Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah

by Nigel Cawthorne

  GE had initially estimated that it would cost $1.8 million to light the fair. When this was rejected, they revised it down to $554,000. Westinghouse came in at $399,000. At that price, Westinghouse had to devise a more economical system. In less than six months, they designed and built bigger generators than had ever been built before. Using AC at high-voltage, they could distribute this throughout the fair on thin wires, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of copper. The fair site would be a blaze of light and consume three times the amount of electricity then being utilized by the whole of the city of Chicago.

  Westinghouse also had come up with a new design for an incandescent lamp to avoid infringing Edison’s patents and manufactured 250,000 of them. Consequently when Westinghouse went to see Tesla when he arrived back in New York, he had not put much thought to promoting his motors or his polyphase system. But realizing the importance of the World’s Fair as a showcase, Tesla went to Pittsburgh, he said, ‘to bring the motor to high perfection’.

  Words Are Not Enough

  The Columbian Exposition covered almost 700 acres (283 Hectares) and attracted some 28 million visitors from all over the world. The centre-piece was a Ferris wheel standing 264 ft (80 m) high that could carry over 2,000 people. It revolved on the largest one-piece axle ever forged. But it was Westinghouse’s illuminations that took the breath away. Former governor of Illinois, Will E. Cameron said:

  Inadequate words have been found to convey a realizing idea of the beauty and grandeur of the spectacle which the Exposition offers by day, they are infinitely less capable of affording the slightest conception of the dazzling spectacle which greets the eye of the visitor at night … Indescribable by language are the electric fountains. One of them, called ‘The Great Geyser’, rises to a height to 150 ft [45 m], above a band of ‘Little Geysers’ … so bewildering no eyes can find the loveliest, their vagaries of motion so entrancing no heart can keep its steady beating.

  Visiting the Electricity Pavilion

  At the Chicago World’s Fair, the Electricity Pavilion rose to 169 ft (52 m) and covered 3.5 acres (1.4 Hectares) – the size of two soccer fields. In it, AEG exhibited the equipment they had used to transmit AC the record-breaking 109 miles (175 km) from Lauffen to Frankfurt in Germany. GE also demonstrated their new AC system. Both were technically infringing Tesla’s patents, but Westinghouse made no objection as it helped demonstrate the superiority of AC. Instead, they erected a 45-ft (14 m) high monument to the ‘Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Tesla Polyphase System’.

  Not to be outshone, GE erected a 82-ft (25 m ) Tower of Light in the centre of the Electricity Pavilion, with 18,000 bulbs around the pedestal, which was topped by a huge Edison light bulb.

  Other stands showed electric body invigorators, charged belts and electricity hairbrushes. It was then thought that electricity could cure all ills. Elihu Thomson exhibited a high-frequency coil that could produce a spark 5 ft (1.5 m) long. Alexander Graham Bell launched a telephone that transmitted sound on a beam of light, while Elisha Gray (1835 – 1901) unveiled a prototype fax machine called the teleautography – for a few cents, you could have your signature reproduced electronically at a distance. Edison himself exhibited his phonograph, the multiplex telegraph and his kinetescope, which produced moving pictures for an individual viewer.

  On the Westinghouse stand, Tesla exhibited AC motors and generators, and had the names of famous electrical pioneers – Franklin, Helmholtz, Faraday, Maxwell and Henry – all spelt out in phosphorescent tubes, along with that of Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj (his old friend, the Serbian poet). Huge flashing neon signs saying Westinghouse and Welcome Electricians were lit by discharges of artificial lightning that made a deafening sound. Among the flashing sparks and the tubes, lit wirelessly, was a large Egg of Columbus spinning furiously.

  The Wizard of Physics

  Tesla visited the World’s Fair in August to put on a week of demonstrations and to attend the International Electrical Congress being held there. Its honorary chairman was Helmholtz, who Tesla showed his personal exhibit. A thousand electrical engineers attended, including most of the leaders in the field. Ten dollars were offered for seats to see Tesla, who was introduced as the ‘Wizard of Physics’. However, entrance was limited to those who could produce the appropriate credentials.

  Tesla demonstrated mechanical oscillators and steam generators that were so small it was said they could fit in the crown of a hat. He produced motors that could run so precisely they could be used as electric clocks and a continuous-wave radio transmitter, the implications of which were lost on most of his distinguished audience. He also exhibited a version of his Egg of Columbus which demonstrated his theory of planetary motion. The Electrical Experimenter said:

  In this experiment one large, and several small brass balls were usually employed. When the field was energized all the balls would be set spinning, the large one remaining in the centre while the small ones revolved around it, like moons about a planet, gradually receding until they reached the outer guard and raced along the same field.

  But the demonstration which most impressed the audiences was the simultaneous operation of numerous balls, pivoted discs and other devices placed in all sorts of positions and at considerable distances from the rotating field. When the currents were turned on and the whole animated with motion, it presented an unforgettable spectacle. Mr Tesla had many vacuum bulbs in which small, light metal discs were pivotally arranged on jewels and these would spin anywhere in the hall when the iron ring was energized.

  The Columbian Exposition had proved to its 28 million visitors that AC was safe. From then on, over 80 per cent of all electrical devices bought in the US worked on alternating current.

  Tesla’s Famous Friends

  As a result, Tesla was proclaimed ‘Our Foremost Electrician’ and hailed as the ‘New Edison’. But Tesla’s health was failing again, due to overwork. Tesla’s friend, Thomas Commerford Martin introduced him to socialites Robert and Katherine Underwood Johnson who took him under their wing. Tesla began calling them ‘the Filipovs’ after a Serbian poem, Luka Filipov, he had translated for them. Robert Johnson was associate editor of the prestigious Century magazine that ran a new profile of Tesla.

  His regular dinners with the Johnsons, particularly those at Thanksgiving and Christmas, became the closest thing he knew to home life. He would arrive in a hansom cab, which would have to wait outside for hours to take him back to his hotel which was only a few blocks away. The Johnsons were the only people with whom he was on first-name terms, except for the railroad-heir William ‘Willie’ K. Vanderbilt (1849 – 1920) who would let Tesla use the Vanderbilt box at the Metropolitan Opera House. Apart from opera, Tesla enjoyed theatrical comedies, particularly those featuring actress Elsie Ferguson who, he said, ‘knew how to dress and was the most graceful woman he had ever seen on the stage’. Gradually, he stopped going to the opera and the theatre, going to the movies instead.

  It was through the Johnsons that Tesla met the writer Mark Twain, who was an admirer. Tesla told Twain that his books had saved his life when he was a boy of 12, struck down with a bout of malaria. This, apparently, brought tears to the author’s eyes.

  Visiting Tesla’s laboratory, Twain asked whether the inventor could come up with a high-frequency electrotherapy machine that he could sell to rich widows in Europe on his next visit. Tesla said he already had a machine that would aid their digestion. It vibrated in sympathy with the peristaltic waves that moved food through the gut. Enthusiastic, Twain insisted that he tried it out. It worked – too well – and sent the great writer dashing for the lavatory.

  ‘I think I will start with the electrotherapy machine,’ said Twain when he returned. ‘I wouldn’t want the widows to get too healthy all in one shot.’

  The Johnsons also introduced Tesla to the hero of the Spanish-American War, Richmond Pearson Hobson, who became a life-long friend, naturalist John Muir, who invited him out to Yosemite Valley, and writer Rudyar
d Kipling, who had come to live in Vermont. After dining with the author in 1901, Tesla wrote to Mrs Johnson: ‘What is the matter with ink-spiller 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.’

  With Twain and other notables in the laboratory, the first photographs under phosphorescent light were taken. However, despite his overwork, Tesla refused to accept the Johnsons’ invitation to take a holiday with them at their home at the Hamptons on Long Island.

  Fame, But No Fortune

  With Tesla’s help, Thomas Martin published The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla in 1894. But Tesla kept giving copies away free. Both Martin and the Johnsons were worried that Tesla made no effort to make money out of his work and suggested that he should, at least, tell the newspapers about taking photographs under phosphorescent light so he would get the credit. Meanwhile, Martin had to lend Tesla money from his share of the book – money that Tesla would never repay.

  The University of Nebraska offered Tesla an honorary doctorate, but this was considered too trifling an accolade for the great inventor. Instead, Johnson organized an honorary doctorate from Columbia. One from Yale soon followed.

  To boost his fame, Martin arranged for Tesla to have his voice recorded on a phonograph, an honour already bestowed on the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba (1861 – 1931) and Sarah Bernhardt. He also got Tesla to sit for a sculptor and do interviews with the mainstream media. Journalists flocked around. Joseph Pulitzer (1847 – 1911) – who later established the Pulitzer prizes but was then publisher of the New York World – sent a young reporter named Arthur Brisbane (1864 – 1936) to interview Tesla in one of his favourite haunts, Delmonico’s Restaurant where, for many years, he ate every night. Brisbane noted the famous restaurateur lowered his voice at the mention of Tesla’s name. According to Brisbane, Charles Delmonico said in hushed tones:

  That Tesla can do anything. We managed to make him play pool one night. He had never played, but he had watched us for a little while. He was very indignant when he found that we meant to give him 15 points. But it didn’t matter much, for he beat us all even and got all the money. There are just a few of us who play for 25 cents, so it wasn’t the money we cared about, but the way he studied out pool in his head, and then beat us, after we had practised for years, surprised us.

  Brisbane said he found that Tesla ‘stoops – most men do when they have no peacock blood in them. He lives inside of himself. He takes a profound interest in his own work.’ However, the engraving that accompanied the article famously showed Tesla erect and unbowed.

  When asked what it was like to subject himself to such huge voltages, Tesla said: ‘I admit that I was somewhat alarmed when I began these experiments, but after I understood the principles, I could proceed in an unalarmed manner.’

  Later he explained the spectacle presented when he was connected to an AC voltage of two-and-a-half million volts. It was, Tesla said:

  …a sight marvellous and unforgettable. One sees the experimenter standing on a big sheet of fierce, blinding flame, his whole body enveloped in a mass of phosphorescent wriggling streamers like the tentacles of an octopus. Bundles of light stick out from his spine. As he stretches out the arms, thus forcing the electric fluid outwardly, roaring tongues of fire leap from his fingertips. Objects in his vicinity bristle with rays, emit musical notes, glow, grow hot. He is the centre of still more curious actions, which are invisible. At each throb of the electric force myriads of minute projectiles are shot off from him with such velocities as to pass through the adjoining walls. He is in turn being violently bombarded by the surrounding air and dust. He experiences sensations which are indescribable.

  Vow of Chastity

  Tesla also became a close friend of society architect Stanford White, designer of Madison Square Garden, the Washington Memorial Arch and the New York Herald Building. They met in 1891 when piano virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski (1860 – 1941) played at Madison Square Garden for five nights. White even put Tesla up at his club, The Players, which became one of the inventor’s favourite haunts. But it was a strange friendship. While Tesla was thought to be chaste, White, though married, invited him to one of his parties where naked girls emerged from pies. White was later shot dead by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of White’s mistress showgirl Evelyn Nesbit.

  It seems from their correspondence that Katherine Johnson took some amorous interest in Tesla. He was also seen dining out with women. However, he had become interested in Buddhism and seems to have sworn a vow of chastity after meeting Swami Vivekananda (1863 – 1902) at a dinner with Sarah Bernhardt. Swami was in America for the Congress of World Religions held at the Chicago World’s Fair and preached chastity as a path to enlightenment.

  Both Bernhardt and Vivekananda visited Tesla’s laboratory in New York. Tesla also studied the theosophical theories of the spiritualist Madame Blavatsky (1831 – 91), now widely seen as a charlatan.

  Chapter 6 – Niagara Falls

  In the schoolroom there were a few mechanical models which interested me and turned my attention to water turbines. I constructed many of these and found great pleasure in operating them. How extraordinary was my life an incident may illustrate. My uncle had no use for this kind of pastime and more than once rebuked me. I was fascinated by a description of Niagara Falls I had perused, and pictured in my imagination a big wheel run by the Falls. I told my uncle that I would go to America and carry out this scheme. Thirty years later I saw my ideas carried out at Niagara and marvelled at the unfathomable mystery of the mind.

  Nikola Tesla

  In 1886, civil engineer Thomas Evershed, who had worked on the Erie Canal, proposed digging a series of canals and tunnels to carry water from Niagara Falls to waterwheels that would be used to power industrial mills and factories. Three years later, Edison drew up a plan to electrify the city of Buffalo, NY, which was 20 miles (32 km) away. However, DC had never been transmitted more than one or two miles.

  Even Westinghouse, at that time, was dubious that electricity could be transmitted so far and suggested a complex system of compressed air tubes and cables to convey the power. Plans were drawn up for the construction of an industrial complex next to the Falls, but then came the news that AC power had been transmitted the 109 miles (175 km) from Lauffen to Frankfurt by AEG in Germany.

  The International Niagara Commission, headed by Lord Kelvin, offered $20,000 for the best plan to harness the power of the Falls. Like Edison, Kelvin was opposed to AC – until he saw it in action at the Columbian Exposition. Then he became an enthusiastic convert. Westinghouse refused to enter at first as he felt that, to win, he would be handing over $100,000-worth of advice. Of the twenty schemes submitted, fourteen used hydraulics or compressed air. Four involved DC power, one of which was endorsed by Edison. Two used AC. One of them was not fully worked out; the other used the Tesla system manufactured by Westinghouse.

  Closing the Deal

  GE thought they were still in the running and when blueprints went missing from the Westinghouse works they were accused of industrial espionage. However the success of the hydroelectric plant at Telluride followed by Westinghouse’s triumph at the Chicago World’s Fair left no one in doubt about who should be awarded the contract. Thomas Martin’s article on Tesla in Century closed the deal. The following year, The New York Times wrote: ‘To Tesla belongs the undisputed honor of being the man whose work made this Niagara enterprise possible … There could be no better evidence of the practical qualities of his inventive genius.’

  Meanwhile the president of the Cataract Construction Company, Edward Dean Adams, visited Tesla in New York and offered him $100,000 for a controlling interest in fourteen US and foreign patents, along with any future inventions Tesla may come up with. Tesla accepted and in February 1895 the Nikola Tesla Company was set up. Not only was Tesla working on wireless and remote control, he was putting his mind to cheap refrigeration, the production of liquid air,
the manufacture of fertilizers and nitric acid from the air, and artificial intelligence.

  Electrifying Buffalo

  Construction of the first power station at Niagara took 5 years. It was a headache for investors throughout. The outlay was huge and no one knew whether it would work as the plans lay principally in Tesla’s three-dimensional imagination. However their worries evaporated when the switch was thrown and the first power reached Buffalo at midnight on 16 November 1896. The Niagara Gazette reported: ‘The turning of a switch in the big powerhouse at Niagara completed a circuit which caused the Niagara River to flow uphill.’ The first 1,000 horsepower of electricity reaching Buffalo was taken by the street railway company, but already the local power company had orders from residents for 5,000 more. Within a few years the number of AC generators at Niagara Falls reached the planned ten, and power lines ran as far as New York City. Broadway was ablaze with lights. It powered streetcars and the subway system. Even Thomas Edison’s networks converted to alternating current.

  Mesmerized by Mars

  While these developments were going on, Tesla was doing more experiments with wireless transmission. He set up a transmitter on the roof of his laboratory and using an aerial strung from a balloon, he could detect a signal on top of the Hotel Gerlach, thirty blocks away.

  As always, Tesla was a visionary. Walking up Fifth Avenue one fine Sunday afternoon in 1894, he said to his young assistant D. McFarlan Moore: ‘After we have signalled from any point to any point on the Earth, the next step we will be signalling other planets.’