Tesla's papers confiscated

[twinstead]

Curious about something. I just had somebody tell me that Tesla created some kind of free energy thingy, but the government grabbed all his notes after he died, so nobody knows any details.

This person told me in hushed tones that if his experiments weren't so earth shattering that the government would release the notes. The fact they aren't means they're hiding something.

Now, evidence of absence fallacy aside, I hadn't heard of this particular conspiracy. Does the government really have some of Tesla's notes and won't release them? What's the deal with this?

 

[332nd]

I've heard it but instead of free energy it was a weapon. I believe HARRP comes in somewhere.

As for the notes, I'm not sure.

 

[Ladewig]

Here's one take on it.

https://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html

The article claims that papers were seized, but they were of less value than Teslaphiles assert.
Given that the U.S. had the papers and 60 years, one might expect some pretty awesome particle beam weapons, but they do not yet exist.

ETA: one does have to ask. What precise technologies might exist for which the U.S. military would say, "this technology is too awesome, too life-changing, too revolutionary for us to use in winning wars"? Especially considering that one of the military's biggest and most dangerous challenges in Iraq was simply transporting fuel to outlying bases.


MORE ETA
even if the technology is more about free energy than weapons applications. Wouldn't making the U.S. completely energy independent be of such strategic value that the government would apply it?

 

[Hans]

It's just more CT magical thinking

 

[twinstead]

It's just more CT magical thinking

Apparently. It's funny how they all pretty much use the same logical fallacies no mater what the conspiracy

 

[sackett]

Tesla was a hell of an engineer in the 1880s and 90s. But there's been progress since then, at least a tad, and you have to doubt just a teensy little bit whether his papers would still contain anything very revolutionary.

But if he was living today, I'd send him back to college for a year or two to catch up, and then: Katie bar the door!

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

ISTR that, when Telsa came up on this forum previously, this site was cited (or I went looking and found it as a result of the discussion):

http://www.edisontechcenter.org/tesladebunked.html

Not hugely relevant to the current topic but amusing just the same.

Nice comment at the bottom of the web page:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]This is not a blog, there is no place for comments. If it was it would be saturated with replies by conspiracy theorists and irrational/angry Tesla fanatics. Their passion creates an automatic bias. There is no room for passion in analysis of science and history.[/FONT]

 

[dudalb]

THe amount of pure nonsense written about Tesla staggers the imiganation.
In his early days he made huge contributions to Electronics and Physics,but in his later years he came up with ideas and theories that are just plain batcrap crazy.
That some can have both good and bad ideas is something that the Tesla cultist seem to have trouble grasping.

 

[Ladewig]

I think merely dismissing the claim as typical CT nonsense misses an important point: the papers were seized.

He died in 1943.
The U.S. Government did not know, at the time of his death, that his later years produced very few practical ideas. The was a war on, so seizing his papers was a reasonable reaction.

The never-released-the-papers bit is rather over the top (and mostly false) and fails because of many CT errors, but the OP question on how to deal with this flavor of conspiracy theorist is relevant.

Responding to the OPer's acquaintance by saying "that is CT crap, don't believe it" doesn't really help all that much.

 

[Horatius]

In his early days he made huge contributions to Electronics and Physics,but in his later years he came up with ideas and theories that are just plain batcrap crazy.

This is something lots of people need to realize, and it doesn't just apply to Tesla. There are lots of examples of scientists and engineers who produced great work at one point in their life, who also produced complete crap at other points.

People like Linus Pauling, who unequivocally did great work, but also supported a lot of woo. You can't just point to their successes and assume that means everything they do is a success.

 

[dudalb]

Isacc Newton spent more time writing interpertations of The Book Of Revelatations then he did on the Scientific discoveries for which he was famous.

 

[catsmate]

Isacc Newton spent more time writing interpertations of The Book Of Revelatations then he did on the Scientific discoveries for which he was famous.

Yes but he invented the cat-flap.


Well OK he probably didn't.

 

[SpitfireIX]

ISTR that, when Telsa came up on this forum previously, this site was cited (or I went looking and found it as a result of the discussion):

http://www.edisontechcenter.org/tesladebunked.html

Not hugely relevant to the current topic but amusing just the same.

Nice comment at the bottom of the web page:

[/COLOR]

If conflict and drama is your focus of interest, than[sic] study the World Wrestling Federation, not engineering.

 

[Mudcat]

This is something lots of people need to realize, and it doesn't just apply to Tesla. There are lots of examples of scientists and engineers who produced great work at one point in their life, who also produced complete crap at other points.

Albert Einstein pontificated about the divine and got dragged into the whole unified field theory later into his life, Henry Ford was an anti-semantic, and Thomas Edison was all for monetary reform into a commodity-based system... Okay, that last one would be workable.

Isacc Newton spent more time writing interpertations of The Book Of Revelatations then he did on the Scientific discoveries for which he was famous.

He also experimented with Alchemy.

 

[CORed]

Curious about something. I just had somebody tell me that Tesla created some kind of free energy thingy, but the government grabbed all his notes after he died, so nobody knows any details.

This person told me in hushed tones that if his experiments weren't so earth shattering that the government would release the notes. The fact they aren't means they're hiding something.

Now, evidence of absence fallacy aside, I hadn't heard of this particular conspiracy. Does the government really have some of Tesla's notes and won't release them? What's the deal with this?

The thing about Tesla is that in his early years, he was a brilliant inventor, but in his later years he was quite a crackpot. On a slow news day, the papers would send somebody to interview Tesla, and he would deliver wild claims about fantastic inventions that existed only in his head. Tesla died in 1943, in the middle of WWII, and the government did seize his papers. It's unlikely that they found, or concealed, anything useful.

 

[JayUtah]

The thing about Tesla is that in his early years, he was a brilliant inventor, but in his later years he was quite a crackpot.

Quite true. Yet his fans just say he was getting more and more brilliant. Consequently fewer people around him could match his intellect and insight. So they inappropriately dismissed his later theories as "crackpot" ideas when it fact they were far ahead of the times. There's a self-fulfilling justification among the fans, few of whom are equipped to evaluate his claims technically: they don't have to understand them; they only have to appreciate them.

Tesla died in 1943, in the middle of WWII, and the government did seize his papers.

And that's reasonably suspicious to his fans on its face. Not everyone who died during wartime had his papers seized by the government. What made Tesla so special?

I think the answer is simply that wartime makes governments do farfetched things. Consider all the crackpot ideas that were formulated and considered -- incendiary pigeons, etc. On the odd chance Tesla might have had notes on a viable breakthrough, better to have it than not, and better us than the enemy.

It's unlikely that they found, or concealed, anything useful.

I agree. But then Tesla fans happily employ circular reasoning. "It was all crackpot stuff," is what they'd expect as a cover story. If you approach the question with the mindset of the worst Tesla fans (many of which are free-energy nuts), you see a clear motive for the Establishment to hide Tesla's work, much of it having to do with energy supply and distribution.

The crackpot characterization works in circles here too. Free-energy nuts and pseudo-scientists consider first the apparent novelty of an idea. Mainstream science, they believ, is always just more of the same; no innovation or singular breakthroughs. Therefore if Tesla's ideas seem radical, this helps that sort of person believe they might be the breakthroughs we need, the kind of advances Tesla made early on, and the kind of idea the Establishment would want to suppress.

 

[tsig]

Curious about something. I just had somebody tell me that Tesla created some kind of free energy thingy, but the government grabbed all his notes after he died, so nobody knows any details.

This person told me in hushed tones that if his experiments weren't so earth shattering that the government would release the notes. The fact they aren't means they're hiding something.

Now, evidence of absence fallacy aside, I hadn't heard of this particular conspiracy. Does the government really have some of Tesla's notes and won't release them? What's the deal with this?

If Tesla had discovered a secret of nature it would have been rediscovered by now.

 

[JayUtah]

If Tesla had discovered a secret of nature it would have been rediscovered by now.

That's quite a reasonable projection. But as you may know, Tesla fans argue that he was so far ahead of any of his contemporaries that it would take mainstream science more than just mere decades to duplicate his efforts. Alternatively, his fans argue that he was so orthogonally insightful that mainstream science would never be able to follow him.

 

[sackett]

See my location? I'm crackin' up over here!

...Henry Ford was an anti-semantic....

Oh god please let that be intentional, because it's absolutely, hugely, immensely, overwhelmingly, cosmically -- no, Marvel Cosmically -- CORRECT!

 

[sackett]

That's quite a reasonable projection. But as you may know, Tesla fans argue that he was so far ahead of any of his contemporaries that it would take mainstream science more than just mere decades to duplicate his efforts. Alternatively, his fans argue that he was so orthogonally insightful that mainstream science would never be able to follow him.

Didn't you mean simultaneously?