Page - 64 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

64 After the failure of Wardenclyffe Tower, Tesla had a nervous breakdown from which he only recovered in 1906. In the next years he pursued ideas of blade- less turbines as a propulsion for cars and aircraft, and developed the principle of the modern radar. Hotel room 3327 in New York Fig.: Tesla’s turbine, US Patent 1,061,206 (Google patents). All in all, Tesla could not build on his earlier successes and lived from the mod- est royalty fees into the 1920s. These setbacks depressed Tesla, making him withdraw more and more. His announcement of a particle beam weapon in 1934 – practical, but not to be implemented – brought Tesla back into the international limelight. He spent the final months of his life as a recluse. On 8 January 1943, he was discovered dead in his bed in his hotel room in New York. His room number 3327 can be seen as an example of his idiosyncrasies. He loved the number 3, and the sequence of digits yield the equation 33 = 3 · 3 · 3 = 27.