Tesla’s basic idea was revisited by Atlantic Richfield Oil Company’s consultant physicist Bernard Eastlund, who sought a less expensive way to transmit natural gas from remote areas. He proposed a “pipeline” in the sky, using natural gas to power microwave transmitters. The microwaves would be sped great distances through the ionosphere, then beamed down to satellites and converted to electrical power on earth. In short, HAARP is simply vintage Tesla in modern hands, another reminder that he still looks down upon us.
M.C.
2010
FOREWORD Leland Anderson
Despite the flashy, dramatic, and often limelight attention that Nikola Tesla was given in the heyday of his reign in the fields of research and engineering, he maintained a very private personal life. Since he was a loner—a perennial bachelor, working apart, not entering into corporate associations, and not mixing friends—his personal life was obscure to outsiders. Such reclusiveness marking the career of one of the world’s leading figures in science and engineering can pose severe analytical obstacles for a biographer. However, almost immediately after Tesla’s death at the age of eighty-six in 1943, the biography Prodigal Genius appeared by John J. O’Neill, science editor of the New York Herald Tribune. For many years it stood as the only biography of Tesla, primarily because of the difficulty for any other would-be biographer to uncover significant additional information about him.
Following World War II, the tons of material representing Tesla’s library were shipped to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the country of his birth (Tesla was a U.S. citizen), where a state museum was established in his name. The circumstances surrounding the transfer of his estate to Yugoslavia are interesting but will not be commented upon here except to point out the problem of remoteness of such a museum for any biographer in this country, let alone the severe restrictions on access to archival materials that exist for researchers venturing to the museum.
In 1959, two rather short biographies of Tesla appeared. Dr. Helen Walter’s book was intended for young people, and curiously contained illustration and frontispiece sketches quite unlike Tesla’s appearance. Margaret Storm’s book, published by herself and printed in green ink, was based on the assertion that Tesla was an embodiment of a superior being from the planet Venus! Another short biography intended for young people appeared in 1961 by Arthur Beckhard. Tesla’s name was misspelled on the dust jacket (Tesla once wrote to a friend that he wished he could turn all the forked lightning in his laboratory on critics who misspell his name), and the book omits essentially everything on his life after 1900 (Tesla was then forty-four). All three authors leaned heavily on O’Neill’s biography, as evidenced by the perpetuation of a number of erroneous legends that subsequent study has vitiated, and none of the three extended O’Neill’s treatment.
Lightning in His Hand: The Life Story of Nikola Tesla, by Inez Hunt and Wanetta Draper, nearby residents of Colorado Springs, appeared in 1964, twenty years after O’Neill’s biography. O’Neill did not venture to Colorado Springs, where Tesla established an experimental station in 1899 and conducted electrical experiments which to this very day amaze scientists the world over, and consequently did not benefit from information that could have been provided by residents of that city about Tesla’s interactions with them. Tesla took on flesh and bones to some degree in Hunt and Draper’s biography, and the book carried numerous photographs. Much of the focus of the book concerned Tesla’s half-year stay in the Springs, which was the original intent of the authors.
Why should anyone actually wish to undertake another full biography after the appearance of O’Neill’s Prodigal Genius? It has been considered the most authoritative biography extant, and probably was the best effort that could have been produced by anyone at that time, with the exception of Kenneth Swezey—a science writer and Tesla’s close personal friend during the last twenty-plus years of his life. However, from this vantage point of distance in time, O’Neill’s biography is now seen to be weak insofar as it analyzed Tesla the man and thin with regard to his interactions with personal associates and friends. Even though O’Neill and Tesla were amicable, Tesla kept O’Neill at a distance, and O’Neill gleaned only what he was able to pry out of Tesla with great difficulty—certainly not the most ideal liaison for a biographer.
Much information has surfaced since the appearance of O’Neill’s biography, adding new dimensions to the extent of knowledge about Tesla. Many questions asked by students of his life have been answered; however, this unfolding has also presented many more mysteries. The Freedom of Information Acts revealed that the federal government had a great interest in Tesla’s papers. Why shouldn’t it? In the midst of World War II, and at press conferences, Tesla often startled reporters with talk of developing weapons with beams that would melt aircraft, telegeodynamics, and other advanced concepts. Whether real or speculative, the federal government took no chances. What became of these investigations by federal agencies is a story in itself.
In reviewing my own interest in Tesla, since high school days I was fascinated by his high frequency, high voltage researches for which he became world known. I was disturbed, however, by the inordinate difficulty in obtaining copies of his technical writings and, as well, identifying references to writings by others about Tesla’s work. This prompted what was to become a project of many years—that of producing an exhaustive catalog (published in 1979 as a bibliography and for which I served as co-editor) of the writings by and about Tesla and his work. In the course of pursuing studies in electrical engineering, and continuing interest in Tesla’s high frequency, high voltage researches, my inquiries eventually led me to meet those who worked for him, such as his secretaries Dorothy Skerritt and Muriel Arbus, and laboratory technicians such as Walter Wilhelm. Along the way, his personal friends came into the picture as well as others who had known Tesla on a person-to-person basis.
As the Tesla Centennial (1956) approached, it became apparent that no observances were being arranged by the major scientific and engineering organizations in this country to signal the event. Together with Skerritt, Arbus, Wilhelm, and a number of other interested persons, therefore, I helped found the Tesla Society—the function of which was to develop and coordinate activities for the centennial observance. Following the centennial year, the Society expired, but an awareness of Tesla’s impact on society was regenerated in the hiatus since his death. An interest had been reawakened in the discoveries that he announced and demonstrated, but which had been retarded in development because of a technology lag in associated disciplines, such as material sciences.
Inspiration—that is what he gave to other inventors whose endeavors his life spanned, and that is what his work continues to give to technical specialists in these times. On the occasion of Tesla’s seventy-fifth birthday (1931), his contemporaries wrote that his lectures were then both as imaginative and inspirational to productive development as when they were first published forty years before that:
In almost every step of progress in electrical power engineering, as well as in radio, we can trace the spark of thought back to Nikola Tesla. There are few indeed who in their lifetime see realization of such a far-flung imagination. (E. F. W. Alexanderson)
In reading of Tesla’s work one is constantly struck by his many suggestions which have anticipated later developments in the radio art. (Louis Cohen)
Prolific inventor, who solved the greatest problem in electrical engineering of his time, and gave to the world the polyphase motor and system of distribution, revolutionizing the power art and founding its phenomenal development. My contact as your assistant at the historic Columbia University high frequency lecture and afterward has left an indelible impression and inspiration which has influenced my life. (Gano Dunn)
You fanned into a never dying flame my latent interest in gaseous conduction. Early in 1894 I told our mutual friend that your book… which contains your original lectures, would still be considered a classic a hundred years hence. I have not changed my opinion. (D. McF
arlan Moore)
I remember vividly the eagerness and fascination with which I read your account of the high tension experiments more than forty years ago. They were most original and daring: they opened up new vistas for exploration by thought and experiment. (W. H. Bragg)
There are three aspects of Tesla’s work which particularly deserve our admiration: The importance of the achievements in themselves, as judged by their practical bearing; the logical clearness and purity of thought, with which the arguments are pursued and new results obtained; the vision and the inspiration, I should almost say the courage, of seeing remote things far ahead and so opening up new avenues to mankind. (I. C. M. Brentano)
Today, we yet find that the writings of Tesla retain their undiminished power of inspirational endeavor to the reader. Tesla was indeed out of his time, and this biography represents a distinct achievement in overcoming unusual investigative obstacles to bring his remarkable story to life.
Denver, Colorado
1. MODERN PROMETHEUS
Promptly at eight o’clock a patrician figure in his thirties was shown to his regular table in the Palm Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Tall and slender, elegantly attired, he was the cynosure of all eyes, though most diners, mindful of the celebrated inventor’s need for privacy, pretended not to stare.
Eighteen clean linen napkins were stacked as usual at his place. Nikola Tesla could no more have said why he favored numbers divisible by three than why he had a morbid fear of germs or, for that matter, why he was beset by any of the multitude of other strange obsessions that plagued his life.
Abstractedly he began to polish the already sparkling silver and crystal, taking up and discarding one square of linen after another until a small starched mountain had risen on the serving table. Then, as each dish arrived, he compulsively calculated its cubic contents before lifting a bite to his lips. Otherwise there could be no joy in eating.
Those who came to the Palm Room for the express purpose of observing the inventor might have noted that he did not order his meal from the menu. As usual, it had been specially prepared beforehand according to his telephoned instructions and now was being served at his request not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself.1
While Tesla picked at his food, William K. Vanderbilt paused to chide the young Serb for not making better use of the Vanderbilt box at the opera. And shortly after he left, a scholarly-looking man in a Van Dyke beard and small rimless glasses came to Tesla’s table and greeted him with particular affection. Robert Underwood Johnson, in addition to being a magazine editor and poet, was a socially ambitious and well-connected bon vivant.
Grinning, Johnson bent down and whispered in Tesla’s ear the latest rumor circulating among the “400”: a demure schoolgirl named Anne Morgan, it seemed, had a crush on the inventor and was pestering her papa, J. Pierpont, for an introduction.
Tesla smiled in his modest way and inquired after Johnson’s wife, Katharine.
“Kate has asked me to bring you to lunch on Saturday,” said Johnson.
They discussed for a moment another guest of whom Tesla was fond—but only in a platonic way—a charming young pianist named Marguerite Merington. Assured that she too had been asked, he accepted the invitation.
The editor went his way, and Tesla returned his attention to the cubic contents of his dessert course. He had barely completed his calculations when a messenger appeared at his table and handed him a note. He recognized at once the bold scrawl of his friend Mark Twain.
“If you do not have more exciting plans for the evening,” wrote the humorist, “perhaps you will join me at the Players’ Club.”2
Tesla scribbled a hasty reply: “Alas, I must work. But if you will join me in my laboratory at midnight, I think I can promise you some good entertainment.”
It was, as usual, precisely ten o’clock when Tesla rose from his table and vanished into the erratically lighted streets of Manhattan.
Strolling back toward his laboratory, he turned into a small park and whistled softly. From high in the walls of a nearby building came a rustling of wings. Soon a familiar white shape fluttered to rest on his shoulder. Tesla took a bag of grain from his pocket, fed the pigeon from his hand, then wafted her into the night, and blew her a kiss.
Now he considered his next move. If he continued on around the block, he would feel compelled to circle it three times. With a sigh, he turned and walked toward his laboratory at 33–35 South Fifth Avenue (now West Broadway), near Bleecker Street.
Entering the familiar loft building in the darkness, he closed a master switch. Tube lighting on the walls sprang into brilliance, illuminating a shadowy cavern filled with weirdly shaped machinery. The strange thing about this tube lighting was that it had no connections to the loops of electrical wiring around the ceiling. Indeed, it had no connections at all, drawing all its energy from an ambient force field. He could pick up an unattached light and move it freely to any part of the workshop.
In a corner an odd contraption began to vibrate silently. Tesla’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction. Here under a kind of platform, the tiniest of oscillators was at work. Only he knew its awesome power.
Thoughtfully he glanced through a window to the black shapes of tenements below. His hardworking immigrant neighbors appeared safely asleep. The police had warned him of complaints about the blue lightning flaring from his windows and electricity snapping through the streets after dark.
He shrugged and turned to his work, making a series of microscopic adjustments to a machine. Deep in concentration, he was unaware of the passage of time until he heard a pounding on the door at street level.
Tesla hurried down to greet an English journalist, Chauncey McGovern of Pearson’s Magazine.
“I’m so pleased you could come, Mr. McGovern.”
“I felt I owed it to my readers, sir. Everyone in London is talking about the New Wizard of the West—and they don’t mean Mr. Edison.”
“Well, come along up. Let’s see if I can justify my reputation.”
As they turned to the stairs there came a ring of laughter from the street entrance and a voice that Tesla recognized.
“Ah, that’s Mark.”
He opened the door again to welcome Twain and the actor Joseph Jefferson. Both had come directly from the Players’ Club. Twain’s eyes sparkled in anticipation.
“Let’s have the show, Tesla. You know what I always say.”
“No, what do you say, Mark?” the inventor asked with a smile.
“What I always say, and mind you they’ll be quoting me into the hereafter, is that thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”
“Then we’ll get a storm of work done tonight, my friend. Come along.”
“Not to stagger on being shown through the laboratory of Nikola Tesla,” McGovern would later recall, “requires the possession of an uncommonly sturdy mind….
“Fancy yourself seated in a large, well-lighted room, with mountains of curious-looking machinery on all sides. A tall, thin young man walks up to you, and by merely snapping his fingers creates instantaneously a ball of leaping red flame, and holds it calmly in his hands. As you gaze you are surprised to see it does not burn his fingers. He lets it fall upon his clothing, on his hair, into your lap, and, finally, puts the ball of flame into a wooden box. You are amazed to see that nowhere does the flame leave the slightest trace, and you rub your eyes to make sure you are not asleep.”3
If McGovern was baffled by Tesla’s fireball, he was at least not alone. None of his contemporaries could explain how Tesla produced this oft-repeated effect, and no one can explain it today.
The odd flame having been extinguished as mysteriously as it appeared, Tesla switched off the lights, and the room became black as a cave.
“Now, my friends, I will make for you some daylight.”
Suddenly, the whole laboratory was flooded with strange, beautiful light. McGovern, Twain, and Jefferson cast their eyes around th
e room, but they could find no trace of the source of the illumination. McGovern wondered vaguely if this eerie effect might somehow be connected with a demonstration Tesla had reportedly given in Paris in which he had produced illumination between two large plates set at each side of a stage, yet with no source of light apparent.*
But the light show was merely a warm-up for the inventor’s guests.Lines of tension on Tesla’s face betrayed the seriousness with which he himself regarded the next experiment.
A small animal was brought from a cage, tied to a platform, and quickly electrocuted. The indicator registered one thousand volts. The body was removed. Then Tesla, with one hand in his pocket, leaped lightly upon the same platform. The voltage indicator began slowly climbing. At last two million volts of electricity were pouring “through” the frame of the tall young man, who did not move a muscle. His silhouette was now sharply defined with a halo of electricity formed by myriad tongues of flame darting out from every part of his body.
Seeing the shock on McGovern’s face, he extended one hand to the English interviewer, who described the strange sensation: “You twist it about in the same fashion as you have seen people do who hold the handles of a strong electric battery. The young man is literally a human electric ‘live wire.’”
The inventor leaped down from the platform, turned off the current, and relaxed the tension of his audience by tossing off the performance as no more than a trick. “Pshaw! These are only a few playthings. None of these amount to anything. They are of no value to the great world of science. But come over here, and I will show you something that will make a big revolution in every hospital and home as soon as I am able to get the thing into working form.”
Tesla: Man Out of Time Page 2