Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (34 page)

Common people must have rest like machinery but the great old Nick
—
the Busy One
—
see him go 150 hours without food or drink. Why he can invent with his hands tied behind his back! He can do anything, in short, he is superior to all laws of hygiene and human energy. He is a vegetarian that doesn’t know how to vegetate
…

R
OBERT
U
NDERWOOD
J
OHNSON
¹

O
n January 7, 1900, Tesla left Colorado Springs with every intention of returning. Engaging C. J. Duffner and another watchman to look after the laboratory, the inventor departed with inexplicit promises for future payment. His funds exhausted, he also left without covering outstanding bills he had incurred with the local power company.
²

The Johnsons were thrilled with the wizard’s return, and they celebrated in grand style by dining out. With Gilder’s approval, Robert suggested that Tesla compose a discourse on his recent endeavors.

Coincidentally, Marconi was in Manhattan seeking investors and planning on lecturing on his progress in wireless.
³
“When I sent electrical waves from my laboratory in Colorado, around the world,” Tesla reported, “Mr. Marconi was experimenting with my apparatus unsuccessfully at sea. Afterward, Mr. Marconi came to America to lecture on this subject, stating that it was
he
who sent those signals around the Globe. I went to hear him, and when he learned that I was present he became sick, postponed the lecture, and up to the present time has not delivered it.”
⁴

Although fearful of Tesla, Marconi was also desirous of obtaining a greater understanding of the master’s equipment. With Michael Pupin as intermediary, Marconi was introduced to Tesla at the New York Science Club.
⁵
Pupin was in exceptionally high spirits, as John S. Seymour, commissioner of patents had finally retired. After six years of submissions,
in his attempts to try and prove that his understanding of resonance and harmonics in the field of AC transmission superseded Tesla’s, he had finally won. In December 1899 he applied once again for his patent, “The Art of Reducing Attenuation of Electrical Waves,” and the new commissioner, Walter Johnson, sanctioned it.
⁶
Apparently just one month later, the trio left after dinner to visit Tesla’s lab. George Scherff was working late and greeted them at the door.

“I remember [Marconi] when he was coming to me asking me to explain the function of my transformer for transmission of power to great distances,” Tesla recalled. Although the inventor obviously had mixed feelings about the meeting, he nevertheless obliged with a discourse on the difference between Hertzian radiations and Tesla currents. “Mr. Marconi said, after all my explanations of the application of my principle, that it is impossible.”

“Time will tell, Mr. Marconi,” Tesla shot back.
⁷
Pupin was able to usher Marconi to the door before discussions became more heated.

“I understand completely what you are doing, Mr. Marconi,” Pupin began as he walked the young Italian back to his hotel. “I would like very much to act as a consultant in your operation.”

“That would be an honor,” Marconi said as he discussed with Pupin a way to “persuade Signor Edison to come aboard.” Marconi’s reason, in particular, was to obtain Edison’s grasshopper patent, which described a wireless way for jumping messages from train stations to moving trains and which Edison patented in the 1880s.

Pupin was elated. Not only was he becoming professionally involved in an exciting international wireless enterprise; he had also begun to cash in on his new AC patent. In June, Pupin received a $3,000 advance for selling the rights to John E. Hudson, president of AT&T, and a few months later he negotiated for yearly payments of $15,000 per year, for an amount totaling $200,000 for the invention Commissioner Seymour called “tautological” and “no more…than a multiplication of Tesla’s circuit [that utilized principles] well understood in the art.”
⁸
In either case, the patent enabled AT&T to perfect long-distance telephone transmissions and provided Pupin with a handsome income for many years to come. It also vindicated his position that he had understood Tesla’s invention better than Tesla did.

Tesla tried again to interest the submarine designer John Holland in telautomatics; he also worked to fashion “dirigible wireless torpedoes” or small airships which could be controlled from the ground. “Everybody who saw them,” he revealed a few years later, “was amazed at their performance.”
⁹

After putting together a prospectus and conferring with his lawyers, the inventor packed his bags for Washington to speak in person with
Admiral Higginson of the Light House Board and Secretary John D. Long of the navy. He planned not only to offer his “devil telautomata” but also a scheme for “establish[ing] wireless telegraphic communication across the Pacific.” Met with ridicule and skepticism, the inventor was shuffled into what Mark Twain called “the circumlocution office.” “My ideas,” Tesla said, “were thrown in the naval waste basket…Had only a few ‘telautomatic’ torpedoes been constructed and adopted by our navy, the mere moral influence of this would have been powerfully and most beneficially felt in the present Eastern complication [the Japanese war with Russia].”
¹⁰

Tesla had hoped at least that the U.S. Coast Guard or Navy would come through on a smaller scale by financing the construction of modest-sized transmitters for their lighthouses and ships, but the agencies dodged any serious commitment and continued to hide behind a bureaucratic quagmire involving the need for congressional approval.
¹¹

“I’ve circumscribed the globe with electrical impulses,” he told Scherff upon his return. “Let them have the Hertzian dabblers. They’ll come back around my way soon enough.”

“What will you do with Professor Pupin, stealing your work in alternating current?”

“He’s involved in sending voice over wires,” the inventor replied. “Who can be bothered.”

It was at this time that Tesla commissioned an agent in Britain to locate an appropriate place for constructing a receiving station,
¹²
as he continued to rework blueprints for his transoceanic broadcasting system. Using his English royalties as collateral, he asked George Westinghouse for a loan of a few thousand dollars; he also tried to interest him in the wireless enterprise.
¹³

Westinghouse, however, declined to get involved, but he did advance the inventor the requested funds, even though his company had overextended themselves nearly $70 million in their rapid expansion and changeover to the polyphase system. Incessant legal fees due to the never-ending litigation on patent priority battles, mostly with the countless subsidiaries were also a great drain. Swiss emigrant B. A. Behrend, author of one of the early standard textbooks on AC motors, wrote in his treatise that much to the chagrin of New England Granite’s (a GE subsidiary) patent attorney, he refused to testify against Tesla, “as such evidence would be against [his] better convictions.”
¹⁴

This letter was written in 1901,
a full year after
Judge Townsend’s unequivocal ruling vindicated Tesla as the sole author of the AC polyphase system (see chapter 3).
¹⁵
Now Westinghouse could finally begin to collect damages and pay back its enormous debt. George Westinghouse sent Tesla a thank you note congratulating himself “for winning the suit” and
congratulating Tesla for being “awarded the credit for a great invention.” Westinghouse ended the letter as follows “You know I appreciate your sympathetic interest in my affairs.”
¹⁶

In the early part of 1900, Tesla filed for three patents related to wireless communication.
¹⁷
He made several attempts to contact the elusive Colonel Astor but concentrated most of his efforts on working on an article for the
Century.
Robert had requested that Tesla write an educational piece about telautomatics and wireless communication. The plan was to decorate the essay with photographs of the remote-controlled boat and the inventor’s fantastic experiments in Colorado, but Tesla had other ideas. Influenced by Western philosophers Friedrich Nietzche and Arthur Schopenhauer about such ideas as the creation of the Übermensch through activation of the will and renunciation of desire and by Eastern philosophers such as Swami Vivekananda on the link between the soul and Godhead, Prâna (life force) and Akâsha (ether) and its equivalence to the universe, force, and matter,
¹⁸
the inventor decided to compose a once-in-a-lifetime apocalyptic treatise on the human condition and technology’s role in shaping world history.

Robert pleaded with him “not to write a metaphysical article, but rather an informative one,” but Tesla would not listen. Instead, he sent back a twelve-thousand-word discourse which covered such topics as the evolution of the race, artificial intelligence, the possibility of future beings surviving without the necessity of eating food, the role of nitrogen as a fertilizer, telautomatics, alternative energy sources (e.g., terrestrial heat, wind, and the sun), a description of how wireless communication can be achieved, hydrolysis, problems in mining, and the concept of the plurality of worlds.

Robert was now in a bind. Neither he nor Gilder wanted to publish a lengthy, controversial, abstract philosophical essay which might damage the magazine. However, they could not simply cross out sections they were unhappy with, for they were dealing with a man who was born a genius and a friend who had contributed two previous gems that added greatly to the prestige of their publication. How to approach the hypersensitive savant was a difficult problem which Robert did not relish.

March 6, 1900

Dear Tesla,

I just can’t see you misfire this time. Trust me in my knowledge of what the public is eager to have from you.

Keep your philosophy for a philosophical treatise and give us something practical about the experiments themselves…You’re making a task of a simple thing and for all I have said, forgive my clumsy way of saying it because of my love and
respect for you, and because I have had nearly 30 years of judging what the public finds interesting.

Faithfully yours,
(believe me never more faithfully)
RUJ
¹⁹

March 6, 1900

My dear Robert,

I heard you are not feeling well and hope that it is not my article that makes you sick.

Yours sincerely,
N. Tesla
²⁰

Tesla knew what he was doing. He had decided, once and for all, to put down a significant percentage of the knowledge he had amassed into one treatise, and there was no way he was going to change it. Most likely Robert conferred with Gilder. Clearly, the essay was brilliant and original, and the more they read it, the more they realized its many layers of wisdom. The best tack to take at this point, they reasoned, was to work to clarify the piece by using subheadings, by including all of the startling electrical photos from Colorado, and the telautomaton, and by having Tesla more carefully explain the details of his inventions, and then hope for the best. The published essay began as follows:

The Onward Movement of Man

Of all the endless variety of phenomena which nature presents to our senses, there is none that fills our minds with greater wonder than that inconceivably complex movement which, in its entirety, we designate as human life. Its mysterious origin is veiled in the forever impenetrable mist of the past, its character is rendered incomprehensible by its infinite intricacy, and its destination is hidden in the unfathomable depths of the future.

Inherent in the structure matter, as seen in the growth of crystals, is a life-forming principle. This organized matrix of energy, as Tesla comprehended it, when it reaches a certain stage of complexity, becomes biological life. Now, the next step in the evolution of the planet was to construct machines so that they could think for themselves, and so Tesla created the first prototype, his teleautomaton. Life-forms need not be made out of flesh and blood.

As an environmentalist, Tesla was concerned about personal hygiene, air and water pollution, and the needless waste of natural resources. Through concentration on energy problems, solutions could be achieved. Thus, many of Tesla’s inventions were created specifically to maximize
efficient use of energy and prove out the principle that a self-directed thinking machine could alter the course of civilization by gaining greater control over the evolution of the planet.

In the middle of the treatise, the inventor explained in vivid detail the mechanism behind his wireless transmitter. Numerous photographs of his experiments at Colorado Springs also enhanced the impact of the message. Thirty-five pages later, he ended the treatise with a discussion of the cognitive hierarchy and the speculation that “intelligent beings on Mars…if there are [any]” most likely utilize a wireless energy-distribution system that interconnects all corners of their planet. Tesla concluded: “The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.”
²¹

When the article appeared in the June issue of the
Century,
it created a sensation. Tesla circulated advance copies to friends, such as Mrs. Douglas Robinson, one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
²²
Julian Hawthorne, Stanford White, and John Jacob Astor. In Astor’s case, Tesla included his wireless patent applications, forwarding “this matter to your home, instead of your office [for secrecy reasons]…The patents give me an absolute monopoly in the United States not only for power purposes,” the inventor continued in another letter to the colonel, “but also for establishing telegraphic communication…no matter how great the distance.”
²³
Those who were Tesla supporters rallied around him,
Nature
gave it a “favorable response,” and the French quickly translated it for their readers,
²⁴
but those who were against him now had a new supply of ammunition for a frontal assault.