"The theory, wraps all these errors and fallacies and clothes them in magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king. Its exponents are very brilliant men, but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists. Not a single one of the relativity propositions has been proved."
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In 1935,
Evidence like Michelson-Morley and Eddington's 1919 eclipse observation
Ives-Stilwell wouldn't happen until 1938, Rossi-Hall 1941.
Tesla actually claimed to possess evidence that falsified special relativity. The same 1935 interview says: "He has measured cosmic ray velocities from Antarus ... which he found to be fifty times greater than the speed of light..."
In addition, Tesla claimed to have simple thought experiments that disproved relativity, and he disliked relativity on aesthetic, philosophical, and religious grounds:
Tesla contradicts a part of the relativity theory emphatically, holding that mass is unalterable; otherwise, energy could be produced from nothing, since the kinetic energy acquired in the fall of a body would be greater than that necessary to lift it at a small velocity.
-Hugo Gernsback, Science and Mechanics, November 1931
What is 'thought' in relativity, for example, is not science, but some kind of metaphysics based on abstract mathematical principles and conceptions which will be forever incomprehensible to beings like ourselves whose whole knowledge is derived from a three-dimensional world.
And:
I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties.
New York Herald Tribune, 1932 Sep 11
We read a great deal about matter being changed into force and force being changed into matter by the cosmic rays. This is absurd. It is the same as saying that the body can be changed into the mind, and the mind into the body. We know that the mind is a functioning of the body, and in the same manner force is a function of matter. Without the body there can be no mind, without matter there can be no force.
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"he was also somewhat of a kook and a charlatan" How so? In 1892 he met with Helmholtz and Hertz and reproduced some of the latter's experiments (cf. the end of ch. 10 of Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius). I doubt Helmholtz and Hertz would've received "a kook and a charlatan." ? Geremia May 6 '17 at 20:21
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@Geremia: Re charlatanism, see, for example, his claim, described above, to have a method of transmitting mechanical energy over large distances. There are other examples, such as a claim that he had a pocket-sized mechanical vibrator that he had used to cause a skyscraper to quake. I doubt Helmholtz and Hertz would've received "a kook and a charlatan." I said "somewhat of a..." Being able to do some good scientific and engineering work doesn't exclude the possibility of kookery in other areas. Examples include Linus Pauling and vitamin C, and Penrose's quantum consciousness and CCC theory. ? Ben Crowell May 6 '17 at 20:25
"He had spent his entire life working on electromagnetism within the framework of aether theories." Tesla opposed the ether. Tesla said (ibid.): "I had maintained for many years before that such a medium as [Hertz et al.] supposed could not exist, and that we must rather accept the view that all space is filled with a gaseous substance. ? ? Geremia May 6 '17 at 20:27
? On repeating the Hertz experiments with much improved and very powerful apparatus, I satisfied myself that what he had observed was nothing else but effects of longitudinal waves in a gaseous medium, that is to say, waves propagated by alternating compression and expansion. He had observed waves in much of the nature of sound waves in the air[, not transverse electromagnetic waves, as generally supposed.]" ? Geremia May 6 '17 at 20:27
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@Geremia: Tesla wrote in 1937: "All literature on [relativity] is futile and destined to oblivion. So are also all attempts to explain the workings of the universe without recognizing the existence of the ether and the indispensable function it plays in the phenomena."
But your quote suggests that he held contradictory or changing views, so I've edited my answer appropriately. Thanks for the interesting info
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