Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (27 page)

Nikola Tesla said much in a notable speech at a banquet to celebrate the conveyance of power from Niagara to Buffalo. Not [just] a plodding workman, he is a dreamer of wise dreams, a poet, and a humanitarian, working with new tools for the benefit of all. He is a man who wonders at the folly of men who invent guns when they might invent tools. His spirit is naturally hopeful
…
He looks not so much at the world as at the universe. He finds power in the waterfall, and at the same time looks forward to a time when we may, perhaps, tap the unseen forces of the planets and use the cosmic energy that swings the stars in their courses. He looks to a time when power shall be so cheap, so universal, that all labor shall be done by tireless machines and every man’s life be thus so much more worth living.

C
HARLES
B
ARNARD
¹

I
n July 1896, Tesla journeyed to Niagara Falls for his first survey of this great enterprise. He traveled with George Westinghouse, Edward Dean Adams, William Rankine, and Comdr. George Melville of the U.S. Navy. Also present was Thomas Ely, supervisor of motive power for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Tesla was important to all five for almost as many reasons.

A reporter for the
Niagara Gazette
greeted them upon their arrival. “Tesla is an idealist,” the journalist wrote, “fully six feet tall, very dark of complexion, nervous and wirey. Impressionable maidens would fall in love with him at first sight, but he has no time to think of impressionable maidens. In fact, he has given as his opinion that inventors should never marry. Day and night he is working away at some deep problems that fascinate him, and anyone that talks with him for only a few minutes will get the impression that science is his only mistress and that he cares more for her than for money and fame.”

Rankine predicted that Buffalo would receive electrical power by November, and Westinghouse predicted that costs would be cheaper than steam. “You could say it will cost one half what steam power cost[s],” Rankine added in support.

“Mr. Tesla, what is your opinion of the effect of this development of power on Buffalo and Niagara Falls?”

“The effect will be that both cities will stretch out their arms until they meet.”
²

Tesla looked up at the roaring cataract overcome with emotion as he and the others donned their rain gear before entering the mighty wonder. He had grown up just fifty miles from the magnificent maze of cascading flumes known as Plitvice Lakes, but those were Lilliputian compared to this thundering colossus. Pride overcame the inventor as he trailed behind for a few moments to think, as he so often did, of his mountain homeland. It had been four years since he had seen his family, fifteen years since his first successful construction of a turbine that could be driven by waterpower, and nearly thirty-five years since he had told his uncle of his dream of one day harnessing Niagara Falls. Humbled by this awesome manifestation of nature, he sat for a moment to reflect as he watched his cohorts disappear along the catwalks into a mist of rainbows.

“Let’s go, Mr. Tesla,” Adams called out, having waited as patiently as he could, for the next stop on the itinerary was the Edward Dean Adams Hydro-Electric Power Station, the first of two that would be built in his name. Designed by Stanford White, the edifice housed nearly a dozen gargantuan Tesla turbines, capable of generating collectively over 35,000 kilowatts. The men appeared like dwarfs sauntering amid a lustrous gadgetry assembled as if by giants—one long row of towering, kettleshaped engines. From this chamber, an efficient, nonpolluting, never-ending source of electrical energy was about to be generated capable of driving the factories and illuminating the streets and homes of nearly one-fourth of the entire continent. The echoes of their steps faded as they stood for a moment in silence in the chapel of the dawning New Age.

Upon his return to New York, Tesla found a letter from Sir William Preece.
³
A young man, half British, on his mother’s side, and half Italian, had stopped by Preece’s office with a wireless Morse-code apparatus based on the work of Heinrich Hertz. Guglielmo Marconi, just twenty-two years old, had brought a notebook which reviewed the literature in the field (most likely the writings of Hertz, Lodge, and Tesla). Marconi had chosen wisely, as Preece was head of the British Post Office and had experimented himself in testing induction effects through the ground from telegraph lines.
⁴

“After the experiments with the classical Hertz devices under the auspices of the Imperial Post Office in England,” Tesla reported many years later, “Preece wrote me a letter conveying the information that the
tests had been abandoned as of no value, but he believed good results [would be possible by my system]. In reply, I offered to prepare two sets for trial and asked him to give me the technical particulars necessary to the design. Just then, Marconi came out with the emphatic assertion that he had tried out my apparatus and that it did not work. Evidently he succeeded in his purpose, for nothing was done in regard to my proposal.”
⁵
Tesla’s first patent specifically for wireless transmission was filed a year later, on September 2, 1897 (no. 650,353).

The following month, in August 1896, Tesla received a histrionic plea from Katharine, who was vacationing with her family at a cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine. Wanting desperately for Tesla to join them, she could only allude to her wish.

August 6, 1896

Dear Mr. Tesla,

I am so troubled about you. I hear you are ill…Leave work for a while. I am haunted by the fear that you may succumb to the heat…Find a cool climate. Do not stay in New York. That would mean the laboratory every day…

You are making a mistake my dear friend almost a fatal one. You think you do not need change and rest. You are so tired you do not know what you need. If somebody would only pick you up and carry you bodily. I hardly know what to expect to gain by writing you. My words have no effect, forgotten as soon as read perhaps.

But I must speak and I will. You do not send me a line? How delighted I should be if it bore an unfamiliar postmark.

Sincerely yours,
Katharine Johnson
⁶

Robert, having some perspective on Katharine’s sense of drama, also wrote to invite him up. “But I know it isn’t safe for you to get more than three miles away from Delmonico’s. The rumor is that you have melted in your laboratory.”
⁷

Perhaps Katharine was right, for Tesla was unavailable to the Johnsons even upon their return. Tesla was also ignoring letters from his sisters from Croatia, particularly Marica, who, much like Katharine, asked him why he would not respond. Roentgen rays had been left behind many months ago, but he was still gaunt from illness and overwork. Now he was in a wireless race against newcomers like Marconi. Fearing that his invention would be pirated, Tesla’s lab became a more mysterious place.

November 7, 1896

Dear Mr. Tesla,

It may seem presumptuous [for] a stranger to address you,
but Mrs. Johnson, (my wife) whom you may remember having met, cannot refrain from uniting with me in congratulating you on the success of the Buffalo experiment…If this seems taking too great a liberty with one whom we know so slightly, I trust you will attribute it to our interest in the progress of humanity.

Respectively yours,
Robert Underwood Johnson
⁸

Tesla’s holiday spirit prevailed, and he joined his beloved Johnsons for Christmas dinner, apologizing for being so distant by bringing Mrs. Filipov an exquisite bouquet of flowers.

The celebration of the inauguration of the Niagara power station was held at the Ellicott Club in Buffalo in the midst of winter’s most dangerous month. Fortunately, the weather was permitting, and 350 of the nation’s most prominent businessmen made the January trek. Hosted by Morgan’s advance man, Francis Lynde Stetson, a law partner of Grover Cleveland’s, the list of attendees included a veritable who’s who of commerce. Curiously missing from the event, although invited, were such notables as John Jacob Astor, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Thomas Alva Edison.

“Mr. Stetson spoke of the pall of smoke hanging over Buffalo and said that the day should come when power would come from Niagara and not from smoke and steam…The introduction of Nikola Tesla, the greatest electrician on earth, produced a monstrous ovation. The guests sprang to their feet and wildly waved napkins and cheered for the famous scientist. It was three or four minutes before quiet prevailed.”
⁹

A constellation of psychological peculiarities accompanied the wizard’s lecture. He began in a self-deprecating manner: “I have scarcely had courage enough to address an audience on a few unavoidable occasions…Even now as I speak…the fugitive conceptions will vanish, and I shall experience certain well known sensations of abandonment, chill and silence. I can see already your disappointed countenances and can read in them the painful regret of the mistake of your choice.”
¹⁰

Why did Tesla “poison the well” with this dreadful opening? A deep sense of inferiority appears evident and yet Tesla was also completely aware that this dinner was in his honor and was therefore the pinnacle of his life to date—and through him an apotheosis for the whole of humanity. Why didn’t he simply congratulate himself or accept praise well deserved? We see here the first tangible manifestation of an overpowering feeling of inferiority, a clear-cut self-destructive element in his nature. The dark legacy of a deep-seated repression flooded through his veins, like a hydra about to annihilate.

Nevertheless, it was
his
inventions that would change an entire world. It was the name Nikola Tesla which appeared a dozen times on the patent
plaque of his new system. It was Nikola Tesla who was praised with “wild enthusiasm” by the corporate and engineering intellegentsia. And it was Nikola Tesla who changed, in precise and measurable ways, the very direction humanity was taking. This was a moment of anointment; through his specific action, the evolution of the race and the texture of an entire planet would be permanently changed in a positive way.

Yet at this moment of the fulfillment of his greatest wish, a deep neurotic constellation was also triggered. From the psychoanalytic perspective, Tesla could now repay his family for the death of his brother by symbolically bringing the brother back to life—and, on the larger scale, give the world a new life, his AC polyphase system. But the shadow had its hold, and he was simply unable to accept the happiness of the moment without throwing a monkey wrench into it. His speech went on: “These remarks, gentleman, are not made with the selfish desire of winning your kindness and indulgence of my shortcomings, but with the honest intention of offering you an apology for your disappointment…But I am hopeful that in my formless and incomplete statements…there may be something of interest…benefiting this unique occasion.”
¹¹

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.