by Marc Seifer
19. Leland Anderson, ed., “John Stone Stone on Nikola Tesla’s Priority in Radio and Continuous-Wave Radiofrequency Apparatus,” The Antique Wireless Review, vol. 1, 1986.
20. E. F. Sweet and FDR correspondence re: Tesla, September 14, 1916; September 16, 1916; September 26, 1916 [NAR].
21. Leland Anderson, “Priority in the Invention of the Radio: Tesla vs. Marconi,” The Tesla Journal, vol. 2/3, 1982/83, pp. 17-20.
22. Lawrence Lessing, Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong (New York: Lippincott, 1956), pp. 42-43.
23. Ibid., pp. 66-80.
24. [KSP].
25. Lloyd Scott, Naval Consulting Board of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920).
26. Johnson, George Sylvester Viereck, pp. 23, 34.
27. “Germany to Sink the Armenian. Navy May Seize Sayville Wireless,” New York Times, July 1, 1915, 1:4-7.
28. NT to JPM Jr., July 1915 [LC].
29. “JP Morgan Shot by Man Who Set the Capitol Bomb,” New York Times, July 3, 1915.
30. “Wireless Controls German Air Torpedo,” New York Times, July 10, 1915, 3:6, 7.
31. NT, “Science and Discovery Are the Great Forces Which Will Lead to the Consummation of the War,” New York Sun, December 20, 1914, in Lectures, Patents, Articles, pp. A-162-171.
32. “Federal Agents Raid Offices Once Occupied by Telefunken. Former Employee Richard Pfund Charged; No Arrests Made,” New York Times, March 5, 1918, 4:4.
33. NT to GS, December 25, 1917 [LC].
34. Royalty check to NT for $1,567 from Hochfrequenz Maschienen Aktievgesell Schaft for drachlose Telegraphic, 1917 [Swezey Col.]. Tuckertown was still owned by the Germans, although seized by the U.S. Navy, and Tuckertown, with full knowledge of the “Director of Naval Communications,” had agreed to pay Tesla royalties, see NT to GS, October 12, 1917 [LC].
35. Lloyd Scott, Naval Consulting Board of the U.S. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1920).
36. Interview with A. Puharich, 1984. According to Puharich, the Hammond/Tesla documents were removed from the Hammond Museum in Gloucester, Mass., after Hammond’s death, and classified as top secret sometime in 1965.This author has read through many of these documents from the National Archives through the FOIA.
Chapter 41: The Invisible Audience, pp. 378-394
1. RUJ to NT, March 1916 [LC].
2. NT to JPM Jr. [JPM].
3. Hunt and Draper, 1964/77, pp. 170-71.
4. For literature: Romain Rolland, Hendrik Pontoppidan, Troeln Lund, and Verner von Heidenstam were announced; Theodor Svedberg was named for chemistry. Rolland was the only winner that year out of that group, with the others, except for Lund, eventually also winning.
5. Nobel nominations for 1915 and 1937 [Archives, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]; L. Anderson corresp., 1991.
6. The date of 1912 in the O’Neill book, and often echoed in various magazine articles, was probably a typographical error in the biography. O’Neill, 1944, p. 229.
7. NT to Light House Board, September 27, 1899 [NAR].
8. NT to RUJ, November 10, 1915 [BLCU].
9. Hunt and Draper, 1964/77, p. 167.
10. RUJ to NT, March 1916 [LC].
11. Probably Karl Braun who shared the 1909 Prize with Marconi; NT, On His Work in A.C., p. 48.
12. “Tesla No Money; Wizard Swamped by Debts,” New York World, March 16, 1916.
13. NT’s Fountain,” Scientific American, 1915.
14. “Can’t Pay Taxes,” New York Tribune, March 18, 1916; “Wardenclyffe Property Foreclosure Proceedings,” NY Supreme Court, circa 1923 [L. Anderson files].
15. Abraham and Savin, 1971.
16. NT to GS, April 25, 1916 [LC].
17. NT, My Inventions, p. 103.
18. Leland Anderson, “Tesla Portrait by the Princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy,” The Tesla Journal, nos. 4/5, 1986/87, pp. 72-73.
19. Trbojevitch immigrated circa 1912. Interviews with William Terbo, 1984-1991.
20. John O’Neill to NT, February 23, 1916 (greatly condensed) [NTM].
21. NT to J. O’Neill, February 26, 1916 [NTM].
22. B. A. Behrend, “Edison Medal Award Speech, 1917,” in Tesla Said, p. 180.
23. NT to Waldorf-Astoria mgt., July 12, 1917 [LA].
24. Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the AIEE, May 18, 1917, in Tesla Said.
25. O’Neill, 1944.
26. Minutes of the AIEE, May 18, 1917, in Tesla Said, pp. 189.
27. Lester S. Holmes was represented for the hotel as owner of said Tesla property. Baldwin and Hutchins to NT, July 13, 1917, from: Wardenclyffe Property Foreclosure Proceedings, New York Supreme Court, circa 1923 [LA].
28. Quoted in J. B. Smiley to Frank Hutchins, July 16, 1917 [LA].
29. John B. Smiley to Frank Hutchins, July 13, 1917 [LA].
30. NT to Waldorf-Astoria, July 12, 1917 [LA].
31. “Tesla’s New Device Like Bolts of Thor,” New York Times, December 8, 1915, 8:3.
32. NT to JPM Jr., April 8, 1916 [LA].
33. “Reason for Seizing Wireless,” New York Times, February 9, 1917, 6:5.
34. “Spies on Ship Movements,” New York Times, February 17, 1917, 8:2.
35. “19 More taken as German spies,” New York Times, April 8, 1917, 1:3.
36. “Navy to Take Over All Radio Stations,” Enumeration, April 7, 1917, 2:2.
37. F. J. Higginson to NT, May 11, 1899 [NAR].
38. F. Higgenson to NT, August 8, 1900 [NAR]. For the full correspondence of this event, see chapter 26; R. P. Hobson to NT, May 6, 1902 [LA].
39. L. S. Howeth, History of Communications-Electronics in U.S. Navy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), pp. 518-19; A. Hezlet, Electronics & Sea Power (New York: Stein & Day, 1975), p. 41.
40. Howeth, History of Communications, p. 64.
41. Hezlet, Electronics & Sea Power, pp. 41-42.
42. Robert Sobel, p. 43; Hezlet, p. 77.
43. Howeth, p. 256.
44. Ibid., pp. 375-76; Scherff to NT [LC]. U.S. Navy to Tuckerton Counsel, April 29, 1919 [NA].
45. Howeth, pp. 577-80.
46. NT, “Electric Drive for Battleships,” New York Herald, February 25, 1917; in Lectures, Patents, Articles, p. A-185.
47. Patent no. 1,119,732, Apparatus for transmitting electrical energy, was applied for on January 16, 1902.The application was renewed on May 4, 1907 and granted on December 1, 1914. This patent, in essence, contains all of Tesla’s key ideas behind the construction of Wardenclyffe.
48. KJ to Mrs. Hearst, circa 1917 [BLCU].
49. NT to GS, July 26, 1917 [LC].
50. GS to NT, August 20, 1917 [LC].
51. Howeth, p. 354.
52. The breakdown was as follows: GE 30%, Westinghouse 20%, AT&T 10%, United Fruit 4%, others 34%. Sobel, 1986, pp. 32-35.
53. Tesla would also be cut out of a secret agreement between GE and Westinghouse to hold back production of efficient fluorescent lighting equipment, as they did not want to undermine the highly profitable sale of normal Edison lightbulbs or “cut too drastically the demand for current” (S. C. Gilfillan, Invention and the Patent System (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 100.
54. “U.S. Blows Up Tesla Radio Tower,” Electrical Experimenter, September 1917, p. 293.
55. “Destruction of Tesla’s Tower at Shoreham, LI Hints of Spies,” New York Sun, August 5, 1917.
56. Howeth, pp. 359-60.
57. Ibid., p. 361.
58. E. M. Herr to NT, November 16, 1920 [LC].
59. GW Corp. to NT, November 28, 1921 [LC].
60. NT to GW Corp., November 30, 1921 [LC].
Chapter 42: Transmutation, pp. 395-403
1. NT, “Edison Medal Speech,” May 18, 1917, in Tesla Said, 181-82.
2. Hugo Gernsback, “Nikola Tesla and His Inventions,” Electrical Experimenter, January 1919, pp. 614-15; R. Hugo Lowndes, Gernsback: A Man With Vision, Radio Electronics, August
1984, pp. 73-75.
3. Erik Barnouw, A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcast USA (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 28-30.
4. [KSP].
5. H. Gernsback, “NT: The man,” Electrical Experimenter, February 1919, p. 697.
6. H. Winfield Secor, “The Tesla High Frequency Oscillator,” Electrical Experimenter, March 1916, pp. 614-15, 663; NT, “Some Personal Reflections,” Scientific American, June 5, 1915, pp. 537, 576-77.
7. Lester Del Ray, Fantastic Science Fiction Art: 1926-1954 (New York: Ballantine, 1975).
8. NT to JPM Jr., June 13, 1917 [LC].
9. NT to GS, September 25, 1917 [LC].
10. Ibid., December 25, 1917.
11. Ibid.
12. O’Neill, pp. 222-28.
13. NT to GS, December 25, 1917.
14. NT to GS, June 11, 1918 [LC].
15. NT to GS, June 12, 1918 [LC].
16. NT to GS, May 15, 1918; June 22, 1918 [LC].
17. Leland Anderson, Nikola Tesla’s Residences, Laboratories and Offices (Denver, Colo.: 1990).
18. GS to NT, March 29, 1918 [BLCU]; November 4, 1925 [LC].
19. Leland Anderson to M. Seifer, April 28, 1988; see International Science and Tech., November 1963, pp. 44-52, 103.
20. Waltham advertisements, New York Times, June 8, 1921, 36:4, 5.
21. NT to GS, December 6, 1922 [LC].
22. NT to GS, October 18, 1918 and circa 1925 [LC].
23. RUJ to NT, December 30, 1919 [LC].
24. J. Abraham and R. Savin, Elihu Thomson Correspondence (New York: Academic Press, 1971), p. 400.
25. “Radio to Stars, Marconi’s Hope,” New York Times, January 19, 1919.
26. NT, “Interplanetary Communication,” Electrical World, September 24, 1921, p. 620.
27. “Celestial Movies,” February 3, 1919, 14:3.
28. H. Gernsback, “Nikola Tesla: The man,” Electrical Experimenter, February 1919, p. 697.
29. Surmised in part from: “At Night and in Secret NT Lavishes Money and Love on Pigeons,” New York World, November 21, 1926, Metropolitan Sec., p. 1.
30. O’Neill, 1944.
31. Ibid., pp. 224-26.
32. L. Anderson to M. Seifer, July 29, 1991.
33. C. R. Possell to Marc J. Seifer, phone interview and written correspondence, May 29, 1991; June 10, 1991; Extraordinary Science, IV, 2, 1992.
34. Jeffery Hayes, Boundary-Layer Breakthrough (Security, Colo.: High Energy Enterprise, 1990).
35. Interview with L. Anderson, July 29, 1988, Colorado Springs, Colo., as told to him and Inez Hunt. Also see James Caufield, “Radioed Light, Heat and Power Perfected by Tesla,” Harrisburg Telegraph, March 22, 1924, Radio Sec., pp. 1-2: “The war was upon him and the gov’t requested that [Wardenclyffe] come down. After the war Prof. Tesla again started to prove his theory, but this time he chose Colorado Springs as the location of his laboratory. It was while at the ‘Springs’ that he first demonstrated power transmission without the aid of wires.”
Chapter 43: The Roaring Twenties, pp. 404-415
1. Tesla quote as told to John O’Neill and Bill Lawrence, O’Neill, pp. 316-17.
2. D. Wallechensky, November 1928, quoted in C. Cerf and V. Navasky, The Experts Speak (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 259.
3. NT to Hugo Gernsback, November 30, 1921 [KSP].
4. NT. “Views on Thought Transference,” Electrical Experimenter, May 1911, p. 12.
5. Nikola Tesla v. George C. Bold Jr. Suffolk County Supreme Court, April 1921 [LA].
6. KJ to NT, April 24, 1920 [NTM].
7. Introduction compiled mostly from C. Daniel, ed., Chronicle of the 20th Century (Mt. Kisco, N.Y.: Chronicle, 1987); W. Langer, ed., New Illustrated Encyclopedia of World History (New York: Harry Abrams, 1975).
8. RUJ to NT, October 15, 1925 [LC].
9. W. Jolly, pp. 258-60.
10. Nancy Rubin, p. 25.
11. Dragislav Petkovich, “A Visit to Nikola Tesla,” Politika, April 27, 1927, p. 6.
12. Adrian Potter, FBI report on Friends of Soviet Russia, 1921-1923 [FOIA].
13. George Seldes, Witness to a Century (New York: Ballantine, 1987), pp. 181-83.
14. Ronald Kline, “Professionalism and the Corporate Engineer: Charles P. Steinmetz,” IEEE Transactions, August 1980, pp. 144-50.
15. L. Fischer, The Life of Lenin (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 630.
16. There is a famous photo taken on April 3, 1921, during a trans-Atlantic wireless broadcast for RCA, GE, and AT&T. In a number of sources (M. Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981); M. Seifer, “The Inventor and the Corporation: Tesla, Armstrong & Jobs,” 1986 Tesla Symposium Proceedings; R. G. Williams, Introducing Nikola Tesla Through Some of His Achievements (Mokelumne Hill, Calif.: Health Research, 1970) it has been suggested that the man standing between Albert Einstein and Charles Steinmetz was Nikola Tesla. Other people in the photo include Irving Langmuir and David Sarnoff. After reviewing the original caption and conferring with Tesla expert Leland Anderson, it has been ascertained that the man is not Tesla at all, but rather John Carson of AT&T. Coincidentally, this photo has been used by the GE public relations people on numerous occasions with all people but Einstein and Steinmetz airbrushed out. See Life Magazine, 1965 and B. Gorowitz, ed., The Steinmetz Era: 1892-1923: The GE Story (Schenectady, N.Y.: Schenectady Elfun Society, 1977), p. 39.
17. [KSP].
18. “Judgment [of $3,299] Filed Against Tesla by St. Regis,” New York Times, May 25, 1924, 14:1.
19. “At Night and in Secret Nikola Tesla Lavishes Money and Love on Pigeons,” New York World, Metropolitan Sec., November 21, 1926, 1:2-5.
20. M. Cheney, p. 84. Original source, Kenneth Swezey.
21. A. Nenadovic, “100 Years Since the Birth of Nikola Tesla,” Politika, July 8, 1956 [KSP].
22. K. Swezey, “How Tesla Evolved Epoch-Making Discoveries,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 4, 1926, pp. 8-9.
23. A. Nenadovic, July 8, 1956.
24. John B. Kennedy, “When Woman Is Boss,” Collier’s, January 30, 1926, pp. 17, 34.
25. Anne Morgan to NT, April 26, 1928 [NTM].
26. “At Night and in Secret Nikola Tesla Lavishes Money and Love on Pigeons,” New York World, Metropolitan sec., November 21, 1926, p. 1. Other sick birds that he could not care for, Tesla took to animal hospitals.
27. C. Hedetniemi to OAP, January 29, 1943 [FOIA].
28. “Dr. Tesla Picks Tunney,” New York Herald Tribune, September 27, 1927, 2:3.
29. Ginzelda Hull Hobson to K. Swezey, February 14, 1956 [KSP].
30. Petkovich, p. 4.
31. According to L. Anderson, Swezey said that the O’Neill stories of Tesla wiping his plates at the dinner table were untrue, the proof beign the pigeon link. “Meticulous,” Tesla was clearly obsessed with avoiding contaminated water, phobic and fearful of germs, and so it seems likely to this researcher that he did, indeed, clean off his silverware and plates with napkins at eating establishments. Caring for pigeons, even in one’s apartment (probably in a separate room where he kept a lab), is quite different than eating from unclean dishes.
32. NT to JPM Jr., November 21, 1924 [LC].
Chapter 44: Faster Than the Speed of Light, pp. 416-427
1. NT, 1960; translated from German by Edwin Gora.
2. NT to Flowers, 1917-1925 [NTM].
3. John B. Flowers, “Nikola Tesla’s Wireless Power System and Its Application to the Propulsion of Airplanes,” August 8, 1925 [Archives, Toby Grotz, Colorado Springs, Colo].
4. NT, “World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy,” Telegraph & Telephone Age, October 16, 1927, pp. 457-60; in Nikola Tesla, 1981, pp. 83-86.
5. “In a solar eclipse the moon comes between the sun and the earth…At a given moment, the shadow will just touch at a mathematical point, the earth, assuming it to be a sphere…Owing to the enormous radius of the earth, [it] is nearly a plane. [Thus,] that point where the shadow falls will immedia
tely, on the slightest motion of the shadow downward, enlarge the circle at a terrific rate, and it can be shown mathematically that this rate is infinite” (NT, On His Work with AC, pp. 137-39).
6. NT to Mrs. A. Trbojevic, November 20, 1928 [Wm. Terbo archives]; NT to Nikola Trbojevich, September 13, 1928, October 3, 1928; January 28, 1929; May 29, 1929, in Correspondence with Relatives, pp. 128, 135.
7. W. Terbo, Opening remarks, in S. Elswick, ed., Proceedings of the 1988 Tesla Symposium, Colorado Springs, Colo., 1988, pp. 8-11.
8. Myron Taylor, memorandum, September 28, 1931 [Archives, US Steel, USX Corp., Pittsburgh, PA]; Sava Kosanovic, August 30, 1952 [KSP].
9. Derek Ahlers, interview with Peter Savo, September 16, 1967 [Archives, Ralph Bergstresser].
10. “Beam to Kill Army at 200 Miles, Tesla’s Claim on 78th Birthday,” New York Herald Tribune, July 11, 1934, 1:15; in Solutions to Tesla’s Secrets, pp. 100-12.
11. Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life & Times (New York: World Publishing—Times/Mirror, 1971).
12. Fritzof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Colo.: Shambhala, 1975), pp. 64, 208.
13. NT, New York paper on various theories, circa 1936 [KSP].
14. “Tesla Coil Used in Atom Splitting Machines,” N.Y. American, November 3, 1929; O’Neill to NT, August 1, 1935 [NTM].
15. NT, “Tesla ‘Harnesses’ Cosmic Energy,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 2, 1933; in Solutions to Tesla’s Secrets, pp. 104-5.
16. “Tesla at 75,” Time, July 20, 1931, pp. 27-28.
17. [KSP].
18. “Tesla, 79, Promises to Transmit Force,” New York Times, July 11, 1935, 23:8.
19. “Sending Messages to Planets Predicted by Dr. Tesla on Birthday,” New York Times, July 11, 1937, 13:2; in NT, Solutions…, pp. 132-34.
20. Nancy Czito, private corresp., Washington, D.C., 1983.
21. Patent numbers 685,957; 685,958, in NT, Lectures, Patents, Articles, 1956, pp. P-343-51.Robert Millikan coined the term “cosmic rays” in the mid-1920s. Tesla originally referred to the rays as a form of radiant energy. Dr. James Corum suggested that even if the rays did not travel faster than lightspeed, these statements by Tesla must have been based upon some real effect that had occurred (interview, 1992, Colorado Springs).
