Tesla: Man Out of Time
The younger Morgan replied stiffly that he could not possibly consent to Tesla’s turning over an interest in the two companies. Instead, he suggested that Tesla go ahead and organize the two firms and, from his profits, start repaying the $150,000 to the Morgan estate as and when he could. This did not end the dialogue, but it certainly crimped it.
Over the next several years the inventor favored J. P. Morgan with repeated invitations to invest in a wireless station and the turbine. But the financier neither understood nor was much interested in fluid propulsion or radio. As for the wireless transmission of electrical power, the old objection still obtained: Why would Morgan want to put all his power lines out of business? Nevertheless, the financier lent Tesla $5,000 and then, like his father, took refuge in a European vacation. He sailed that autumn, carrying some books the inventor had given him, and leaving Tesla pacing the dock.
Meanwhile Tesla began licensing his turbine in Europe. Through the intercession of the former Prince Albert of the Belgians, he received $10,000 for the license in Belgium. A concession in Italy was expected to bring him $20,000. In America he concluded automobile and train lighting contracts and was working on other practical arrangements. But still his funds were far short of his needs.
He struggled to take the disappointments philosophically and had a remarkably accurate idea of his own place in—or rather, out of—time.
“We are but cogwheels in the medium of the universe,” he wrote to Morgan, “and it is… an unavoidable consequence of the laws governing that the pioneer who is far in advance of his age is not understood and must suffer pain and disappointment and be content with the higher reward which is accorded to him by posterity.”3
When Morgan returned just before Christmas, Tesla presented him with a number of propositions. He was again desperate. “I am almost despairing at the present state of things. I need money badly and I cannot get it in these dreadful times. You are about the only man to whom I can look for help. . . .” He closed by wishing the multimillionaire a Happy Christmas. Morgan responded with a bill for interest of $684.17 on the two loans already extended and a hearty return of seasonal wishes.
In January 1914, despite the threatening World War, Tesla pleaded with Morgan that he needed another $5,000 to finish and ship a turbine to the German Minister of Marine, High Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. He felt that no question of loyalty was involved since he had already offered the turbine to the U.S. government. Despite complimentary remarks about his invention from some in the War Department, no orders had been placed at home. This time Morgan relented and extended another loan.
Two months later he offered Morgan a chance to finance an automobile speedometer and to buy a two-thirds interest in a new company. It was becoming painfully apparent that there were problems with the turbine: the metal had not been manufactured that could take such high speeds for long; and it was by no means inexpensive, at least in the early stages of development. More time was needed and therefore, he must develop interim sources of capital.
But this time Morgan’s secretary returned all the enclosures and advised that Mr. Morgan could not possibly be interested in any further inventions.
Through the next winter, however, Tesla continued to appeal to Morgan again and again. “Please do not take this as another cry for help,” he wrote; but in reality it was a desperate cry. Meantime, he moved his offices from the smart Metropolitan Towers to the less expensive Woolworth Building. In November Morgan replied that he would extend the loans but would add nothing more to them.
Everyone seemed to be hard up. Scherff sent the inventor two new notes of his own for signature, replacing the old unpaid ones, so that the former employee might be able to use them as collateral. He expressed disappointment that Tesla had been unable to make at least some payment; but Tesla, signing the new notes, wrote glowingly of his prospects for the turbine.
In the midst of personal trials he still found time to help his friends. Johnson, who had been promoted to editor of Century magazine four years earlier, wrote urging secrecy in an office scandal that jeopardized his position. He referred to a letter from a Mr. Anthony “written without any knowledge of the situation at the office. What he will say when I tell him the new situation, the Lord knows….”4
Tesla, having interceded in the mysterious affair, wrote back that he had done all he could to dispose of the matter, “but I have encountered resistance and so fear I have reached no tangible results… I am not relaxing my efforts. Trusting that you will not let this little embarrassment weigh too heavily on your mind….”5*
But the little embarrassment—the nature of which remained a closely guarded secret—resulted in Johnson’s resignation. Things were never quite the same at their fashionable home on Lexington Avenue after that. Although in time Robert obtained a new position as permanent secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, his finances seem to have undergone some sort of erosion. The Johnsons continued to indulge themselves with the parties, the servants, and the European holidays to which they were accustomed, but now their lifestyle was bringing them into debt. A pattern began that would continue for the remainder of both men’s lives, of borrowing small sums of money from each other to cover overdrafts. More often, surprisingly, it was to be Tesla who bailed out Johnson.
War with Germany was drawing ever closer for the United States. Tesla and young John Hays Hammond, Jr., on the latter’s initiative, corresponded at length on possible ways of earning money through military applications of their work in robotry. Hammond, using Tesla’s principles, had built an electric dog on wheels that followed him everywhere, its motor operated by a light beam behind its eyes. Bowser was not exactly an invention to set the generals and admirals fiercely bidding against one another, but Hammond had also operated a crewless yacht by radio in Boston harbor, and the two inventors toyed with the idea of forming a teleautomatics company. Hammond had an automatic selective system he wanted to develop, and Tesla thought that a dirigible torpedo he had invented many years earlier could be of service to the War Department. But although he helped Hammond get a technical article published on the state of the art, their efforts at joint development were not pursued.6
Even at this stage in his career Tesla was still often handicapped by public confusion about his citizenship. A Washington Post article, making a common error, referred to him as the “noted Balkan scientist.” And among the bureaucrats in Washington he may have suffered from a mistaken application of the NIH (not invented here) factor. Mere superiority of product would seldom be enough to override such a disadvantage, however much society might be the loser.
But no doubt much more damaging to Tesla’s prospects at this time were those traditional enemies of innovation—inertia and vested interest. An industrial consultant tells of inquiring some years ago of an executive in the Office of Naval Research in Washington, D.C., if they had ever sponsored R&D programs on the Tesla turbine. The reply was: “We get proposals all the time for funding Tesla turbine work. But let’s be candid. The Parsons turbine has been around a long time with entire industries built around it and supporting it. If the Tesla turbine isn’t an order of magnitude superior, then it would be pouring money down the rat hole because the existing industry isn’t going to be overturned that easily….”
Sometimes Tesla’s inventions had better luck backing into America from abroad. In 1915 a German firm, licensed to use his wireless patents, built a radio station for the U.S. Naval Radio Service on Mystic Island near Tuckerton, New Jersey. It was equipped with the famous Goldschmidt high-frequency alternator of the magnetic reflecting type, which enabled radio frequency alternating currents to be developed directly.7 Tesla received royalties of around $1,000 per month from these patents for two years—a most welcome source of income.
When the chief engineer, Emil Mayer, told him that messages from the station were being received at a distance of 9,000 miles, he took the news calmly, for it merely confirmed what he already knew. “You have thu
s proved, practically, what I demonstrated with my wireless plant in scientific experiments carried on from 1899 to 1900,” he replied. Unfortunately the war soon brought his radio royalties to a halt. The Tuckerton Radio Station was closed by the government in 1917, the year of America’s entry into the war. Tesla did, however, receive royalties later from the Atlantic Communications Companies.
World War I was brought home to America’s Serbian population long before it engaged the country at large. Local Slavs could not help but feel the impact since Serbia had led the movement for Pan-Slav unification that ultimately set off the whole conflagration. A Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo in Bosnia, leading to both Serbia and Montenegro being overrun by the Central Powers, composed, among others, of Austria and Germany. Soon news of the extreme sufferings of the Serbian people reached the United States.
Relief efforts were begun by local emigrants under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Red Cross, of which Pupin was chairman. Further proof of the antipathy between the two scientists is supplied by an anecdote from this period. The very Rev. Peter O. Stijacić with a noted professor of theology from Serbia called upon Tesla one day to solicit a message of unity to American Serbs, in hope of inspiring them to send more generous aid to the homeland. Innocently they suggested that such an appeal be signed by the famous Nikola Tesla, Michael Pupin, and Tesla’s dear friend, Dr. Paul Radosavljević (known as Dr. Rado), who taught at New York University. Tesla politely asked that they excuse him as a signer, knowing the impossibility of ever agreeing with Pupin on a word or a phrase, let alone a message of unity. And if the unification committee itself could not get together, . . . American Serbs, he said philosophically, but with amusement in his eyes, had minds of their own.
In 1918 a kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was proclaimed under the rule of King Peter I. But this by no means ended Slavic turmoil and misery. Eleven years later King Peter’s successor, Alexander I, following a move toward separatism by Croatia, established a dictatorship. At least the country then acquired one name for all its people and its parts—Yugoslavia. Tesla approved both of Alexander and of unity.
Another anecdote about the inventor is told by the Reverend Stijacić. On his first trip to America as a young writer for the Serbian Federation, Stijacić had been surprised to find in the Chicago Public Library, a book of poems, the author of which was the popular Serbian poet Zmaj-Jovan. The translator was Nikola Tesla. Later, when Stijacić was taken by Dr. Rado to meet the inventor in his offices on the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, he said, “Mr. Tesla, I did not know that you were interested in poetry.”
A look of wry amusement shone in the inventor’s eyes. “There are many of us Serbs who sing,” he said, “but there is nobody to listen to us.”
The New York Times on November 6, 1915, carried a story on page one, based upon a Reuter’s dispatch from London, reporting that Tesla and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize in physics. Interviewed the next day, Tesla told a Times reporter he had received no official notification of the award. But he speculated that it might be for his discovery of a way to transmit energy without wires. This, he said, had proved to be practical not only over terrestrial distances but “even effects of cosmic magnitude may be created.”
He then described for the reporter a future when all wars would be waged with electrical waves instead of explosives. More positively, he said, “We can illuminate the sky and deprive the ocean of its terrors! We can draw unlimited quantities of water from the ocean for irrigation! We can fertilize the soil and draw energy from the sun!”8
Asked what he thought Edison was being honored for, Tesla tactfully replied that Edison was worthy of a dozen Nobel prizes. That gentleman, reached in Omaha on his way home from the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, seemed surprised when shown the London dispatch. He too said he had received no official notice. He made no further comment.
Robert and Katharine were unsurprised but delighted by the news. The former quickly sent his congratulations. Tesla, his mood now more thoughtful, replied that many people would win the Nobel Prize, but that “I have not less than four dozen of my creations identified with my name in technical literature. These are honors real and permanent, which are bestowed, not by a few who are apt to err, but by the whole world which seldom makes a mistake, and for any of these I would give all the Nobel prizes during the next thousand years.”9
What followed was a curious business. The western press, including leading magazines, picked up the story and without checking, gave it wide circulation. In another story in the Times, Tesla was interviewed again as a Nobel winner.
His comments to the inquiring reporter were entirely typical. He bemoaned the fact that the world, after so many years, still did not understand his concepts of voice transmission. With such a plant as Wardenclyffe, he explained, the telephone exchange of New York City could hook up, enabling subscribers to speak to anyone in the world without any change in the telephonic apparatus. A picture from the European battlefields could be transmitted to New York in five minutes.
The current passed through the earth, he elaborated, starting from the transmission station with infinite speed from that region and, slowing down to the speed of light at a distance of 6,000 miles, then increasing in speed from that region and reaching the receiving station with infinite velocity.
“It’s a wonderful thing. Wireless is coming to mankind in its full meaning like a hurricane, some of these days. Some day there will be, say, six great wireless telephone stations in the world system connecting all the inhabitants of this earth to one another not only by voice but by sight.”10
Flawed though his physics might be (Tesla would resist to the end the idea that light sped faster than anything) his prophecy was sound enough. He did not explicitly foresee today’s microwave-boosting synchronous satellites for television, yet something of the sort had been in his mind since, as a teenager, he had envisioned building a ring around the equator that would revolve in Earth synchrony.
And if he did not invent television, he at least imagined it. Four years later Johnson suggested that as a money-making venture, Tesla invent a way of reproducing football games on a home screen as they occurred. “I am already expecting to become a multimillionaire without going into show business,” he replied, but went on to offer his “best suggestion,” which was to employ “nine flying machines, winged and propellerless five hundred miles or more, take negatives, develop films, and reel them off as they arrive. . . . It calls for an invention to which I have devoted twenty years of careful study, which I hope will ultimately realize, that is television, making possible to see at distance through a wire….”11 But, in fact, he never pursued this idea.
The report of the Nobel Prize in physics for 1915, to be jointly shared by Edison and Tesla, was carried in the Literary Digest12 and The Electrical World of New York,13 both publications having gone to press before November 14, the date on which another Reuter’s dispatch, this time from Stockholm, dropped a devastating bombshell. The Nobel Committee announced that the prize for physics would in fact be shared by Professor William Henry Bragg of the University of Leeds, England, and his son, W. L. Bragg of Cambridge University, for their use of X rays to determine the structure of crystals.
What had happened? The Nobel Prize Foundation declined to clarify. One biographer and close friend of Tesla’s reported years later that the Serbo-American had declined the honor, stating that as a discoverer he could not share the prize with a mere inventor.14 Yet another biographer advanced the theory that it was Edison who objected to sharing the prize, that it was in keeping with his “sardonic and sadistic brand of humor” to have deprived Tesla of $20,000 when he knew how much he needed funds.15
But no real evidence exists to prove that either of them declined the Nobel. The Nobel Foundation said simply, “Any rumor that a person has not been given a Nobel Prize because he has made known his intention to r
efuse the award is ridiculous.” The recipient would have nothing to say in the matter, except to decline it after the fact if he or she so chose. But the Foundation did not deny that Tesla and Edison had been first choices.
Edison’s fame and wealth were secure; he had little need of such an honor. But for Tesla it must have been one more cruel disappointment. And certainly it was not the kind of publicity he needed at this critical time.
20. FLYING STOVE
The teething troubles that beset the development of the new turbine were substantial. Elated with the initial success of his small turbine models, Tesla had designed a large double turbine to test with steam at the Waterside Station in New York. This was Edison country, peopled with engineers of the New York Edison Company, and predictably there were problems almost from the start.
Tesla’s habit of arriving at the station sprucely attired at 5 P.M. and insisting that the workers stay for overtime caused no pleasure. There wasn’t enough money to test the turbine properly, even on a straight schedule. The engineers, failing to understand it, reported it a misconception. And so on.
More important, there was a severe practical problem. At the tremendously high speeds at which the turbine operated, averaging 35,000 revolutions per minute, the centrifugal force was so great that it stretched the metal in the rotating disks. It was to be many years before metallurgy would produce the superior metals required.
He finally persuaded the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in Milwaukee to build three turbines, but again he was most undiplomatic with both engineering staff and management, and communicated his dissatisfaction to the board of directors. He walked out on tests after learning of a negative report by the engineers, claiming they would not build it as he wished. They said he refused to supply enough information.