by Marc Seifer
Hammond Senior, who had just lost his bid for the vice-presidential slot, made the arrangements. Jack met the fifty-three-year-old inventor at his Metropolitan Towers office in New York the week of September 26, and it is most likely that Tesla reciprocated by visiting Gloucester shortly thereafter. Hammond requested that Tesla send his patent information on wireless control of machinery, and Tesla did so before the end of the month.21
Moonlighting at the patent office in Washington D.C., Jack had already rigged, by this time, a forty-foot vessel to be maneuvered by means of wireless. His broadcasting system, in part based on a Marconi design, also utilized Tesla oscillators and contained “two 360-foot radio control towers near the laboratory overlooking Freshwater Cove…With these devices, a man standing at a shore lookout station could steer an empty boat in the water.”22 Jack also asked Tesla to speak at his Yale graduation.23
This period in Tesla’s life was marked by extreme bitterness because Marconi was rewarded for his piracy with the Nobel Prize in December. Tesla informed Jack that the Italian tinkerer had “abandoned the old devices of Hertz and Lodge and substituted mine instead. In this manner the transmission across the Atlantic was effected.”24 Jack, however, held no ill will toward Marconi and included him prominently in the four-volume compendium he was writing on the history of wireless communication. He also invited Marconi to the Gloucester compound and formed a friendship that would last well into the 1930s.25
Having returned from a European excursion, where he had visited electrical engineers (and psychic researchers) in London, Paris, and St. Petersburg, Jack was able to complete his master’s dissertation:
Mr. Tesla in 1892 showed that the true Hertzian effect was not a means by which it was possible for a sending station to communicate with a receiving station at any great distance. He demonstrated furthermore, that waves propagated at a transmitting station travelled along the ground as a conductor. Today [1912] it is acknowledged that these views are correct. It was, however, left to the splendid enterprise of Marconi to crystallize the results of previous investigators into a complete and practical system of space telegraphy…In 1897 Mr. Marconi transmitted messages to a distance of 8.7 miles. Today Mr. Marconi says that the maximum effective distance of transmission is 6,000 miles.26
Perturbed with Hammond’s decision to highlight Marconi’s dubious achievements and proceed in his field of remote control, Tesla sought compensation. Working with Fritz Lowenstein and Alexander Graham Bell, Jack invented a “mechanical dog” which followed its “master” when a lantern was beamed at it. Created in the shape of a milk carton on wheels, the “critter” made use of selenium cells for “eyes” to receive the glimmering command signal. Hammond assured Tesla that he was not infringing upon his work in telautomatics, but Tesla remained unconvinced, especially after an article in the newspapers reported that Hammond was in the midst of displaying remote controlled torpedoes to the military.
My dear Mr. Hammond,
Judging from the enclosed, I think that you are playing a wireless possum. Notwithstanding your assurances, I will watch your progress and bring a friendly suit for infringement as soon as I ascertain that you are in funds.27
Jack wrote back to reconfirm that he would give proper credit, but Tesla wanted a contract and a percentage of any profits.
“My dear Mr. Tesla,” the twenty-two-year-old wrote back, “I am very agreeable to share the profits with you, but I shall only on the condition that you share our liabilities also.”28
“As I naturally surmise that your Papa would pay all our liabilities,” Tesla replied, “I am willing to share in these.”29
Aside from the banter, Tesla was hoping that Hammond would succeed in his interface with the military, for now he would have a market for selling his new bladeless engines. Soon a partnership was formed, Hammond Senior footing the bill.
“Go in on this with your brother Harris,” Jack’s father cautioned. “He is older than you and more experienced. And be careful with Mr. Tesla. He tends to spend gold as if it were copper.”
Having studied Tesla’s method of selective tuning, Jack came to call it the “1903 prophetic genius patent.”30 Tesla had created this invention due to a recurrent problem which he had noticed in 1894-95, namely, that he had been having difficulty illuminating particular bulbs in his laboratory without illuminating others. After studying the work of Herbert Spencer on the combined action of two or more nerves in the human body, the inventor came upon a plan whereby bulbs would illuminate only when a combination of more than one frequency was transmitted. Jack noted that “Mr. Tesla resembles his system to a combination lock.”31 Explaining the particulars to the initiate, Tesla showed that devices could be made to respond not only to one frequency but to two, three, or even more. This combined arrangement, analogous to today’s TV and telephone scramblers, would not only ensure privacy, it would also allow for a system with a virtually unlimited number of separate channels.32
The corresponding patent, along with Tesla’s method of utilizing resonant earth frequencies for transmission, that is, Tesla currents, became the backbone for a plethora of inventions ranging from military guidance systems to radio and telecommunications. The further development and refinement of this foundation would also eventually make Jack and a few other inventors millionaires, for example, Edwin H. Armstrong.
In 1911, writing from the patent office, where Jack was still employed, the willing prodigy informed Tesla that he had contacted the War Department with the hope of selling ship-to-shore communication systems capable of transmitting twenty words per minute. Jack had also begun the construction of a military-linked think tank at Gloucester, where he hired such competent engineers as Fritz Lowenstein and Benjamin Franklin Meissner. Born in 1890, Meissner, who would come to author a textbook on radiodynamics with some help from Tesla,33 became chief assistant at the lab. Having worked for the U.S. Navy in 1908, Meissner had aided in the development of the electric dog and superheterodyne. He is also credited with inventing the “cat whisker” which was a detector on the crystal radio set.” Jack was also conferring with Reginald Fessenden, Lee de Forest, John S. Stone, and Guglielmo Marconi.
Washington, DC
February 16, 1911
Dear Mr. Tesla,
Let us create an unpretentious company and call it the Tesla-Hammond Wireless Development Company. In thinking of this name, I have followed Emersonian advice, and as you see, have attached my chariot to a star…
The purpose of this company would be to perfect an automatic selective system, to perfect the [submersible] torpedo, and eventually to carry out your magnificent projects that will wirelessly electrify the world.
I am most sincerely yours,
John Hays Hammond Jr.35
202 Metropolitan Towers
February 18, 1911
New York City
Dear Mr. Hammond:
The Tesla-Hammond combination looks good to me, but we should have to go at it with some circumspection. I have already interested a gentleman who signs himself J.P.M. in a part of my wireless inventions and my friend Astor is now waiting for the completion of my plant to go into the wireless power transmission business which should be a colossal success.
In the art of Telautomatics, however, I am perfectly free and would be glad to go into any fair proposition to exploit the field. I think that in a few years this departure will command the attention of the world.
I have just completed my turbines and am starting Monday to install them at the Edison plant where I expect to show them to you in operation on your next visit to the city.
With kind regards,
N. Tesla36
Writing on his classy Wardenclyffe letterhead, with the magnifying transmitter posing at the top of the page, the inventor pens, in the estimation of this author, a most exasperating dispatch. The tiff that Tesla had with Morgan had been held in secret. Only a handful of people even knew the details of their contract. Even Tesla’s closest friends and lat
ter-day biographers were kept in the dark. However, on another level, it had become obvious by 1911 to all but Tesla that Wardenclyffe was a ship with a lead hull.
Still intoxicated with the world-telegraphy idea, filled with hope that his new bladeless turbines would cause a revolution, the perennial iconoclast embarked foolhardly, albeit courageously, on the best-case scenerio: that he would raise enough capital with new inventions to finally return to Long Island to complete the tower.
Perhaps it was still possible at this juncture of his life if his motor, for instance, replaced the gasoline engine in the automobile or the prop engine in the airplane. However, what was not possible was the intimation in the letter that Morgan was still “interested.” This was a blatant display of disinformation which the pompous Waldorf dandy conceitedly proclaimed in order to hide the very fact, maybe even to himself, that his optimism was possibly delusion.
Here was a chance to develop a concrete wireless system with the backing of the wealthy and powerful Hammond lineage, but Tesla turned the opportunity away because of arrogant, tunnel-minded, and narcissistic proclivities—and possibly because of contractual limitations imposed by the Morgan contract. Had he developed the wireless scheme with Jack, he may have had to legally compensate Morgan with 51 percent of any developments he achieved. Hammond hadn’t figured that the star he had hitched himself to was a half-baked comet.
THE APOSTLE OF FIGMENTS
In May 1911, T. C. Martin invited Tesla to address thirteen hundred members of the National Electric Light Association, which was holding its annual symposium at the Engineering Society Building on Thirty-ninth Street.
“There is no enjoyment that I could picture in my mind so exquisite as the triumph which follows an original invention or discovery,” the inculcation began. “But the world is not always ready to accept the dictum of the inventor, and doubters are plentiful, so that discoverers have often to swallow bitter pills, along with their pleasure.”
But what magniloquent pills would this mad scientist force his congregation to ingest! Tesla proceeded to dazzle the audience with slides of his AC polyphase system, telautomaton, and world wireless experiments, flashing pictures from Colorado with streamers extending sixty-five feet.
In discussing his method of individuation, he stated that the broadcasting of combination and multiple frequencies was benefited in a system that did not use wires. “All the statements that you read in the newspapers that wireless messages are interfered with,” the inventor explained, “are because the workers in that field are laboring under delusions—they are transmitting messages by Hertz waves, and in this way no secrecy is possible.”
Having skyrocketed his vision to a world which was not of this earth, the wizard stepped into the shoes of Prometheus. “Now, the discovery [of standing waves that] I have made upset all that has gone before, for there was a means of projecting energy into space, absolutely without loss from any point of the globe to another, to the antipodes, if desired. In fact, a force impressed at one point could be made to increase with distance…You can imagine how profoundly I was affected by this revelation. Technically, it meant that the earth, as a whole, had a certain period of vibration.”37
Set against a sky of thunderclouds, the Wardenclyffe citadel was flashed on the screen, its mushroom-shaped vertex looming.
“I have annihilated distance in my scheme,” deus roared, “and when perfected, it will not be one mite different than my present plans call for. The air will be my medium, and I will be able to transmit energy of any amount to any place. I will be able to issue messages to all parts of the world and send [forth] words which will come out of the ground in the Sahara Desert with such force that they can be heard for fifteen miles around.”38
“It would be possible by my powerful wireless transmitter, to light the entire United States. The current would pass into the air and, spreading in all directions, produce the effect of a strong aurora borealis. It would be a soft light, but sufficient to distinguish objects.”39 Naturally, the tower would also be powerful enough to send signals to nearby planets, especially if there were any Martians out there to receive them.
And this was just the introduction to the topic he came to divulge that night: the Tesla bladeless turbine.
Tesla began to work on his new engines in earnest, shuffling between Providence and Bridgeport, with most of his operations now shifted to the New York Edison Waterside Station. He also looked for prospective clients. One of his plans was to sell, probably through Jacob Schiff, five hundred engines to the Japanese. “By applying my turbine to their torpedo,” Tesla wrote Jack’s brother Harris, “I can double the power. We should negotiate royalties on the basis of horsepower.”40 Tesla also conferred with GE and the exuberant Seiberling Company, leaders in the development of high-speed power boats.41
Promising “great success,” the vulcan worked overtime, forging his revolutionary equipment, as Jack continued perfecting a prototype remoteoperated boat and a wireless broadcasting station. With a range of two thousand miles, the Hammond transmitter became “the most important private sending station in the world.” Jack also studied telephotography, and he worked on perfecting his electric dog. “And, if you reverse the motor by pushing over the tail switch,” Jack announced to the press, “you can make the dog back away most surprisingly in either direction when you advance upon him with the light.”42
Expanding his market, Tesla designed prototypes that could transmutate the gasoline engine in the automobile; he began to make overtures to Ford Motor Company and also Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, who was planning on putting them in tanks. As with any new creation, there were problems. For instance, because the ball bearings were wearing down too quickly, the disks were not maintaining their spins at optimum accelerations. As a “sun dodger,” Tesla also had a penchant for working throughout the night, and therefore his labor costs were often double. Naturally, there were other expenditures.
Jack suggested more publicity and sent over the well-known journalist Waldemar Kaempffert to interview, in Kaempffert’s words, the “temperamental genius” for Scientific American.43 But in Tesla’s estimation he had enough publicity. He needed more capital.
Throughout the latter part of 1912 and through the first months of the new year, Tesla sent urgent pleas to his partner. He had expended $18,000, had worked without salary for all this time, and required $10,000 back immediately.
Dear Mr. Hammond,
…in desperate need of money. I am unable to hold out any longer.44
But Hammond, who was helping Lowenstein install his wireless equipment aboard navy ships and competing against De Forest for a $50,000 amplifier deal with AT&T, ignored the request, his brother Harris taking a full quarter of a year to respond:
June 10, 1913
Dear Mr. Tesla,
As you know, we have advanced a great many thousands of dollars in the development of this turbine and have expected each week the past year to be in a position to have tested it…[Now] we find that the turbine is only partially set up at the Edison plant…[We are missing] a splendid opportunity of having it thoroughly and honestly tested by people who would be the greatest benefit to us should these tests be successful.
Sincerely yours,
Harris Hammond
The High Priest of Telautomatics was incapable of believing that the son of one of the richest men in the world was scorning his entreaty. “Since my notice, I have done the best I could to save what was possible, the sacrifices which I have been compelled to make and the losses which I have suffered are such that if I were dealing with a man less attractive to me than yourself, I would disdain to answer.” Tesla also enclosed glowing testaments to the turbine from professors and chief engineers, but the partnership was over.45 Hammond would not come through.
THE CASTLE THAT JACK BUILT
Jack Hammond traveled to Europe only months before World War I to confer with various scientists in order to perfect a better receiving instrument than the Marc
oni coherer. It appears that Tesla and Hammond were working at cross purposes. As would become obvious, the $10,000 Tesla requested would not have been sufficient to complete his work on the turbines. He probably needed forty or fifty times that figure, and Jack’s main interest lay in the perfection of wireless transmitting and receiving apparatus. The torpedo propellants were really secondary.
In retrospect, it seems that Tesla might have been better off abandoning the turbine for the time being and working with Jack to perfect the guidance system; but he was too close to a potential major success to sink more time into an invention he had already perfected fifteen years earlier. Jack would go on in 1913 and 1914 to demonstrate his remote-controlled boat before the U.S. military elite. General Weaver, chief of the U.S. Coast Artillery, and a small entourage traveled up to Gloucester to witness the Natalia, the prodigal son’s newest success, the general even taking the controls himself. “Again and again the flashing craft shot forth and manoeuvered [sic] about the harbor under invisible control, while natives of Gloucester gasped in amazement…They saw her headed for a definite mark a mile away, two miles, three miles away, and strike it with precision every time.”46
A few weeks later, Hammond Junior demonstrated the long-range capabilities of the vessel. It could operate while twenty miles away from the Gloucester radio transmitter and in one way or another was directed the full distance of sixty miles to the naval base at Newport by means of wireless. Jack had also perfected the problem of static interference and selective tuning. In December he wrote:
My dear father,
We are now drawing up as systematically as possible the whole proposition to the present to the Board of Ordinance. This work means a good deal in the future financial success of the proposition.
