Wizard

by Marc Seifer

  Tesla had taken the word “shadowgraph” from Søren Kierkegaard, who described them in his essay “Either/Or.” To the existential philosopher they were sketches “that derive from the darker side of life…[but] are not directly visible…The [shadowgraph] does not become perceptible until I see through the external…Not until I look through it, do I discover that inner picture too delicately drawn to be outwardly visible, woven as it is of the tenderest moods of the soul.”4

  In Europe meager X rays were being produced by static machines and Ruhmkorff induction coils; Tesla suggested, instead, the use of a high-frequency disruptive coil attached to a special bulb with two electrodes, a cathode inside the vacuum, for generating the “cathode streams,” and an anode placed as far away as possible outside the bulb to limit the reduction of the potential. With this apparatus, “effective pressures of about 4,000,000 volts were achieved.”5 At first, the bulb will get hot and glow with a purplish hue, then the electrode will disintegrate, and the bulb will cool. Use of a fan helps. “From [this] point on…the bulb is in a very good condition for producing the Roentgen shadows.” When the electrode is too hot, it is probably because the vacuum is not high enough.6

  Generating such high voltages, this work not only was set up to measure the quality of the energy emanating from the bulb and to test its ability to pierce living and nonliving objects or be reflected; it also laid the foundation for Tesla’s later experiments with particle-beam weapons.

  Here, in 1896, Tesla discussed the idea promulgated by the quantum physicists a few years later that the energy had both particle-like and wavelike properties. Having set up a target to shoot the streams at, Tesla wrote: “The effects on the sensitive plate are due to projected particles or else to vibrations [of extremely high frequencies].”7 The inventor further speculated that “the streams are formed of matter in some primary or elementary condition…Similiar streams must be emitted by the sun and probably by other sources of radiant energy.”8 Tesla also appeared to have come close to the idea of breaking up the electron into subatomic particles. “The projected lumps of matter act as inelastic bodies, similarly to ever so many small lead bullets…These lumps are shattered into fragments so small as to make them lose entirely some physical properties possessed before the impact…[Might it not be possible] that in the Roentgen phenomena we may witness a transformation of ordinary matter into ether?9 [Or] we may be confronted with a dissolution of matter into some unknown primary form, the Akâsa of the old Vedas.”10

  The inventor as physicist then proceeded to take X rays of small animals, such as birds and rabbits, as well as his workers, and of his own skull, ribs, limbs, and vertebrae. As some shadowgraphs took as long as an hour to obtain, Tesla noticed that he would sometimes fall asleep while he was being bombarded by the machine.

  Week after week, Tesla would crank out yet another article on his “Latest Results.” On March 18, 1896, he announced in Electrical Review that he had produced shadowgraphs of humans at distances of forty feet and affected photosensitive paper at a distance of sixty feet from the source of the rays. The inventor also tested different metals to see which ones reflected the energy in the best way. Adorned with a lavish X ray of the bones of the wizard’s own rib cage, the article conveyed an eerie impression.11

  “I told some friends,” Tesla wrote, “that it might be possible to observe by the aid of [a]…screen objects [and skeletons] passing through a street…I mention this odd idea only as an illustration of how these scientific developments may even affect our morals and customs. Perhaps we shall shortly get used to this state of things.”

  For Tesla, Roentgen rays were a gateway to a world invisible and ripe for new possibilities. “Roentgen gave us a [wonderful] gun to fire…projecting missiles of a thousandfold greater penetrative power than that of a cannon ball, and carrying them probably to distances of many miles…These missiles are so small that we may fire them through our tissues for days, weeks, and years, apparently without hurtful consequence.”

  Throughout the year, the inventor suffered from “the grippe.” Although his illness made the papers, nobody seemed to link it to his excessive experimentation with the mysterious energy. In fact, concerning the risk to one’s health, Tesla wrote: “No experimenter need be deterred from…investigation of Roentgen rays for fear of poisonous or generally deleterious action, for it seems reasonable to conclude that it would take centuries to accumulate enough of such matter to interfere seriously with the process of life of a person.”12 We now know, of course, that this view is wrong as long-term exposure to X rays can be very dangerous to one’s health.

  Tesla did, however, refer to pain in the center of his forehead when experimenting with the rays and to “the hurtful action on the skin, inflammation and blistering,” but this he attributed to the production of ozone, which in small quantities was “a most beneficial disinfectant.” Nevertheless, there was a severe accident in the lab “to a dear and zealous assistant…without a protective screen present. The worker suffered severe blistering and raw flesh exposed,” the inventor undertaking “the bitter duty of recording the accident” in order to lessen the danger for others.”13

  Edison was also making headlines with his work with Roentgen rays, especially when he noted that the streams caused blind people to experience sensations in their eyes. “The X-rays succeeded in eliciting from the blind the ejaculation, “I see; yes, I see a light!”14

  Edison, whose fluoroscope was already being used for lighting the eye during eye surgery, saw the possibility that eyesight, in some way, might be restored with the use of X rays.15 Tesla doubted it, and so the press took up the charge and created a new round of headlines placing the two pioneers once again against each other. “The humorless dark Hungarian [had the] unpleasant duty to say, ‘Is it not cruel to raise such hopes when there is so little ground for it…What possible good can result?’”16

  Time proved Edison wrong, as X rays have not been used to “stimulate the retina” in such a way as to restore sight, but the two wizards did perform a number of successful miracles with the strange energy when each used the instruments to locate bullets lodged in the bones of various patients. Fortunately, the Kentucky School of Medicine helped bring the battle between the two to a close when they “combin[ed] the devices of Tesla and Edison” to extract bird shot from the wounded foot of a voter who had received the injury in a fight at an election poll. After developing the X ray, which took only ninety seconds to make, “every bone was distinctly shown, and the shot, about thirty in number, were plainly located.”17

  To celebrate the triumph and quell any purported hostilities, T. C. Martin was able to coax Tesla into joining Edison and a number of other electricians for a day of fishing on a topsail schooner off Sandy Hook. The event was sponsored by the Safety Insulated Wire and Cable Company. Although a storm erupted, accompanied by dark clouds and lightning, the “bold fishermen were undismayed…In stately grandness…as happy and well satisfied a party as ever rode the waves of the Atlantic’s billows…Toward nightfall, the [ship] turned her prow homeward…Nicola Tesla [caught] a flounder of large dimensions…[and] Edison caught a shocking big fluke.”18

  20

  FALLS SPEECH (1897)

  Nikola Tesla said much in a notable speech at a banquet to celebrate the conveyance of power from Niagara to Buffalo. Not [just] a plodding workman, he is a dreamer of wise dreams, a poet, and a humanitarian, working with new tools for the benefit of all. He is a man who wonders at the folly of men who invent guns when they might invent tools. His spirit is naturally hopeful…He looks not so much at the world as at the universe. He finds power in the waterfall, and at the same time looks forward to a time when we may, perhaps, tap the unseen forces of the planets and use the cosmic energy that swings the stars in their courses. He looks to a time when power shall be so cheap, so universal, that all labor shall be done by tireless machines and every man’s life be thus so much more worth living.

  CHARLES BARNARD1
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  In July 1896, Tesla journeyed to Niagara Falls for his first survey of this great enterprise. He traveled with George Westinghouse, Edward Dean Adams, William Rankine, and Comdr. George Melville of the U.S. Navy. Also present was Thomas Ely, supervisor of motive power for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Tesla was important to all five for almost as many reasons.

  A reporter for the Niagara Gazette greeted them upon their arrival. “Tesla is an idealist,” the journalist wrote, “fully six feet tall, very dark of complexion, nervous and wirey. Impressionable maidens would fall in love with him at first sight, but he has no time to think of impressionable maidens. In fact, he has given as his opinion that inventors should never marry. Day and night he is working away at some deep problems that fascinate him, and anyone that talks with him for only a few minutes will get the impression that science is his only mistress and that he cares more for her than for money and fame.”

  Rankine predicted that Buffalo would receive electrical power by November, and Westinghouse predicted that costs would be cheaper than steam. “You could say it will cost one half what steam power cost[s],” Rankine added in support.

  “Mr. Tesla, what is your opinion of the effect of this development of power on Buffalo and Niagara Falls?”

  “The effect will be that both cities will stretch out their arms until they meet.”2

  Tesla looked up at the roaring cataract overcome with emotion as he and the others donned their rain gear before entering the mighty wonder. He had grown up just fifty miles from the magnificent maze of cascading flumes known as Plitvice Lakes, but those were Lilliputian compared to this thundering colossus. Pride overcame the inventor as he trailed behind for a few moments to think, as he so often did, of his mountain homeland. It had been four years since he had seen his family, fifteen years since his first successful construction of a turbine that could be driven by waterpower, and nearly thirty-five years since he had told his uncle of his dream of one day harnessing Niagara Falls. Humbled by this awesome manifestation of nature, he sat for a moment to reflect as he watched his cohorts disappear along the catwalks into a mist of rainbows.

  “Let’s go, Mr. Tesla,” Adams called out, having waited as patiently as he could, for the next stop on the itinerary was the Edward Dean Adams Hydro-Electric Power Station, the first of two that would be built in his name. Designed by Stanford White, the edifice housed nearly a dozen gargantuan Tesla turbines, capable of generating collectively over 35,000 kilowatts. The men appeared like dwarfs sauntering amid a lustrous gadgetry assembled as if by giants—one long row of towering, kettleshaped engines. From this chamber, an efficient, nonpolluting, never-ending source of electrical energy was about to be generated capable of driving the factories and illuminating the streets and homes of nearly one-fourth of the entire continent. The echoes of their steps faded as they stood for a moment in silence in the chapel of the dawning New Age.

  Upon his return to New York, Tesla found a letter from Sir William Preece.3 A young man, half British, on his mother’s side, and half Italian, had stopped by Preece’s office with a wireless Morse-code apparatus based on the work of Heinrich Hertz. Guglielmo Marconi, just twenty-two years old, had brought a notebook which reviewed the literature in the field (most likely the writings of Hertz, Lodge, and Tesla). Marconi had chosen wisely, as Preece was head of the British Post Office and had experimented himself in testing induction effects through the ground from telegraph lines.4

  “After the experiments with the classical Hertz devices under the auspices of the Imperial Post Office in England,” Tesla reported many years later, “Preece wrote me a letter conveying the information that the tests had been abandoned as of no value, but he believed good results [would be possible by my system]. In reply, I offered to prepare two sets for trial and asked him to give me the technical particulars necessary to the design. Just then, Marconi came out with the emphatic assertion that he had tried out my apparatus and that it did not work. Evidently he succeeded in his purpose, for nothing was done in regard to my proposal.”5 Tesla’s first patent specifically for wireless transmission was filed a year later, on September 2, 1897 (no. 650,353).

  The following month, in August 1896, Tesla received a histrionic plea from Katharine, who was vacationing with her family at a cottage in Bar Harbor, Maine. Wanting desperately for Tesla to join them, she could only allude to her wish.

  August 6, 1896

  Dear Mr. Tesla,

  I am so troubled about you. I hear you are ill…Leave work for a while. I am haunted by the fear that you may succumb to the heat…Find a cool climate. Do not stay in New York. That would mean the laboratory every day…

  You are making a mistake my dear friend almost a fatal one. You think you do not need change and rest. You are so tired you do not know what you need. If somebody would only pick you up and carry you bodily. I hardly know what to expect to gain by writing you. My words have no effect, forgotten as soon as read perhaps.

  But I must speak and I will. You do not send me a line? How delighted I should be if it bore an unfamiliar postmark.

  Sincerely yours,

  Katharine Johnson6

  Robert, having some perspective on Katharine’s sense of drama, also wrote to invite him up. “But I know it isn’t safe for you to get more than three miles away from Delmonico’s. The rumor is that you have melted in your laboratory.”7

  Perhaps Katharine was right, for Tesla was unavailable to the Johnsons even upon their return. Tesla was also ignoring letters from his sisters from Croatia, particularly Marica, who, much like Katharine, asked him why he would not respond. Roentgen rays had been left behind many months ago, but he was still gaunt from illness and overwork. Now he was in a wireless race against newcomers like Marconi. Fearing that his invention would be pirated, Tesla’s lab became a more mysterious place.

  November 7, 1896

  Dear Mr. Tesla,

  It may seem presumptuous [for] a stranger to address you, but Mrs. Johnson, (my wife) whom you may remember having met, cannot refrain from uniting with me in congratulating you on the success of the Buffalo experiment…If this seems taking too great a liberty with one whom we know so slightly, I trust you will attribute it to our interest in the progress of humanity.

  Respectively yours,

  Robert Underwood Johnson8

  Tesla’s holiday spirit prevailed, and he joined his beloved Johnsons for Christmas dinner, apologizing for being so distant by bringing Mrs. Filipov an exquisite bouquet of flowers.

  The celebration of the inauguration of the Niagara power station was held at the Ellicott Club in Buffalo in the midst of winter’s most dangerous month. Fortunately, the weather was permitting, and 350 of the nation’s most prominent businessmen made the January trek. Hosted by Morgan’s advance man, Francis Lynde Stetson, a law partner of Grover Cleveland’s, the list of attendees included a veritable who’s who of commerce. Curiously missing from the event, although invited, were such notables as John Jacob Astor, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Thomas Alva Edison.

  “Mr. Stetson spoke of the pall of smoke hanging over Buffalo and said that the day should come when power would come from Niagara and not from smoke and steam…The introduction of Nikola Tesla, the greatest electrician on earth, produced a monstrous ovation. The guests sprang to their feet and wildly waved napkins and cheered for the famous scientist. It was three or four minutes before quiet prevailed.”9

  A constellation of psychological peculiarities accompanied the wizard’s lecture. He began in a self-deprecating manner: “I have scarcely had courage enough to address an audience on a few unavoidable occasions…Even now as I speak…the fugitive conceptions will vanish, and I shall experience certain well known sensations of abandonment, chill and silence. I can see already your disappointed countenances and can read in them the painful regret of the mistake of your choice.”10

  Why did Tesla “poison the well” with this dreadful opening? A deep sense of inferiority appears evident and yet Tesla was also complet
ely aware that this dinner was in his honor and was therefore the pinnacle of his life to date—and through him an apotheosis for the whole of humanity. Why didn’t he simply congratulate himself or accept praise well deserved? We see here the first tangible manifestation of an overpowering feeling of inferiority, a clear-cut self-destructive element in his nature. The dark legacy of a deep-seated repression flooded through his veins, like a hydra about to annihilate.

  Nevertheless, it was his inventions that would change an entire world. It was the name Nikola Tesla which appeared a dozen times on the patent plaque of his new system. It was Nikola Tesla who was praised with “wild enthusiasm” by the corporate and engineering intellegentsia. And it was Nikola Tesla who changed, in precise and measurable ways, the very direction humanity was taking. This was a moment of anointment; through his specific action, the evolution of the race and the texture of an entire planet would be permanently changed in a positive way.

  Yet at this moment of the fulfillment of his greatest wish, a deep neurotic constellation was also triggered. From the psychoanalytic perspective, Tesla could now repay his family for the death of his brother by symbolically bringing the brother back to life—and, on the larger scale, give the world a new life, his AC polyphase system. But the shadow had its hold, and he was simply unable to accept the happiness of the moment without throwing a monkey wrench into it. His speech went on: “These remarks, gentleman, are not made with the selfish desire of winning your kindness and indulgence of my shortcomings, but with the honest intention of offering you an apology for your disappointment…But I am hopeful that in my formless and incomplete statements…there may be something of interest…benefiting this unique occasion.”11