is it not possible to be useful to all mankind with the knowledge accumulated by years of hard work? If not here, not in the United States, maybe in the country where the sympathy for which was born in him for a very long time and the revolution in which he took as a joyful event. Perhaps, in Soviet Russia, which conducted an "experiment to create a new, higher civilization," would his knowledge be especially useful?

In late 1920, the editorial office of a large American magazine sent a journalist to Tesla for a talk. The scientist told him in detail about the problems that he had been working on in recent years. I regretfully remembered the unfinished work on the transmission of electricity for a distance without wires.

A few months later, in April 1921, an interview with Tesla was published in the American Magazine, and again many people read with interest the plans of the scientist. The magazine number caught the eye and the secretary of the organization, which bore a strange name - "California Round Table Society".

This society not only sympathized with the young Soviet republic, but tried, like many others in those years, to provide it with practical assistance in restoring the destroyed economy. Many engineers, scientists, and large specialists of various industries came forward with proposals of their assistance to Soviet Russia. William A. Woderspoon - secretary of the California Round Table Society - sent a text of an interview to Nikola Tesla to Moscow, and he himself addressed a scientist with a letter asking him to carefully read the enclosed issue of the newspaper Sovet Rasha with speeches by Lenin and Krzhizhanovsky About the electrification plan for Russia. Woderspoon inquired if Tesla could have found a way to help this country in implementing its grandiose plan.

On the desktop of Nikola Tesla appeared newspapers and magazines with articles about the new Russia. He carefully studied the plan drawn up by Soviet electrical engineers for the revival of this country, which for a long time already belonged to his sympathies. Among the names of the drafters of the electrification plan, Tesla met many well-known figures of electrical engineering, known Russian scientists with world renown.

This extraordinarily bold plan seemed an impossible fantasy to Herbert Wells, who visited Russia in 1920. But many specialists, very far from fiction, electricians in the States considered the plan to be very realistic and would willingly take up its implementation. For example, such a cautious, sober and unconditionally recognized authority in the electrical world, like Charles Proteus Steinmetz, an old acquaintance of Nikola Tesla, has long been looking for opportunities to offer the Soviet government his assistance. More and more often, the most progressive figures of American science and culture who are members of the American League of Assistance to Soviet Russia talked about this.

The offer of the Round Table Society was as close as possible to Tesla's thoughts, and he replied to Woderspoon:

- Russia is a country of genius, and the world will still be amazed at what will be done there.

The famous engineer offered his assistance in the consultation of Soviet specialists on the use of multiphase current for the electrification of industry and transport. He also wanted to conduct in Russia experience with the world's first wireless transmission of electricity in its own way. "I would also be happy to carry out the installation for wireless transmission of power in Russia, if, as I believe, it will be possible in the near future," Tesla wrote to the Society of the Round Table.

However, the proposals of both Tesla and Steinmetz were not implemented. Steinmetz soon died, and without realizing his desire to become a participant in the implementation of the grandiose plan for the electrification of Russia.

Tesla continued to work. He must work, work and work! After all, for many years, carried out in tireless works and reflections, he has accumulated a vast experience, and every his thought may still be useful to mankind. He continued to aspire to everything he could, to promote the development of science and technology, and to ensure peace throughout the world.

But work became more and more difficult. The main obstacle is poverty. Increasingly, I had to move from hotel to hotel, lay things down, and sometimes, packing in one of the suitcases of books and manuscripts, to deposit them for safekeeping. It was not always then possible to buy them out, but sometimes miracles happened: Berend came from Philadelphia and, not finding his friend in the old place, would look for him in all the hotels in New York. Finding Tesla in some small room of a second-rate hotel, Berend persuaded him to move to the best room or to change the hotel, taking over the payment. Then Berend went to the whole bureau of storing things and found Tesla's suitcases, deposited or deposited. He immediately redeemed them, and the messengers installed them in the room of the astonished scholar. A lot of manuscripts, notebooks, notebooks with calculations and amazing thoughts were preserved because of Berend's friendly attention.

But Berend was leaving, and Tesla was left alone again. Somehow, touching the mail, Tesla found a letter from the reporter who wanted to interview him and asked for permission to have lunch together. In the past, tens and hundreds of letters with similar requests came to the address of the scientist. But Tesla never responded to such suggestions. Perhaps there was something different in this request, and Tesla remembered the name of the reporter - Kenneth Sweezy.

A month later he again held in his hands a small sheet of letter paper, at the bottom of which there was the same signature. "You probably have not received my first letter, and I venture to send you a second." What is it - naivety or one of the techniques of an experienced newsman? This time Tesla decided to answer.

And at the restaurant table Tesla met someone who later became his close friend for many years. Svisi was only nineteen years old, and he had no specialty, but in the pocket of his jacket he kept a letter from Albert Einstein, who highly appreciated one of his first popular technology books, "My God," Tesla exclaimed, meeting at the appointed hour of Svizi "Are you so young?" I thought you were at least forty-five years old.

The conversation over dinner was interesting for both of them, and soon they began to meet regularly. Tesla began to invite Susie to his hotel to talk about the news of technology. The young man listened with attention to the stories of the scientist. Often, instead of talking to the hotel, Tesla suggested that Svizi watch a new movie or wander the streets of the city.

"You know, Svizi," Tesla told his young friend, "I'm getting younger with you, even though I'm not old yet.

Kenneth Svizi remembers how more than once in the middle of the night he woke up from a phone call and through the sleep he heard Tesla's voice:

"What are you doing, Swizzie?" I hope you have not slept yet? I ask you, think about what came to my mind right now.

And Tesla began to expound his thoughts on the relativistic theory, on the principles of relativity, on the work of Einstein, and expounded his own ideas about the structure of the atom and its shell that were emerging at that time. He spoke nervously, with pauses, although he did not expect any response from Sviz, then passionately, with enthusiasm. Immediately, during the conversation, if so one can call these one-sided conversations, he cited calculations, he himself expressed objections to his own hypotheses. Having exhausted his objections and finding a solution to the question that interested him, he suddenly, without waiting for Svizi's answer, interrupted the conversation and hung up the phone. In his inspired work, Tesla did not distinguish between day and night and, needing an occasion for oral presentation of his thoughts, did not think that others could use the night time for sleep.

Svizi never regretted the interrupted youthful sleep. He regretted only that by the morning not all the details of the night "conversation" with those in whom the fire of relentless creation, the flame of service to science, did not cease to burn until the very last moment of life. And yet Tesla was alone. The friendship with the young man shone this loneliness even more. Where are those with whom he started his career? Where are the disciples, the successors of his ideas, his plans? Where are the followers, not only understood, but also capable of continuing to develop what was the purpose of his life?

Loneliness in everything: in science, in life ...

The sad news of Katarin's death came on the winter evening of 1924. In total darkness, without stirring, Tesla sat up all night. He saw Katharine bright, joyful, lively. I saw her as she was thirty-three years ago, in the first days of her acquaintance I saw her as she was on the day of the last meeting - then, in the square in front of the library.

Almost white, light-gray-gray dove ...

Nikola Tesla went even deeper into his inner world. What did he work on in those years? We know little about this. Many documents of the scientist's personal archive, memories of his friends have not yet been studied. Especially valuable for the disclosure of unknown aspects of Tesla's creativity can give memories to Svizi, which he is going to write in the coming years.

Seventy-five years old enough to look back. On this day, Tesla received many greetings, among which was a letter from Albert Einstein, who wrote to him from Villa Kaput.

"Dear Mr. Tesla!

I was happy to learn that you are celebrating your 75th birthday and that you, as a fruitful pioneer in the field of high frequency currents, have achieved an exceptional development of this field of technology. I congratulate you on the great success of all your work. Albert Einstein".

But on the day of his anniversary Tesla looked only forward. The reporters who visited him in July 1931 heard from the scientist:

- At present I am working on the development of a new energy source. When I say "new source", I mean my work on such a source of energy, to which no scientist has yet applied. I lead a lonely life, full of incessant thoughts and deep reflections. Naturally, I have accumulated a lot of ideas. The question is, do I have enough physical strength to complete these ideas and give them to the world ... I do not work anymore for the present. I work for the future. The future belongs to me.

Did he mean those thoughts that came to us in the form of a multitude of scribbled leaves of a notebook, thoughts of gravity fields? After all, there must be not only an electromagnetic field, but also a gravitational field. There must also be material particles of attraction. He pondered a lot about them and on the interaction of fields. Mankind will find unprecedented reserves of energy in the action of forces and particles of attraction.

But, perhaps, he had in mind the energy of the atomic nucleus ¹⁸ ?

It is known that Tesla closely followed the progress of physics and especially the work on studying the structure of the atom. For many years he speculated on the possibility of electric discharges to the atom, and in 1934, after reading a report on the construction of a special apparatus for obtaining high voltage with the so-called Van de Graaf electrostatic generator, designed to study the structure of the atomic nucleus, Tesla began to study this question. He had more than anyone else knew the laws of distribution of charges on spherical surfaces.

As a result of a thorough analysis of the data on the installation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tesla published an article on this subject in the journal Saintypik American in 1934. In it, he examined in detail the limits of the possibility of obtaining ultrahigh stresses by charging ball-shaped containers with static electricity from rubbing belts and expressed doubt that the discharges of this electrostatic generator could help in the studies of the structure of the atomic nucleus.

The article made a great impression in the scientific world. But who is Nikola Tesla? A new generation of scientists and inventors, this name was little known. Multiphase AC currents have long been firmly established; And it seemed there was no need to remember who first introduced them into industrial practice. The invention of radio in the United States was attributed only to Marconi, and merit in the development of lighting technology - to Edison alone. These people during their lifetime quietly reaped the fruits of universal recognition, while Nikola Tesla lived in poverty and poverty.

Tesla had to deny himself the most necessary, to part with many habits. But at the same time it became more and more difficult to make ends meet. It was already necessary to refuse and from the help of their invariable secretaries - Dorothy Skerrit and Murieli Arbus. Not being able to reward them for their work and, most importantly, for their loyalty, Tesla, taking leave of them, took out Edison's gold medal and cut it in two with a knife.

"There's a hundred dollars worth of gold here, and it's of no value to me," he said, and handed Miss Scherrith and Miss Arbus to one side.

However, poverty, almost poverty, did not change his attitude toward money. "Money?" He was saying to Sweezy. - What is the use in them? I would have enjoyed them if I had a whole room of these papers to throw them out of the window.

No matter how difficult Tesla experienced, his room invariably had a small table on which lay a handful of small coins - a messenger of telegrams, a hotel servant and everyone who provided him any services, had to take from them as much as they needed . Tesla never forgot to make sure that there was always enough money on the table.

These days, from far-away native Yugoslavia, the government offered a life-long pension of 6,000 dollars a year. Tesla gladly accepted it. He considered himself entitled to do this. Did not he always remain Yugoslav? Even after going through "immatrikulyatsiyu" (the so-called getting foreigners citizenship of the United States), Tesla did not cease to consider himself a Serb, Yugoslav. No, no "blessings" provided by developed countries by scientists, not through their fault of backward and poor countries, do not make them forget their homeland! Did not he love his country more than anything else in the world? This pension was an honorable recognition of his services, whereas proposals for material assistance from the Rockefellers and Morgan, bankers and millionaires were just a small amount of crumbs given to those whose ideas enriched these dishonest people who did not want to recall the merits of the inventor and the scientist. The only joy found was Tesla, still in the feeding of pigeons. He never missed a single day, and at exactly the same time he appeared at the library with a supply of food. In his hotel room on the window there was always food for birds, and soon they began to fly into the open window and freely fly around the room. Pigeons served as one of the reasons for his frequent relocations: the hotel administration demanded to stop feeding birds in the room, but Tesla preferred to part with the hotel than to comply with this requirement.

With particular insistence, Tesla returned to the idea of ​​the need to prevent the danger of war. He was well aware that the development of civilization still does not guarantee the terrible, destructive wars that bring untold disasters, and no international agreements guarantee an even more terrible massacre than in 1914-1918.

In 1933, Tesla warned against excessive hopes for the role of the League of Nations. He wrote:

"At present, many gifted minds are trying to find means to prevent the possibility of repeating that horrendous conflict that ended only theoretically, the duration and main consequences of which I correctly predicted in an article published in the journal Sun on December 20, 1914. According to a number of competent persons The League is not only a means of preventing this conflict, but, on the contrary, it can lead to the reverse consequences., It is particularly unfortunate that the punitive policy was applied under the cover of peace treaties, because in a few years the peoples will be able to fight with arms, destructive force and The range of which has no boundaries, the enemy will be able to destroy any city at any distance from it, and no power on earth can prevent it.If we want to prevent an imminent catastrophe and change the state of things that may turn our planet into hell , We must urgently, with all our strength and capabilities, contribute to the improvement of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy. "