CHAPTER 4
Though Tesla managed to become fabulously wealthy before the age of thirty, and despite his suave and gentlemanly European manner, he was not heir to those same old family privileges as one Marchese Guglielmo Marconi. Despite receptions among the upper class, receptions in which Tesla had unknowingly been cast as intriguing entertainment, he was not as truly welcomed by those seeking bizarre and furtive amusements. In comparison, we consider the aristocrat Guglielmo Marconi, member of a family whose matriarch was English aristocracy. It was perhaps on this basis alone that the elitists “forgave” his Italian aristocratic lineage. Is it more clear why these upperclass receptions responded so favorably and persistently to Marconi and not to Tesla?
Technology enters a pre-existent world where various powers have produced their stagnant structure, one designed to promote their rulership and continual supply of wealth. While rising above the populations they use, such powers repress, redirect, and divest the dreams of humanity. No greater earthly power could ever have dissuaded the invisible hands of oligarchic control, until the unforeseen change forever established its presence. The sudden appearance of this irresistible antagonist was one whose permeating presence could not be quantified in coin or person. Incapable of being caught and executed, this foe was free to spread its message of liberty to those sensitive enough to receive it This was an organized anarchy, a disciplined and deliberate movement toward visionary objectives, whose inspiring leader could neither be located or eradicated. Obviously ordained by far superior authority, this was a thematic social movement whose power was successfully codified into a new ethos and mythos. Moreover, it was a consciousness uniquely framed for the working classes. It was in their life-style of urgencies, passions, necessities, devotions, and personal sacrifices that this consciousness best blossomed. Those higher castes who attempted its importation were shocked to find themselves incapable of keeping and cultivated its favors. In later times, oligarchs were forced to have their bureaucracies hire working class minds as advisers.
Whereas aristocratic natural philosophers once toyed with the forces of Nature, and spent their days toying with their thoughts on the same, the new revolution produced definitive hardware. Equipped with this new consciousness, and coupled with the inheritance of Old World trade skills, of which they were the devoted custodians, the servant class inventive revolution went forward with no opposition. The ghost walked in its machines. As the New Century came, the new and powerful consciousness swept their world with an indifferent superiority all its own. Here was a victorious conqueror whose spirit remained more unseen than even oligarchs themselves. Power was rapidly refocussing in deeper levels than even the bureaucratic structures made to maintain social rigidity.
A dynamic and thrilling power was suddenly released in and among the working class with no possibility of flow back up into the oligarchic structures. This was a spontaneous generation of power, an undefinable phenomenon to all who could only watch its unhindered progress. This revolution was one whose power was not obtained by usurping the traditional sources. Here was a power derived from a new consciousness alone. In the flood of such new awakenings, new demands were enunciated by the working class. But these demands included neither bureaucracy nor oligarchy at all. Many whose awareness level saw the comparison between former repressive times and their present liberation took the matter further, by annihilating the bureaucracy and ferreting out the oligarchy toward the same ends.
ATOMIC FUEL
Throughout the years preceding World War II, a small group of widely separated researchers successfully demonstrated the possibility of deriving energy from the atomic lattices of various materials. This development was the result of methodic investigations in photoelectric and photonuclear processes, conducted by Dr. Gustav Le Bon in Belgium (1897). The next appearance of this thought regime came when Dr. Andre Helbronner in France (1920), and Dr. Fritz Paneth and Dr. Kurt Peters in Germany (1926) each independendy began studying electrical discharge processes in pure hydrogen gas, a dangerous experimental line to pursue even in university laboratories. Each researcher discovered that “extra energy”, in exceedingly great supplies, could be obtained for hours from their experimental apparatus. Long after an initial high voltage electrical discharge had been made to pass across tungsten or palladium arc electrodes, and then withdrawn, their strange and continued red glowing heat was observed. Here was the clearest suggestion that an unknown energy process had been accidentally tapped.
In varieties of these experiments, the properties of uranium and other heavy isotopes were found to release similar, though limited energetic streams. Some utilized uranium, radium, and thorium electrodes in other gaseous atmospheres, obtaining electrical outputs as well as heat. Tubes in this regard were built and used by Ainsworth (1915), Winkelmann (1923), Metzger (1925), McElrath (1936), The use of purified uranium in small laboratory experiments by Fermi proved to be the more inferior of all the methods, ultimately requiring highly privatized and expensive systems for the production of “fuel”. Here was a new technology which could be made inaccessible to civilian privateers by virtue of its excessive industrial support structures. The purification of uranium required gigantic facilities requiring great financial expenditures. Here was the perfect opportunity to institute a new monopoly at the ground floor!
But this experimental pursuit, while remaining a laboratory secret, also had its malignant side. Besides being a deadly radioactive poison, uranium had another potential utility. These researches released one of the most terrifying secrets in all of Nature. Both regulators, their servant minions, and the rest of society came face to face with the dread power of the insignificant. What was once perceived as weak, became the horrid strength. And not one of the controlling factions could have foreseen the nightmare which was released. And then, just as sudden, the regulatory commissions found themselves staring into an abyss of horror in which every Old World method had found its new world end.
Warring Houses stimulate international wars for the acquisition of land, resource, and populations. Warring Houses therefore depend on the superiority of their military forces to turn the tide of victory in their favor. Science, that infant-terrible from the lower classes, proved to have merit in military applications. So long as military force was controllable, limited, regulated, even wars could be tolerated among Houses. Blasting, destroying, devastating, and killing were all part of he strivings of power. Wars were very controlled events. But, as scientific research was making its progress into the very wheelworks of Nature, an unexpected developed emerged. The science and technology, whose ghost could not be contained, spawned a conundrum. Science found itself beholding, in deep recesses of matter, a natural power capable of annihilating all earthly power. And very suddenly, all natural and social powers bent down toward the infinitesimal, toward the atom and its hideous energies.