Famous Scientific Illusions: Nikola Tesla on Scientific Error, Invention, and Misread Phenomena - Hardcover

Famous Scientific Illusions collects Nikola Tesla's sharp challenges to accepted scientific explanations, showing the great inventor in his most combative and independent-minded form. In these essays, Tesla questions what he regarded as persistent errors in scientific interpretation, including the axial rotation of the Moon, Franklin's pointed lightning rod, and common misunderstandings about wireless communication. The title essay appeared in Electrical Experimenter in February 1919, and the table of contents commonly associated with the book includes "The Illusion of the Axial Rotation of the Moon," "The Fallacy of Franklin's Pointed Lightning-Rod," and "The Singular Misconception of the Wireless."

This is not Tesla as myth or legend, but Tesla as a working scientific controversialist: precise, confident, sceptical, and willing to stand against prevailing expert opinion when he believed the evidence had been misread. Whether modern readers accept every argument or not, the value of Famous Scientific Illusions lies in seeing Tesla's habits of thought at close range-his suspicion of careless consensus, his command of physical principles, and his relentless drive to correct what he saw as false assumptions in science and technology. For readers of Nikola Tesla, invention, electricity, wireless history, scientific controversy, and the history of science, this compact collection offers a revealing look at one of the modern age's most famous technical minds.