Wizard

by Marc Seifer

  Faithfully yours,

  Katharine Johnson16

  In January, Tesla had published a full-page photograph of his hand for Electrical Review in his attempts to dramatically display the improvements he had made in the efficiency of his vacuum lamps.17 Every line on the palm was visible, so effective was the illuminant (although, as Katharine points out, the shape is marred by an underlying shadow). The famous palmist Cheiro was the rage of the day, having published analyses of the hands of such celebrities as Tom Edison, Sarah Bernhardt, and Theosophist Annie Besant. Mark Twain commented: “Cheiro has exposed my character to me with humiliating accuracy. I ought not to confess this accuracy, still I am moved to do it.”18

  It seems likely that Tesla’s clever vanity had come upon a way to exploit his fluorescent tubes and at the same time reveal in a veiled way the magnanimity of his being by exposing his hand to the world. Referring to a professional palmist, Tesla’s hand supposedly reveals “a flirtatious streak and hypersensitivity” seen in the Girdle of Venus; from the head line “incessant worries stemming from the past,” a close association with his mother (because it is tied to the heart line), “an irrational streak and blind spot in his thinking” (due to chaining, an undulating course, and foreshortening of the line); and all of this is counterbalanced by a “remarkable fate line, which, rising like a firm oak tree, reveals stability, vision, creative aspiration, stubbornness and an ability to withstand great stress and turmoil…The fate line is the strongest line in the hand.”19

  During these months playful banter peaked between the inventor and the elusive Madame Filipov; it seems she tried to get Tesla married. In February, Katharine wrote, “Another charming lady is to be here who does not believe that you are my friend, that I even know you. I wish to convince her that you are on my list and you shall sit beside her. Come and shed the radiance of your happy countenance upon us all especially the Johnsons.”20

  In March she demands that Tesla join them for luncb to “bring solace to your friends” and a few days later invites him over again. “A very charming girl is to be here who wants very much to meet Mr. Tesla. A real one, I assure you.”21 Tesla decides to have everyone for dinner first and writes, “I shall send my private equipage…to dine…at the Waldorf and I am getting up the appetite for the occasion.”22

  Tesla’s celibacy has always been a question mark. It seems probable that he and Katharine had engaged in a “sticky” liaison a few years earlier, but at this stage, due in part to Katharine’s arrangements, Tesla had become active with other women, and Katharine had enjoyed his pleasures vicariously. Three ladies who interested him were Mrs. Winslow, Miss Amatia Kussner, and Miss Marguerite Merrington. The first, alas, was married; to the second, Tesla wanted to display his inventions at his laboratory; “There is another reason why she should come but that is difficult to say…Well I do not want to say anything disparaging of a lady.”23

  For yet another “Johnson blowout” Tesla wrote, concerning the third lady, “I’d sooner be glad to rely on your choice and only remember to suggest Miss Merrington—if she would come. I know I would be her victim—before dinner, but after that I think I could hold my own for she does not drink claret.”24 And a few months later:

  March 9, 1899

  My dear Mrs. Johnson,

  I shall be glad to have any of your friends come but we must have one lady for each gentleman—else you must dine without me…Agnes must come by all means and—wouldn’t you invite Miss Merrington? She is such a wonderfully clever woman. I would say wise had she but married. Really, I would like to have her with us.

  Sincerely,

  Nicholas I of Houston St.25

  Born in England, Marguerite Merrington was raised in a convent in Buffalo before she studied the piano and became a teacher at her alma mater, Normal College. Resigning to move to New York City to follow her passion of “dramatic author,” Miss Merrington first made headlines in 1891 with her well-received romantic play Letterblair. This success was followed two years later when she won a $500 prize from the National Conservatory of Music for her libretto Daphne, which was reviewed by, among others, Antonin Dvořák. “Tall, graceful and charming,” the regal Miss Merrington was a “frequent dinner guest at the Johnson home.” An integral part of the Gramercy Park set, Miss Merrington accompanied the young Owen Johnson to Mark Twain’s birthday party in 1905 and maintained her creative spark throughout her life, writing a book on General Custer and his wife in 1950, the year before she died, unmarried, at the age of ninety-one.26

  In August 1898, John Jacob Astor returned from the battlegrounds, but it was not until December that Tesla met with Astor at his home. While Jack was considered by many to be “cold-hearted, humorless, weak-minded and almost completely absent of personality,”27 his wife, Ava, was seen as the most beautiful woman in America. Tesla was particularly taken by Lady Astor’s loveliness, and it seems that she was enthralled by the inventor’s experiments. The three dined together on occasion at Delmonico’s or the Waldorf, and when Tesla arrived at the Astor residence, he often brought along a bouquet of flowers. But although “Ava…sparkle[d] at every lighted candle and Jack…followed her about like a bedraggled and slightly bad tempered spaniel,” all was not well with the marriage; where Astor was able to leave his exquisite wife for months on end, touring the high seas for adventure and the noble cause, she retreated by entertaining a zealous interest in bridge.28

  Thus, even though Ava was on his side, the inventor was uncertain of his standing. “My dear Astor,” Tesla began, “I would like to explain why I could not go down to Cuba with you.”

  “I understand,” Astor replied. “During the gunfire, perhaps that is when it dawned on me, I realized that your life was too precious to risk on such a trip. I see, however, from recent reports that you have been attacked after all, but it has been by reporters instead.”

  “I’m glad,” Tesla quipped, “that I am living in a place in which, though they can roast me in the papers, they cannot burn me at the stake.”29

  Tesla thereupon called a meeting with Astor and two of his cronies, Mr. Clarence McKay and Mr. Darius Ogden Mills, so that he could display his continuing progress with his oscillators and fluorescent lights as well as show them patent applications, articles which had appeared in the technical journals, and reports on tests performed by the Royal Society in London and the Roentgen Society in Germany. “Let me read you the following dispatch from Sir William Crookes,” Tesla said. “Congratulations. The performance of your machine is marvelous.” And Tesla presented another report, which hailed his oscillator as “one of the most significant of the age.”

  “You will see how many enterprises can be built up on that novel principle, Colonel. It is for a reason that I am often and violently attacked, because my inventions threaten a number of established industries. My telautomaton, for instance, opens up a new art which will sooner or later render large guns entirely useless, and will make impossible the building of large battleships, and will, as I have stated in my patent long before the Czar’s manifesto, compel the nations to come to an understanding for the maintenance of peace.”30

  “You are taking too many leaps for me,” Astor said, causing the others to reconsider as well. “Let us stick to oscillators and cold lights. Let me see some success in the marketplace with these two enterprises, before you go off saving the world with an invention of an entirely different order, and then I will commit more than my good wishes. Stop in again when you have a sound proposal or call me on the telephone.”

  Tesla waited until the new year and then hit the colonel with a direct assault. “My dear Astor,” Tesla said, “It has always been my firm belief that you take a genuine, friendly interest in myself personally as well as in my labors…Now I ask you frankly, when I have a friend like J.J.A., a prince among wealthy men, a patriot ready to risk his life for his country, a man who means every word he says—who puts such a value on my labors and who offers repeatedly to back me up—have I not a fou
ndation for believing that he would stand by me when, after several years of hard work I have finally brought to commercial perfection some important inventions which, even at the most conservative estimate, must be valued at several million dollars.”

  Informing Astor that George Westinghouse had given him $500,000 for the AC polyphase system and that Edward Dean Adams had invested $100,000 to become a partner in his later endeavors when he had “14 [new] U.S. and as many foreign patents,” Tesla remarked that there was a “powerful clique” which still now opposed him. “And it is chiefly for this reason that I want a few friends, like yourself, to give me at this moment their valuable financial and moral support.”

  Having “placed faith” in Astor’s words, Tesla reveals that he had sold off securities to buy back control of his company, although “Mr. Adams still has a minority interest.” Having stated that his laboratory in the past has “paid $1500 for every $100 invested, on the average,” the inventor proclaims, “I am fully confident that the property which I have now in my hands will pay much better than this.”

  “I now produce a light superior by far to that of the incandescent lamp with one third of the expenditure of energy, and as my lamps will last forever, the cost of maintenance will be minute. The cost of copper, which in the old system, is a most important item, is in mine reduced to a mere trifle, for I can run on a wire sufficient for one incandescent lamp more than 1000 of my own lamps, giving fully 5000 times as much light. Let me ask you, Colonel, how much is this alone worth when you consider that there are hundreds of millions of dollars invested to-day in electric light in the various chief countries in which I have patented my inventions in this field?

  “Sooner or later,” Tesla continues, “my system will be purchased either by the Whitney Syndicate, G.E. or Westinghouse, for otherwise they will be driven out of the market.”

  The inventor closed: “Then consider my oscillators and my system of transmitting power without wires, my method of directing the movement of bodies at a distance by wireless telegraphy, the manufactures of fertilizers and nitric acid from the air, the production of ozone…and many other important lines of manufacture as, for instance, cheap refrigeration and cheap manufacture of liquid air, etc.—and you will see that, putting a fair estimate on all, I cannot offer to sell any considerable amount of my property for less than $1000 a share. I am perfectly sure that I will be able to command that price as soon as some of my inventions are on the market.”

  Telling Astor that he had contracts pending with “the Creusot Works in France, the Helios Company in Germany, Ganz and Company in Austria and other firms,” Tesla requested an investment of $100,000. “If you do not take that much interest you will put me at a great disadvantage.” Should Astor come in, other Astor associates, such as Mr. McKay and Darius Ogden Mills, “would do the same.” If, Tesla wrote, “after six months you should have any reason to be dissatisfied, it will be my first duty to satisfy you.”31

  Astor stressed interest in seeing Tesla exploit his fluorescent lights, and the inventor agreed. On January 10, 1899, papers were signed whereby Astor gave Tesla $100,000 for five hundred shares of the Tesla Electric Company; in return, Astor was elected director of the board.32 At the same time, Tesla moved into the Waldorf-Astoria. Tesla also received $10,000 from the dry-goods manufacturer Simpson and Crawford,33 and he may also have received funds from Mr. Mills or Mr. McKay. The old Tesla Company, with William Rankine and Edward D. Adams, was, for all intents and purposes, dissolved, along with his relationship with Alfred Brown and Charles Peck, although all of these individuals may have in one way or another been involved in the new enterprise.

  The first letter on Waldorf stationery written to the Johnsons is dated November 3, 1898. It is one of the rare letters in which Tesla refers to Mrs. Johnson as “My dear Kate.” Tesla was about to hook a big fish, perhaps the wealthiest fish on the planet, and his sense of self-importance escalated accordingly. In haughty fanfare, the Serbian aristocrat separated his exalted ilk from “other social tribolites…plebians, drummers, grocerymen, [and] Jews.”34 Anti-Semitic references are rare in the Tesla correspondence, but no doubt he was anti-Semitic, at least in the social sense, that is, as a common reflection of the times. Anti-Semitism against ethnic ghetto dwellers, such as those newly arrived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and New York’s Lower East Side, was common among the upper classes, even though the Rothschilds, August Belmont, Jacob Schiff, and Bernard Baruch were well respected and known to be Jewish. It is, however, clear evidence of one of Tesla’s prejudices. The letter also refers to Tesla’s wish to meet Lieutenant Hobson, whose Cuban exploits had been featured in the Century. “The interest in [Hobson] was at a fever heat [at our offices],” Johnson recalled, “[and] the estimates of the sale of his [proposed] book ran into the hundred thousands.” Unfortunately, shortly after his account appeared, a scandalous event occurred which was egged on by the “sensational press,” and the idea for the book “fell flat.”35 The incident had to do with Hobson’s handsome appearance and the inability of women to refrain from kissing him when he came into their midst.

  “I would have cut off my right arm rather than to offend one of [those ladies],” Hobson declared, concluding, “The kissing episodes, what little there was to them, were entirely beyond my control, and my conscience is clear.”36

  The dashing lieutenant was well liked by Tesla and the Johnsons, and his entrée into their circle added a wonderful spark to their lives. He would join a group that included at this time the Gilders, Miss Kussner, Miss Merrington, Mrs. Winslow, Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. Dodge, Rudyard Kipling, and John Muir. Playful jealousies became evident as Tesla and the Johnsons vied for the war hero’s attention, Tesla daring even to tender to Hobson one lady with whom the inventor may have had intimate relations.

  “Remember, Luka,” Tesla teased, “Hobson does not belong to the Johnsons exclusively. I shall avenge myself on Mme. Filipov by introducing him to Mme. Kussner and somebody will be forgotten.”37

  Tesla spent many “delightful” hours with Hobson, inviting him to the laboratory, to dinner, and out on the town. “He is a fine fellow,” the inventor concluded.38 Their friendship would last.

  Hobson, twenty-eight, a southerner, was a striking presence in his uniform, with deep-set, penetrating eyes, hair swept back, a firm, prominent chin, and a handlebar mustache. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in 1889, he had spent three years in Paris studying at a maritime college and had worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  Gifted with a keen mind, Hobson had worked for the secretary of the navy during the China-Japan war. His family, on both sides, included lawyers, judges, a governor, and a general.39 He was a ready-made hero, and he was a social catch of the first order.

  All the pieces of Tesla’s puzzle were now in place. He had obtained fundamental patents on wireless communication and remote control, he had calculated the type of energy he needed in order to disturb the electical conditions of the planet, he had obtained a sizable sum of working capital from one of the wealthiest men in the world, he had begun serious negotiations with the U.S. Navy, and, as a social triumph, he had moved into the Waldorf-Astoria. The budding entrepreneur settled upon a plan for marketing his oscillators and cold lamps—well, they could wait for now—and then Tesla took the next bold step. He would test his wireless theories on a grand scale.

  The laboratory at Houston Street was simply too small and vulnerable to fires and potential spies. With few people aware, Tesla had scouted the country to seek out potential sites for his new “Experimental Station.” George Scherff, his capable secretary, tried to get Tesla to reconsider, to stay in New York and do something tangible, something that would pay an immediate return, but he was talking to a deaf ear. Destiny was urging Tesla westward.

  25

  COLORADO SPRINGS (1899)

  Nikola Tesla, the Servian scientist, whose electrical discoveries are not of one nation, but the pride of the world, has taken up his abode in Colorado Spring
s…On East Pike’s Peak avenue, with limitless plains stretching to the eastward, and a panorama of mighty mountains sweeping away north and south, to the west—Tesla has caused to be constructed a [wireless] station for scientific research.

  DESIRE STANTON, COLORADO SPRINGS, 18991

  Having been invited to Colorado Springs to build his laboratory by Westinghouse patent attorney Leonard E. Curtis, a longtime adviser and friend through the difficult years of the “battle of the currents,” Tesla shipped his equipment in early spring, 1899. Before he left New York and as the coup de grâce to his relationship with T. C. Martin, Tesla met with competing editor Charles W. Price of Electrical Review and professional photographer Dickenson Alley to choreograph a spectacular piece on the wizard’s laboratory. Complete with a rich description of his experiments and a sensational series of photographs, the article ran in the March 29, 1899, issue. Starting with a full-length portrait of the inventor grasping a basketball-sized wireless vacuum lamp glowing resplendently, the essay went on to describe the evolution of other inventions, such as his high-tension transformer, which resulted in Tesla’s flat, spiral transmitting coil. This eight-foot transmitter, “easily recognizable by its spider web appearance” was the first which efficiently enabled the inventor to generate two individualized vibrations, or tuned circuits, simultaneously and also produce many millions of volts.2 Other prints depicted the flamboyant engineer transmitting high currents through his body to illuminate a variety of vacuum tubes, such as one which he whipped around his head in a multiple exposure. With one hand seeming to pluck a refulgent rod out of the midst of a spiral galaxy of blurred light and the other grasping a sparking, circular high-tension coil, “the operator’s body…[was] charged to a [great] potential.”3