The Electric War

by Mike Winchell

  “It is all and more than I anticipated it would be,” said Tesla about the plant. Reflecting on the operation he had witnessed that day, Tesla added that “the plant and the prospect of future development in electrical science, and the more ordinary uses of electricity, are my ideals. They are what I have long anticipated and have labored, in an insignificant way, to contribute toward bringing about.”

  The reporters asked in disbelief if it was true that this was Tesla’s first time at Niagara Falls and the plant. “Yes, I came purposely to see it. But, and it is a curious thing about me, I cannot stay about big machinery a great while.”

  * * *

  January 12, 1897, 10:25 p.m.

  Ellicott Club, Buffalo, New York

  It had been a long day for Nikola Tesla. He’d agreed to be the guest of honor at this formal dinner after Edward Dean Adams had first told him that he wanted to celebrate a monumental achievement: the successful effort to use Niagara Falls to power Buffalo, New York, since November 15 of the previous year.

  But what Tesla assumed would be a quick stop at Niagara Falls followed by a dinner party where he’d mingle for a bit, say a few words, and then retire actually turned out to be a nonstop morning-to-late-night extravaganza of traveling and sightseeing.

  They’d arrived at nine a.m. in Niagara Falls, where they were treated to breakfast at the Prospect House Hotel. From there, they’d visited Power House No. 1 once again, followed by a factory-after-factory visit of businesses powered by Niagara.

  After visiting Niagara Falls, they were taken by private train to Buffalo for the celebratory dinner.

  After hours of eating and drinking and cigar smoking and talking, Nikola Tesla stood up to address the eager crowd. Hundreds of the most celebrated names in the country waited with bated, cigar-tainted breath for the electrical genius to share his thoughts.

  Tesla pursed his thin lips and took a deep breath through his nose. His dark eyes met the crowd as he modestly opened by admitting that he felt as if he wasn’t worthy of the honor they’d bestowed upon him. The crowd relented and shook their heads. Then they turned silent, waiting for more.

  Tesla urged everyone to allow their actions to be dictated not just by material motivation—which he admitted was an unavoidable force in the will of men—but “for the sake of success, for the pleasure there is in achieving it and for the good they might do thereby to their fellow men.”

  The crowd applauded for Tesla’s fresh perspective. It was genuine, they knew, and not the contrived, affectatious front the rest put on like a glamorous gown meant to hypnotize the senses from anything else. Those who knew Tesla knew his inventive passion was driven by his desire to better society. This wasn’t just an ideal for Tesla; it was his primary motivation. After all, this man had given up a pool of royalty riches.

  Nikola Tesla paused. He stared blankly, as if he was seeing a flash of light—something that wasn’t really there. Then he looked around at the collection of prominent men with that same blank stare and asked for each and every one of them to be “men whose chief aim and enjoyment is the acquisition and spread of knowledge, men who look far above earthly things, whose banner is Excelsior!”

  EPILOGUE: AFTER THE STORM

  The Niagara Falls victory marked the end of the War of the Currents. Alternating current and the Westinghouse-Tesla camp reigned supreme. As is the case with all wars, the effects lingered long after the fighting had stopped.

  Almost a decade after it had ended, a gruesome incident occurred that mirrored the tactics Edison had employed during the electric war. Topsy the elephant was a veteran performer at Forepaugh’s Circus and had developed a reputation as a “bad” or “wild” elephant after killing a spectator in 1902. She was sold to Sea Lion Park, which soon became Luna Park, on Coney Island. At Luna Park, Topsy was involved in a series of public incidents of erratic behavior, leading Luna Park owners Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy to plan a public execution, at first attempting to charge people admission to witness the killing.

  On January 4, 1903, Topsy was strangled, poisoned, and electrocuted with alternating current, the creature’s death ultimately resulting from the electrocution. With Edison Manufacturing cameras capturing the execution on film, later played on Edison Kinetoscopes, over the years some casual observers of the video inaccurately attributed the Topsy killing as a product of the War of the Currents. This, however, is not true, as the incident happened far after the back-and-forth battle had ceased, and Thomas Edison was not known to be in attendance at Luna Park on that day. The horrific Topsy execution, though, does symbolize the lingering effects of the hard-fought war in the years that followed.

  After the electric war had concluded, Niagara continued to fortify its arsenal of generators, and by the first few years of the twentieth century a fifth of the country’s electricity was supplied by Niagara, the natural marvel turned scientific breakthrough.

  As each decade handed off the present tense to the next, electricity in a residential sense grew, spreading across the nation at a steady pace. The main reason for this slow growth was the fact that the cost of electricity was too high for the average citizen.

  Topsy the elephant is electrocuted in public at Luna Park

  On a commercial scale, electricity fostered massive profits by way of increased productivity. Factories produced more and more goods, which allowed eager consumers to add to their quality of living. Thus, the first few decades of the twentieth century included a gradual increase in the average person’s standard of living. Society was prospering, and so were businesses.

  Nearly every aspect of business, and society in general, utilized electricity—alternating current electricity. Like water dropping into the Niagara cataract, money poured into the bank accounts of electric companies who sold alternating current. The fight to dominate the electric world was, without much hyperbole, a fight to run the future world. These visionaries—Westinghouse, Tesla, and Edison—had the foresight to understand what would result from winning the war. In turn, their vigor to win made their actions more and more vicious. For this wasn’t just a temporary competition; it was a battle that would continue to pay off for whomever came out victorious.

  Except for Nikola Tesla, that is.

  * * *

  The Serbian wizard of electricity would not rake in that money hand over fist like many of the others involved in the War of the Currents. Tesla couldn’t have been surprised by this, since he had ripped up his royalty rights that would have served as an endless supply of income. It was a sacrifice that cost his bank account dearly, leaving him penniless during the final years of his life, but it was also a sacrifice that allowed alternating current to achieve its ultimate potential.

  Tesla gives a demonstration of wireless power transmission, Columbia College, New York, New York

  Tesla lectured on a regular basis and was a sought-after speaker. He continued to push his creative, inventive ideas, but many people found his post-AC concepts odd. One of Tesla’s obsessions materialized in 1901 when he began building the Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, Long Island. This massive structure was 187 feet high, with a large dome made of conductive copper mesh topping the edifice. Underground, the shaft of the tower pushed down into the earth over a hundred feet, with iron piping stabbing down another three hundred feet. Tesla aimed to use Wardenclyffe as a wireless transmission station, intending to send messages across the Atlantic Ocean to England, in order “to telephone, to send the human voice and likeness around the globe.” But in true Tesla form, he got caught up in his own mind, and he soon envisioned the transmission of wireless power overseas. According to Tesla himself, the tower was “adequate for the transmission of virtually any amount of energy.”

  Tesla’s grand scheme required more money than he could secure. Construction dragged on and costs piled up. To make matters worse, Tesla’s past caught up with him when his old debts with the Waldorf-Astoria came back to haunt him. In arrears to the tune of twenty thousand dollars, Tesla gav
e two mortgages on Wardenclyffe to George C. Boldt, manager of the Waldorf-Astoria. Unfortunately, Tesla couldn’t manage to make any payments, and he soon lost possession of Wardenclyffe to Boldt. Before the strange tower could ever be used, Boldt decided there was more value in the destruction of the tower, so in July 1917 he had Wardenclyffe demolished and the steel sold for scrap.

  Wardenclyffe Tower

  Tesla found himself obsessed with the concept of the wireless transmission of energy, and specifically, another breakthrough technological device: the radio. As was the pattern for Tesla, the failure to secure a patent or gain public or financial backing while he was experimenting and, most say, inventing the radio, left him off the patent ledger as the inventor of the radio, at least while he was alive.

  Instead, Guglielmo Marconi would receive initial credit for the radio. Ultimately, Nikola Tesla’s public image would be that of an “also-ran” in his many scientific and inventive battles. Even his victories occurred too late for him to enjoy them, as evidenced when the Supreme Court ruled that Tesla was the true inventor of the radio … the same year of his death (1943).

  Tesla became an American citizen in 1891, a proud moment for the Serbian immigrant. In fact, with all the acclaim and respect he’d earned as an inventor and scientist, Tesla often said he found his citizenship to be his most cherished accomplishment. He valued being an American citizen over any other distinction he’d received.

  One honor Tesla did receive in 1916 was, ironically, the Edison Medal, which signified “meritorious achievements in electrical science and art.”

  Nikola Tesla worked alone for much of his life after the alternating current victory, with paid assistants as his primary human companionship for the active years of his life. George Westinghouse remained a business friend, but no one could ever get close enough to Tesla to be called a true friend, not even Westinghouse.

  During the later years of his life, Nikola Tesla finally found his closest and most passionate life partners: pigeons. He’d routinely feed and talk to pigeons, especially outside the New York Public Library. Sometimes he’d sneak ailing or weak pigeons into his hotel room and nurse them back to health. Tesla never married, but—odd as it might seem—one pigeon in particular filled that role. In the twilight of his life, Tesla described this pigeon by saying, “Yes, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me … When that pigeon died, something went out of my life … I knew my life’s work was finished.”

  Penniless and a relative mystery to the average American, Nikola Tesla died alone in his thirty-third-floor hotel room at the Hotel New Yorker on January 7, 1943. He was eighty-six years old.

  Upon his death, the US government—before his nephew Sava Kosanovic could secure his uncle’s belongings—confiscated many of Tesla’s scientific documents and his private black notebook, claiming there was an imminent threat due to the fact that the inventor had claimed he’d created a “death beam” prior to his passing. It was not until 1952 that Kosanovic would receive his uncle’s papers. Much has been theorized about the papers and what the government did with the knowledge contained in them, but no claim has ever been substantiated. To this day, conspiracy theories abound in relation to the Tesla papers. Just what did those secret papers detail? It remains yet another Tesla mystery.

  * * *

  George Westinghouse, like a steady railcar, continued to find success in business and invention, highlighted by the gas shock absorber, which helped make a car ride safe and smooth. Always with an eye on the future, not dwelling on past accomplishments or failures, Westinghouse continued to produce a new patent once every six weeks, culminating in some four hundred patents by the time of his death.

  Nikola Tesla, caught up in his studies, sits in front of his Tesla coil transformer.

  With the stock market crash of 1907, Westinghouse eventually lost control of Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company and the Westinghouse Machine Company. Up to that point, Westinghouse had continued to invest the bulk of his time in his many business ventures. Yet he never lost sight of something far more important to him than business: the people he employed and his family.

  Through it all—business successes and failures—Westinghouse and his wife remained happily married and close to each other, along with their son.

  Westinghouse’s piece work and incentivized stipends led other companies to do the same, and his promise to give Saturdays and Sundays off helped contribute to the traditional work-free weekend for most American companies.

  Revered by his employees, those in the business community, and those in the electric fraternity, Westinghouse was awarded the Edison Medal in 1912 for “meritorious achievements in the development of the alternating current system.” Awards didn’t mean as much to Westinghouse as did the purpose of his work. He summed up what success and professional achievement meant to him when he said, “If some day they say of me that with my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied.” Indeed, Westinghouse had every right to feel satisfied.

  George Westinghouse died on March 12, 1914, and a large segment of the population mourned a great loss.

  * * *

  While Westinghouse and Tesla had gained a clear victory in the AC/DC feud, Thomas Edison would be the ultimate winner in the public’s retrospective viewfinder, going down in history as the father of invention and the star inventor of the Gilded Age.

  Edison greatly prospered in life, even after the direct current defeat, inventing and patenting a seemingly endless list of items still used today (in all, he held 1,093 US patents at the time of his death), which include the motion picture recorder and viewer (the Kinetograph/Kinetoscope) and the alkaline storage battery. He also dabbled in concrete and iron ore, with relative success in both ventures.

  An Edison Kinetoscope—used for playback, often in Kinetoscope parlors

  Thanks to the Kinetoscope and the phonograph, Edison essentially established a substantial and profitable entertainment industry. He ran his own movie studio—the Black Maria—where he produced a number of silent pictures, leading up to The Great Train Robbery (1904), which marked the first time a film followed a narrative structure about a real event. This success led to the birth of the “movie theater” and ultimately the long-lasting impact of Edison’s work included the launch of both the entertainment and movie industries.

  Over time, Edison has been revered as the pioneer of the industrial surge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and rightly so, based on his entire body of work. Long after his death on October 18, 1931, he would be studied in classrooms and cherished in the country he’d helped advance in many ways. Due to the light bulb, the phonograph, the movie camera, and the invention process itself, Thomas Edison became a national hero for his accomplishments.

  As such, the viciousness with which he fought against Westinghouse and Tesla was pushed between the lines of the history books, hidden as people learned of the Wizard of Menlo Park as only a genius of invention. Appropriate for the Gilded Age itself, Edison’s exterior shine and sparkle hid the interior corruption that came with his victory-at-any-cost mode during the War of the Currents.

  THE ELECTRIC WAR A TIMELINE

  • OCTOBER 6, 1846: George Westinghouse Jr. is born in Schoharie, NY.

  • FEBRUARY 11, 1847: Thomas Alva Edison is born in Milan, OH.

  • JULY 10, 1856: Nikola Tesla is born in Smiljan, Croatia.

  • 1859–1863: Edison works as a newsboy, selling papers all along the Michigan railway.

  • 1862: Edison creates the Weekly Herald, a small publication that features local news and gossip. He sells the paper for three cents a copy, or eight cents for a monthly subscription.

  • 1864–1867: Edison works as a traveling telegrapher.

  • 1865: Westinghouse receives first patent, for the rotary steam engine.

  • JANUARY 1869: Edison announces in the Journal of the Telegraph that he’s becoming a full-time inventor.


  • APRIL 13, 1869: Westinghouse issues first air brake patent. Soon after, the Westinghouse Air Brake Company opens near Pittsburgh.

  • JUNE 1869: Edison receives first patent, for an automatic vote counter.

  • 1870s: Edison releases several inventions, including a telegraph that prints messages on a strip of paper, an underwater telegraphy system for the British post office, and the Edison Mimeograph.

  • DECEMBER 25, 1871: Edison, twenty-four years old, marries sixteen-year-old Mary Stilwell.

  • 1874: Edison invents the quadruplex telegraph (can send four messages over a wire simultaneously).

  • 1876: Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.

  • MAY 1876: Edison opens his “invention factory” in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

  • 1876: Edison patents the electric pen along with its complete system, Autographic Printing.

  • 1877: Edison invents the phonograph.

  • 1878: Edison files an early patent on the design of an incandescent light bulb.

  • NOVEMBER 1878: Edison Electric Light Company is formed.

  • NOVEMBER 4, 1879: Edison files a patent for the incandescent light bulb with carbon filament.

  • DECEMBER 28, 1879: Edison holds an exhibition at Menlo Park to show off his incandescent light bulb.

  • FEBRUARY 1880: Edison submits his first patent application for direct current, termed a “System of Electrical Distribution.”

  • DECEMBER 1880: Edison gets permission from New York City government officials to lay lines underground throughout Lower Manhattan.

  • JANUARY 1881: Edison relocates from Menlo Park, New Jersey, to Manhattan, as does the Edison Electric Light Company.

  • AUGUST 7, 1881: George Smith, a dockworker, is killed instantly after placing his hands on a generator at Brush Electric Company in Buffalo, NY.

  • SEPTEMBER 4, 1882: Edison’s bulbs light Lower Manhattan.