Abstract :
Outside the 34th Street side of the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, it seems fitting that lightning cracks the sky as Joseph Kinney [above] points to a plaque recognizing that the father of AC power, Nikola Tesla, once lived at the hotel. That very few among the thousands of people walking by each day realize that the inventor and engineer once rivaled Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Henry Ford for the mantle of greatest American inventor is why Kinney has spent nearly 20 years championing Tesla. · Kinney, the chief building engineer for the hotel as well as its unofficial historian, is a 63-year-old bespectacled man with white hair and a perpetual twinkle in his eye. His sarcasm and intensity often ignite a rather goofy, high-pitched chortle. Dressed in tie and jacket despite the oppressive humidity of a hot summer day, he is clearly proud of the Tesla plaque, which reads, in part: "Here died, on January 7, 1943, at the age of 87, the great Yugoslav-American scientist-inventor."
