· Nikola Tesla (1857-1943) (Inventor; too many to list, including AC
Current) Source: Any decent biography of Nickola Tesla
The following was sen by Darko Djurdjic, engineer of Geodesy, writing from Republic
Srpska, BIH
PRODIGAL GENIUS
The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O'Neill (1944)
"With the passing decades, Tesla shifted away from a meat diet. He substituted
fish, always boiled, and finally eliminated the meat entirely. He later almost
entirely eliminated the fish and lived on a vegetarian diet. Milk was his main
standby, and toward the end of his life it was the principal item of diet, served
warm. As a youth he drank a great deal of coffee, and, while he gradually became
aware that he suffered unfavorable influences from it, he found it a difficult
habit to break. When he finally made the decision to drink no more of it, he
adhered to his good intentions but was forced to recognize the fact that the
desire for it remained. He combated this by ordering with each meal a pot of
his favorite coffee, and having a cup of it poured so that he would get the
aroma. It required ten years for the aroma of the coffee to transform itself
into a nuisance so that he felt secure in no longer having it served. Tea and
cocoa he also considered injurious. He was a heavy smoker in his youth, mostly
of cigars. A sister who seemed fatally ill, when he was in his early twenties,
said she would try to get better if he would give up smoking. He did so immediately.
His sister recovered, and he never smoked again."
A MACHINE TO END WAR
Liberty, February 1937 by Nikola Tesla as told to George Sylvester Viereck
"MORE people die or grow sick from polluted water than from coffee, tea,
tobacco, and other stimulants. I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically
abstain from meat. I am convinced that within a century coffee, tea, and tobacco
will be no longer in vogue. Alcohol, however, will still be used. It is not
a stimulant but a veritable elixir of life. The abolition of stimulants will
not come about forcibly. It will simply be no longer fashionable to poison the
system with harmful ingredients. Bernarr Macfadden has shown how it is possible
to provide palatable food based upon natural products such as milk, honey, and
wheat. I believe that the food which is served today in his penny restaurants
will be the basis of epicurean meals in the smartest banquet halls of the twenty-first
century. There will be enough wheat and wheat products to feed the entire world,
including the teeming millions of China and India, now chronically on the verge
of starvation. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen
drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this
purpose in 1900."
THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING HUMAN ENERGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO THE HARNESSING
OF THE SUN'S ENERGY.
by Nikola Tesla, Century Illustrated Magazine, June 1900
"A thousand other evils might be mentioned, but all put together, in their
bearing upon the problem under discussion, they could not equal a single one,
the want of food, brought on by poverty, destitution, and famine. Millions of
individuals die yearly for want of food, thus keeping down the mass. Even in
our enlightened communities, and not withstanding the many charitable efforts,
this is still, in all probability, the chief evil. I do not mean here absolute
want of food, but want of healthful nutriment. How to provide good and plentiful
food is, therefore, a most important question of the day. On the general principles
the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable, because,
in the sense interpreted above, it must undoubtedly tend to the addition of
mass of a "smaller velocity." It is certainly preferable to raise
vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure
from the established barbarious habit. That we can subsist on plant food and
perform our work even to advantage is not a theory, but a well-demonstrated
fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique
and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more
economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental
performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less,
and, in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult
to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the
wanton and cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals.
To free ourselves from animal instincts and appetites, which keep us down, we
should begin at the very root from which we spring: we should effect a radical
reform in the character of the food. There seems to be no philosophical necessity
for food. We can conceive of organized beings living without nourishment, and
deriving all the energy they need for the performance of their lifefunctions
from the ambient medium. In a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence
of a formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a
crystal, it is none the less a living being."
SPEECH ON BEHALF EDISON MEDAL PRIZE
A speech delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
May 18, 1917.
"On this occasion, you might want me to say something of a personal and
more intimate character bearing on my work. One of the speakers suggested: "Tell
us something about yourself, about your early struggles." If I am not mistaken
in this surmise I will, with your approval, dwell briefly on this rather delicate
subject. I may say, also, that I am deeply religious at heart, although not
in the Orthodox meaning, and that I give myself to the constant enjoyment of
belleving that the greatest mysteries of our being are still to be fathomed
and that, all the evidence of the senses and the teachings of exact and dry
sciences to the contrary notwithstanding, death itself may not be the termination
of the wonderful metamorphoses we witness. In this way I have managed to maintain
an undisturbed peace of mind, to make myself proof against adversity, and to
achieve contentment and happiness to a point of extracting some satisfaction
even from the darker side of life, the trials and tribulations of existence.
I have fame and untold wealth, more than all this, and yet - how many articles
have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccesful man,
and how many poor, struggling writers, have called me a visionary. Such is the
folly and shortsightedness of the world!"