Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (55 page)

Upon Tesla’s return to New York in 1900, he wrote again of his interest in placing the equipment aboard their ships. Rear Admiral Higginson, chairman of the Light House Board, wrote back that his committee would meet in October to discuss with Congress “the estimates of cost.”
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Higginson, who had visited Tesla in his lab in the late 1890s, wanted to help, but he had been placed in the embarrassing position of withdrawing his offer of financial remuneration because of various levels of bureaucratic inanity. Tesla spent the time to go down to Washington to confer face-to-face with the high command—Hobson also negotiated on his friends behalf—but Telsa was essentially ignored and returned to New York empty handed and disgusted with the way he was treated.

From the point of view of the navy, wireless telegraphy was an entirely new field, and they were unsure what to do. Furthermore, they may have been turned off by Tesla’s haughty manner, particularly when it came to being “compared” to Marconi, which had always enraged Tesla. (Keep in mind, however, that the navy took over ten years to recompense Hammond for his work on radio-guided missiles, and even then they almost didn’t come through. Tesla was by no means the only one to get the runaround from the military, and Hammond had the best connections possible through his influential father.)

In 1902 the Office of Naval Intelligence called Comdr. F. M. Barber, who had been in retirement in France, back to the States and put him in charge of the acquisition of wireless apparatus for testing. Although still taking a frugal position, the navy came up with approximately $12,000 for the purchase of wireless sets from different European companies. Orders were placed with Slaby-Arco and Braun-Siemans-Halske of Germany and Popoff, Ducretet and Rochefort of France. Bids were also requested from De Forest, Fessenden, and Tesla in America and Lodge-Muirhead in
England. Marconi was excluded because he arrogantly coveted an all-or-nothing deal.
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Fessenden was angry with the navy for obtaining equipment outside the United States and so did not submit a bid. Tesla was probably too upset with his treatment from the past and too involved with Wardenclyffe, which was under active construction at that time, to get involved, and so the navy purchased additional sets from De Forest and Lodge-Muirhead.

In 1903 a mock battle with the North Atlantic fleet was held five hundred miles off the coast of Cape Cod. With the “White Squadron” commanded by Rear Adm. J. H. Sands and the “Blue Squadron” by Rear Admiral Higginson, Tesla’s ally, the use of wireless played a key role in determining the victor. Commander Higginson, who won the maneuver, commented, “To me, the great lesson of the search we ended today is the absolute need of wireless in the ships of the Navy. Do you know we are three years behind the times in the adoption of wireless?”
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Based on comparison testing, it was determined that the Slaby-Arco system outperformed all others, and the navy ordered twenty more sets. Simultaneously, they purchased an eleven-year lease on the Marconi patents.
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With the onset of World War I, the use of wireless became a necessity for organizing troop movements, surveillance, and intercontinental communication. While the country was still neutral, the navy was able to continue their use of the German equipment—until sentiments began to shift irreversibly to the British side. Via the British navy, Marconi had his transmitters positioned in Canada, Bermuda, Jamaica, Columbia, the Falkland Islands, North and South Africa, Ceylon, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. His was a mighty operation. In the United States, the American Marconi division, under the directorship of the politically powerful John Griggs, former governor of New Jersey and attorney general under President McKinley, had transmitters located in New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
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One key problem, however, was that the Marconi equipment was still using the outmoded spark-gap method.

In April 1917, the U.S. Navy completed the seizure of all wireless stations, including those of their allies, the British. At the same time, Marconi was in the process of purchasing the Alexanderson alternator, which was, in essence, a refinement of the Tesla oscillator. Simultaneously, the Armstrong feedback circuit was becoming an obvious necessity for any wireless instrumentation. However, the Armstrong invention created a judicial nightmare, not only because it used as its core the De Forest audion but also because De Forest’s invention was overturned in the courts in favor of an electronic tube developed by Fessenden. Never mind that Tesla, as far back as 1902, had beaten Fessenden in the courts for this development. With the Fessenden patent now under the control of Marconi, the courts
would come to rule that no one could use the Armstrong feedback circuit without the permission of the other players.

The most important ruling, concerning the true identity of the inventor of the radio, became neatly sidestepped by the War Powers Act of President Wilson, calling for the suspension of all patent litigation during the time of the war. France had already recognized Tesla’s priority by their high court, and Germany recognized him by Slaby’s affirmations and Telefunken’s decision to pay royalties; but in America, the land of Tesla’s home, the government backed off and literally prevented the courts from sustaining a decision. The Marconi syndicate, in touch with kings from two countries, with equipment instituted on six continents, was simply too powerful.

With the suspension of all patent litigation and the country in the midst of a world war, Franklin Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, penned the famous Farragut letter. This document allowed such major companies as AT&T, Westinghouse, and American Marconi the right to pool together to produce each other’s equipment without concern for compensating rightful inventors. Furthermore, it “assured contractors that the Government would assume liability in infringement suits.”
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On July 1, 1918, Congress passed a law making the United States financially responsible for any use of “an invention described in and covered by a patent of the United States.” By 1921, the U.S. government had spent $40 million on wireless equipment, a far cry from Secretary Long’s policy of refusing to pay a few thousand dollars for Tesla’s equipment eighteen years before. Thus, the Interdepartmental Radio Board met to decide various claims against it. Nearly $3 million in claims were paid out. The big winners were Marconi Wireless, which received $1.2 million for equipment and installations taken over (but not for their patents). International Radio Telegraph received $700,000; AT&T, $600,000; and Edwin Armstrong, $89,000. Tesla received a minuscule compensation through Lowenstein, who was awarded $23,000.
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In 1921 the navy published a list of all the inventors in wireless who received compensation from them. The list contained only patents granted after 1902. Inventors included Blockmen, Braun, Blondel, De Forest, Fuller, Hahnemann, Logwood, Meissner, Randahl, Poulsen, Schiessler, von Arco, and Watkins. Note that both Tesla’s and Marconi’s names are missing.
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Marconi’s could be missing either because his patents had lapsed or, more likely, because they were viewed as invalid from the point of view of the government. In the case of Tesla, all of his twelve key radio patents had “expired and [were] now common property.”
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However, Tesla had renewed one fundamental patent in 1914,
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and this should have been on the list, as should have Armstrong’s feedback patent.

The U.S. government, through Franklin Roosevelt,
knew
that Marconi had infringed upon Tesla’s fundamental patents. They knew the details of Tesla’s rightful claims through their own files and through the record at the patent office. In point of fact, it was Tesla’s proven declaration which was the basis and central argument that the government had against Marconi when Marconi sued in the first place, and it was this same claim, and the same Navy Light House Board files, that would eventually be used by the U.S. Supreme Court to vindicate Tesla three months after he died, nearly twenty-five years later, in 1943.

Rather than deal with the truth and with a difficult genius whose present work appeared to be in a realm above and beyond the operation of simple radio telephones and wireless transmitters, Roosevelt, Daniels, President Wilson, and the U.S. Navy, in the midst of war, took no interest in protecting Tesla’s tower.

In July 1917, Tesla packed his bags and said goodbye to the Waldorf-Astoria. Having lived there for nearly twenty years, he talked George Boldt Jr. into allowing him to keep a large part of his personal effects in the basement of the hotel until he found a suitable place for transferring them. “I was sorry to hear about your father,” Tesla told the new manager, George Boldt Sr. having died just a few months before.

Preparing to move to Chicago to work on his bladeless turbines, Tesla was invited to the Johnsons for a farewell dinner. Robert was now directing the affairs of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an organization which counted among its ranks Daniel Chester French, Charles Dana Gibson, Winslow Homer, Henry James and his brother William, Charles McKim, Henry Cabot Lodge, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Katharine had been in bed for over a week with the grippe, but this evening was too important, and she dragged herself out of bed and put on her best gown.

Dressed in straw hat, cane, white gloves, and his favorite green suede high-tops, Tesla arrived with a large bouquet of flowers and a check for Johnson.

“Kate’s been ill,” Robert managed to say before the lady of the house appeared.

Taking center stage, as she always tried to do when “He” was around, Kate radiated an intense glow of amorous pride as she held back the flood of tears while she chatted on an on about “how crazy [she was] about all of her grandchildren.”
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Taking a weekend train to Chicago, Tesla moved into the Blackstone Hotel, alongside the University of Chicago. On Monday morning the inventor hired a limousine to drop him at the headquarters of Pyle
National Corporation. Having already shipped prototypes to give them a head start, he would now work at an intense pace in an entirely new setting, his goal being the perfection of his revolutionary bladeless turbines.
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At night he liked to walk down the street from his hotel to the Museum of Arts and Sciences, the only building remaining from the World’s Fair of 1893. There he could stand by the great columns and think back to a time when, daily, hundreds of thousands would stream into a magical city powered by his vision. One Saturday, in the heat of summer, he took the mile walk along Lake Michigan, past the Midway, to a series of small lakes and a park which was once the Court of Honor. There, at the entranceway, to a place that once was, he found, to his delight, the Statue of the Republic still standing, its gold plating all worn away. With him was a letter from George Scherff.

August 20, 1917

Dear Mr. Tesla,

I was deeply grieved and shocked when I read the enclosed, but I have the supreme confidence that more glorious work will arise from the ruins.

I trust that your work in Chicago is progressing to your satisfaction.

Yours respectfully,
George Scherff
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At the height of the world conflagration, the Smiley Steel Company’s explosives expert had circled the gargantuan transmitter to place a charge around each major strut and nail the coffin shut on Tesla’s dream. With the Associated Press recording the event and military personnel apparently present, the magnifying transmitter was leveled, the explosion alarming many of the Shoreham residents.

And with the death of the World Telegraphy Center came the birth of the Radio Broadcasting Corporation, a unique conglomerate of private concerns under the auspices of the U.S. government. Meetings were held behind closed doors in Washington between President Wilson, who wanted America to gain “radio supremacy,”
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Navy Secretary Daniels, his assistant Franklin Roosevelt, and representatives from GE, American Marconi, AT&T, and the Westinghouse Corporation. With J. P. Morgan & Company on the board of directors and the Marconi patents as the backbone of the organization, RCA was formed. It would combine resources from these megacorporations, all of which had cross-licensing agreements with each other and co-owned the company.
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(Cross-licensing agreements also existed with the government, which also owned some wireless patents.) Here was another
entente cordiale
reminiscent of the AC polyphase days, which was not so for the originator of the invention. It was a second major time
Tesla would be carved from his creation,
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a secret deal probably concocted which absolved the government from paying any licensing fee to Marconi in lieu of their burying their Tesla archives. David Sarnoff, as managing director, would soon take over the reins of the entire operation.

The
New York Sun
inaccurately reported:

U.S. Blows Up Tesla Radio Tower

Suspecting that German spies were using the big wireless tower erected at Shoreham, L.I., about twenty years ago by Nikola Tesla, the Federal Government ordered the tower destroyed and it was recently demolished with dynamite. During the past month several strangers had been seen lurking about the place.
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The destruction of Nikola Tesla’s famous tower…shows forcibly the great precautions being taken at this time to prevent any news of military importance of getting to the enemy.
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At the end of the war President Wilson returned all remaining confiscated radio stations to their rightful owners. American Marconi, now RCA, of course, was the big beneficiary.
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In 1920 the Westinghouse Corporation was granted the right to “manufacture, use and sell apparatus covered by the [Marconi] patents.”
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Westinghouse also formed an independent radio station which became as prominent as RCA. At the end of the year, Tesla wrote a letter to E. M. Herr, president of the company, offering his wireless expertise and equipment.