by Marc Seifer
From GE’s point of view, there was a whole host of patents in AC that Thomson owned, but any others that they could obtain would undoubtedly help in the legal arena. Thus, they approached Charles Steinmetz with a scheme to work on improvements on AC designs in such a way that they would obscure Tesla’s role. Attracted to the intrigue, Steinmetz accepted the challenge.18
The fray between Westinghouse and GE took a new turn in the race to win the bid to light the upcoming Chicago World’s Fair and to harness Niagara Falls. In the courts, the suits switched from lightbulbs to power generation, and at their respective plants attention turned toward a way to compete with the success achieved by Brown and Dobrowolsky.
For Westinghouse Corporation, Schmid, Scott, and Lamme could confer with Tesla, while Stillwell and Shallenberger brooded, and the money men reluctantly agreed to dismantle the very lucrative but outmoded Gaulard-Gibbs machinery. For GE, the situation was more complex. They had hoped that someone like Steinmetz or Thomson could come up with a competing design, but they hadn’t realized that Tesla held all the fundamental patents. Quite simply, there was no other system. Tesla had understood the foundation. One couldn’t proceed without him.
Thomson and Steinmetz were reduced to figuring out ways to somehow bypass the patents by designing “teaser currents”19 or some other smokescreen device in order to pretend that they had created a separate invention. In a case of industrial espionage, Thomson-Houston apparently paid a janitor to steal the Tesla blueprints from the Westinghouse plant.20 Embarrassed to explain how the blueprints ended up at Lynn, Thomson said that he needed to study the Tesla motor designs to make sure that his were different.
The intrigue must have triggered a variety of emotions in Steinmetz. He had already lived a clandestine life in Germany; by editing a radical socialist newspaper under a pseudonym during the so-called Reign of Terror, he had learned to use secret passwords at radical meetings and write with invisible ink, as when he carried love notes between his leader, the charismatic revoutionary Heinrich Lux, who had been jailed for his activities, and Lux’s girlfriend. Although Steinmetz never renounced his affiliation with the socialist movement, he supported a rather unscrupulous capitalistic corporate structure that was motivated not only by the all-consuming profit motive but also by its ability to subvert the law to achieve its ends. This new situation thereby only served to heighten his contradictory nature.
His affiliation with the Machiavellian policies of GE induced Steinmetz to abandon his ideals. His opus on AC, Theory and Calculations of Alternating Current Phenomena, coauthored with Ernst Julius Berg, a colleague educated at the Royal Polytechnikum in Stockholm, and first published in 1897, just three years after Tesla’s own compendium, omitted any reference to Tesla at all. (By the turn of the century, Berg’s name on the cover, like Lux’s love notes, disappeared.)
At the time, Tesla’s book The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, edited by T. C. Martin, was a veritable bible for all engineers in the field. It included chapters on alternating-current motors, the rotating magnetic field, synchronizing motors, rotating field transformers, polyphase systems, single-phase motors, etc. That it does not appear in the bibliography of Steinmetz’s work is astounding.
In the foreword to Steinmetz’s second text, Theoretical Elements of Electrical Engineering, written in 1902, the author tries to explain why he omitted reference to the inventor of the AC polyphase system. “Of later years,” Steinmetz wrote, “the electrical literature has been haunted by so many theories, for instance of the induction motor, which are incorrect.”21 This was a natural opening that might have catapulted Steinmetz into a discussion which would set the record straight, but he chose a pusillanimous path instead. This decision not only aided in obfuscating the truth as to the origin of the invention; it also bolstered his own image in the corporate community.
As these texts on AC would serve as important templates for subsequent writers, it was quite common in the later years for engineers to obtain degrees, study AC, and even write textbooks on the topic themselves and never come across Tesla’s name.
Clearly, it was to GE’s benefit to pretend that Tesla never existed, and it was to Westinghouse’s benefit to pretend that the Lauffen-Frankfurt transmission had never occurred. The next generation of engineers, and those that followed, never realized that obfuscation had taken place; that is one of the main reasons why Tesla’s name practically vanished.
Perhaps the most blatant case of misrepresentation occurred a generation later, when Michael Pupin published his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography From Immigrant to Inventor. Pupin was able to write long passages on the history of AC and ignore Tesla almost completely. Tesla’s name appears only once, in passing, in the 396-page book.22
In this work Pupin described “four historical events, very important in the annals of electrical science,” that is, the Lauffen-Frankfurt transmission, the harnessing of Niagara Falls, the formation of GE, and the lighting of the Chicago World’s Fair by AC. Mentioning the Westinghouse concern only once as a company that was interested in AC, Pupin concluded, “If the Thomson-Houston Company had contributed nothing else than Elihu Thomson to…[GE], it would have contributed more than enough…[Thus] the senseless opposition to the alternating current system…vanished quickly.23
In the preface Pupin had the audacity to write that “the main object of [my] narrative [is]…to describe the rise of idealism in American science, and particularly in physical sciences and the related industries…[As] witness to this gradual development,…[this] testimony has competence and weight.” Considering that Pupin is generally remembered fondly by the engineering world, it is my opinion that he failed to live up to the standards to which he aspired.
These attempts to alter the past turned the stomach of a number of key players, most notably C. E. L. Brown, of Oerlikon Works in Switzerland, and one of his top engineers, B. A. Behrend. A staunch man with a granite profile and hound-dog eyes, Brown, who, with Dobrowolsky, had been the first engineer to transmit electrical power over long distances with Tesla’s AC invention, had learned of Tesla’s work from British engineer Gisbert Kapp, who published Tesla’s 1888 talk in his magazine Industries. Kapp, who authored one of the most “brilliant” textbooks on induction motors, wrote Tesla on June 9, 1888, to request the use of his paper for the magazine.24
Based on Tesla’s treatise and Kapp’s refinements, Brown was able to construct “[before] Westinghouse…probably…the first successful motor…in 1890.”25 Brown’s succinct response, conspicuously placed in Electrical World, was directed specifically to Carl Hering, one of the first writers to imply that the invention was Dobrowolsky’s. “The three-phase current as applied at Frankfort,” Brown wrote, “is due to the labors of Mr. Tesla, and will be found clearly specified in his patents.”26
Hering’s first response was to continue the artifice. “I do not think,” Hering said, “[that] Mr. Brown does proper justice to the real inventor of this modification of the Ferraris-Tesla system, namely, Dobrowolsky.”27 But Tesla demanded a more clear-cut communiqué. After a discussion with W. J. Johnston, who would later allow Hering to take over the editorship of Electrical World, Tesla was able to obtain the following response: “We desire to state right here,” Johnston said, “that the Electrical World has over and over put itself on record as upholding Mr. Tesla’s priority.”28 The magazine was also able to extract from Hering the following: “Dobrowolsky, though he may have been an independent inventor, admits that Tesla’s work is prior to his.”29
Although Hering was loath to admit Tesla’s priority, at the same time he placed his finger on an important point: Tesla himself had not demonstrated physically that his system could be used for long-distance transmission. Certainly Westinghouse at that time was not aware of the vast benefits of the system. Had it not been for the success at Lauffen-Frankfurt, Tesla’s apparatus might have evolved differently in America. Hering did not have access to various details of the Westinghouse
motors, and that was because the work was not in the public domain. Great amounts of money were spent to keep the work private. Had a Lauffen-Frankfurt type of transmission occurred in America without Westinghouse’s permission, it would have clearly been a case of patent piracy. Tesla issued patents in most of the industrialized countries, and it appears likely that Brown and Oerlikon licensed Tesla’s patents and paid him for the privilege of using them.
Coincidentally, Gisbert Kapp’s treatise, which was initially published in two installments in December 1890 in the Electrician in London, appears also to have been used extensively by Charles Steinmetz in 1891 and 1892, while he was constructing AC motors at a machine shop in New York before he was hired by Thomson, according to B. A. Behrend, author of one of the first definitive works on the AC motor. An émigré from Switzerland, Behrend came to work for the New England Granite Company, a division of GE, in 1896. Particularly upset by the tactics of such writers as Steinmetz in using other people’s work and leaving their names out of the bibliography, Behrend would later become one of Tesla’s most important allies. In the foreword of his book, Behrend stated: “The tendency to write books without references is due largely to the desire to avoid the looking-up of other writers’ papers. The reader is not benefited by such treatment, as he may frequently prefer the original to the treatment of the author whose book he is reading. Besides, a knowledge of the literature of our profession is essential to an understanding of the art and to an honest interpretation of the part played therein by our fellow workers.”30
Writing to Oliver Heaviside specifically about such authors as Steinmetz, Behrend quoted Huxley: “Magna est veritas et praevalebit!” translating and modifying the quote as follows, “Truth is great, certainly, but considering her greatness, it is curious what a long time she is apt to take about prevailing.” The body of his book began with this sentence: “The Induction Motor, or Rotary Field Motor, was invented by Mr. Nikola Tesla, in 1888.” Tesla’s picture also appeared as the frontispiece.
Throughout his life, Behrend sought to set the record straight as to who the real author of the AC polyphase system was. When Westinghouse sued New England Granite for patent infringements, Behrend was placed in “an embarrassing and disagreeable” position; the high command, which stemmed from Wall Street, wanted him to testify against Tesla.
On May 3, 1901, Behrend wrote back to the attorney Arthur Stem, “My dear sir…You will see that I am now, even more than I have been before, of the opinion that it is not possible for us to bring forth arguments that could go to show the invalidity of the Tesla Patents in suit…I cannot undertake this duty.”31
10
THE ROYAL SOCIETY (1892)
The lecture given by Mr. Tesla…will live long in the imagination of every person…that heard him, opening as it did, to many of them, for the first time, apparently limitless possibilities in the applications and control of electricity. Seldom has there been such a gathering of all the foremost electrical authorities of the day, on the tiptoe of expectation.
ELECTRICAL REVIEW1
The rapid progress in the field of electromagnetic radiation, opened up by the findings of Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and especially Hertz, induced in Tesla a mania to complete as many patents as he could. Summoning his prodigious powers of self-denial, depriving himself of sleep, and exerting the full potential of his will, Tesla unfurled his creations as fast as he could. It was at this time that the grand vision arose of wireless transmission of electrical power, and he simply abhorred the thought that someone else should invent it before he could. Thus, he began to build ever more powerful coils while at the same time continuing his numerous experiments in high-intensity lighting, ozone production, converting AC to DC, and wireless communication.
In February 1891, Tesla applied for the first of three portentous patents for the conversion and distribution of electrical energy.2 This invention, which was finalized after his return from Europe, was the mechanical oscillator, a completely unique, multipurpose device. Unlike the Hertz spark-gap apparatus, which produced slow, rhythmic discharges, the Tesla oscillator supplied a smooth, continuous current which could not only generate hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of volts but could also be tuned to specific frequencies. Over his lifetime, Tesla said, “I developed not less than fifty types of these transformers…each complete in every detail.”3
The device was, in essence, a small engine, with almost no moving parts. The “work-performing piston was not connected with anything else but was perfectly free to vibrate at an enormous rate. In this machine,” Tesla proclaimed, “I succeeded in doing away with all packings, valves and lubrication [although the utilization of oil was intrinsic to its design.]…By combining this engine with a dynamo…I produced a highly efficient generator…[which propagated] an unvarying rate of oscillation.”4 Since the current was so “absolutely steady and uniform…one could keep the time of day with the machine.”5 In fact, the inventor also used the oscillator as a clock.
In June 1891, Tesla came upon an article by Prof. J. J. Thomson. This British scientist, whose work would lead him to a Nobel Prize as the discoverer of the electron, was in the process of directing electrical beams from cathode-ray tubes so as to study the structure of electromagnetic energy. These investigations prompted a vigorous exchange in the electrical journals between these two men6 and inspired Tesla to “return with renewed zeal to my own experiments. Soon my efforts were centered upon producing in a small space the most intense inductive action.”7 Tesla would describe these exciting results to Thomson in person, six months later, during the lectures he gave in London.
That same year, Tesla took out two more patents on AC motors which he owed Westinghouse; he also took out a patent on an electrical meter and a condenser, and two on incandescent lighting.
On January 8, 1892, T. C. Martin, Josh Wetzler, and George Sheep sent Tesla an invitation “to dine, and spend an evening…before your journey to Europe.”8 Tesla’s glass blower, David Hiergesell, provided all of the tubes necessary for the trip. Sailing on the sixteenth, Tesla arrived in London on the twenty-sixth. Sir William Preece provided a horse and carriage for the young inventor and invited Tesla to stay at his house.9 Tesla’s plan was to speak before the Institution of Electrical Engineers a week later “and leave immediately for Paris” to lecture before the Société Française des Electriciens.
It must have been gratifying that Preece took an interest, as he was part of the old guard. Twenty-two years Tesla’s senior and one of the patriarchs of the British scientific community, Preece was an amiable gentleman, with a full rich beard, high forehead, wire-rimmed glasses, and an air of self-assurance. As head of the government’s Postal Telegraph Office, Preece had worked with telegraphy as far back as 1860 and had brought Bell’s telephone, along with Bell himself, to the British Isles in the mid-1870s. He had also been associated with Edison since 1877, having coined the term “Edison effect” after visiting the wizard in 1884 to study his work with vacuum lamps and a peculiar “effect” whereby electronic particles flowed through space from the negative pole to the positive. Using this device as a voltage regulator Preece returned to England to show his colleagues, especialy Ambrose Fleming.10
After a few days of enjoyable company and a tour of London, Tesla relaxed, and on Wednesday, February 3, his discourse, entitled Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency, was presented.
“For a full two hours, Mr. Tesla kept his audience spellbound. Before such colleagues as J. J. Thomson, Oliver Heaviside, Silvanus P. Thompson, Joseph Swan, Sir John Ambrose Fleming, Sir James Dewar, Sir William Preece, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and Lord Kelvin, Tesla proclaimed the driving force of his motivation: ‘Is there, I ask, can there be, a more interesting study than that of alternating current?’…We observe how th[is] energy…tak[es] the many forms of heat, light, mechanical energy, and…even chemical affinity…All of these observations fascinate us…Each day we go to ou
r work…in the hope that someone, no matter who, may find a solution [to] one of the pending problems,—and each succeeding day we return to our task with renewed ardor; and even if we are unsuccessful, our work has not been in vain, for in these strivings…we have found hours of untold pleasure, and we have directed our energies to the benefit of mankind.”11
“Any feature of merit which this work may contain,” Tesla humbly stated, “was derived from the work of a number of scientists who are present today, not a few who can lay better claim than myself.” Looking about the room and, with a gleam in his eye, Tesla continued.12 “One at least I must mention…It is a name associated with the most beautiful invention ever made: it is Crookes!…I believe that the origin [of my advances]…was that fascinating little book [on radiant energy] which I read many years ago.”13
Firing up his great coil, amid erupting thunderbolts, Tesla spoke as if a sorcerer; he announced that with his knowledge he had the ability to make animate that which was inert. “With wonder and delight…[we note] the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will…We see the mass of iron and wires behave as though…endowed with life.”14
Lamps suddenly burst forth in a variety of “magnificent colors of phosphorescent light.” Tesla touched a wire, and sparks ejaculated from its end; he created sheets of luminescence, directed electrical “streams upon small surfaces,” lit wireless tubes simply by picking them up, and “erased” them by “holding a wire from a distant terminal” [i.e., grounding the effect] or by grasping the tube with both hands, thereby “render[ing] dark” the area in between and pulling his hands apart in a steady stroke. And just as easily, he would rotate the tube in the “direction of axis of the coil” and reignite the glow.15
