IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014 - 12

subjects include such things as the nanotechnology
facilities of the above-mentioned Bilkent University
in Turkey, the nanotechnology virtues and vices of
titanium dioxide and carbon, and nanotechnology in
K-12 and higher education.
Is Nanotechnology: Social and Ethical Implications worth the price? It depends on what you want
to do with it. It would be worthwhile to put it on the
reserve-book list of a course on either the technical
or the social and ethical aspects of nanotechnology.
Individual chapters could be excerpted for various
special purposes in teaching, or conceivably as references for research in a graduate course. But the book

falls a long way short of being the definitive word on
the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology.
Despite all the funds expended on these topics, such
a definitive book remains to be written, and perhaps
cannot be written until the word "nanotechnology"
ceases to excite the attention of anyone except historians. And thanks to the U.S. government, that will not
happen for a while yet.

Author Information
Karl Stephan is Associate Professor in the Department
of Engineering and Technology, Texas State University,
San Marcos, TX. Email: kdstephan@txstate.edu.

ERIC P. WENAAS

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
by W. Bernard Carlson, Princeton University Press, 2013, 520 pages. Reviewed by Eric P. Wenaas.

. Bernard Carlson points out in his
new book, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, that Nikola Tesla's counterculture status has attracted a number
of authors to write books about his life and inventions,
most of which are celebratory in nature and often
make assertions about his theories and inventions
that have no basis in fact. Carlson's book is refreshing not only for its candor in describing how and why
Tesla succeeded in the technologies he brought to
fruition, but also why he failed in the technologies he
did not reduce to practice. He states quite correctly
that as an historian, he has to tell Tesla's story based
on the documents, and quite mercifully he avoids the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2014.2307541
Date of publication: 10 March 2014

unsubstantiated stories about Tesla that swirl about on
the Internet, in books, and elsewhere.
This book is truly the first scholarly study of Tesla
that is not only objective but also provides extensive
references and endnotes to support and document the
narrative. There are a whopping forty-nine pages of
references and endnotes, a rich list of archival collections, and a list of major sources of information - not
the least of which is The Tesla Collection, originally a
23-volume collection of full-text articles by and about
Tesla appearing in periodicals and newspapers between
1896 and 1920. These difficult-to-find articles are catalogued by publication, author, year subject and title -
and the best part is they can be accessed from the Internet at www.teslacollection.com/.
Carlson notes that while other biographies have
focused largely on Tesla's personality, his book "seeks

Eric P. Wenaas received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University and his Ph.D. degree
in interdisciplinary studies in engineering at from SUNY Buffalo. He writes a book review column for the Antique Wireless
Association Journal and has written a book and many published articles on the history of wireless. Email: admin@
chezwenaas.com.
12

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SPRING 2014

http://www.teslacollection.com/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Spring 2014