Tesla’s Last Known Living Assistant’s Recorded Statement
In 1933 to 1943 by Arthur Mathews Province of Quebec, Canada.
< BEGINNING OF TAPE >
To understand properly the first part of the story you will need a map of the province of Quebec, Canada. It was early in Spring that Major Henry Sanford of New York City came to Quebec with a number of friends. One of these friends was Nikola Tesla. Major Sanford owned a large camp in the Quebec woods not far from a place called Lake Edwards. Major Sanford invited me to go with them to his camp. We met in Quebec City at the old Lake Saint John railway station. The Lake Saint John railway at that time operated the railway between Quebec City and Chicoutimi at Lake Saint John. Major Sanford had a private train consisting of two coaches and a baggage car. The baggage car was loaded with electrical equipment. One item of that equipment was a 75 KW generator set. This generator was driven with a gasoline motor due to the fact that Major Sanford’s camp was located at about almost 10 miles from the railway station and the only way to get there was by means of a foot path through the bush and a fortarge on which canoes could carry materials. And of course this meant that everything that we had had to be carried by hand. And then to make this more convenient, most of the heavy materials such as the 75 KW generator had been taken apart and packed in small containers.
We left that morning from Quebec at around 8:00 and I don’t remember exactly what time it was when we arrived at Sanford station but it was around noon I believe. Arriving at Sanford station, the train was placed on a siding and we unloaded the baggage car. And from there I will try to remember all the members in the party as we arrived at Sanford station. Major Sanford and Mrs. Sanford, there was a trained nurse Miss Kidd, and Tesla and myself and twelve Indian guides. The head guide or chief was a man named Gro Louis. The material was divided up amongst us and we all had as much as we could carry. Some of the parcels were very heavy and required two guides to carry them. There was no particular rush for we could go as slow or as fast as we pleased, admiring the beautiful woods as we walked along. So finally we arrived at the camp sometime late that evening.
My first job on arriving at the camp was to put the 75 KW generator together. When I completed the power plant we then built an exact model of a Tesla transformer which he had built at Colorado in 1898. I don’t remember the exact date but I believe this was in 1898. This transformer was to transmit power through the earth without using any wires. After the transmitting transformer had been built, we then built three other transformers to receive the power, which would be sent from this big transformer. The first one was located about ten miles away in the bush, the second transformer was located at Lake Saint John near Desbiens and the third transformer was built later on at Tadoussac which was on the river Saint Lawrence.
For the purpose of making any required adjustments Tesla first used the nearby transformer which was about ten miles from the transmitter. Power was then sent to this ten mile away transformer and the power sent was considerable and convinced Major Sanford that the idea was practical. After proving to Major Sanford that his wireless power idea was workable, Tesla then turned his attention to some new things.
The first thing was radar and the war preventing idea. The radar was in fact part of this war preventor. It was the guide. TV was demonstrated and a voice operated typewriter and other things, which I will mention later on. Tesla had offered his idea of radar to the American government but whoever it was who investigated the idea did not think it was practical and so it was turned down.
One of the showpieces of Sanford was a gold wire aerial. This was used to receive short wave programs. This gold wire aerial was actually constructed by the Indian. I showed him how to do it and it was placed on top of two tall trees, which were about sixty-five feet apart. It was a gold plated aerial as I said. A cage type aerial which was used on the battleships at that time with twelve wires separated in the middle by a ring twelve inches in diameter tapering down to each end to two inches. At Sanford I constructed a number of short wave receivers which the major presented to some friends and the local hospital at Lake Edwards. Dr. Creed was one and he also presented one of the receivers to Gro Louis, the Indian guide. I should say the chief of the Indian guides. Tesla also built a microwave receiver, which were very small indeed.
One of the ideas of Tesla was a metal analyzer. This was very useful in finding out what certain pieces of metal were. I first used this at Ottawa in 1969. There was a large lump, chunk of metal had been discovered on the beach near Neuville and this piece of metal weighing something like three thousand pounds was taken to Valcartier Camp where they tried to find out what it was. It was a kind of a mystery and they were not able to find out what it was at Bacarte and then it was shipped to Ottawa to the national research council where they also did everything possible to find out what it was but they were not able to do that. Needless to say they could not be certain of what it was. The story went around that it fell from the sky and it was a part of a spaceship or something or other of that kind but no one could say exactly what it was. And so, in 1969 I was invited to go to Ottawa and test this with the tester, with the Tesla analyzer. I had, I still have in fact this invention of Tesla. Well, to shorten the story, I certainly found out what the piece of metal was using the Tesla analyzer.
Another wonder, it was a small portable TV machine. This TV machine could see through stone walls. In other words, like a camera, a special kind of camera, you pointed it at a wall and it could see anything on the other side of the wall. It recorded this on a tape of some kind and then you wind it up and you could transmit this picture which had been picked up through a stone wall and send it to a small screen. This screen of Sanford’s was mounted on the wall and it looked like a colored picture of some kind. I said, in other tapes, ah, oil painting TV because when it was operating that’s exactly what it looked like to me because it was like a picture in a nice frame on the wall and there were no visible wires to it but Tesla had a small box that he was operating from the table and as he operated this it could change these pictures that were seemingly coming from nowhere on this frame of some kind and it looked like, as I say, it looked like an oil painting and I had called it an oil painting TV. He had a camera with him during our trip through the bush and he had pictures recorded of us and the guide carrying parcels walking through the forest and he sent this picture to this oil painting picture and as I say it very much resembled an oil painting because it was in color. That’s the first I had heard of the TV, and remember, this was in 1932.
Another marvel was a small recording machine, something like our modern tape recorders but it had no moving parts. It had no tape or anything else. It simply recorded and would play back your recording at a push of a button just exactly like our tape recorders but it would record for an hour or so and play back, as I said, what was recorded without the use of tape or any moving parts whatever. There was no motor in it.
Many of these ideas had been conceived by Tesla many years before but he did not have the opportunity to develop them and here at Sanford’s it was a beautiful place, a magnificent place, a beautiful workshop which had been constructed by Major Sanford, well equipped with almost everything you could think of.
Another fearful fantastic idea which Tesla developed with Sanford was his dark idea. This would also prevent wars. But would it? I believe that this could also be used to make war because the equipment could be carried in an airplane and it would float over a city and put it to dark. Not a bit of light anywhere would show. This is, to me, a most fearful idea. You turn on a switch and everything goes dark. There would be no electric lights, no lights in your car, your headlights would not show, if you strike a match it would burn but it would not show any light. No form of light whatever, instantly, the moment the switch is closed. So then Tesla said that if war started and the switch was turned on, the war would not be able to continue because nobody would be able to see. I wonder how it would be? I wonder if it would ever be used? Can you imagine what would happen in a big city, say at noontime, suddenly, not a pick of light anywhere; the sun would suddenly die out. Headlights of cars would not turn on and so it would be a terrible mess. And this apparatus, according to Tesla, could be put to work and control whole nations, either a city, or a village, a town, or the whole nation. All of America, all of Canada, of a press of a button. Is it a good idea? I really don’t know.
Apart from the very big things used all over the world, inventions of Tesla, there are a number of little things. Very important little things. For instance, the ignition system which, I believe, is used in almost every car in the world. It was invented by Tesla many years ago. But certainly all of the cars that I can think of use the same identical ignition system which was invented by Tesla at the beginning of the century and no one has been able to find a better system. The speedometer, which is also used in almost every car in the world, also invented by Tesla. So was the ship’s log. Most ships in the world use the Tesla Log.
The hydro system, that is to say, the method for driving generators to produce electricity from waterfalls, was one of the great inventions of Tesla. The first power plant in the entire world was Niagara Falls, which was built by the Westinghouse Company in 1895. It’s one of the few things, which had Tesla’s name on it up to recent years.
Tesla also developed a number of ideas for helping overcome pain in the human being such as sciatica, rheumatism and all kinds of things like that and he uses a small electrical vibrator.
Another one of his great inventions was the electric car. He built the first one in 1897 and he drove from New York City to Buffalo, New York and it had an average speed of 94 miles an hour. This car, if it was built today, would cost one-cent a mile to operate and it would cost practically nothing for repairs because apart from the mechanical parts, that is to say the wheels and the steering apparatus where they would compose the only moving parts, the engine in this electric car is a small alternating current motor which runs at the tremendous speed of thirty thousand rpm and this is reduced to eighteen hundred by means of a fluid transmission, also the invention of Tesla. The whole electric car is a magnificent piece of work and it could be put in use today and save the public hundreds of billions of dollars now wasted in gasoline and oil and spare parts. I could give a few details about this electric car. You see, it does not use a storage battery. It uses the special primary battery and if you know anything about primary batteries you’ll know that the only part of a primary battery which fails is the negative plate. Any little dry cells you use for your flashlight, for instance, is the zinc which gives way, and when that gives way the battery goes dead. Well now, Tesla invented a completely new kind of primary battery and in this primary battery, if the negative plate wears out, it can be replaced even by a child in a few seconds. And the battery, when installed in this electric car, will run that car five hundred miles before the battery needs to be attended to. And when the battery does need to be attended to it would take you ten minutes to remedy whatever is going on and the spare parts are all in the trunk. You have enough spare parts to keep that battery running twelve months of the year. You do not have to stop at the service station. You could run five hundred miles for instance at seventy five miles per hour, if you were allowed to do it of course, but you could run this car say fifty or sixty miles an hour right across the country and probably not have to stop more than fifteen minutes to attend to the batteries.
Well, some time in the future somebody will no doubt build this Tesla electric car but it will be when we have no more fuel oil or gasoline? I don’t know how long the present oil supply will last. It certainly will not last forever so we will have to have other means of transportation. Would it be by the Tesla electric car?
If you have read my book, The Wall of Light, you will know the first part is the life story of Tesla. This story was written by Tesla himself and you will note in this story that Tesla gives full credit to God for his ability to discover some amazing new ideas in the Bible. As I have mentioned before the microwave comes from the fourth chapter of Revelations. In many places in his work Tesla mentions the fact that he was inspired by Bible study to conceive his amazing ideas. His idea of the alternating current comes from the book of Matthew. In other words from the Trinity. Tesla explains that his microwave, for instance, is not what many others think it is. It is not a wave, it is a dimension. The actual dimension of the beam. Tesla clearly states that his microwave is a beam which grows smaller. But he states that it’s diameter is smaller than the hair of your head.
Another idea of Tesla is a locator. This will help you to find anything underground. It will help you to find metal deposits or liquid deposits such as island water. I wrote a story about this locator many years ago which was published in one of the radio magazines of that time and a man out west read my story and he wrote to me and he said that his father had died suddenly and left his money buried someplace on their three hundred acre farm and did I think that Tesla’s locator would help him to find it? Well I wrote back and told him that sure, if you can build the Tesla locator you certainly would be able to find it if your father put it in a metal box or a metal lined box. Because if it was in a wooden box and the money was in paper then it would be very difficult to find it but if the money was in cache, coins or if it was in a money box then I was fairly sure he would be able to find it. Well, to make the story shorter I sent him a diagram of this locator. This man built the locator and he found the money.
Another marvelous idea of Tesla was what he called the translator. This was not a very large affair either. It was something about the size of a small tape recorder and it had many buttons on it and you pushed one of these buttons to translate a language. In other words the button would be of Japanese for instance, you’d push the Japanese button and it would translate the Japanese into whatever language you wanted such as English, French, Chinese, what not and so on.
Tesla also had a small gadget, which was a speed warner. This was about as big as a pocket wallet and once you were driving the car for instance he would set it and if you went too fast over the speed limit it would yell loudly and tell you if you were going too fast or not. There is no connection to the car whatever. You simply could carry this like a purse in your pocket. You set it for instance at fifty miles per hour and if you went over fifty miles an hour it would yell out.
Also at Sanford’s, Tesla built what he called a gravity motor. This was a tripod of three tall trees, the logs of three tall trees, latched together at the top and in the center of the top part there is a pulley and over this pulley was a rope and you handed this rope that goes down a shaft at the base and a weight on the other end and when the weight was coming down it was turning the shaft and you had free power. Free power, which would last as long as the rock was falling down, turning the shaft. Leonardo de Vinci was said to have built such a power plant. It was absolutely free and very useful but one difficult point was the fact that you had to wind it up.
Many people write to me asking the question where can they find the best books concerning the life of Tesla? I have been answering letters like that for many years, since the early twenties in fact, and I give the same answer to everybody that writes to me. Where can they find information, which is true about Tesla? Well, you can find it in copies of his patents. You can get those patents or copies of the patents in the Washington patent office, Washington D.C., United States of America. Now there are also lectures and articles, which Tesla had published before 1943, in other words before he died. Anything published in recent years might be a little bit altered, I don’t know. I don’t say that the present day publications are altered but if you want all the truth without any guess work get copies of the original papers, lectures, articles, and patents, and his life story which is published in the first part of my book The Wall of Light.
Tesla was a man who minded his own business and wanted other people to mind theirs. He did not like gossip. His private life was his life and it belonged to no one else. He did not interfere with other people’s business and he did not want anyone to interfere with his. Tesla was a down to earth kind of man. He was a mechanical engineer.
< TAPE CUTOFF >
