Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (57 page)

The year also saw numerous articles about Marconi’s recent experiences intercepting impulses possibly emanating from extraterrestrials. With Professor Pickering writing Elihu Thomson that he might have detected vegetation on the moon
²⁴
and a resurgence of interest in the “Canals of Mars” scenario, the press jumped at the Italian’s far-out declaration and grilled him for additional details.

Stealing Tesla’s thunder even on this front, Marconi proclaimed that he “had often received strong signals out of the ether which seemed to come from some place outside the earth and which might conceivably have proceeded from the stars.” As to the language problem of communicating with the Martians, Marconi said, “It is an obstacle, but I don’t think it is insurmountable. You see, one might get through some such message as 2 plus 2 equals 4, and go on repeating it until an answer came back signifying ‘Yes.’…Mathematics must be the same throughout the physical universe.”
²⁵

Seeking redress in a variety of ways, Tesla sought publicity in
Electrical World,
where he attributed the Italian’s signals to an undertone metronome effect emanating from other wireless operators. Anticipating the possibility that a critic might ascribe the same mechanism to his own extraterrestrial encounter of 1899, Tesla added: “At the time I carried on those investigations there existed no wireless plant [capable of]…produc[ing] a disturbance perceptible in a radius of more than a few miles.”
²⁶
This, of course, was a false premise, as Marconi at that time was already sending messages hundreds of miles.

Johnson wrote Tesla that “When Marconi repeats [your] idea, it is no longer laughed at,” but in some circles, this did not seem to be the case.

Celesial Movies

Mr. Tesla has small confidence in the Marconian idea of getting into communication by way of mathematics. He would prefer to
send pictures by wireless: the human face, for example. But suppose Mars does not like your face. That would be a regrettable rebuff to scientific investigation. If civilization on Mars is as old as we are asked to believe, the Martians have no doubt acquired their own taste in faces.
²⁷

Although the Christmas dinner of 1919 was marred by Katharine’s ill health, it was overshadowed by good news: President Wilson had appointed Robert ambassador to Italy! With mixed emotions and Katharine apparently recovering her health, Tesla’s friends left for Europe, where they stayed throughout the following year.

Now, really alone, the wizard continued his slide from public scrutiny. Copied, mocked at, and ultimately abandoned by the world he helped create, Tesla tried to keep his life in perspective and contain his anger by doing his best to transform it; but over time the irony of it all took its toll and caused an already eccentric individual to exaggerate already strange ways. Tesla would become more fanatical about cleanliness and spend more time walking the streets after hours, circling his block three times before entering the St. Regis and avoiding stepping on cracks on the sidewalks. Some said he peeked in windows and liked to watch others in voyeuristic ways. Practicing “gastronomical frugality,”
²⁸
the celibate slowly turned away from the meat and potatoes of life and eventually from eating solids altogether. Now he would rarely write in pen, preferring the less definite pencil. He would spend more time by himself, feeding the pigeons at midnight by the Forty-second Street Library or stealing away via the Staten Island ferry to a quiet farm where he could block out the city and search once again for his fountainhead.
²⁹
With the Johnsons’ departure, he left for Milwaukee to consummate his relationship with Allis Chalmers.

Much of his time in Wisconsin was invested in trying to perfect the turbine. However, he had reached an impasse, what Sartre calls a “counterfinality,” or unforeseen event which opposes the goal intended, with Hans Dahlstrand, head engineer. Thwarted, Tesla had no recourse but to return to New York. So upset was he that he refused to talk about it when his biographer, Jack O’Neill, questioned him on the Milwaukee experience.
³⁰

Allis Chalmers had issued Dahlstrand’s detailed report describing a long list of serious problems, as he saw it, in the manufacture of the turbine. Aside from the fatigue and cracking of the disks, Dahlstrand also cited additional impediments, including only a 38 percent efficiency performance, a decrease of mechanical efficiency as steam pressure increased, a problem in designing attachment gears needed to join the turbine to other units, and a high cost of production. Another factor was that the present-day motors, such as the Parsons turbine which was being developed by Westinghouse, or the Curtis motor, being developed by GE,
were operating satisfactorily.
³¹

This question of the failure of the Tesla turbine was posed to a number of Tesla experts. Leland Anderson found that manufacturers interested in the Tesla turbine “all say it is a fine concept and an excellent machine, but there [are] too [many]…support systems…to be replaced for a machine
not that much better in performance.
And that is the point—the Tesla turbine is good, but not that much better.”
³²

C. R. Possell, president and chief engineer of the American Development & Manufacturing Company, one of the only existing organizations working on manufacturing Tesla bladeless turbines and pumps, offered a somewhat different explanation. Mr. Possell, who initially worked on the Tesla “boundary layer drag turbine” during the Korean War for the military and who has been actively trying to perfect the turbine for thirty-five years, stated that the main problem had simply to do with the high cost of research and development.

According to Possell, “Tesla was about twenty-five to thirty years ahead of his time. Metallurgy was not what it is today. Magnetic bearings are a whole new science. He didn’t have the right materials. Instrumentation [for measuring performance] was in its infancy, and it was hard to demonstrate the turbine adequately. Somewhere between the first prototype and the first use of it, you are going to have hundreds and hundreds of man hours, and the turbine didn’t get that.” Possell gave as just one example (and there are numerous others), the “millions of man hours” required to get a plane to fly at Mach One.

At present, the Tesla pump, based on the same technology, has been used by Jerry LaBine as a replacement for the motor in the jet ski recreational vehicle, and also, it has been further developed by Max Gurth, inventor of the “Discflo pump.” Utilizing Tesla’s basic idea and principles associated with the structure of a vortex (responsible for such events as whirlpools and tornadoes) and laminar flow, (i.e., the natural, gentle movement through fluids), Gurth has been able to increase the space between the disks. Thus, he has improved its ability to move such difficult products as solid waste and petrochemicals. Whereas a normal pump would have their blades pitted and corroded by coming into contact with the assorted troublesome products, the boundary layer drag pump has no blades and therefore avoids that entire problem!
³³

Possell not only sees a day when the pump will be used inside the human body, as, for instance, a heart valve, but also a day when the turbine is perfected. One of the great advantages of a bladeless Tesla engine is its ability to withstand extremely high temperatures. “Bladed turbines are about at their maximum,” Possell said, meaning that they can run at about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, “although GE is experimenting with turbines that can run at 2,200 degrees. If you could boost the temperature an
additional 350 degrees, you would double its Horse Power output.” Possell is convinced that the bladeless turbine built with new ceramic components could run at about 2,700 degrees, which would effectively “triple the Horse Power performance.” Thus, Possell is also working to design an engine to compete with the Pegasus engine found in the VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) Harrier jet. This VTOL of the future has been named the Phalanx. The vehicle will not come about, however, without large funding and commitment from the highest levels of industry and government.
³⁴

The waiter was surprised to see an elegant gentleman sitting at the breakfast counter before the restaurant was officially opened. “Aren’t you Dr. Tesla,” the fellow inquired, amazed to see such an important man back in town after so many years.

Having received permission from the owner to eat as early as possible, Tesla replied in the affirmative. He had journeyed to Colorado Springs from Milwaukee, retracing his past and looking toward a possible future when he might erect another wireless station. With a key from Dean Evans of the local engineering school, the inventor was able to utilize the lab to work on some technical calculations. Enjoying the much-needed respite, and perhaps a quick jaunt in a hot spring, the inventor had returned to his beloved retreat. There the spry mountaineer could perch himself like a phoenix on a cliff, to sit and contemplate Thor’s design, and watch the lightning storms that crackled along the jagged horizon.
³⁵

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me.

I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was purpose to my life.

N
IKOLA
T
ESLA
¹

I
n November 1918, Germany signed the armistice ending the Great War. Shortly thereafter, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled to Holland; his country had incurred a debt of $33 billion to the Allies. The new heroes of the age were aeronauts, like Eddie Rickenbacker, hailed as the top ace with twenty-six downed Messerschmitts. Humans were leaping continents the following year, with the British propelling the sturdy Dirigible R-34 from Edinburgh to Roosevelt Field and back to London in seven days. This first-ever round-trip transatlantic airship journey was commanded by Maj. G. H. Scott of the Royal Air Force, complete with his thirty-man crew and Willy Ballantyne, a twenty-three-year-old stowaway. The same year, with Tesla, Thomson, Marconi, and Pickering bickering about Martian signals and lunar plant life, Robert Goddard, military rocket expert and physics professor from Clark University, proposed a seemingly outrageous trajectory for sending a man to the moon. Even Tesla thought the scheme far-fetched, for the known fuels of the day did not have sufficient “explosive power,” and even if they did, he doubted that a “rocket…would operate at 459 degrees below zero—the temperature of interplanetary space.”
²

In 1920, William Jennings Bryan led the campaign to institute Prohibition; Anne Morgan and her suffragettes gained the right to vote for women; and four motion-picture celebrities, Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, and her new husband, Douglas Fairbanks, formed United Artists. As the war faded, sports figures became the new heroes, the young Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth making the papers after being sold to the Yankees for a whopping $125,000.

Hugo Gernsback tried to put Tesla on the masthead of yet another futuristic
Electrical Experimenter
spin-off, but his financial offer was, in Tesla’s eyes, puny, and he rejected it. Feeling that he had been underpaid for his autobiography, Tesla replied, “I appreciated your unusual intelligence and enterprise, but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more, and then again.”
³
Gernsback, however, never wavered in his praise of Tesla and continued to feature Teslaic articles and drawings in his various periodicals. On the topic of thought transference, as a materialist, Tesla completely rejected any concept related to ESP; however, he did think that it was possible to read out the thoughts of another person’s brain by attaching TV equipment to the rods and cones of the retina, which was, in his view, the arena of cognitive processing.
⁴
This invention, called the “thought recorder,” provided the basis for a number of Frank Paul spectaculars, such as his October 1929
Amazing Stories
cover depicting two humans wearing thought-reading helmets.

The 1920s marked a period of turmoil and revolution. Homeostasis had yet to settle in. With the Johnsons still in Europe, Tesla was forced to face the painful Wardenclyffe fiasco once again without the solace of his close friends. With his Manhattan attorney, William Rasquin Jr., Tesla took the train out to the Supreme Court of Suffolk County to battle agents for the George C. Boldt estate and the Waldorf-Astoria, who were trying, once again, to recoup approximately $20,000 in unpaid rent. The referee was the Honorable Rowland Miles.

The case dragged on for months and covered over three hundred pages of testimony. Tesla testified that in March 1915 he had put up Wardenclyffe as collateral against past monies owed to Francis S. Hutchins, personal counsel for George C. Boldt and the Waldorf-Astoria. Hutchins and the hotel interpreted the transaction as an outright transference of the deed. Since the hotel now thought that they owned the property, they felt that it was their right to resell the land and take down the tower to sell the lumber and other parts for salvage.

When Tesla took the stand, he was asked if he remembered the day he delivered the deed.

“I distinctly remember [telling] Mr. Hutchins that the plant had cost an enormous amount of money in comparison with which this indebtedness was a trifle, and that I expected great realizations from the plant, $30,000 a day, if the plant had been completed.” Tesla assumed that if he paid the $20,000 owed, he would have gotten back the plant. He further assumed that the Waldorf-Astoria would take good care of the property because of its enormous value. They did not take good care, however. Vandals broke in and stole equipment, such as expensive lathes.

“Can you describe the structures and any other equipment that was in the laboratory,” Tesla’s counsel asked. The plaintiffs attorney tried to block the testimony, but the judge allowed Tesla to begin.

The inventor sat back, removed his white gloves, placed them on the podium, and proceeded. “The building formed a square about one hundred feet by one hundred. It was divided into four compartments, with an office and a machine shop and two very large areas.” “The engines were located on one side, and the boilers on the other side, and in the center, the chimney rose.”

When asked how big the boilers were, Tesla said that there were two 300-horsepower boilers surrounded by two 16,000 gallon water tanks that utilized the ambient heat for hot water. “To the right of the boiler plant were the engines. One was a 400-horsepower Westinghouse engine, and a 35-kilowatt outfit which, with the engine, drove the dynamo for lighting and furnished other conveniences.” There were high- and low-pressure compressors, various kinds of water pumps, and a main switchboard for operating everything.

“Towards the road, on the railroad side, was the machine shop. That compartment was one hundred by thirty-five feet with a door in the middle and it contained I think eight lathes. Then there was a milling machine, a planer and shaper, a spliner, three drills, four motors, a grinder and a Blacksmith’s forge.

“Now, in the compartment opposite, which was the same size as the machine shop, there was contained the real expensive apparatus. There were two special glass cases where I kept historical apparatus which was exhibited and described in my lectures and scientific articles. There were at least a thousand bulbs and tubes each of which represented a certain phase of scientific development. Then there was also five large tanks, four of which contained special transformers created so as to transform the energy for the plant. They were about, I should say, seven feet high and about five by five feet each, and were filled with special oil which we call transformer oil, to stand an electric tension of 60,000 volts. Then there was a fifth similar tank for special purposes. And then there were my electric
generating apparatus. That apparatus was precious, because it could flash a message across the Atlantic, and yet it was built in 1894 or 1895.”

The court sat humbled. The opposing attorney tried to block Tesla’s further testimony, but the judge allowed the inventor to continue.

“Beyond the door of this compartment,” Tesla continued, “there were to be the condensers, what we call electric condensers, which would store the energy and then discharge and make it go around the world. Some of these condensers were in an advanced state of construction, and others were not. Then there was a very expensive piece of apparatus that the Westinghouse Company furnished me, only two of this kind have ever been constructed. It was developed by myself with their engineers. That was a steel tank which contained a very elaborate assemblage of coils, an elaborate regulating apparatus, and it was intended to give every imaginable regulation that I wanted in my measurements and control of energy.”

Tesla also described “a special 100-horsepower motor equipped with elaborate devices for rectifying the alternating currents and sending them into the condensers. On this apparatus alone I spent thousands of dollars. Then along the center of the room I had a very precious piece of apparatus.” It was Tesla’s remote-controlled boat.

“Was that all there was, generally speaking?”

“Oh, no, nowhere near,” Tesla replied. The inventor then proceeded to describe a series of closets that housed numerous other appliances, “each representing a different phase” of his work. There was the testing room, which included precious instruments given to him by Lord Kelvin, a breach, and other instruments such as voltmeters, wattmeters, ampere meters. In that small space there was a fortune.

The opposing attorney asked that the statement “there was a fortune” be taken out.

“Yes, strike it out,” said the judge.

Tesla then went on to discuss the tower. After describing the structure above the ground, he described the shaft. “You see,” Tesla said, “the underground work was one of the most expensive parts of the tower.” He was referring particularly to special apparatus he invented for “gripping the earth.”

“The shaft, your Honor,” was first covered with timber and the inside with steel. In the center of this there was a winding stairs going down and in the center of the stairs there was a big shaft again through which the current was to pass, and this shaft was so figured in order to tell exactly where the nodal point is, so that I could calculate exactly the size of the earth or the diameter of the earth and measure it exactly within four feet with that machine.

“And then the real expensive work was to connect that central part with the earth, and there I had special machines rigged up which would
push the iron pipes, one length after another, and I pushed, I think sixteen of them, three hundred feet. The current through these pipes [was to] take hold of the earth. Now that was a very expensive part of the work, but it does not show on the tower, but it belongs to the tower.

“The primary purpose of the tower, your Honor, was to telephone, to send the human voice and likeness around the globe. That was my discovery, that I announced in 1893, and now all the wireless plants are doing that. There is no other system being used. Then, the idea was to reproduce this apparatus and connect it just with a central station and telephone office, so that you may pick up your telephone and if you wanted to talk to a telephone subscriber in Australia you would simply call up that plant and that plant would connect you immediately. And I had contemplated to have press messages, stock quotations, pictures for the press and the reproductions of signatures, checks and everything transmitted from there, but…

“And then I was going to interest people in a larger project and the Niagara people had given me 10,000-horse power…”

“Did you have any conversation with Mr. Hutchins or anybody representing the plaintiffs concerning the taking down of the tower or anything like that?” asked the judge.

“No, sir. It came like a bolt from the blue sky.”

As the deed had been transferred in a legal manner with Tesla’s full compliance, Judge Miles ruled in favor of the hotel. The inventor’s lawyer countered, arguing that the Waldorf-Astoria sold equipment which they did not account for and destroyed a property worth $350,000 to try and recoup the $20,000 owed. “The property despoiled exceeded the value of the mortgage, and therefore the plaintiffs [the hotel management] should have been held to account to defendant Tesla.” Precedent cases were cited.

The Waldorf-Astoria, however, had the last word. “As a solace to the wild hopes of this dreamy inventor,” their lawyer wrote, “if prior to that time he should grasp in his fingers any one of the castles in Spain which always were floating about in his dreams, and had he paid the board bills which he owed, this wild scrubby woodland, including the Tower of Babel thereon, would cheerfully have been reconveyed to him. By no fair inference or construction can [Tesla’s counterclaim make void this judgment]. It was merely a sop to the vanity of a brilliant but unpractical mind. The judgement should be affirmed with costs.”
⁵

In the summer of 1922, Robert Johnson and his ailing “ambassadress”
⁶
returned to the States from Italy. They arrived in time to attend Paderewski’s comeback piano concerto with their elusive friend at Carnegie Hall in November.

Robert’s autobiography,
Remembered Yesterdays,
which was just completed,
highlighted not only a memorable meeting between Tesla and Paderewski in the late 1890s but also the virtuoso’s 1919 stint as president of Poland. As the pianist had held office for only ten months, Tesla was moved to jest that it was “just long enough to gain publicity for his next tour.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Mr. Tesla,” Kate sparkled as they stepped into the limousine that was to take the trio to the opening. Dressed in black capes, canes, and silk high hats, the tall “angular” gentlemen struck a smart pair as they accompanied the suddenly recovering and radiant Mrs. Filipov.

“Seeing Paderewski again is like falling in love all over,” she said between her men. Tesla looked down and noticed the sorrow that lay hidden beneath her brow. His was apparent to her as well. Robert’s upper lip held them steady.

The Bolsheviks were taking over in Russia; Communist and anarchist uprisings reverberated throughout the world. In the United States there were race riots in Chicago, Negro lynchings in Minnesota, a suspicious explosion outside the J. P. Morgan Building, in New York, killing thirty people and wounding three hundred others, and forty thousand Klansmen marching on Washington. It was time to do something to stop the tide, so Attorney General A. M. Palmer rounded up three hundred Communists and sixty-seven anarchists in thirty-three cities. The last group arrested faced deportation for bombing out the windows and homes of Palmer and also Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt. Eugene V. Debs, still in prison for violating the Espionage Act, was nominated once again to run for president by the Socialist party; Woodrow Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize.