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The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 2: The Swiss Years: Writings, 1900-1909 (Original texts)
Nikola Tesla Complete Patent Collection
Theoretical Physics and Philosophical Problems: Selected Writings (Vienna Circle Collection)
...I finally succeeded in reaching electrical movements or rates of delivery of electrical energy... actually surpassing those of lightning
discharges, and by means of this apparatus I have found it possible to reproduce whenever desired phenomena in the earth the same as or similar to
those due to such discharges.
...The powerful electrical oscillations... being communicated to the ground cause corresponding vibrations to be propagated to
distant parts of the globe. Stated otherwise, the terrestrial conductor is
thrown into resonance with the oscillations impressed upon it just like a
wire. ...For the present, it will be sufficient to state that the planet
behaves like a perfectly smooth or polished conductor of inappreciable
resistance with capacity and self-induction uniformly distributed along the
axis of symmetry of wave propagation and transmitting slow electrical
oscillations without sensible distortion and attentuation.
...It is necessary to employ oscillations in which the rate
of radiation of energy into space in the form of hertzian or electromagnetic
waves is very small. ...paradoxical as it may seem, the effect will increase with
the distance and will be greatest in a region diametrically opposite the
transmitter.
— Nikola Tesla, Patent No 787412, Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through The Natural Mediums, April 18, 1905
...the entropy of monochromatic radiation of sufficiently low
density varies with the volume according to the same law as the entropy of an
ideal gas...
...monochromatic radiation of low density...behaves
thermodynamically as if it consisted of mutually independent energy quanta...
— Albert Einstein, On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning
the Production and Transformation of Light, Annalen der Physik 17, 1905, 132-148.
A dynamically ordered state, one with molecules moving "at the same speed and in the same direction," is "the most improbable case conceivable...an infinitely improbable configuration of energy."
— Ludwig Boltzmann, The second law of thermodynamics, 1886; reprinted.In: McGuinness B, editor. Ludwig Boltzmann. Theoretical physics and philosophical problems. NY: D. Reidel; 1974.
... On September 5, 1906, while on a summer vacation with his wife and youngest daughter in Duino, near Trieste, Boltzmann committed suicide
by hanging himself. The equation
relating probability to the thermodynamic entropy is engraved on
Boltzmann's tombstone at the Vienna Zentralfriedhof.
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