Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once.

So lie back, adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath and off we go.

This evening we're relaxing with a classic, experiments with alternate currents of high potential

and high frequency, a lecture delivered before the

institution of electrical engineers, London, by Nikola Tesla, with a portrait and biographical sketch of the author, New York,

1892.

Let's begin. Biographical sketch of Nikola Tesla.

For a long time, the Slav people who, after the Battle of Kosovo, in which the Turks defeated the Serbians, retired to the confines of the present Montenegro, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and Bosnia, and borderlandland of Austria knew what it was to deal as our

Western pioneers did with foes ceaselessly fretting against their frontier and

the races of these countries, through their strenuous struggle

against the armies of the Crescent, have developed notable qualities of bravery and sagacity,

while maintaining a patriotism and independence unsurpassed

in any other nation.

It was in this interesting border region and from among these valiant eastern folk that

Nikola Tesla was born in the year 1857 and the fact that he today finds himself in

America and one of our foremost electricians is striking

evidence of the extraordinary attractiveness alike of electrical pursuits and of the country

where electricity enjoys its widest application.

Mr. Tesla's native place was Smillion Lika where his father was an eloquent clergyman of the Greek church, in which, by the way, his family is still

prominently represented. His mother enjoyed great fame throughout the countryside for her skill and originality in needlework, and doubtless

transmitted her ingenuity to Nikola, though it naturally took another and more masculine direction. The boy was early put to his books and upon his

father's removal to Gospic he spent four years in the public school and later

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