The Unlikely Friendship of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla

Mark Twain was, within the esti­ma­tion of many, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s first tru­ly dwelling­grown man of let­ters. And in maintain­ing with what can be rec­og­nized because the can-do Amer­i­can spir­it, he might­n’t resist placing him­self forth every now and then as a person of sci­ence — or, extra prac­ti­cal­ly, a person of tech­nol­o­gy. Right here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his patent­ed inven­tions (includ­ing a guess­ter bra strap), the sort­author of which he made pio­neer­ing use to put in writing a ebook, and even the inter­net-pre­dict­ing sto­ry he wrote in 1898. Giv­en Twain’s incli­na­tions, his fame, and the time by which he lived, it might come as no sur­prise to listen to that he additionally struck up a good friend­ship with the much-roman­ti­cized inven­tor Niko­la Tes­la.

Because it hap­pens, Tes­la had grow to be a fan of Twain’s lengthy earlier than they met, hav­ing discovered solace within the Amer­i­can author’s books professional­vid­ed dur­ing an extended, near-fatal stretch of kid­hood in poor health­ness. He cred­its his recov­ery with the snort­ter that learn­ing mate­r­i­al professional­vid­ed him, and one imag­ines see­ing life within the U.S. by way of Twain’s eyes performed some half in his even­tu­al emi­gra­tion there.

By that time, Twain him­self was liv­ing in Europe, although his fre­quent vis­its to New York meant that he might drop by Tes­la’s lab and see how his lat­est exper­i­ments with elec­tric­i­ty have been going. It was there, in 1894, that the 2 males took the pho­to­graph above, by which Twain holds a vac­u­um lamp engi­neered by Tes­la and pow­ered (out of body) by the elec­tro­magazine­internet­ic coil that bears his identify.

As Ian Har­vey writes at The Vin­tage Information, “Tes­la was a sci­en­tist whose work giant­ly revolved round elec­tric­i­ty; at the moment, mak­ing your liv­ing as a sci­en­tist and inven­tor might typically imply hav­ing to be some­what of a present­man,” a pres­positive Twain beneath­stood. His­to­ry has report­ed that Tes­la professional­vid­ed Twain with — in addi­tion to an elec­tric­i­ty-based con­sti­pa­tion treatment that labored somewhat too nicely — recommendation in opposition to placing his mon­ey into an uncom­pet­i­tive auto­mat­ic sort­set­ting machine that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, went unheed­ed. The one­time river­boat cap­tain went on to make an much more unsound make investments­ment in a pow­der known as Plas­mon, which promised to finish world starvation. Per­haps Tes­la’s spir­i­tu­al descen­dants are to be present in as we speak’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, invent­ing the long run; Mark Twain’s cer­tain­ly are, beneath­writ­ing any num­ber of far-fetched schemes, if with far much less of a humorousness.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Performs With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Mark Twain Wrote the First E book Ever Writ­ten With a Kind­author

Mark Twain’s Patent­ed Inven­tions for Bra Straps and Oth­er Each­day Gadgets

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­internet in 1898: Learn His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Occasions’ in 1904”

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the Twenty first Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Good Telephones & Wire­much less, The Demise of Cof­price & Extra (1926/35)

When David Bowie Grew to become Niko­la Tes­la: Watch His Elec­tric Per­for­mance in The Pres­tige (2006)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.