I ran toward the noise, crossing three avenues and the river. It grew more intense. I was certain that the ripples of the water's current were not being stirred by the wind but rather had risen in reaction to the sonic bomb that was blowing me away. Soon I'd run so far that my legs and lungs grew weary. I pushed on, nearing the outskirts of town, a distance of approximately 3.2 kilometers from my boarding house. I had to stop his shrieking. The noise grew louder. My molars were ready to pop from my jaw. Finally I stopped, the sound and the distance having sapped my strength. I walked. I was nearly crawling when at last, at a distance of 4.1 kilometers from my room, I spied the young man whose voice had launched this assault on my very being. He stood in the street before a house, looking up to a window where I imagined the man's beloved must reside. Up to her window the man yelled, "Dearest, I am lost!"
The outburst quite literally blew me off my feet. It lifted me into the air and deposited me five feet from where I'd been. "Sir," I attempted to say, but the man could not hear me. My strength had been so depleted by the sound assault that I could not muster my voice. "Sir, I beg you," I said louder, but the man heard nothing.
With one last bellow he shouted, "I would give you my heart but there is nothing left, dear lady. You have crushed it to bits!" I was knocked unconscious, felled by the sound vibrations. Discarded and broken as an old dust rag in the rubble of the street, I gave over to complete breakdown, though not without first registering two last thoughts that crossed my mind just before the flood of unconsciousness. The first: there is tremendous potential energy in sound waves. The second: if I am to be an inventor I must never fall in love.
I have always been extremely sensitive, it's true.
In the days and weeks that followed this incident my senses did not subside from their hyperactive state. I heard watches ticking three rooms away. The sound of a fly landing on the scratchy material of my bedsheets rocked my head with a dull thud. A horse and buggy passing miles away sent tremors through my body as if this carriage tolled an approaching apocalypse, while a locomotive on the outskirts of the city made my joints tremble in their sockets. Even the rays of the sun created enough pressure that I felt they would crush my head like a melon. I wrapped my bed's legs in a foam-rubber cushion, a barrier to absorb the vibrations that assaulted me, but even this was no match for the sound that surrounded me everywhere. Like a Hindu, I swaddled my head in a thick wool blanket. I took refuge in my room and would not leave. I could get no rest, though not owing to the pain—I'd been groomed for illness—but rather to the wonder this condition presented. What could such heightened sensory powers mean? How could they be of use? I've often regretted that I was not, at the time, put underneath the microscope of medical experts who might have gained some new understanding of the human body.
After days, a knock came upon my door, causing me to nearly vomit as my stomach ratcheted from side to side with the knocking. It was my friend, a fellow engineer, Anital Szigety. "Enough of this. I won't have it," Szigety whispered, and after pulling at the tongues of my shoes he fit one boot onto my left foot and one onto my right. Lacing both, he sat me straight up on my bed. "Athletic exertion is the certain cure for all your ailments and so athletic exertion it will be for you."
I was too weak to resist.
I had withered, but Szigety helped me down the stairs and out the door, where we began walking—hobbling, really. Szigety dragged me down to the river. We passed below a bridge and I surrendered. I was certain it would kill me. The pressure of such a structure overhead could crush the very cells of my body. Szigety disagreed. He was relentless in his friendship. I trembled. Applying his shoulder to my backside he forced me to pass below the bridge. And when we emerged alive on the other side, hope struck a spark. We continued walking. A slight sensation of life again returned to my limbs. In a short distance, in light of the evidence that sounds would not kill me, we were running. In an even shorter distance we began to leap and laugh. "A miracle," I yelled, but I do not believe in miracles. Miracles simply mean that the world of science is much greater, much odder, encompassing many more dimensions than previously imagined. I sprinted. I yelped, and the sound did not kill me. I skipped and jumped, and in that moment, that joyous return to health, I saw it like the most beautiful flash of God, though I also do not believe in God. I saw the alternating-current engine, running without a tick across the synapses of my brain. I understood. The puzzle I had for so long been trying to assemble I finally understood, as if the past weeks of illness had been a pregnancy, a delivery of sorts, and there on the streets of Budapest I became the happy parent of my life's work.
"Szigety!" I yelled. "Come quick. Look!" I pointed to the air directly in front of me where I could see the engine spinning as clear as day.
"What is it?" he asked. He saw nothing.
I reached out my hand. "You don't see it, do you?"
"See what?"
"Here," I said, and with a dead branch as a stylus, the dirt below as a sketchpad, I drew the machine exactly as I saw it whirling before me, every last coil and magnet in place.
He studied it for only a moment before demanding, "How does it work? How does it work?" just as you might, Sam. And so I explained how it begins with a magnet, an iron rod where the charge has been separated, negative at one end, positive at the other. The iron rod is then wrapped in copper wire, which, of course, is a marvelous conductor, meaning that a charge can move very easily through it. The wire is twisted around the iron bar, and this creates a highly unusual magnetic field. When electrons are sent through the copper wire and the entire apparatus is rotated, a wonderful thing happens. Rather than creating a simple linear flow of charge, the wire instead produces a force that causes the charge to flow around the wires, circling the magnet. Once the wire loop has rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, the force, of course, reverses and the charge moves in the alternate direction along the wire. The current changes. After a second one-hundred-and-eighty-degree rotation the current changes back once again, and an alternating current is produced.
"Ah," Szigety said.
I continued, telling him how it is different from DC because of the way electrons travel through the wires. "It is better than DC because if you care to change the voltage you can simply wrap a second wire around the magnet core. And most importantly, DC cannot travel far from home. If we wanted to power the world with DC electricity, we'd have to build a power plant every two miles."
Szigety nodded, not quite understanding. Just as you might. I suppose I could try to tell you again how it works, but you would be horribly bored by the telling, and even when I was done you still might not understand entirely. But that is all right, old friend. There is a much better way for you to understand what I invented. Plug in your phonograph. Plug in your toaster or your reading lamp. Plug in your ceiling fan and refrigerator. That is the best way for you to know my alternating current.
With the dregs of my modest furnishings and possessions hawked to fund my American journey, I had set out from Gare de l'Ouest, Paris. Case in one hand, letter to Thomas Edison and train ticket in the other hand, bowler on my head. My thoughts swam. The intricate metal framework of the train station was trying to give me one last lesson. I could barely hear it. "What?" I asked.
"Faites attention!" the grillwork exhaled, and so I stopped still, causing a pileup in the flow of foot traffic. I was instantly walloped from behind. "Excusez-moi, monsieur." As I turned, a boy more than ten years my junior straightened up, returned my case to the hand from where it had been dislodged. "Ah, merci," I whispered and looked. The letter, the train ticket were still in place. No harm done. I turned again. The boy had disappeared into the crowd.
"Messieurs et mesdames," a conductor called above the heads of the crowd. He called for my train. The train that would carry me to the boat that would carry me across the sea where I would march directly into the offices of the heroic Mr. Edison, who, I liked to imagine, would kiss me on both cheeks, receiving me as a long-los
t son.
I saw my train just ahead. They were calling for the last riders to board. I reached for my wallet in my back pocket, where I had safely stored the funds from the sale of all I owned, as well as the ticket for passage aboard the sailing ship Saturnia. The wallet was gone. The train whistle hollered as if it knew the agony I felt at that moment. The wheels, though stiff and tired, began their slow departure.
"That is my train to America," I thought. "It is leaving." I stood struck dumb. I checked my pockets one last time. No wallet. No ticket. I did find a scrap of paper where I had, days before, sketched a design for a flying machine. The sight of these hopeful lines kicked me into action. I picked up my case and began to sprint alongside the body of the moving locomotive. I had my eye on a door, and by concentration and tremendous speed I caught it and hurled myself inside, landing against a very surprised, elderly French woman who shoved me off her and spit the word "Cochon!" The word made me smile.
When I reached the harbor I was able to recount every single detail of my original sea ticket. I had, of course, lovingly memorized its every feature, the eleven-digit number, the berth, even the departure gangway and the first mate's name. I talked myself on board.
After such a panic, my steps were slow as I circled the deck, walking my way to America. My berth lay below the waterline, and so I spent nearly the entire crossing, night and day, strolling the decks. I was in love with my latest invention and, like a lover, I'd stare out at sea, imagining my beloved, a machine I would build once I reached America. The alternating-current polyphase generator. I could picture holding it in my hands, the curve of it, the touch of its metal skin. The possibility was palpable. Here before me was the ocean, infinite, impossible, fantastic, yet there I stood with it, a part of it. The ocean was no different from electricity. Currents, indeed. I would go to America, and when I got there I would build a machine that would generate an electrical ocean. Had anyone ever before made an ocean? I thought not.
I took stock of my meager belongings:
• one sheet of paper where I'd been working a particularly long integer
• one aforementioned sheet of paper with detailed notes for the construction of a flying machine
• four centimes
• a number of articles I had written
• one letter of introduction from Charles Batchelor to Thomas A. Edison, inventor
Not altogether too much. I had just returned my four coins to my inside breast pocket when two members of the Saturnia's crew came around the corner. They leaned over the railing, staring down at the sea. One sailor even went so far as to step both feet up onto the first rung of the railing so that his hips were above the guard, teetering out over the rail's edge, farther than most would care to go. I couldn't hear everything, but a few words were undeniable. "Doddering fat—" and then a word I wasn't yet familiar with in English. "Captain Cowbrains," was the expression that followed from the mouth of one of the sailors. I moved in closer to listen.
"I am certain we could take him. We've got a majority."
The sailors, as luck would have it, were planning a mutiny onboard my very ship. The mechanics of such an uprising fascinated me. These sailors were gruff sorts. One short, the other tremendous and no doubt good for taking out at least six men. His arms were as thick as my thigh. The scruff of his beard seemed as though it alone could wreak plenty of damage. The men compiled evidence, a list of their crew's grievances. I listened.
"The rats! Even if we were to get four hours off, most of us can't sleep for the rats occupying our berths."
"Inhumane hours."
"Like dogs."
"Filthy berths."
"And not enough clean water."
"The rats."
"That coal shoveler whose hand got pinched off between the teeth of an engine's gears, picked like a crab."
"John Templar," the other man said. "Awful!"
"Nathaniel Greevey!"
"Lost overboard, and the captain refused to turn back."
"Moldy food."
"And nearly never enough."
"Not by half."
"And the worst part: our pay dips to new lows, far below the set rate, and all the while the captain chuckles. 'That's how the system works, boys!' Which system is that, I asked him. 'Capitalism! Capitalism!' he told me, laughing. 'Ever heard of it?'"
I hadn't even reached America yet, and already I was learning much.
The uprising was quelled by the officers onboard and the instigators were jailed until we reached New York, where, I heard, they were headed for a terrifying prison called the Tombs. The name made me fear that they'd be buried alive, interred by capitalism. It was a lesson I wouldn't forget.
As we approached our port I was surprised to learn that Manhattan is an island. The entire contents of the ship emptied out onto the decks as we entered the harbor. Among my fellow passengers, hundreds of them, a hush descended. We held the silence while our ship approached the tip of the island. A man standing beside me began to say, "Où est le ..." but that was all of the question he was allowed to get out before his wife and a number of nearby passengers hissed a quick "Silence!" They wanted nothing to distract from the wonder of this new land.
New York was a volcano erupting before us. With every gush of hot lava a new pier or courthouse or bridge took shape. The city cleared its lungs and a furnace let loose a great belch of black industrial smoke. The city began to scream as the rope pulley carrying a square cord of lumber to be used in dock construction gave way and fell to the cobbled street with a terrific crash. Everywhere things were changing, working, scheming, oiling, negotiating, screaming, and I felt like yelling, "All right, New York. I am here. Let us begin!" but I feared the displeasure of my fellow travelers. I disembarked at Castle Garden, sprinting down the gangway ahead of the others, and begin we did.
Certainly there must have been at some time a young woman or man in a more dire situation than the one I then found myself in, though at that moment I could not imagine who he or she may have been.
I had the four centimes. I had taken an orange from the ship's breakfast table and kept it tucked in my pocket, its roundness creating an awkward bulge. And though my hunger grew, I put myself on strict rations, thinking to save two-thirds of the orange for the day after and the day after that. But as I walked through the city I did pull the fruit from my coat any number of times and, raising it to my nose, I inhaled deeply as if perhaps I could derive some nutritional value from its fragrance.
Still within view of the Saturnia I encountered a police officer and thought to ask him for directions to Edison's laboratory. "Pardon me, sir"—my English was, I thought, superb—"could you direct me to 65 Fifth Avenue?"
"To 65 Fifth?" he spat back as though the words were an insult hurled between us. "To 65 Fifth?" he roared again, tipping his head high, trying to lift it above mine.
"Yes." I stood my ground. "That's the street I am looking for."
And with that he pointed quite generally in a northerly direction, which was absurd. The only thing not in a northerly direction from where we stood was water. I walked north.
The volcanic sense I had had on board remained. The streets, though rudimentarily cobbled, were packed with people and carts, animals and grime. All the scents of the city—roasting corn, the stinging odors of horse urine, grilled meats, candied nuts, and the starchy scent outside each public house I passed—were terrifically intensified by my empty stomach.
At 65 Fifth Avenue a number of pigeons swooped in and out of view overhead. There was no sign, just a tiny card tucked into the jamb of the doorway. I was scared to look at it. I worried what might happen to someone whose dream has come true.
THOS. ED.
was all the card said. The print had blued in the weather. My heart thrumped. It was pounding. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer, and soon my palms were damp with nerves. I raised my hand up to the doorknob. It was not locked, and after a deep breath I pushed my way inside, sick and e
xpecting, in my nervous state, to find the laboratory vacated outside of a spool of thin wire rolling across the bare floor.
But this was not the case.
Entering Edison's laboratory was like entering the circus halfway through the grand finale. Everything was in motion. Men dressed in dark suits ran this way and that, tinkering with alkaline storage batteries, casting forms in the metallurgy room, machining tiny screws to be fitted into an advanced phonograph's stylus, typing upon a row of Royal typewriters, engaging in heated arguments with one another. One such fellow passed right by the tip of my nose yelling, "All right. Who's the rotten dog who finished wiring the fan oscillator and then forgot to turn it on?" A circus indeed. Elephants could have barred and lions roared and invention would still have soared above it all, the star of the show.
In the chaos my presence was noted, a few foreheads ruffled, but my intrusion caused little stir. The men in dark suits looked right through me, their heads filled with circuits, cylinders, cymbals. Which was how I managed to walk directly up to a desk piled landslide-high with papers, right up to a man who was simultaneously conducting multiple conversations, at least two per ear.
Clients and assistants surrounded him. I recognized the man immediately. It was Thos. Ed., a handsome man, if a bit dogged. His mouth seemed to be turned down in a permanent scowl. He had graying hair and a very broad forehead that he rubbed again and again. I approached and he pulled away from one conversation, tilting his head so as to give a bit of distance between his eardrum and the river of berating insults that flowed from one very angry man standing to his left. As the recipient of this abuse, Edison seemed immune. He raised his eyebrows to me as if to ask, "What could you possibly want?" I did not answer but chose to wait until I had his undivided attention. And wait I would: five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen. I shifted my footing and after standing before him for over twenty minutes, witnessing a number of assistants interrupt the stream of several conversations, I realized that undivided attention was not ever going to happen. I stepped up. I began to speak.
The Invention of Everything Else Page 6