Unexpected Futurist: Mark Twain, Tesla, and a Vision of a Worldwide Visual Telephone System
In Unexpected Futurist, we profile the lesser known futurist side of influential individuals.
When one thinks of Mark Twain, one thinks of folksy wit, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and the Mississippi River. Twain’s work immortalized the rapidly changing United States of the 1800s. But in his personal life, Twain often preferred the future to nostalgia, supporting women’s suffrage and civil rights, and frequently being contemptuous of what he considered to be the absurd and corrupt values of the past. He harbored a long running fascination with technology and new gadgets, and frequently invested in the latter — albeit with spotty success, at best.
Twain cemented his becoming an honorary futurist via his long friendship with inventor and Mad-scientist archetype Nikola Tesla. Tesla was at the forefront of research into wireless energy transmission, and he gave Twain demonstrations of the radical new technology. In at least instance, photographed for posterity, Tesla had Twain perform a neat trick in which a bulb was lit by harmlessly passing high voltage current through Twain’s body. Don’t try this at…
