Tesla: Man Out of Time
“Fitzgerald also knows that Tesla had conceived and designed a revolutionary type of torpedo which is not presently in use by any of the nations. It is Fitzgerald’s belief that this design has not been made available to any nation up to the present time. From statements made to Fitzgerald by Tesla, he knows that the complete plans, specifications and explanation of the basic theories of these things are some place in the personal effects of Tesla. He also knows there is a working model of Tesla’s, which cost more than ten thousand dollars to build, in a safety deposit box belonging to Tesla at the Governor Clinton Hotel, and Fitzgerald believes this model has to do with the so-called death ray or the wireless transmission of electrical current.
“Tesla has also told Fitzgerald in past conversations that he has some eighty trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with experiments conducted by him. Bureau is requested to advise immediately what, if any, action should be taken concerning this matter by the New York Field Division.”2
Kosanović later reported to Walter Gorsuch of the Office of Alien Property in New York that he first went to Tesla’s rooms with the other men to search for a will. After the safe was opened, Swezey took from it a book containing the testimonials sent to Tesla on his seventy-fifth birthday, while Kosanović took from the room three pictures of Tesla. According to the manager of the New Yorker Hotel and Kosanović, nothing else was removed. The safe was closed under a new combination, which combination was in Kosanović’s exclusive possession.
On January 9, Gorsuch of OAP and Fitzgerald went to the New Yorker Hotel and seized all of Tesla’s property, consisting of about two truckloads of material, sealed it and transferred it to the Manhattan Storage and Warehouse Company. It was added to about thirty barrels and bundles that had been there since about 1934, and these too were sealed under orders of the OAP.
In addition to the question of the legitimacy of Alien Property’s involvement in the case is the question of why Kosanović was allowed to have access to the safe’s combination, from which he later claimed the Edison Medal had vanished. Tesla’s American naturalization papers, which he so prized that he always kept them in his safe, may now be seen at the Tesla Museum in Belgrade; but it is not known what other papers or objects were in the safe.
The Washington Bureau of the FBI went so far as to advise the New York Bureau “to discreetly take the matter up with the State’s Attorney in New York City with the view to possibly taking Kosanovich into custody on a burglary charge and obtaining the various papers which Kosanovich is reported to have taken from Tesla’s safe.” New York was also told to contact the Surrogate Court so stops could be placed against all of Tesla’s effects, so that no one could enter them without an FBI agent being present, and New York was to keep Washington advised of all developments.3
The idea of arresting the Yugoslav ambassador was quickly dropped. And very soon the Washington headquarters made a curious decision. Edward A. Tamm of the FBI in Washington advised D. M. Ladd of that Bureau that the whole matter was being turned over to the Custodian of Alien Property; and Tamm noted, “There appears to be no need for us to mess around in it.”4
Soon the well-known electrical engineer Dr. John G. Trump, who was serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, was asked to participate in an examination of Tesla’s scientific papers. Present at the Manhattan Warehouse & Storage Company in addition to Dr. Trump were Willis George, Office of Naval Intelligence, Third Naval District, Edward Palmer, chief yeoman, USNR, and John J. Corbett, chief yeoman, USNR.
Dr. Trump reported afterward that no examination was made of the vast amount of Tesla’s property that had been in the basement of the New Yorker Hotel for ten years prior to his death, or of any of his papers except those in his immediate possession at the time of death. It should be remembered that Tesla’s scientific reputation had been in eclipse for a number of years and that there had been many efforts to discredit his claims in radio, robotry, and alternating current. Dr. Trump was a busy man, just as the staff of the FBI was stretched thin by its preoccupation with investigating wartime sabotage.
“As a result of this examination,” wrote Dr. Trump, “it is my considered opinion that there exist among Dr. Tesla’s papers and possessions no scientific notes, descriptions of hitherto unrevealed methods or devices, or actual apparatus which could be of significant value to this country or which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands. I can therefore see no technical or military reason why further custody of the property should be retained.”
He added: “For your records, there has been removed to your office a file of various written material by Dr. Tesla which covers typically and fairly completely the ideas with which he was concerned during his later years. These documents are enumerated and briefly abstracted in the attachment to this letter.”
In closing Dr. Trump said: “It should be no discredit to this distinguished engineer and scientist, whose solid contributions to the electrical art were made at the beginning of the present century, to report that his thoughts and efforts during at least the past fifteen years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character—often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power—but did not include new sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”
The file (of which Dr. Trump’s notes were only an abstract) consisted apparently of either photostats or microfilm made by the naval officers present, and the original papers apparently remained in storage, later to be transmitted to Yugoslavia. The examination had failed to disclose any alien-owned property subject to the vesting power of the Alien Property Custodian under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Tesla’s papers and personal effects were released in February of 1943 for disposition by Kosanović, the administrator of his estate.
Dr. Trump’s abstract included the following:
“Art of Telegeodynamics, or Art of Producing Terrestrial Motions at Distance—This document, in the form of a letter dated June 12, 1940, to the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., proposes a method for the transmission of large amounts of power over vast distances by means of mechanical vibrations of the earth’s crust. The source of power is a mechanical or electromechanical device bolted to some rocky protuberance and imparting power at a resonance frequency of the earth’s crust. The proposed scheme appears to be completely visionary and unworkable. Westinghouse’s reply indicates their polite rejection….
“New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy through Natural Media—This undated document by Tesla describes an electrostatic method of producing very high voltages and capable of very great power. This generator is used to accelerate charged particles, presumably electrons. Such a beam of high-energy electrons passing through air is the ‘concentrated nondispersive’ means by which energy is transmitted through natural media. As a component of this apparatus there is described an open-ended vacuum tube within which the electrons are first accelerated.
“The proposed scheme bears some relation to present means for producing high-energy cathode rays by the cooperative use of a high-voltage electrostatic generator and an evacuated electron acceleration tube. It is well known, however, that such devices, while of scientific and medical interest, are incapable of the transmission of large amounts of power in nondispersed beams over long distances. Tesla’s disclosures in this memorandum would not enable the construction of workable combinations of generator and tube even of limited power, though the general elements of such a combination are succinctly described.
“A Method of Producing Powerful Radiations—an undated memorandum in Tesla’s handwriting describing ‘a new process of generating powerful rays or radiations.’ This memorandum reviews the works of Lenard and Crookes, describes Tesla’s work on the production of high voltages, and finally in the last paragraph gives the only description of the invention contained in the memorandum. .
. . ‘Briefly stated, my new simplified process of generating powerful rays consists in creating through the medium of a high-speed jet of suitable fluid a vacuous space around a terminal of a circuit and supplying the same with currents of the required tension and volume.’”
Long afterward in a letter to a colleague, Dr. Trump told what happened when he visited the Hotel Governor Clinton to examine the “device” stored in its vault, presumably the same box remembered by the messenger boy in Tesla’s room.
“Tesla had warned the management that this ‘device’ was a secret weapon,” said Dr. Trump, “and it would detonate if opened by an unauthorized person. Upon opening the vault and indicating the package containing the secret weapon, the hotel manager and employees promptly left the scene.” The federal agents who had come along also pulled back, the better to give him the sole distinction of opening the parcel.
It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. He remembered hesitating, thinking how beautiful the weather was outdoors, and pondering on why he was not outside too.
He lifted the parcel onto a table and, mustering his courage, snipped the string with his pocket knife. He removed the wrapping. Inside was a handsome polished wooden chest bound with brass. It required a final effort of courage to raise the hinged lid.
Inside stood a multidecade resistance box of the type used for Wheatstone bridge resistance measurements—a common standard item to be found in every electrical laboratory before the turn of the century!
Why had Tesla seen fit to terrify the staff and management of the hotel with this harmless object for so many years? Perhaps he had become so accustomed to having his hotel bills paid behind his back (believing that the hotels, honored to have him living there, had routinely dismissed the billings), that he was insulted when the Governor Clinton brashly demanded its $400.
Although the FBI closed its Tesla file in 1943, it didn’t seem to want to stay closed. It was reopened in 1957 when an informant complained that a New York couple were issuing newsletters containing “information pertaining to flying saucers and interplanetary matters” and exploiting the inventor’s name and fame. They allegedly claimed that Tesla’s engineers, after his death, had completed a “Tesla Set,” a radio device for interplanetary communication, that the device had been placed in operation in 1950 and since then Tesla engineers had been in close touch with alien spaceships. Once again the FBI decided no action was warranted and the file was closed.
Swezey had never put much credence in the “secret weapon” rumors and had written to an inquirer: “Because Tesla was a recluse, and himself liked to talk in mystifying terms during his later years, I think many legends have been built up about the dozens of ideas he had evolved but which were not permitted by others to see the light of day.”
He said he had known the inventor well for two decades before his death: “Tesla’s greatest genius flamed up during a dozen or so years just before and slightly after the turn of the century. What he did after that may have carried the germs of some of the developments we are witnessing today, but he had not carried any of them—at least on paper or in any other tangible form—to the point of practicality….”
Perhaps, but between 1945 and 1947 an interesting exchange of letters and cables occurred among the Air Technical Service Command at Wright Field, Ohio, in whose Equipment Laboratory much top-secret research was being performed, Military Intelligence in Washington, and the Office of Alien Property—subject, files of the late Nikola Tesla.
On August 21, 1945, the Air Technical Service Command requested permission from the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Force in Washington, D.C., for Private Bloyce D. Fitzgerald to go to Washington for a period of seven days “for the purpose of securing property clearance on enemy impounded property.”
On September 5, 1945, Colonel Holliday of the Equipment Laboratory, Propulsion and Accessories Subdivision, wrote to Lloyd L. Shaulis of the OAP in Washington, confirming a conversation with Fitzgerald and asking for photostatic copies of the exhibits annotated by Trump from the estate of Tesla. It was stated that the material would be used “in connection with projects for National Defense by this department,” and that all of it would be returned in a reasonable length of time.
That was the last time that the Office of Alien Property or any other federal agency in the United States admitted to having possession of Tesla’s papers on beam weaponry. Shaulis wrote to Colonel Holliday on September 11, 1945, saying, “The materials requested have been forwarded to Air Technical Service Command in care of Lt. Robert E. Houle. These data are made available to the Army Air Force by this office for use in experiments; please return them.” They were never returned.
These were the full photostatic copies, not merely the abstracts. OAP has no record of how many copies were made by those who examined the files with Dr. Trump. The Navy has no record of Tesla’s papers; no federal archives have a record of them.
Curiously, four months after the photostats had been sent to Wright Field, Col. Ralph Doty, the chief of Military Intelligence in Washington wrote James Markham of Alien Property indicating that they had never been received: “This office is in receipt of a communication from Headquarters, Air Technical Service Command, Wright Field, requesting that we ascertain the whereabouts of the files of the late scientist, Dr. Nichola [sic] Tesla, which may contain data of great value to the above Headquarters. It has been indicated that your office might have these files in custody. If this is true, we would like to request your consent for a representative of the Air Technical Service Command to review them. In view of the extreme importance of these files to the above command, we would like to request that we be advised of any attempt by any other agency to obtain them. [Italics supplied.]
“Because of the urgency of this matter, this communication will be delivered to you by a Liaison Officer of this office in the hope of expediting the solicited information.”
The “other” agency that had the files, or should have had them, was the Air Technical Service Command itself! Colonel Doty’s letter, which was classified under the Espionage Act, was declassified on May 8, 1980.
This embarrassing contretemps goes unexplained in the records. Perhaps it was handled orally with the Liaison Officer.
However, on October 24, 1947, David L. Bazelon, assistant attorney general and director of the Office of Alien Property, wrote to the commanding officer of the Air Technical Service Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, regarding the Tesla photostats that had been sent by registered mail on or about September 11, 1945, to Colonel Holliday, at the latter’s request.
“Our records do not reveal that this material has been returned,” said Bazelon. He sent a description and asked that it be returned.
Obviously at least one set of Tesla’s papers had reached Wright Field because on November 25, 1947, there was a response to the Office of Alien Property from Colonel Duffy, chief of the Electronic Plans Section, Electronic Subdivision, Engineering Division, Air Matériel Command, Wright Field. He replied: “These reports are now in the possession of the Electronic Subdivision and are being evaluated.” He believed that the evaluation should be completed by January 1, 1948, and “At that time your office will be contacted with respect to final disposition of these papers.”
There is no written record that OAP ever sought further to have the documents returned, and they were not returned.
For many years there have been rumors that these unpatented inventions or concepts of Tesla’s found their way not only to the U.S. Army Air Force but to Russia and to private American defense industries, and ultimately into certain university research laboratories engaged in beam weaponry.
The Office of Alien Property experienced a very difficult problem over the years in explaining its role in connection with Tesla’s papers. Between 1948 and 1978 it issued the following variations on a theme to many inquirers:
“While this Office participated in an examination of certain material owned by the late Dr. Tesla, our
records do not disclose that any such material has been vested or is presently under the jurisdiction of this Office….”
“This Office has never had custody . . . of any property of Nikola Tesla….”
“While the Tesla papers were in our custody…”
“Photostatic copies of certain documents, made while the papers were under our seal….”
“In 1943 this Office placed a seal on the property….”
“While the Tesla papers were in our custody . . .” etc., etc., etc.
As for what is now Headquarters Aeronautical Systems Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, they state: “The organization (Equipment Laboratory) that performed the evaluation of Tesla’s papers was deactivated several years ago. After conducting an extensive search of lists of records retired by that organization, in which we found no mention of Tesla’s papers, we concluded the documents were destroyed at the time the laboratory was deactivated.”5 (Italics supplied. Response, under the Freedom of Information Act, dated July 30, 1980.)
Tesla’s original papers, and the remaining models of his inventions— his magnifying transmitter, robot boats, early tube lighting, induction motors, turbine, exhibits shown at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, such as the “Egg of Columbus,” and others—left America in 1952 for Yugoslavia. His ashes were sent later. The artifacts may now be seen at the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, a dignified-looking building with a broad, well-proportioned facade at No. 51 Proleterskih Brigada, an avenue renamed after the war, but formerly known under the monarchy as Crown Street. The museum bears a plaque on a low wall, printed in the old Cyrillic alphabet.
Here Tesla’s English writings have been translated into SerboCroatian—except, as the archivist admits, for the “unimportant” material, which remains, just as he wrote it, in the language of his adopted country.
30. THE LEGACY
The fact that Tesla’s research notes and papers have not been easily available for western scientists has not, of course, meant that Teslian research is dead. On the contrary, the very mystery surrounding some of his unproved claims has served to goad numerous scientists into trying to duplicate his experiments. And since his aspirations were virtually limitless, there has always been a chance that the rewards of success would not be inconsiderable. But the single greatest stimulus to try to follow in Tesla’s footsteps doubtless remains the example of the man himself—his stunning record of achievement and the enduring fascination of his mind. As one admiring German writer put it, “Tesla went beyond the borders of his exact science to foretell what lies in the future . . . a modern Prometheus who dared reach for the stars….”1