Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (30 page)

“Perhaps it would be more effective if an outside person came to your defense,” Robert suggested.

“My dear Luka, I know that you are a noble fellow and devoted friend and I appreciate your indignation at these uncalled for attacks, but I beg you not to get involved under any condition as you would offend me. Let my ‘friends’ do their worst, I like it better so. Let them spring on scientific societies worthless schemes, oppose a cause which is deserving, throw sand into the eyes of those who might see. They will reap their reward in time.”
²¹

“Then how can we redress such an outrageous individual?”

“Let us have a profound contempt for the creature,” Tesla concluded.

“I don’t see Commerford in this same category,” Katharine offered, trying to set the stage for a reconciliation.

“I know you and Luka want me to forgive your friend Martin for his disparaging editorial. It was well done, but not so painstakingly as many others before. He renders me more and more valuable services.”

“At least talk to him,” Katharine pleaded.

Tesla grabbed his hat, coat, and gloves and waved his hand. “Sorry for him. That is all,” he said as he departed.
²²

Tesla counterattacked with a spirited response to
Electrical Engineer
which they were forced to publish:

On more than one occasion you have offended me, but in my qualities both as Christian and philosopher I have always forgiven you and only pitied you for your errors. This time, though, your offense is graver than the previous ones, for you have dared to cast a shadow on my honor…Being a bearer of high honors from a number of American universities, it is my duty, in view of this slur, to exact from you a complete and humble apology…On this condition I will again forgive you, but I would advise you to limit yourself in your future attacks to statements for which you are not liable to be punished by law.
²³

Tesla, of course, was angry with the general tone of their editorial; but what particularly upset him was the implication that he had abandoned his mechanical and electrical oscillators and his cold lamps without filaments (fluorescent lights). He was in the midst of negotiating a large business transaction with a number of investors, particularly Astor. In no way did he want there to be any implication that these endeavors were being abandoned.

Martin’s rebuttal was published right after Tesla’s letter:

His Friends to Mr. Tesla

One foremost electrical inventor [unnamed—probably Elihu Thomson]…has been kind enough to say that the
Electrical Engineer
made Mr. Tesla.

This statement was disputed by Martin as “a person’s actions make the person”; however, the journal (i.e., Martin) did cite the fact that in the past it published Tesla’s articles and book of his inventions and lectures and, furthermore, that it was their editor who has “striven with all the ability possessed to explain Mr. Tesla’s ideas.” This is completely true. For an eight-year period, 1890-98,
Electrical Engineer
published 167 articles by or about Tesla, 40 more than
Electrical Review
and 70 more than
Electrical World.
²⁴
Moreover, it was clearly Martin who choreographed the reclusive inventor’s entrée into the American electrical arena.

As Tesla often promised more than he delivered, the journal, as a “true friend,” felt an obligation to urge him to complete “a long trial of beautiful but unfinished inventions.” They (i.e., Martin) also took keen exception to the fantastic statements about Tesla’s remote-controlled flying machine that could change its direction in flight, “explode
at will
and…never make a miss.” Martin continued: “Our past admiration of Mr. Tesla’s real, tangible work is on record, and stands; but we draw the line at such things as these. We are sorry Mr. Tesla feels so keenly, but we cannot help it.”
²⁵

Given that this assault stemmed from one of Tesla’s closest allies, it bears careful consideration. However, from a historical perspective, we should also consider hidden agendas. For instance, in 1894, Tesla was freely distributing his collected works and not paying for additional copies.

“I made some money out of my Tesla book,” Martin confessed to Elihu Thomson many years later, “[but it was] promptly borrowed from me by the titular component, so that two years of work went for nothing.”
²⁶
The following year, in 1895, Tesla’s laboratory burned to the ground, and Martin wrote an admirable tribute.
²⁷
Perhaps that is why he did not insist Tesla repay him.

Martin had been placed in an awkward position, for he was also a good friend of Tom Edison’s, a powerful Tesla rival; and as a reporter he had to be objective in covering advances from other rivals, such as Marconi. Tesla’s irritating habit of living beyond his means and seeing projects completed before they actually materialized was forever a source of frustration to his longtime protector. And history has so proved, in many ways, that Martin was right. Tesla’s oscillators were never a commercial success; his wireless system of distributing light, information, and power (in its total form) was never realized; and for reasons difficult to understand, Tesla’s fluorescent lights were never marketed.

On the other hand, Tesla was extremely prolific. He did build working models of all of his inventions. For instance, the telautomaton was a fully functioning prototype. And it takes many years for one’s endeavors to come to fruition. Tesla had already proved himself in a variety of ways. That all of his projects never materialized is understandable given the great scope of his efforts.

Tesla’s telautomaton remains one of the single most important technological triumphs of the modern age. In its final form, it was conceived as a new mechanical species capable of thinking as humans do, capable of carrying out complex assignments and even capable of reproduction. The invention also comprised all of the essential features of wireless transmission and selective tuning. Here was a true work of genius.

Surprisingly, Tesla was an adherent of a stimulus-response model for explaining human behavior and consciousness rather than a proponent of a model espousing a creative unconscious. The rivalry between Ernst Mach and Carl Stumpf, Tesla’s philosophy teacher, discussed earlier, and the work of Descartes on the self-propelled automata correlate to a number of key positions Tesla took which influenced directly the development of his telautomaton. The mind, according to this proposition, was nothing more than a simple compilation of cause-and-effect sensations. What we call ideas were secondary impressions derived from these primary sensations.

Paradoxically, although Tesla’s achievement was highly original and although he touted himself as the “creator of new principles,” in no way
did the inventor think that he had ever produced a new idea that did not stem from something external, for example, a mechanism present in nature or deriving from the work of others. A reader of great philosophers, Tesla fully understood what the adoption of his telautomaton would mean to the world. He saw clearly the implication in the “coming race.” Machines would not only replace laborers, they would think for themselves. Tesla’s genius, therefore, was not only in the appreciation of the advanced thinking of others but also and more important, in implementing on a practical basis their abstract ideas. Whereas others sought to change the world with thoughts, Tesla manifested on the physical plane real working models. He certainly was the father of remote-controlled electronic “beings,” but he would have been the last person to claim that he was the father of the idea.

In a famous article printed in the
Century
in 1900, Tesla explained the entire conceptualization behind his telautomaton: “I have, by every thought and every act of mine, demonstrated and do so daily, to my absolute satisfaction that I am an automaton endowed with a power of movement, which merely responds to external stimuli beating upon my sense organs, and thinks and acts accordingly. I remember only one or two cases in all my life which I was unable to locate the first impression which prompted a movement, or a thought, or even a dream.”
²⁸

Tesla neglects to mention that one of these two instances was the revelation he had in Professor Poeschl’s class: He had seen that the commutator could be eliminated in the DC machines. In other words, Tesla’s most successful invention, the AC polyphase system, was initiated from intuitive insight. Nevertheless, Tesla stubbornly clung to the “tabula rasa” premise. No inspiration, according to this pundit, began from within; self-directed responses were initiated only after external stimuli were received. This is a complex idea, as it seems from the first paragraph below that Tesla believes the reverse.

How Cosmic Forces Shape Our Destinies

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe…There is no constellation or nebula, no sun or planet…that does not exercise some control over its destiny—not in the vague and delusive sense of astrology, but in the rigid and positive meaning of physical science.

More than this can be said. There is no thing endowed with life—from man who is enslaving the elements, to the humblest creature—in all the world that does not sway in its turn.
²⁹

At the time he conceived these ideas, that is, in the early 1890s, Tesla was studying Herbert Spencer and also Buddhist writings. He even gave his friend Johnson a copy of a book on Buddhism to read. Nevertheless, the
influence of Mach’s principle and Newton’s laws concerning such correlates as the angular momentum of the earth, sun, and galaxy also figured into his cosmological paradigm. “The Buddhist expresses it one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one…Science, too, recognizes this connectedness of separate individuals, though not quite in the same sense that it admits that the suns, planets and moons of a constellation are one body, and there can be no doubt that it will be experimentally confirmed in times to come.
³⁰

Having studied will psychology (occult psychological principles) as a youth, Tesla was a firm believer in self-determination and the incredible power of the will. Somehow, however, he reconciled this internal procedure, which the philosopher George Gurdjieff links to a direct expression of the soul, to his external-behavioristic paradigm. For Tesla, the spark of life is not only biological but also present in the structure of matter: “Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within.”
³¹

Such things as metals respond to stimuli (e.g., magnets). Tesla refuses to separate the motive forces involved in electromagnetic effects from reactions of “living” matter. This in essence was Bulwer-Lytton’s “vril power.” The energy that runs the universe directs life. “Thus, everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside. There is no gap between, no break in continuity, no special and distinguishing vital agent. The momentous question of Spencer, What is it that causes inorganic matter to run into organic forms? has been answered. It is the sun’s heat and light. Wherever they are there is life.”
³²

As Tesla himself was a “self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences,” he could use the model of himself to build his telautomaton. What we call memory, Tesla further stated, “is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.” Creative thinking and also dreaming would be derived from secondary reverberations of these initial external stimuli.

Long ago I conceived the idea of constructing an automaton which would mechanically represent me, and which would respond, as I do myself, but of course, in a much more primitive manner to external influences. Such an automaton evidently had to have motive power, organs for locomotion, directive organs and one or more sensitive organs so adapted as to be excited by external stimuli…

Whether the automaton be of flesh and bone, or of wood and steel, it mattered little, provided it could provide all the duties required of it like an intelligent being.
³³

To Tesla, his remote-controlled boat was not simply a machine, it was a new technological creation endowed with the ability to
think.
In Tesla’s view, it was also, in a sense, the first nonbiological life-form on the planet. As a prototype, this first new life-form was “embodied,” in Tesla words, with a “borrowed mind,” his own! “[It will be able] to follow a course laid out or…obey commands given far in advance, it will be capable of distinguishing between what it ought and what it ought not to do…and of recording impressions which will definitely affect its subsequent actions.”
³⁴

Very few individuals could comprehend the magnitude of the creation in 1898, and so they lashed out at Tesla instead.

In November 1898, the examiner in chief of patents came to witness a demonstration of Tesla’s telautomaton before granting a patent, so “unbelievable” was the claim. “I remember that when later I called on an official in Washington, with a view of offering the invention to the Government,” Tesla wrote, “he burst out in laughter…Nobody thought then that there was the faintest prospect of perfecting such a device.”
³⁵

November 29, 1897

My dear Luka,

I have concluded that so important a literary event as the appearance of your splendid book of poems should be firstly commemorated by a dinner at the Waldorf as Mrs. Filipov suggested in her peculiarly delicate way
…
As this does not seem possible because of your immense popularity, I would like you to name another evening very soon, however, for my money may run out.

Yours sincerely,
N. Tesla
¹

The Waldorf-Astoria was the tallest hotel in the world, a center for banquets, concerts, and conventions in the city, and the permanent or temporary residence of the wealthiest and most eminent citizens of the day. Residing there became a goal to which Tesla aspired; it would be one he would achieve before the end of the year, and one he would maintain for the next two decades. Built in two parts, the original Waldorf was completed by William Waldorf Astor in 1893; the Astoria, by his cousin, John Jacob Astor, in late 1897. At first, Jack was reluctant to tear down his mother’s home to erect a hotel, but after the Waldorf grossed $4.5 million in its first year, he changed his mind. Its opening “marked the beginning of a new concept in living,” extolling the essence of exclusiveness, cordiality, pomposity, and elegant grandiosity to the masses.
²

The manager, George C. Boldt, was a Prussian immigrant from the island of Rügen, situated near Denmark in the Baltic Sea. “Mild mannered, dignified and unassuming,” Boldt resembled “a typical German professor with his close-cropped beard which he kept fastidiously trimmed…and his pince-nez glasses on a black silk cord.” Described also as “a martinet, and a man of mercurial moods,” Boldt was a socialite, in certain ways, of the most
superficial kind. “I would rather see Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish enjoying a cup of tea in an all but empty Palm room,” Boldt declared, “than a dozen lesserknown guests there feasting.”
³

The manager also adored mechanical contrivances, sprinkling the hotel with such modern conveniences as pneumatic tubes, electric bulb carriage calls, flashing control panels on the elevators, and “his network of hushed but authoritative buzzers.”
⁴
A few years later, the Waldorf would be the first hotel with a radio tower. No doubt, Tesla, himself an elitist, was attractive to Boldt. With his position of inventor extraordinaire well established, it is likely that the inventor was accepted in a distinct class above the manager. Once he moved in, Tesla may even have avoided paying rent in lieu of his connection with Astor, or he may have negotiated a favorable deal.

With over nine hundred on staff, the acclaimed “Oscar of the Waldorf” as chef, and Boldt’s capable wife overseeing the decor, there was no finer establishment. A regal fragrance wafted from every corner of the hotel, with exquisite porcelain, exotic flowers, and expensive furniture decorating the halls, dining rooms, and suites. This was the alley where the peacocks came to strut. At over six feet two inches and dressed in suede high-tops, tails, cane, top hat, and ever-present white gloves, Nikola Tesla was one of the proudest and most renowned.

The Spanish-American War dragged on through most of 1898 as Tesla continued to try to exploit his telautomaton for use as a naval weapon. He had offered his wireless transmitters to aid in the organizing of ship and troop movements but was turned down by the secretary of the navy for fear, as Tesla reported a year later, “that I might cause a calamity, as sparks are apt to fly anywhere in the neighborhood of such apparatus when it is at work.” Tesla tried to guarantee that he had overcome “these defects and limitations,” but it was to no avail.
⁵
Public demonstrations and photographs of lightning bolts spewing from his ingenuity worked to hinder any assurances he might give. Instead, during the conflict, the navy utilized hot-air balloons connected to ships by telegraph lines instead. Being up in one would “make a man’s hair turn white,” since the balloon was an easy target, but soldiers had to “obey orders, and that was all there was to it.”
⁶

Tesla contacted shipbuilder Mr. Nixon, designer of the
Oregon
(the Villard ocean liner he had fixed while working for Tom Edison in 1884), and also submarine builder John P. Holland.
⁷
Two years later, Holland would sell the navy its first submersible; it would weigh a commanding seventy-four tons and become a quintessential fighting machine,
⁸
but in 1898 he was still having difficulty negotiating a deal. “The Navy Department was obliged to decline…[Holland’s offer] to go into Santiago Harbor
and destroy the Spanish warships…as it smacked of privateering and was in violation of international law.”
⁹
And Tesla also invited military personnel to his laboratory, particularly U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Francis J. Higginson, chairman of the Light House Board, to discuss the use of his wireless transmitters. But dealing with the government was anything but easy.
¹⁰

During this period, in June 1898, Richmond Pearson Hobson rocketed to stardom, capturing the hearts of America through his heroic efforts in the war. A few months later, Hobson would become the key attraction of the Tesla-Johnson social net, and a decade after that, his fame so well established, he would become a presidential candidate.
¹¹

On June 4, the
New York Times
reported that a bold American fighting frigate, the
Merrimac,
had “made a dash” into Santiago Harbor under “a lively cannonade of fire” in attempts to attack the waiting Spanish armada. The ship was sunk, and “an officer, an engineer and six seamen were taken prisoners.” The
Times
concluded, “Everybody is astounded at the audacity of the American vessel.”
¹²

The following day, it was revealed that enemy fire had not sunk the ship at all. Rather, it had been deliberately scuttled by Lieutenant Hobson for the purpose of locking in the harbor the entire Spanish fleet. “This splendid stroke” effectively removed the feared Admiral Cervera from the war. “In a day, in an hour, the potent, all-pervading force of electricity…flashed his fame over the round world.”
¹³
As Hobson was imprisoned in the dungeon of Morro Castle, he continued to make headlines as the world waited for the war to end and his hoped-for release.
¹⁴

As ever, Katharine continued to spread her Irish charms, inviting the Serbian mystic to dinner so that she could be “hypnotized” by his presence.
¹⁵
The very day of the sinking of the
Merrimac,
the inventor received the following provocative missive:

June 6, 1898

Dear Mr. Tesla,

I want very much to see you [tomorrow evening], and will be really disappointed if you do not think my request worthy of your consideration. Robert is giving himself a birthday party and he is going to have some of your Servian songs sung.

You must save this evening for us. After this date I am going away to Washington for a visit, so if anybody cares to see Mrs. Filipov?

When you come tomorrow evening, we’ll talk about the hand which is before me now but which is doomed to seclusion…I cannot stand it. It is too strong, too virile—when I enter the room without thinking it makes me start—
It is the only thing in it.
But it is not satisfactory for it does not give the proper
idea of your hand which is large and free. Like yourself, this seems sticky, short, I know what causes this, it is the shadows. You must try again and make your hand be as large and grand as it is.

Faithfully yours,
Katharine Johnson
¹⁶

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