by Marc Seifer
The New York Herald was “the first” newspaper to capitalize on the rising star. In a long feature article adorned with an etching drawn from an outdated photograph, the Herald described the inventor’s demeanor and his heritage and discussed the full range of his future plans.
“Mr. Tesla is such a hard worker that he has little time for social pleasures, if indeed he has any taste in that direction. He is a bachelor, tall, very spare of build, has dark, deep-set eyes, jet black hair and an expression that suggests at once the deep thinker. Though polite and even friendly to newspaper men, he has no desire to exploit himself in print.”
Tesla described his parents and schooling, his invention of the rotating magnetic field, and also his new system of lighting, which he promised would be “a more practical illuminant than we have at present.” He discussed the possibility of sending vast amounts of electricity along wires from Niagara Falls and also the concept of wireless transmission of intelligence and power through the earth and air “to any distance.”
“From present experimental evidence it can be quite safely concluded that an attempt to transmit intelligible sounds through the earth from here, for instance, to the European continent without any cable will succeed beyond a doubt…Such a result…which I have advocated for two years…if achieved, would, of course, be of incalculable value to the world and greatly advance the progress of the human race.”
The Herald ended with a question about how it felt to send hundreds of thousands of volts through the body, and Tesla replied, “If you are prepared [for the shock] the effect on the nerves is not nearly as great. Initially, you feel a burn, but beyond that the feeling is scarcely noticeable. I have received currents as high as 300,000 volts, an amount which, if received in any other way, would instantly kill.”18
Although the travel and the lectures were digressions, Tesla accepted the engagements to solidify his place in the history of electrical science. For the cloistered conceptualist, naturally, the accolades and interaction with colleagues were also inducements. However, it was only now, as he was being sought after by reporters and the adoring public, that he began to realize, in a conscious sense, his latent desire for recognition. Every hour, every moment, that was not spent working on inventions was time away from his purpose. Even the intervals spent eating and sleeping delayed progress.
Although both his parents had passed away at relatively young ages, there were other kin whose life span had traversed more than ten decades. Perhaps in part as a defense, Tesla would exclaim that he expected to attain centenarian status. He had come to see the human body in its essence as a machine, one that could be efficiently regulated by the stern application of willpower, and so Tesla exerted his will to reduce his sleeping to a minimum and his eating to the bare necessities. Although over six feet tall, he kept his weight to a scant and unvarying 142 pounds.19 The strain was beginning to show, but the Serb was on a quest; his goal was nothing short of saving the whole of humanity through the application of his fertile brain.
Having transmitted energy by means of wireless from one end of a room to another, the inventor’s next task was to devise a way to extend this principle to generate larger amounts of power and to create separate, noninterfering channels. Tesla began to experiment with more and more powerful oscillators, ones that would not only radiate high-frequency AC but also ones capable of engendering physical pulsations.
“The first gratifying result was obtained in the spring…when I reached tensions of about 1,000,000 volts with my conical coil. That was not much in the light of the present art,” Tesla wrote a quarter of a century later, “but it was then considered a feat.”20
According to calculations performed by Professor John Tyndall, the Edison electric lightbulb had an efficiency of about 5 percent, meaning that 95 percent of the electricity produced went into the production of heat or was simply lost in transit. The gas flame, which was still by far the most common form of artificial luminescence, had an efficiency of “less than one percent.” As Tesla told Martin, if “we were dealing with a corrupt government, such wretched waste would not be tolerated.” This squander was “on a par with the wanton destruction of whole forests for the sake of a few sticks of lumber.”
“The energy,” as Martin wrote, “is more or less frittered away, just as in July the load in an iceman’s cart crumbles and melts…along the street.” Whereas “armies of inventors had flung themselves on the difficulties involved in these barbaric losses occurring at every stage,” Tesla had designed an entirely original series of inventions which either converted electricity to rotary action or practically the reverse, that is, converted steam power into electrical energy.21
In the first instance, Tesla constructed a high-frequency oscillator which was immersed in a vat of oil. By modulating the frequency of an AC, he caused the oil to flow at varying rates. Just like a waterwheel turning a turbine, this oil caused a blade to rotate. By increasing the frequency, the flow would change, and the rotation of the turbine would be increased.
In the second instance, that is, in the case of the steam generator, Tesla combined into one invention both an engine and a dynamo and created a device that was as much as one-fortieth the size of comparable traditional constructions. In the old-fashioned steam engine, the reciprocating back-and-forth piston action had to be converted to a rotary effect by way of a crankshaft and flywheel. This device, in turn, was connected to a turbine, which thereby produced electricity. In the Tesla generator, a steam driven piston attached to a condenser was made to bob up and down within a magnetic field, cutting the lines of force, thereby producing a current. This procedure reduced markedly the loss involved in converting mechanical action to electrical power. There was no flywheel or crankshaft. Martin eloquently wrote: “We note immediately the absence of all the governing appliances of the ordinary engine. They are non-existent. The steam chest is the engine, bared to the skin like a prize-fighter with every ounce counting…Denuded in this way of superfluous weight, and driven at high pressure, the engine must have an economy far beyond the common. With an absence of friction due to the automatic cushioning of the light working parts, it is also practically indestructible. Furthermore, whereas the ordinary steam piston, “weighing, perhaps as much as a thousand pounds,” could only change its direction, say, ten times per second, the Tesla oscillator could oscillate at “one hundred strokes a second.” Tesla hoped not only to reduce the complexity of existing equipment but also to create a current that would “maintain a vibration with perfect constancy.” He took out patents on both of these devices in the summer.22
With these various oscillators, Tesla could provide a plethora of effects. Electrically, he could generate precise frequencies that could be used to transmit information or electrical energy. When the oscillator was pulsating at the frequency of light, he could manifest luminescence as well. And mechanically he could create pulsations through metal bars, or pipes, and test for harmonic frequencies and standing waves. By studying impedance phenomena, he could transmit electromagnetic energy through such a conduit and cause a light to illuminate at certain positions along its length but not at others, and if he increased the vibrations and struck a harmonic frequency, he could get the iron rod to begin to vibrate with such intensity that it would crack itself in two. This effect was equivalent to that produced by Joshua’s horns at Jericho or to the danger that could be initiated by soldiers marching in lockstep across a suspension bridge. If their beat struck the resonant frequency, the bridge could sway violently and possibly collapse. Thus, soldiers are trained to break stride while walking across bridges to avoid this amazing type of catastrophe.
The World’s Columbian Exposition
The Scene by Night
Inadequate as words have been found to convey a realizing idea of the beauty and grandeur of the spectacle which the Exposition offers by day, they are infinitely less capable of affording the slightest conception of the dazzling spectacle which greets the eye of the visitor by nig
ht…
Indescribable by language are the electric fountains. One of them, called “The Great Geyser,” rises to a height of 150 feet, above a band of “Little Geysers.” [By adding rotating colored lights, the effects created] are so bewildering no eye can find the loveliest, their vagaries of motion so entrancing no heart can keep its steady beating.
W. E. Cameron23
On May 1, the Chicago World’s Fair, or Columbian Exposition, opened. This auspicious occasion came at a paradoxical time for the country, for on the one hand, the United States had announced that it was the new leader in the creation and deployment of new technology; on the other hand, it was embroiled in the Panic of 1893. Simultaneously, and for one exceptional time, the world at large was experiencing universal peace.
The Columbian Exposition covered almost seven hundred acres, had sixty thousand exhibitors and cost $25 million. With 28 million attendees, the Chicago Fair boasted a $2.25 million profit. Whereas the Paris Exposition of 1889 had the stupendous 984-foot tall Eiffel Tower, the Chicago Fair boasted the Ferris wheel. Revolving on the largest one-piece axle ever forged, the wheel stood 264 feet high and had a seating capacity of over two thousand.24
Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from every corner of the globe streamed into Chicago’s “White City.” The chief architect, Chicagoan Daniel Hudson Burnham, along with the other planners, based their design on a city of waterways, much like Venice, with a “Court of Honor” centrally placed to house the major “palaces.” With wooden façades made to resemble marble, the buildings rivaled even the great stone achievements of the ancient Romans and Greeks. The Manufacturers & Liberal Arts Pavilion, more than twice the size of the others, was “by far, the largest building in the world.” Nearly a third of a mile long and well over two football fields wide, the structure covered 30.5 acres and had a seating capacity of seventy-five thousand.
Abutting Lake Michigan, at the far end above the Court of Honor, with columns extended like the arms of a mighty conductor, was the magnificent Arch and Peristyle. Designed by head sculptor August Saint-Gaudens, this statue depicted a general, representing Christopher Columbus, thunderously entering the fair with his mighty team of horses. Beneath this quadriga was the great, gilded sixty-five-foot Statue of the Republic, which rose from the main canal like a benevolent behemoth as it blessed not only the Manufacturer’s Pavilion but also palaces for agriculture (designed by Stanford White), machinery, administration, and electricity.
And that was just the Court of Honor.
Running perpendicular to the “great quadrangle” for nearly a mile was yet another opulently lined moat containing most of the other large-scale pavilions and displays described in one text as “a cacophonous confusion of advanced cultures, converted heathens, peculiar tongues, and queer importations.”25 With a fleet of fifty gondolas driven by brand-new electrical engines, visitors could motor to any pavilion they wanted.
The Electricity Pavilion, adorned with a dozen elegant minarets, four of which rose 169 feet above the hall, was over two football fields in length and nearly half that measure in width. Covering three and one-half acres, this “spacious and stately” structure “befit[ted] the seat of the most novel and brilliant exhibit of the Columbian Exposition.”
The ex-governor of the state of Illinois, William E. Cameron, described the palace as housing the “magical achievements of Mr. Edison and his brother wizards.”26 Containing the names of the forefathers of the science above a formidable statue of Benjamin Franklin launching his kite at the main vestibule, Electricity Hall presented a fascinating potpourri of advanced technologies.
Foremost among the exhibitors were the megalithic corporations, such as Westinghouse and GE, from America, and the more modest sized AEG, from Germany. Whereas AEG reproduced some of the AC equipment Brown and Dobrowolsky used in their “epoch-making” 108-mile Lauffen-to-Frankfurt transmission, GE presented its own AC system. Westinghouse, having won the bid to light the fair with the only bona fide patents, was in an odd situation. Legally, it should have been able to block the competitors from advertising pirated apparatus, but pragmaticaly, considering time limitations and other factors, such a tactical action was out of the question. In fact, in some ways, they owed AEG gratitude for pointing the way. Their course was to make it clear that there was only one inventor. And so they erected a forty-five-foot high monument in the center aisle of Electricity Hall which proclaimed the truth to the world. The testimonial read in big bold letters: Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Tesla Polyphase System. And with this method, from an annex of Machinery Hall, Westinghouse illuminated the entire World’s Fair. Having manufactured a quarter of a million Sawyer-Mann stopper lamps for the occasion, Westinghouse generated three times more electrical energy than was then being utilized in the entire city of Chicago.27
Not to be eclipsed, GE constructed a scintillating eighty-two-foot high Tower of Light in the exact center of Electricity Hall. It comprised eighteen thousand lamps running the full length of the pedestal, capped by a single enormous Edison lightbulb ignited at the apex.
Other features within Electricity Hall included, on the second floor, electrical gadgets to cure all ills, such as charged belts, electrical hairbrushes, and body invigorators, and on the main floor, displays by the most prominent inventors of the day. Elihu Thomson, for instance, unleashed a high-frequency coil that created sparks five feet long; Alexander Graham Bell unveiled a telephone that could transmit voice via light beams; and Elisha Gray presented his teleautography machine, a precursor of today’s fax machine. For a few cents, it would reproduce a person’s signature electronically at a distance.
Tom Edison presented his own cornucopia of gadgets, including the multiplex telegraph, the fantastic talking machine known as the phonograph, and his kinetescope, which for the first time in a public forum displayed “the varying labile movements” of a human being in motion.
Tesla’s exhibit, which occupied part of the Westinghouse space, featured a number of his early AC devices, including motors, armatures, and generators, phosphorescent signs of noted electricians, such as Helmholtz, Faraday, Maxwell, Henry, and Franklin, and a sign for his favorite Serbian poet Jovan Zmaj Jovanovich. Tesla also displayed vacuum tubes illuminated by means of wireless transmission, his rotating egg of Columbus, sheets of crackling light created by high-frequency discharges between two insulated plates, and other neon signs reading Westinghouse, and Welcome Electricians. These last two displays “produc[ed] the effect of a modified lightning discharge…accompanied by a similar deafening noise. This was probably one of the most novel attractions in a sensational way seen in the building, as the noise could be heard anywhere within Electricity Building and the flash of the miniature lightning was very brilliant and startling.”28
Tesla traveled to Chicago in August not only to visit the fair and present a week of demonstrations but also to attend the International Electrical Congress that was held there for that month. “At Electricity Hall, Professor Tesla announces he will send a current of 100,000 volts through his own body without injury to life, an experiment which seems all the more wonderful when we recall the fact that the currents made use of for executing murderers at Sing Sing, N.Y., have never exceeded 2,000 volts. Mr. Tesla also shows a number of other interesting experiments, some of which are so marvelous as to be almost beyond description.”29
On August 25, Nikola Tesla spoke before “one thousand electrical engineers” at the International Electrical Congress in Agriculture Hall. In attendance was a “galaxy of notables,” including Galileo Ferraris, Sir William Preece, Silvanus Thompson, Elihu Thomson, and honorary chairman Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz, whom Tesla also took on a tour of his personal exhibit.
“People crowded about the doors and clamored for admittance…The great majority of those who came, came with the expectation of seeing Tesla pass a current of 250,000 volts through his body…Ten dollars was offered for a single seat, and offered in vain. Only members of the Elec
trical Congress, with their wives, were admitted, and not even they unless they were provided with credentials.” Before the lecture, a Chicago reporter inquired of Professors William Preece and Silvanus Thompson as to the use of the various equipment scattered about the hall, but they “gazed in wonder and confessed they could not guess…They [simply] lumped off the whole lot under the generic term of ‘Tesla’s animals.’
“Presently, white-haired Elisha Gray was seen escorting a tall, gaunt young man towards the platform. The young man smiled with pleasure but modestly kept his eyes on the floor. His cheeks were hollow, his black eyes sunken…but sparking with animation;…Intense and continuous application of his work has sapped his energy until his friends say he has almost reached the point of dissolution. A gentleman who dined with him a week ago says he could scarcely make himself heard across the table, he was so worn out. He has glossy black hair parted in the middle, a mustache, heavy under his aquiline nose, but fading to a suggestion at the sides of his mouth…his ears are large and stand out from his head. He wore a neat four-button cutaway suit of brownish gray.” Gray said to a rousing applause: “I give you the Wizard of Physics, Nikola Tesla.”
“I have with great reluctance accepted these compliments, because I had no right to interrupt the flow of speech of our chairman,” Tesla began with characteristic humor. Appearing somewhat like a resurrected cadaver, Tesla spoke to allay the fears of all those concerned for his frail health. “A number of scientific men urged [a group of electricians] to deliver a lecture. A great many promised that they would come, [but] when the programme was sifted down I was the only healthy man left…and so I managed to take some of my apparatus…and give you a brief outline of some of my work.”30
Tesla proceeded to display his new steam generators and mechanical oscillators, some of which were so compact “that one could readily carry them in the crown of one’s hat.” He told the audience that his goals were multifaceted. Such a device could, among other things, be used to run motors with perfect synchrony, or electric clocks. He had also produced a continuous-wave radio transmitter, although no one at the time understood the complete ramifications of the equipment. Nevertheless, when the resonant frequency was reached, wireless lights would again illuminate, and in that way intelligence was wirelessly transmitted.