Wizard

by Marc Seifer

  Tesla’s unconscious plan, the heart and soul of his neurosis, was to completely undermine himself by downgrading the Niagara endeavor. It is possible that Stetson had read the speech on the train ride up to Buffalo and foresaw the tragic consequences, as it appears that he waited for a propitious moment to cut the tail end off.

  Now that Tesla had arrived, he began to see himself as more than a mere inventor. He was a creator, not of great paintings or of great musical compositions but of great technologies. Niagara Falls was but a steppingstone to the larger plan. His speech went on to pay homage to the “philanthropic spirit” of the businessman, and the great contribution of the scientist. Tesla also hailed such individuals as arc lighting designer Charles Brush, vacuum tube inventor Philip Lenard, and railroad engine designer Frank Sprague as well as Wilhelm Roentgen, Lord Rayleigh, Elihu Thomson, Thomas Edison, and George Westinghouse. “All of these men and many more are untiringly at work investigating new regions and opening up unsuspected and promising fields.”

  Among all these many departments of research, there is one which is of the greatest significance for the comfort and existence, of mankind, and that is the electrical transmission of power…We have many a monument of past ages exemplif[ying] the greatness of nations, the power of men, the love of art and religious devotion. But that monument at Niagara has something of its own, worthy of our scientific age, a true monument of enlightenment and of peace. It signifies the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man, the discontinuance of barbarous methods, the relieving of millions from want and suffering…Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.12

  Stetson saw his moment and returned to the stage to whisper in Tesla’s ear. “I am just informed,” Tesla suddenly announced, “that in three minutes we have to leave…What can I say? (Cries of ‘No.’)…I can congratulate the courageous pioneers who have embarked in this enterprise and carried it to success. Buffalonians, I would say friends, let me congratulate you on the wonderful expanse of possibilities opened and let me wish that in no time distant your city will be a worthy neighbor of the great cataract which is one of the great wonders of nature.”13 There was a train to catch. The rest of the speech would be published in the electrical journals.

  It was a fortuitous break. For here we see a positive statement concerning the stupendous achievement at Niagara, and we also see the seeds of a new vision Tesla was planting for the world. He was not a mechanic but an artist. Monetary gain was not an end; in fact, the providing of cheap power for the masses was a goal. Businessmen were not greedy capitalists but noble philanthropists. This was a utopian dream which perhaps one day might come true. And as we shall see, it was also a justification, maybe even a rationalization, for some of the audacious ways Tesla chose to spend the “contributions” of the financiers who came to support his Promethean campaign.

  Playing the “Master Game” Tesla was gambling for all the stakes. His goal was no less than the ability to transform himself into a deity. This, as O’Neill writes, was his “superman complex.”

  We shall not satisfy ourselves simply with improving [present day methods], we have a greater task to fulfill to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever…[I have] examined for a long time the possibilities of operat[ing] engines on any point of the earth by the energy of the medium [and] am glad to say that I have devised means which has given me fresh hope that I shall see the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams; namely, the transmission of power from station to station without the employment of any connecting wire.14

  Tesla had audaciously proclaimed in the written and published part of his speech that this great enterprise which they were about to usher in (and the one we still use a century later) was already obsolete! He had a better plan. There was no need for the millions of telephone poles that were to be erected, no need for the megatons of copper that would have to go into an endless array of interconnected power lines, no need for the enormous production of rubber for insulation or for the tens of thousands of acres required to support the system, and no need for the workmen who were soon to be hired to maintain the equipment, for all of this, the transmission of electrical power, light, and information, could be achieved without wires. No wonder Stetson cut Tesla short.

  This speech was the pivotal moment in Tesla’s career. He set out full force to achieve this end. Nothing but death would stop him in his attempts to realize the dream.

  21

  LUMINARIES (1896-98)

  A memorable occasion was the first meeting of Tesla and Paderewski. Two more intellectual or lovable men I have never known. They were most congenial and became friends at once. On comparing notes, they discovered that they had both been in Strasburg years before at the same time [1882], Tesla as an electrical assistant on a small salary, and Paderewski as a student in music, and they laughed heartily at the change of their conditions since that time of storm and stress.

  ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON1

  Tesla traveled back to Manhattan with T. C. Martin, Francis Lynde Stetson, Darius Ogden Mills, and John Hays Hammond’s brother, Richard Hammond, who was considering placing Tesla turbines at a dam in California. A Roentgen symposium was being coordinated by Martin and R. U. Johnson under the auspices of the Century, and Tesla would help in the preparations, but disagreements with Tom Edison, Elihu Thomson, and Michael Pupin had peaked, and Tesla declined an invitation to a dinner of all the participants. “I can not explain, but it is really impossible for me to join the company,”2 he said.

  Edison was about to join forces with Marconi. Thomson was still pirating Tesla’s induction motor; Pupin, the Tesla oscillators. Stetson, as Morgan’s “attorney general,” could smooth over the bumps in GE’s attempts to lay the groundwork for a pooling of patents with Westinghouse—GE would get the AC polyphase system in exchange for the Vanderpoel trolley patents—but he could never erase the growing vendetta against Tesla by a number of key men in his industry.

  This was a particularly difficult time for Martin and so a gap between Martin and Tesla began to form.

  At the end of January, Tesla sponsored another lavish feast followed by a tour of his lab. He invited John Jacob Astor and his stunning wife, Ava Willing, and Mr. and Mrs. Stanford White. Due to the late hour, Lady Astor was “dreadfully disappointed” to pass on the electrical pyrotechnics.3 However, White and company were able to take advantage of the entire affair.

  “My dear Tesla,” wrote White, “I cannot tell you how impressed I was the other night at your laboratory, and how delighted I was to be there.” Signing the letter “Affectionately yours,” White also congratulated Tesla on his “address at Buffalo…[which was] so full of beautiful thoughts.”4 This was White’s second visit to the lab, and his feelings for Tesla continued to grow.

  March 28, 1896

  Dear Luka,

  I happen to be free this evening. If you have visitors (ordinary mortals) I will not come. If you have Paderewski, Roentgen or Mrs. Anthony I will come.

  Yours sincerely,

  TGI5

  “Tesla Great Inventor” had met Paderewski for the first time at a dinner at the Johnson “salon” in April of 1896. After an invitation from Robert, Tesla wrote back, “Hope that Miss—I mean Mr. Paderewski will come.”6 He was referring to Paderewski’s trademark, a lush, unbridled mane which flared above his head as he played the piano during his concerts.

  Referring to this first meeting, Johnson wrote, “Like Tesla, he [Paderewski] has a marvelous mind, which is a store-house of knowledge on all sorts of topics.” Johnson, who had written a poem about the virtuoso, likened Paderewski’s music to “choiring angels in Paradise.”7

  Latter-day prime minister of Poland, Paderewski was the highest-paid performer of the decade. Richard Watson Gilder, editor in chief at the Century, frequently invited, in Paderewski’s words, “all the great visiting artists, musici
ans, distinguished writers, sculptors, painters and politicans who came to America…A connoisseur of art and of life, [Gilder] appreciated and recognized at once the unusual in everything—in people as well.”8 Through Gilder, Johnson met many luminaries, and through Johnson, Tesla followed.

  At this same time, in the spring of 1896, Tesla and the Johnsons were busy reading Rudyard Kipling’s recently published Jungle Book. “The stories of Kipling’s are charm itself,” Tesla wrote Mrs. Filipov. “I think Rikki Tikki Tavi is the best.”9 Two days later, a party for Kipling was organized at the Johnson home. “Sorry I can not come to dinner,” Tesla wrote, “but will show up as soon as possible afterwards.”10

  Kipling, who was thirty at the time, had purchased a house from his brother-in-law in Brattleboro, Vermont, where he had written The Jungle Book, and now he had come to New York to help promote it.

  Much like Twain, Kipling was known as a “globe-trotter,” having visited such places as Ceylon, India, New Zealand, and Australia. After the party, and his stay in New York, Kipling traveled to England and then on to South Africa. On the boat trip over he ran into John Hays Hammond, and when he reached Cape Town, he talked Cecil Rhodes into giving him a tour of the front lines of the Boer War. Upon his return to New York, in early 1899, he spent time with Tesla before another formal dinner in his honor was prepared by the Johnsons. The following letter, although written three years later, reflects the kind of friendship the two men shared:

  Dear Mrs. Filipov,

  What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and cockroaches in the soup?11

  On the very day of the party, Kipling rocked the world, for he was taken ill with typhoid and nearly died. Katharine would spend the next few months helping to take care of the ailing novelist.12 Kipling survived the ordeal, but tragically, his daughter Josephine perished. He was in such a weakened condition that his wife was forced to hide the young girl’s death from him until he was well enough to be able to handle the news. As the newspapers carried daily reports of Kipling’s condition on their front pages, the world mourned the young girl’s loss, just as they rejoiced with his recovery. Having experienced family tragedy in his own life, Tesla hoped that the death would not impair Kipling’s ability to write. “I am delighted Kipling has recovered,” Tesla told the Johnsons. “I just hope there will be no evil consequences except a sorrow though hard to bear.” Philosophically, Tesla added, “It will probably give his works more dignity and depth.”13

  Do not thus drift with the mob. I invite you to join me in a month’s worship with Nature in the high temples of the great Sierra Crown beyond our holy Yosemite. It will cost you nothing save the time and very little of that for you will be mostly in eternity.

  JOHN MUIR14

  Another frequent visitor to the Johnson household was the conservationist and poet John Muir, who, a few years earlier, had taken Johnson on a tour of Yosemite, what Muir called, “the great creations of the Almighty.” On his trips to New York, Muir typically dressed in a seasoned three-piece suit complete with a gold watch dangling from a high vest pocket; but his demeanor was “mountain man” all the way. Sixty years old, still in his prime, his hair was gray and long and his face adorned with a beard that extended to his navel like scraggy sagebrush. His eyes may have sparked in different directions because of an early industrial accident, but his gaze proclaimed the aura of an enlightened one.

  Having dined with Muir at the Johnsons’ during the holiday season, and having invited the naturalist back to his lab, Tesla later told Katharine, that he appreciated Muir’s contribution to society. “I am always grateful to [Muir],” he wrote, “for his magnificent description of Yosemite Valley which I have read through in one breath.”15

  A founder of the Sierra Club with Johnson, Muir was, in a sense, Tesla’s doppelgänger. Muir was a somewhat unkempt naturalist who spent most of his time in the forest, but part of him longed for civilization, and Tesla, ever the fastidious and smartly dressed metropolitan, spent most of his life in the city but longed for the mountains. A former inventor himself, having fashioned an award-winning bed that toppled the sleeper out onto the floor in the morning, Muir was not opposed, in principle, to human progress, only to callous obliteration of the precious wonders of the planet. Since Tesla’s inventions sought to utilize renewable energy and minimize destruction of natural resources, in that sense, both Tesla and Muir shared a common end.

  Muir’s writings remain his most powerful statement to the spiritual path. The importance of his friendship with Tesla helps support the modern-concepts conservation and ecological thinking. Placing it all in perspective, Muir wrote, “Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing.”16

  22

  SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (1896-97)

  Tesla had his rooms in the laboratory on Houston Street darkened [and] a current was turned on invisibly. As the group ga[z]ed at this the apartment was filled with a terrific lightning display, with the snapping, crackling sound, displacing the reverberation of heaven’s artillery, and all remarked the weird and awing effect of the exhibition…

  His face lighting up and his spare figure vibrant with pride, [Tesla announced], “I am producing an electrical disturbance of intense magnitude [which] by means of certain simple instruments can be felt and appreciated at any point of the globe without the aid or intervention of wires of any [kind] at all.”

  NEW YORK JOURNAL1

  One of Tesla’s most ardent admirers was Yale student Lee De Forest, who had studied the inventor’s collected works the previous semester. Tesla’s writings are “the greatest exciters to zealous work and study,” De Forest wrote in his diary. “His New York laboratory [is] a fabulous domain into which all ambitious young electrical students aspire…to enter and there remain…How I pray that I may equal or excel him, that all this belief in my genius is not idle and conceit.”

  In May 1896, De Forest was able to arrange a visit to the East Houston Street den. “Now is the critical point in the curve of my life,” the youth scribbled on his pad as he sat on the train waiting for his stop, “for I am about to seek work with Nikola Tesla.”

  The expert greeted the novice and gave him a tour, but was unable to take him on as an apprentice. Noticing the dejected countenance on the budding inventor’s face Tesla told De Forest: “I see a great future for you as you are endowed with a keen mind. You will not need this job to succeed.” Tesla wished him well and suggested De Forest contact him again.

  De Forest would apply once more in the spring of 1898, and probably again in 1900 or 1901, but for various reasons he was never hired. In retrospect, Tesla’s decision to reject the talented engineer was unfortunate, for De Forest would soon rise to a premier position as a pioneer in the field of wireless communication. He had a commercial mind and became a tenacious rival to Tesla’s other young competitor, Guglielmo Marconi.2

  Throughout 1896, Tesla applied for and received eight patents on his wireless system. These were mostly different types of oscillators for generating electromagnetic currents of high frequency and high potential. His first application specifically in the field of radio communication was in 1897; his second, remote control, in 1898. Earlier patents on oscillators dating back to 1891 and 1893 also covered this work, though in veiled form. Over the next five years, the inventor’s arsenal grew to thirty-three fundamental patents, covering all essential areas of “transmitting electrical energy through the natural medium.”3

  As part of his overall scheme, Tesla also began working on perfecting a system of telephotography. His interest could be traced to 1893 and the Chicago World’s Fair, where Elisha Gray’s teleautographic machine was displayed. But over the summer of 1896 competition peaked, especially when Edison announced his plans to market an “autographic telegraph.” “I’m getting it ready for you newspaper fellows,” Edison said, “and when I get working, all you will have to do is hand
your copy to the operator say in New York, for example, the cover will be shut down and presto! the wires will transmit it letter for letter to the machine at the other end in Buffalo. The wires will transmit 20 square inches of copy a minute and will carry sketches and pictures as well.”4

  In attempts to outdo Edison, Tesla told the New York Herald of his own advances. Under the imaginative assumptions that images from the retina could be captured and transmitted, Tesla included this esoteric idea along with a more realistic plan to transmit text and pictures over the phone lines and by wireless.5

  Even today, the facsimile machine holds a special place in our imagination, for something typed in an office in New York can be transmitted instantaneously by satellite or over the phone lines to a receiver in San Francisco, Moscow, or Tokyo. One can only imagine the sense of disbelief facing Tesla as he tried to convince readers that pictures could be sent by means of wireless from one city to another. Even primitive Morse-coded messages had yet to really be effectively transmitted.

  Nevertheless, Marconi was closing in rapidly on successfully demonstrating his wireless apparatus as Tesla scoured the libraries to study the history of telephotography.

  Tesla traced early work in inventions that led to the development of the facsimile machine and television to English physicist Alexander Bain, who, in 1842, first transmitted pictures by using a grid of electrical wires imbedded in wax held firmly beneath a sheet of chemically treated paper. All of these wires could be channeled into one cable and strung to a receiving station where an identical grid was constructed. If the receiver traced out the letter A, for instance, with an electric stylus, the particular wires comprising the design of the letter would be electrified, and these, in turn, would treat that area of the paper on the receiving end to spell out the matching character. Autographs and drawings could also be transmitted in the same manner. As the process evolved, pictures could be broken down into a finite number of picture elements so that they could also be dispatched. In the 1860s, this grid was replaced by a single wire through the implementation of spinning disks and “perfect synchronism between transmitter and receiver,” Tesla’s synchronous AC motor helping augment the procedure in the late 1880s and early 1890s.6