Ishvar Sitaldin
Professor Weyn
ENGL 21007
February 20, 2023
The True Heart of an Engineer
In this essay, I will discuss a handout I received during my English class: an excerpt of Distant Waves written by Suzanne Weyn. In this excerpt, we are told a story involving a mother and her four children who stumbled upon an Eastern European scientist, Nikola Tesla, during his experiment which caused a whole street to tremble with quakes as if there was an earthquake. The story continues with Nikola Tesla destroying his invention which leads to the end of the vibrations that caused the destruction in the street. The author claims that Tesla went down to help the mother and her kids first instead of destroying the machine and preventing further damage. This is also the part of the story I would like to dive into further in this essay, as I also wonder why he chose that order of events.
I would first like to continue with the events which took place during this part of the story. Tesla was in the middle of his new experiment in which he created a device that had the capability of creating vibrations. According to Tesla, this experiment was a great success even after seeing the destruction caused by his machine on the street. During the experiment, he noticed the mother and her kids in danger because of the intense vibrations, which led to him rushing down to help them instead of stopping his machine. But why did he make that decision? Why did he choose to first help them instead of preventing further damage and consequently putting more people in danger? Any other scientist might have done it the other way around and hoped nothing would happen to the family, keeping in mind the greater scope of destruction.
I believe this has to do with the personality of the scientist in the story, Nikola Tesla. In the text Tesla says while speaking to the mother:
I witnessed what was happening and was about to stop the machine when I saw your babies in distress. I had endangered you! So, I ran down to retrieve you before destroying the machine. By letting the machine run I caused further ruin I’m afraid. Regrettably, these sorts of choices are sometimes not so simple. (p. 24)
As we can see from especially the last sentence, Tesla acted solely on instinct and didn’t fully take in the gravity of the situation. Something which some might say is ironic for someone so smart and intelligent. But it is what I believe to be a show of his compassion and maybe a little bit of naivety.
These characteristics of Tesla are further highlighted in the text, the first one I want to discuss is his ‘naivety’. According to the story and other reputable sources Nikola Tesla’s naivety was on full display when he used to work for an American inventor, Thomas Edison. During a conversation with Edison, Tesla was offered fifty thousand dollars to redesign and improve Edison’s machinery as a joke. Tesla took this seriously and actually worked very hard to design new machinery for Edison, and after he was finished he even asked Edison for the money he was promised. Edison’s response to Tesla was: “Tesla, you don’t understand American humor.” This is also mentioned in the story and in my opinion, it shows that Tesla takes everything at face value and doesn’t consider anything else. This would be in line with the decision Tesla made when he saved the mother and her children after seeing them in danger from his window, without considering the further destruction that would take place.
Next, let us look at Tesla’s compassion as a human being. The amazing work Tesla did on Niagara Falls regarding the generating of energy is well known throughout the world. It is also known that Tesla did not take any money for his work during this time as he believed that he shouldn’t make money from naturally occurring resources. He also stated that “For a few to claim it as theirs to sell is wrong”. All of this is mentioned in the text, and from the conversation Tesla had with the mother in the story I think it is safe to assume that Tesla is a compassionate human being who would not take advantage of others but rather help them when necessary.
After everything we discussed in this essay, I can conclude that the reason why Tesla helped the mother and her children first instead of preventing further destruction to buildings on his street was because of his character as a person. We have seen that Tesla can be a compassionate and sometimes naïve human, which influenced his decision-making during the event. I can also say that the author did a good job of supporting his traits by giving examples of previous instances where these were on display. After reviewing all the information I can safely assume that the ‘real’ Tesla would’ve probably acted in the same way as the author has portrayed him.
