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Tesla Photo Anomaly: Promised Update
Here are a couple of corrections to my previous note on the
doctored photo(s), and some further information that may be
of interest.
The heavily retouched photo, with only Steinmetz and Einstein,
is originally from the book "The Steinmetz Era", by B. Gorowitz.
This was sponsored by GE and was published by what I beleive is
their own internal publishing label (Elfun Hall Publications).
The caption in that book for the photo reads "Another of
Steinmetz's distinguished visitors was Albert Einstein who came
to Schenectady in 1921. It was in that year Einstein received
the Nobel Prize in Physics".
Perhaps no photo of that event was taken, so the other photo was
doctored up to manufacture such a record. The real photo was
also taken in 1921, but was not in Schenectady, NY, but in New
Brunswick, at a wireless symposium. I have only a poor photocopy
of the origial photo, but can count at least 19 people in the
group. The small portion used in both photos under discussion
was cropped from the center of the group.
I should point out that Steinmetz is not standing on a box, as I
had guessed, and that my supposition that the heavily doctored
photo had extended his legs was incorrect. The reason that his
legs were shown all out of proportion to the rest of his body is
that that was the nature of his deformity.
My original guess about the box centered around my observation
that Steinmetz was very short, while Tesla was quite tall, and
that the relative heights between Steinmetz and Tesla behind him
did not match up at all well. I'd have expected Tesla to be at
least another head taller. The alternative would have been that
Tesla was crouching down, which would have seemed unnecessary,
since there is a great deal of space above everyone's heads in the
original photo. (It's a wide, wide, group shot, and there's lots
of empty space overhead to give the photo a decent aspect ratio.
Even with that overhead space, the photo is still way too wide
and short, in my opinion.)
One possibility is that the man behind Steinmetz is not Tesla at
all. In his PhD dissertation, Seifer mentions that Tesla's grand
nephew, William Terbo, maintained that the man in the photo was
too short to be Tesla. Seifer gives no reference or further
information on this. To be fair, Seifer is in the midst of making
a totally unrelated point in that spot in the text, and further
elaboration wouldn't flow well. Apparently there is no surviving
record of attendees to the symposium, or the record is incomplete.
Too bad, as this could be used to clear up the matter.
I've always found it interesting that history books describe the
past with such confidence, while the actual historical records are
so often filled with uncertainty.
So the one photo mystery is cleared up only to be replaced by
another. It would seem reasonable that Tesla might have attended
a wireless symposium, and the prim, dapper Tesla of the Turn of
the Century was replaced with a somewhat more bedraggled-looking
individual by the 1920's, similar to the man standing behind
Steinmetz. Yet the question remains...
Wes B.