ITS

["Gary Johnson" <gjohnson-at-xxxxxxx> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

There was a recent message from someone who looked for the Tesla Museum in
Colorado Springs and found it closed.  Some time ago there was a string
about the International Tesla Society (ITS), but let me summarize for the
benefit of the newcomers.

The ITS started having biannual meetings in Colorado Springs in 1984.  I
missed the first meeting but attended all the remaining meetings.  The focus
was the life and heritage of Nikola Tesla.  Tesla's nephew, William Terbo,
was usually the lead speaker, giving the family history as best he
remembered.  There were historical papers, like Tesla's electric power
installations at Telluride, Colorado and Niagra Falls, New York.  There were
papers on the theory and practice of Tesla coils.  Bill Wysock spoke some
years and often brought some coils to demonstrate.  I don't recall if Bill
was the one who brought a coil to one of the early meetings, but this coil
was set up in a hotel ballroom.  It produced nice sparks in the 3 foot
range.  The only problem was that the coil set off the fire alarms and
caused the elevators to operate at random.  It was really great fun!  I
never heard the reason, but the following meeting was held at a different
hotel!

There would be papers on the politically correct concepts of Tesla that
never quite gained wide acceptance, such as the Tesla turbine.  And there
would be papers on the politically incorrect concepts like Death Rays,
communications from Mars, wireless power transmission, and over-unity
electrical generators.  I have been to my share of technical meetings, but
these were my favorites.  Speakers were willing to share new thoughts with a
friendly crowd of a couple hundred people.  Tesla thought world class
thoughts, at least some of which were right (radio, polyphase power).
Speakers were trying to figure out what Tesla was thinking in other areas.
The result was a feeling of excitement, of being on the cutting edge.

So, what went wrong?  One thing was a loss of focus.  The ITS added medicine
and other non-Tesla topics to its meetings.  I personally found these other
topics interesting as well, but they clearly diluted the purpose of the
meetings.  They added a second meeting in the off years.  The Tesla
conference was more technical (more Ph.D. speakers, a proceedings) and the
Extraordinary Science conference was less technical (fewer Ph.Ds. and no
proceedings).  There was inadequate screening of speakers, especially to the
second conference.

The ITS decided early to restrict membership of the board of directors to
those living within perhaps 100 miles of Colorado Springs.  This obviously
eliminated some quality people who might have provided critical guidance to
the ITS.

The ITS leadership did not include anyone with experience in publishing
technical literature, resulting in what I consider serious errors in
judgment.  The proceedings was typically published two years after the
meeting, unacceptably late by any standard.  The person in charge insisted
on reformatting all the papers so they appeared in the same font, rather
than requiring authors to submit camera ready copy, as is commonly done.
This introduced new errors in the equations.  Also there was no effort to do
any sort of technical review of the papers.  I offered very early to be a
reviewer, having graded thousands of student papers and perhaps a hundred
papers for the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.  They
sent me one paper to review.  I made what I thought were reasonable requests
for clarification in the paper, and was never asked to look at another
paper.  They basically decided to not do any sort of technical review.  I
realize we need to be sensitive about correcting some creative people, but
most papers can be improved with some friendly feedback.

Then there was the matter of greed.  By delaying the publication of the
proceedings, the ITS could sell more videos of the hourly presentations, at
$29.95 each.  There were accusations and lawsuits about misappropriation of
funds.  Some speakers would put on workshops for an extra fee.  The net
effect was a feeling of being pressed to pay exorbitant prices.  In my own
case, I had supplied some literature to the book store on consignment.  I
asked to be paid for what had sold, when I was at the next meeting a year
later.  The people in charge were unable to tell me how much literature had
been sold, and then told me the check was in the mail (which it was not).  I
never received any payment, nor a return of unsold items when the ITS went
bankrupt a couple of years ago.  That was definitely not the way to run the
show.

It is my understanding that one of the leadership bought the remaining
assets of ITS for $5000.  I have not heard anything about a restructuring.
Anyhow, it is a sad story of a great concept squandered by a leadership with
a lack of vision.

Gary Johnson