Annabelle Tuma
Professor Weyn
Writing for Engineers
February 28, 2023
Distant Waves Reading Response
Distant Waves is a 2009 historical fiction novel by author and professor Suzanne Weyne. Though it primarily tells the story of the Titanic, the excerpt discussed today, chapters two and three, concerns a family’s encounter with inventor Nikola Tesla. The chapter opens with a pregnant mother and her four children, two older and two infant twins, as they walk through a Brooklyn park in 1898. The chapter is narrated by one of the older sisters, and we learn from her that her father has recently passed away, leading to the family’s relocation from New England to New York, and (presumably) to her mother’s new interest in the occult. As their walk concludes on Houston street, the sidewalk suddenly begins to move and crack, and debris rains down upon the family. The young narrator describes a sensation of terrible vibration acting upon her and her sister, which is later explained by the character Nikola Tesla (written as accurately as possible to the real man, from surviving records of his character and beliefs). The inventor brings the family into his laboratory to protect them from the dangerous conditions, and it is here that he destroys his electromechanical oscillator, thus ending his man-made “earthquake.”
After doing this, Tesla endeavors to explain his actions to the narrator’s mother. He talks about how every material has a frequency of vibration (which, though not a discovery of his, was a point of fascination to the extent that the Intuitor describes him as having “created some of the most incredible demonstrations of [Resonance] ever seen” (Intuitor 1)), how he utilized Niagara Falls to supply electricity to major cities from the East Coast to the Midwest, how was exploited by Thomas Edison to redo his generators and Machinery, and his strong anti-capitalist beliefs. The narrator’s mother then asks Tesla about his views on ghosts, and Tesla gives his opinion that ghosts are simply people existing on the same earth in a different frequency, and that physics allows for the possibility and existence of anything, even the unexplained.
Though Tesla made many fascinating scientific explanations in this excerpt, the one that seemed most important to me was that on his views of Vibrational Patterns. I feel this topic is significant because of the extensive discoveries Tesla made on Vibrational Patterns and Resonance in his life, and because of how prevalent these concepts still are in modern society.
Tesla’s inventions and investigations involving Vibrational Patterns throughout his life were extensive and revolutionary. According to Cornell University’s website, the history of understanding Resonance is considerable. Started “by Galileo early in the 17th century” (Bleck-Neuhaus 1), the history continues until the “19th century [when] Thomas Young [gave] the first correct description” of the phenomenon (Bleck-Neuhaus 1). Thus, though Tesla did not discover vibration patterns himself, his contributions to its understanding were considerable as the concept was disastrously misunderstood by many of those people who contributed to its discovery. One example of the danger of this misunderstanding is the fact that “in the 19th century mechanical Resonance disasters were observed ever more frequently, e.g. with suspension bridges and steam engines,” but scientists’ knowledge of Resonance and its effects was so imperfect that these catastrophes were not even “recognized as such” (Bleck-Neuhaus 1). Though Tesla’s experiments on Resonance cannot be said to have been carried out completely sans-material casualty, they nevertheless significantly contributed to scientists’ understanding of the field, and to their ability to properly utilize it. Examples of these significant experiments include (from the aforementioned Intuitor) “an artificial earthquake, numerous artificial lightning storms, knock[ing] an entire power plant off line in Colorado, and nearly caus[ing]the steel frame of a sky scraper under construction in Manhattan to collapse” (Intuitor 1). These projects helped contribute to Tesla’s eventual understanding of how “the principles of Resonance could be used to transmit and receive radio messages” (Intuitor 1), long before anyone else conceived of such an idea.
This discovery of radio transmission is one that now, in the 21st century, affects us every day (illustrating the importance of Tesla’s explanation on the subject). According to the Elon University website, radio broadcasting’s invention (used in the form of telegrams at the time) became immensely important as many western Countries entered World War One. The usefulness of radio broadcasting was so important that Governments invested in innovations to the extent that the US Navy eventually held the patents for more advanced forms of radio. Once thousand-mile broadcasts were possible, the “Golden Age of Radio,” began and the majority of US households relied on Radio for news and entertainment (Elon University 1). Though this form of radio is no longer as essential to modern life as it was during WWI, the immediate prevalence and importance of radio directly after Tesla conceived of it cannot be dismissed. It is also not too far-fetched to say that the outcome of WWI may have been different if the Allied Forces had been unable to communicate as effectively as radio allowed them to at the time. Tesla’s discovery of how to use Resonance to broadcast Radio was explored and evolved over the years until Wifi was eventually made possible. Though Tesla is indirectly responsible for Wifi only through his discovery and contribution to radio, it is worth noting that Tesla “dream[ed] of transmitting wireless power” and “spent a small fortune on a demonstration project” (Intuitor 1). Though this dream was never fully realized, wifi “uses modified radio waves to send internet data through the air” and works because “devices […] have little radios and antennas that receive these waves and convert them into usable data” according to High Speed Internet.com. In this way, Tesla led to one of the most significant changes to the function of society ever in the form of his contribution to the invention of Wifi.
Though Nikola Tesla had numerous significant interests and inventions throughout his life, his discoveries related to Resonance and Vibrational Patterns are the most significant of those explored in Distant waves. His discoveries led to the scientific understanding of Resonance, which was disastrously misunderstood even by those who first discovered it centuries before Tesla. From his experiments came Radio Broadcasting and the Telegram, which eventually led to Wifi and modern Smartphones, permanently altering the world that we live in. From these many feats, I feel it safe to conclude that Tesla’s concepts of Resonance were incredibly significant, both at the time they were created, and in all the time since.
Sources:
Bleck-Neuhaus, Jörn. “Mechanical Resonance: 300 Years from Discovery to the Full
Understanding of Its Importance.” ArXiv.org, 20 Nov. 2018,
https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.08353#:~:text=Forced%20oscillations%20and%20mechanical
%20Resonance,purely%20mathematical%20surprise%2C%20by%20Euler.
“1890s – 1930s: Radio.” Elon University, https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1890-1930/.
Kevin Parrish Edited by Rebecca Lee Armstrong, and Kevin Parrish. “How Does Wi-Fi Work?”
HighSpeedInternet.com, 22 Feb. 2023, https://www.highspeedinternet.com/resources/how-does-wi-fi- work#:~:text=Wi%2DFi%20is%20a%20form,access%20the%20internet%20tether%2Dfree.
“The Physics of Resonance.” Intuitor Physics of Resonance, Tesla, Master of Resonance,
http://www.intuitor.com/Resonance/tesla.php.
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