Tesla: Man Out of Time
Margaret Cheney
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The airplane on the facing page, patented in the 1920s by Tesla, was intended to operate much like the vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) aircraft being considered in the 1980s by the U.S. Navy as “a subsonic aircraft for the 1990s.” The latter is a jet aircraft with sophisticated electronic equipment, but the basic concept is the same. Tesla’s plane was never built.
TOUCHSTONE
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Copyright © 1981 by Margaret Cheney
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Touchstone edition 2001
TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cheney, Margaret.
Tesla : man out of time / Margaret Cheney. First Touchstone ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Tesla, Nikola, 1856–1943. 2. Electrical engineers—
United States—Biography. 3. Inventors—United States—Biography.
TK140.T4 C47 2001
621.3′092—dc21
[B]
2001037808
ISBN 978-0-7432-1536-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-7486-6 (ebook)
For Barbara Nelson and Allen Davidson
To aid in the pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian names:
D
g as in gin
e
e as in met
ž
z as in azure
ć
ch as in chin; soft, almost tj
c
ts as in fits
č
ch as in charge
š
sh as in shall
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction by Leland Anderson
Chapter 1: Modern Prometheus
Chapter 2: A Gambling Man
Chapter 3: Immigrants of Distinction
Chapter 4: At the Court of Mr. Edison
Chapter 5: The War of the Currents Begins
Chapter 6: Order of the Flaming Sword
Chapter 7: Radio
Chapter 8: High Society
Chapter 9: High Road, Low Road
Chapter 10: An Error of Judgment
Chapter 11: To Mars
Chapter 12: Robots
Chapter 13: Hurler of Lightning
Chapter 14: Blackout at Colorado Springs
Chapter 15: Magnificent and Doomed
Chapter 16: Ridiculed, Condemned, Combatted
Chapter 17: The Great Radio Controversy
Chapter 18: Midstream Perils
Chapter 19: The Nobel Affair
Chapter 20: Flying Stove
Chapter 21: Radar
Chapter 22: The Guest of Honor
Chapter 23: Pigeons
Chapter 24: Transitions
Chapter 25: The Birthday Parties
Chapter 26: Corks on Water
Chapter 27: Cosmic Communion
Chapter 28: Death and Transfiguration
Chapter 29: The Missing Papers
Chapter 30: The Legacy
Bibliographical Essay
Reference Notes
Postscript
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish particularly to thank:
Leland Anderson, one of the founders of the Tesla Society,* a coauthor of the annotated Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography (San Carlos, Ca., Ragusan Press, 1979), and author of the monograph, “Priority in the Invention of Radio—Tesla v. Marconi.” Mr. Anderson’s research and scholarly works on Tesla have been a major interest of his life. An electrical engineer and former computer consultant, he reviewed my manuscript and generously shared his collection of Tesliana, including many previously unpublished materials and photographs.
Maurice Stahl, a physicist formerly with the Hoover Company and now a consultant for the McKinley Historical Museum in Ohio (featuring a Tesla exhibit), also reviewed the manuscript and advised on technical aspects.
Dr. Bogdan Raditsa, who served under President Tito of Yugoslavia in the early days of his administration, clarified and amplified Yugoslav-Allied politics during World War II as it affected Tesla. He has lived in America for many years, writes books and articles, and teaches Balkan history at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Dr. Lauriston S. Taylor, a radiological physics consultant and recent past president of the NCRP, is an authority on the pioneers of X ray and, as such, read and commented on Tesla’s contributions in this field.
Lambert Dolphin, assistant director of the Radio Physics Laboratory, SRI International, analyzed Tesla’s research in ball lightning, particle-beam weapons, radio communication, and alternating current.
Dr. James R. Wait, formerly senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration environmental research laboratories at Boulder, Colorado, and an authority on wave propagation, commented on Tesla’s concept of electromagnetic energy being transmitted “through the Earth,” as did Mr. Anderson.
Professor Warren D. Rice of Arizona State University, a leading researcher on the Tesla turbine, also analyzed Tesla’s theories of terrestrial-heat power plants and ocean thermal energy conversion plants against the foreground of contemporary work.
I am indebted to radio pioneer Commander E. J. Quinby (USN Ret.), who contributed his personal reminiscences of Tesla’s early work in radio and robotry; to Dr. Albert J. Phillips, former research director of ASARCO, for memories of working with Tesla on a research project; and to Dr. William M. Mueller, Colorado School of Mines, Department of Metallurgy, who gave his analysis of the ASARCO experiment.
Of Tesla’s many loyal admirers in America, few have worked as tirelessly to see justice done to his memory as Nick Basura. He guided me to useful sources at the beginning of my research, for which I am grateful.
Harry Goldman, a Tesla scholar and writer-photographer, provided valuable information and special services in the enhancing of old photographic prints, as well as contributing photos from his private collection.
I am grateful to Eleanor Treibek of Volunteers in Action, the Language Bank, Monterey, California, for translation assistance; to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, for photographs and for the letters of Katharine Johnson, and of Michael Pupin, A. J. Fleming, Sir William Crookes, Richmond P. Hobson, and other tributes to Nikola Tesla; to Professor Philip S. Callahan for permission to use his photograph of Tesla’s birthplace; to the Butler Library at Columbia University for photographs and the letters of Robert and Katharine Johnson, George Scherff, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, Major Edwin Armstrong, and Leland Anderson; to the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress for the microfilm letters of Nikola Tesla, Robert Johnson, Mark Twain, B. F. Meissner, George Scherff, George Westinghouse, J. Pierpont Morgan, J. P. Morgan, and others; to Archivist J. R. K. Kantor of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, for access to the Julian Hawthorne Papers, and to the university’s History of Science and Technology Proj
ect; to the reference staffs of the John Steinbeck Library at Salinas, the New York Public Library, and the libraries of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; to the librarian of Special Collections, Purdue University; to Mr. Elliot N. Sivowitch and the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, to the Westinghouse Corporation, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, RCA, and Niagara Mohawk—for photographs; to Robert Golka for information on “Project Tesla.”
I wish also to thank the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of the Navy, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Archives and Record Service, the technical librarian of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Office of Alien Property, and the Office of the Medical Examiner, City of New York.
The author and the publisher also gratefully acknowledge indebtedness for quotations in the text of this book as follows:
To Dr. Jule Eisenbud and Mrs. Laura A. Dale for permission to quote from the article, “Two Approaches to Spontaneous Case Material,” by Eisenbud, in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research of July 1963; to the David McKay Company for permission to quote from John J. O’Neill’s Prodigal Genius (originally published by Ives Washburn, Inc., 1944); to The New York Times for lines from “Electrical Sorcerer,” by Waldemar Kaempffert, Book Review Section, Feb. 4, 1945; to Time magazine for lines from its cover story on Nikola Tesla of July 20, 1931; to Frederic B. Jueneman for permission to quote from Limits of Uncertainty, p. 206f, Dun-Donnelly, Chicago, 1975; and to Jueneman and Industrial Research to quote from “Innovative Notebook,” by Jueneman, February 1974.
Thanks to Science & Mechanics for permission to quote from the article, “Our Future Motive Power,” by Nikola Tesla, Everyday Science & Mechanics, December 1931, and to reproduce an illustration therefrom.
Especially thanks to M. Harvey Gernsback, president of Gernsback Publications, Inc., for permission to reprint photos, illustrations of the artist Frank Paul, and quotes from “My Inventions,” by Nikola Tesla, that appeared in the Electrical Experimenter and Science & Invention, formerly published by Hugo Gernsback.
And to Leland Anderson for permission to quote from “Priority in Invention of Radio, Tesla v. Marconi,” Antique Wireless Association, March 1980.
In addition the author is indebted to the Nikola Tesla Museum for words quoted from Colorado Springs Notes, 1899–1900, by Nikola Tesla; to King Peter II for a quotation from A King’s Heritage, Putnam, New York, 1954, and for lines from T. C. Martin, ed., The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, reprinted from The Electrical Engineer, 1894 (reissued by Omni Publications, Hawthorne, Calif., 1977).
Among friends and relatives, I am grateful to inventor Allen Davidson and to Randy Pierce and “PJ,” who bravely read and commented on the manuscript in its earliest phases and heartened me with their enthusiasm. Most of all I thank Barbara Nelson for her editorial criticism and loyalty throughout a lengthy endeavor.
PREFACE
It is astounding how time, neglect, and a dazzling new generation of technocrats have converged upon the patents and reputation of this nineteenth-century genius. Nikola Tesla’s work, although sometimes pirated or forgotten and often misunderstood, has never really needed burnishing. One suspects that he is chuckling now as the world catches up to his visions and concepts since, as he wisely noted long ago, “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 a planter—for the future.”
In a mere decade this planter’s once almost forgotten name has acquired a new aura of symbolic allure that feels more at home in an era of automation and the internet. It speaks somehow to the great wealth that was never to be his, to the billions of dollars being earned or anticipated by his smart young admirers of the twenty-first century who have often commented that they are inspired by his work, by his patents, and notably by his dreams. A brilliant neurotic, Tesla spent his last years as an octogenarian in a New York hotel room subsisting on a diet of Nabisco crackers and the spiritual companionship of a lovely white pigeon.
Today one can scarcely pick up a copy of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times without finding a mention of him or his effect on famous young followers and admirers.
It is relevant to mention that he died alone and in debt in 1943, whereupon busy, prodigal America, his chosen country, simply forgot about him in the aftermath of World War II. And as if that were not enough, the academic official assigned to evaluate and preserve his scientific estate—all the research and records he had amassed in more than fifty years—referred them to the Office of Alien Property Custodian (though Tesla was a naturalized U.S. citizen!), which in turn released them to his homeland, the small country of Serbia (then part of communist Yugoslavia). Immediately, of course, this intellectual trove was declared off-limits for generations of Americans and all other citizens except possibly Russians.
One may well ask, is this a hard-luck story?
When I first heard the name Tesla, surprisingly he was known to relatively few Americans, mention of him being almost completely missing from science textbooks through the university level. Even his fellow electricians and engineers were often mystified by his boasts of taming the wild kinetic energy of earth and sky. (Indeed, had it not been for a certain ham radio operator named John Wagner, a Michigan third-grade schoolteacher who correctly protested that it had been Tesla and not the Italian fellow Guglielmo Marconi who invented radio, and who, with his students and the rock group TESLA, devoted decades of energy to clearing away misconceptions—even those of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which credited Edison and Marconi with some of Tesla’s inventions—the truth would have taken even longer to emerge.) Of course there were scientists who knew or suspected that Tesla deserved the credit; but the Nobel Prize Committee awarded the physics prize to Marconi for inventing wireless telegraphy and was loath to make a correction, which incidentally it has not done to this day. In 1943 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Tesla’s favor, but who kept count during a world war? And unfortunately, the inventor had died.
An uneasy relationship between Tesla and Thomas Edison was definitively poisoned in the early twentieth century by a cutthroat affair known as the War of the Currents between their respective industrial champions, the Westinghouse Corporation and General Electric Company. This was resolved with the triumph of Tesla’s alternating current system in harnessing Niagara Falls, and ultimately with AC electrification of the entire world. Alternating current, augmented by radio and automation, has revolutionized the basic technologies of twenty-first-century progress.
In the marshes of public perception, however, it was the all-American Edison (who gave us the phonograph, the lightbulb, and waxed paper, among many other sensible items) who for generations sprang to mind in debates over the major achievements of the twentieth century. Many of Edison’s triumphs, unfortunately, have recently faded from everyday use, including most recently the incandescent lightbulb. In Europe a more efficient light is being developed, a descendant of the fluorescent tube that Tesla first demonstrated at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
The rediscovery of Nikola Tesla (not to mention of his great work) has influenced some of the twenty-first century’s important pioneers. Larry Page, who with his partner Sergey Brin created the global search engine Google, says that his interest in science started early. As explained in The Economist, “When he was twelve, he read a biography of Nikola Tesla, a prolific inventor who never got credit for much, but is now a hero among geeks.” Page, a bona fide visionary, considered writing his thesis at Stanford University on Tesla but decided to “play it safe,” as he said, and proceeded to invent Google.
When a California company recently announced its plans to produce a high-speed all-electric sports car, the entrepreneurs unsurprisingly chose the name Tesla Motor Company. Hollywood admirers predictably rushed to invest millions in its future. Almost a century earl
ier, Tesla (one of the earliest environmentalists) had experimented with all-electric cars with limited success. He had also designed a small plane called a “flying stove” that was meant to carry the commuter from an upstairs bedroom window directly to his office. It remains one of several unfulfilled dreams.
The eccentric and controversial genius who has emerged from obscurity to become in our time the inspiration of billionaire geeks, New Age spiritualists, rock stars, third graders, schoolteachers, poets, operatic composers, playwrights, movie and TV producers, artists, photographers, and Dadaist sculptors, as well as the subject of a stream of books both scholastic and fantastic, may be one of the truly restorative figures of our age.
Tesla mythology is commercially employed today by entrepreneurs as varied as chip manufacturers and the makers of video games. The marketers of a new product line at Nvidia compete with chip competitors by selling a line of Tesla products. It was no doubt inevitable that the builders of a video game named Dark Void would center their conspiracies on a character named Nikola Tesla.
It is scarcely surprising to learn that some of Tesla’s old patents are providing the basic concepts used in modern atmospheric physics. A controversial military-industrial project known as HAARP, the high frequency active auroral research program, is a many-pronged exploration of the ionosphere based in Alaska. The Russian Duma has protested that it will infringe on world communication systems. Technically the earth’s ionosphere was not discovered until 1926 by British physicist E. V. Appleton. Yet in 1900 Tesla filed a patent for the wireless transmission of energy through this still nameless region some seventy kilometers above earth, where particles of cosmic matter from the sun are trapped between the vacuum of space and earth’s atmosphere.
Tesla was galvanized by the luminous mass of swirling energy known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) that create a huge electrodynamic circuit above the earth, carrying the energy of a thousand large power plants. No one can be certain where this research will lead. Excitable writers warn that HAARP’S “death rays” may set the sky ablaze (which is ridiculed by its creators) or permit universal mind control. Others speak of world weather control (a mixed blessing on a fractious planet) and of the ability to transmit energy by microwaves around the globe.
