by Marc Seifer
18. Robert Hessen, Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 116-17.
19. M. Josephson, The Robber Barrons (New York: J. J. Little, 1934), p. 426 and Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan, p. 347.
20. Satterlee, p. 348.
21. Wheeler, p. 233.
22. E. Hoyt, The House of Morgan (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966), p. 245.
23. NT to JPM, December 10, 1900 [LC].
24. NT to JPM, September 7, 1902 [LC].
25. NT to JPM, March 5, 1901 [LC].
26. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
27. NT to JPM, December 10, 1900 [LC].
28. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 (size calculated from point 8) [LC].
29. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
30. Ibid.
31. JPM to NT, February 15, 1901 [LC].
32. NT to JJA, January 3, 1901 [NTM].
33. JPM to NT, March 5, 1901 [LC].
34. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
35. NT to JPM, February 18, 1901 [LC].
36. NT to JJA, January 11, 1901 [NTM].
37. NT to JJA, January 22, 1901 [NTM].
38. One curious feature to this episode is that aside from lighting patents dating from 1890 to 1992, no circa-1900 Tesla patents have been uncovered which are specifically written up to describe fluorescent or neon lighting. This conclusion is corroborated by correspondence with other Tesla researchers (e.g., Leland Anderson and John Ratzlaff). If Tesla drafted patents on this invention, they were never filed in Washington. There may be copies in Morgan’s archives or the Tesla Museum, or the invention might be somehow linked to other patents. A congressional investigation provides tangential evidence that Morgan purposely squelched this invention: “The introduction of fluorescent lighting in this country was slowed up by GE and Westinghouse, through control of patents, lest its efficiency cut too drastically the demand for current.” (Invention and the Patent System, Report of Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States, 88th Cong., 2d sess., December 1964, p. 100.)
39. NT to JPM, March 5, 1901 [LC].
40. NT to GW, March 13, 1901 [LC].
Chapter 30: World Telegraphy Center, pp. 256-265
1. NT to JPM, February 12, 1901 [LC].
2. NT to RUJ, March 8, 1900; March 9, 1900 [BLCU].
3. EH to NT, February 25, 1901 [LC].
4. NT to TCM, December 12, 1900 [NTM].
5. TCM to NT, December 13, 1900 [NTM].
6. TCM to NT, December 18, 1900; December 17, 1900 [NTM].
7. NT to Miss Emma C. Thursby, March 3, 1901 [NHS].
8. Julian Hawthorne, “Tesla’s New Surprise,” Philadelphia North American circa 1900 [BLCU].
9. NT to JH, January 16, 1901 [BLCU].
10. Paul Baker, Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White (New York: Free Press, 1989), p. 15.
11. Ibid., p. 289.
12. Ibid., p. 321.
13. Literary license taken on conversation. Adapted from R. Fleischer, director, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (film), 1955; Michael Macdonald Mooney, Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age (New York: Morrow, 1976), pp. 45-46.
14. NT to KJ, June 11, 1900 [BLCU].
15. J. Ratzlaff and L. Anderson, p. 70.
16. O’Neill.
17. NT to RUJ, January 1, 1901 [BLCU].
18. Interview with Mrs. Robert Underwood Johnson, July 1, 1990.
19. “Nikola Tesla Inventor,” Long Island Democrat, August 27, 1901, 1:3.
20. O’Neill.
21. Historical Sketches of Northern Brookhaven Town: Shoreham, p. 68 [KSP].
22. “Mr. Tesla at Wardenclyffe, L.I.” Electrical World and Engineer, September 28, 1901, pp. 509-10.
23. Ibid.: Warden’s quote: “the ultimate number spoken of is 2000 to 2500 [workers].”
24. “When the Man Who Talked to Mars Came to Shoreham,” Port Jefferson Record, March 25, 1971, p. 3.
25. W. Shadwell, McKim, Mead & White: A Building List, #818, NY, 1978.
26. SW to JPM, February 6, 1901; February 7, 1901 [SWP].
27. SW to NT, April 26, 1901 [SWP].
28. SW to NT, June 1, 1901 [SWP].
29. GS to NT, July 23, 1901 [LC].
30. SW to NT, January 1, 1901 [SWP].
31. G. Marconi, “Wireless Telegraphy and the Earth,” Electrical Review, January 12, 1901; Recent Electrical Patents: “Marconi has been granted another patent on an improved receiver for electrical oscillations in his wireless telegraphy system…Electrical Review, March 2, 1901; quotation in text is from “Syntonic Wireless Telegraphy,” Electrical Review, part I, June 15, 1901, p. 755; part II, June 22, 1901, pp. 781-83.
32. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
33. NT, Wardenclyffe drawing and notes, May 29, 1901 [NTM].
34. Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd (New York: Pocket Books, 1977). See also Satterlee, 1939 and Wheeler, 1973.
35. “Fear and Ruin in a Falling Market,” New York Times, May 10, 1901, 1:6.
36. Edwin Hoyt, The House of Morgan, p. 251.
37. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
Chapter 31: Clash of the Titans, pp. 266-274
1. Thomas Edison, private notebook, March 18, 1902 [TAE, Reel M94].
2. O’Neill.
3. NT to RUJ, June 14, 1901 [BLCU].
4. SW to NT, June 1, 1901 [SWP].
5. “Long Island Automobiles,” Electrical World and Engineer, January 26, 1901, p. 165.
6. Paul Baker, p. 318.
7. Lawrence Grant White letter to Kenneth Swezey, December 21, 1955 [KSP]. Lawrence had provided Swezey with three letters from Tesla, copies of which are in the Library of Congress and the Swezey Collection. He had asked for their return, but the originals are missing and copies do not exist in the Stanford White papers at the Avery Library.
8. The Tesla Museum has a photo of Tesla in one of these bill-board photos.
9. NT to KJ, August 8, 1901 [NTM].
10. The Johnsons went to Maine every August for a number of years. Tesla probably joined them during one of these sojourns.
11. Satterlee, p. 360.
12. New York Times, May 2, 1901, 7:1.
13. NT to JPM, February 8, 1903 [LC].
14. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].
15. Sketch of Thomas F. Ryan (description of JPM). New York World, June 18, 1905, 1:3.
16. NT to JPM, August 8, 1901 [LC].
17. NT to SW, August 16, 1901 [SWP].
18. Paul Baker, Stanny, p. 326.
19. NT to SW, August 28, 1901 [LC].
20. NT to SW, August 30, 1901 [NTM].
21. Satterlee, p. 363.
22. NT to JPM, September 13, 1901 [LC].
23. NT to SW, September 13, 1901 [LC].
24. NT to SW, September 14, 1901 [NTM].
25. Shoreham, in Historical Sketches of Northern Brookhaven Town, pp. 69-70 [KSP].
26. Ibid.
27. NT to KJ, October 13, 1901 [BLCU].
28. NT to JPM, November 11, 1901 [LC].
29. NT to RUJ, November 28, 1901 [BLCU].
30. W. Jolly, Marconi, pp. 103-4.
Chapter 32: The Passing of the Torch, pp. 275-282
1. Lee DeForest, “Passage From Private Notebook,” in Father of Radio: An Autobiography (Chicago: Wilcox and Follett, 1950).
2. NT, “Tesla on Marconi’s Feat,” April 13, 1930, New York World.
3. JAF to ET, January 11, 1927, in Abraham and Savin, p. 239. Fleming’s connection with Tesla actually began a year earlier, when he wrote the inventor that “I have been charged with [your] description…on alternating currents of high frequency [and] am very anxious to repeat these in England.” (JAF to NT, July 22, 1891, NTM).
4. NT, “Tesla on Marconi’s Feat,” April 13, 1930, New York World.
5. ET to Alba Johnson, January 29, 1930, in Abraham and Savin, p. 325; Jolly, p. 111.
6. “The Institute Annual Dinner and Mr. Marconi,” Electrical World an
d Engineer, January 18, 1902, pp. 107-8, 124-26.
7. Charles Steinmetz, Alternating Current Phenomena (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1900), preface; see also preface of Theoretical Elements of Electrical Engineering (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1902).
8. Ronald Kline, “Professionalism and the Corporate Engineer: Charles P. Steinmetz and the AIEE,” IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. E-23, 3, August 1980.
9. Electrical World and Engineer, January 18, 1902, pp. 107-8, 124-26.
10. R. Conot, p. 413.
11. “Marconi Tells of His Wireless Tests,” New York Times, January 14, 1902, p. 1.
12. Electrical World and Engineer, January 18, 1902, pp. 107-8, 124-26.
13. Ibid.
14. NT to JPM, January 9, 1902 [LC].
15. [KSP].
16. Lee DeForest, “A Quarter Century of Radio,” Electrical World, September 20, 1924, pp. 579-80; D. McFarlane Moore quote from DeForest, 1950, p. 220.
17. Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 464-65.
18. DeForest, Electrical World, September 20, 1924, p. 580.
19. R. Conot, pp. 413-14, 444.
20. Tesla-Fessenden U.S. Patent Interference Case, August, 1902, pp. 87, 97-98.
21. Ibid., pp. 99, 102.
22. NT to GS, August 9, 1902 [BLCU].
Chapter 33: Wardenclyffe, pp. 283-292
1. “Cloudborn Electric Wavelets to Encircle the Globe,” New York Times, March 27, 1904 [condensed].
2. Alexander Marincic, “Research on Nikola Tesla in Long Island Laboratory,” Tesla Journal, 6/7, 1988/89, pp. 25-28, 44-48.
3. P. Baker, p. 326; TCM to NT, March 21, 1895 [NTM].
4. RUJ to NT, June 19, 1902 [BLCU].
5. NT to JPM, July 3, 1903 [LC]; NT, On His Work with AC, 1916/1992, pp. 152, 169.
6. Arthlyn Ferguson, “When the Man Who Talked to Mars Came to Shoreham,” Port Jefferson Record, March 25, 1971, p. 3; Natalie Stiefel to M. Seifer, April 10, 1997.
7. NT to JPM, September 5, 1902 [LC].
8. NT to JPM, September 7, 1902.Obviously, some people knew of Morgan’s interest at this time (e.g., the Johnsons, Astor), and The Echo, August 1901, a local Port Jefferson paper, had revealed Morgan’s interest, but his connection at this time was at the level of rumor. Details of Morgan’s connection were never revealed until well after Tesla’s death with the publication of the Hunt and Draper biography in 1967.
9. Mr. Steele (JPM) to NT, October 21, 1902.
10. NT to KJ, September 25, 1902 [BLCU]; interview with Mrs. R. U. Johnson Jr., New York City, 1886.
11. NT to Agnes, January 2, 1903 [BLCU].
12. The biography, coauthored with Frank Oyer, took ten years to complete.
13. T. C. Martin, “The Edison of To-day,” Harper’s Weekly, 47, Jan/Jun, 1903, p. 630.
14. NT to TCM, June 3, 1903 [NTM].
15. NT to RUJ, January 24, 1904 [BLCU].
16. NT to RUJ and GS corresp., March 14, 1905; January 10, 1909; March 24, 1909 [BLCU].
17. GS to NT, December 19, 1910; December 31, 1910 [BLCU].
18. NT to JPM, April 22, 1903; April 1, 1904 [LC].
19. “Cloudborn Electric Wavelets to Encircle the Globe,” New York Times, March 27, 1904.
20. The workers included Mr. Hartman, Mr. Clark, Mr. Johannessen, Mr. Merckling, and Mr. Beers [GS to NT, April 14, 1903, BLCU].
21. These machines were probably hydraulically operated. Concerning the cupola, Tesla testified that one of his most important discoveries was that “any amount of electricity within reason could be stored provided [it was made] in a certain shape…That construction enabled me to produce…the effect that could be produced by an ordinary plant of a hundred times the size,” NT, On His Work With AC, pp. 170-77.
22. Mitchel Freedman, “Dig for Mystery Tunnel Ends With Scientist’s Secret Intact,” February 13, 1979, p. 24; “Famed Inventor, Mystery Tunnels Linked,” March 10, 1979, p. 19. Both in Newsday. Also, personal interview with Edwin J. Binney, West Babylon, who as a boy, climbed down into the tunnels; personal inspection of site by author, 1984. Tesla was also conducting experiments with use of liquid nitrogen and energy transmission during his last days in Colorado.
23. KSP.
24. NT to GS, May 14, 1911 [BLCU].
25. A. Ferguson, op. cit., March 25, 1971.
26. Marnicic, 1989/90.
27. Strange Light at Tesla’s Tower. New York Herald Tribune, July 19, 1903, 2:4.
Chapter 34: The Web, pp. 293-306
1. JPM to NT, July 16, 1903 [LC].
2. NT to GS, August 17, 1903 [BLCU].
3. NT to Dickson D. Alley, May 26, 1903 [BLCU].
4. Petar Mandic to NT, September 2, 1903, in Tesla’s Correspondence With Relatives, p. 134 [NTM].
5. NT to JPM, September 13, 1903 [LC].
6. NT to GS, July 30, 1903 [BLCU].
7. NT to GS, August 17, 1903 [BLCU].
8. Virginia Cowles, The Astors (New York: Knopf, 1979), pp. 134-35.
9. JJA to NT, October 6, 1903 [NTM].
10. NT prospectus, January 1, 1904 [SWP].
11. NT to RUJ, September 22, 1903 [BLCU].
12. “NT Says We Will Be Soon Taking Around the World,” New York World, July 14, 1905.
13. “The Reasons Why 5,000,000 Persons Demand that Higgins Investigate the Equitable,” New York World, July 13, 1905, 1: 3-4.
14. Ibid.
15. “Eymard Seminary, Suffern, New York, Supported by Mrs. Ryan,” New York World, July 1, 1905.
16. What John Skelton Williams Thinks of Thomas F. Ryan,” New York World, June 18, 1905, Editorial Sec., p. 1.[Williams was critical of Ryan. This section of article was compiled by the editors of the newspaper.]
17. NT to TFR, December 20, 1905? [NTM].
18. NT to JPM, October 13, 1903 [LC].
19. R. U. Johnson, p. 482.
20. NT to RUJ, December 2, 1903 [BLCU].
21. G. Wheeler, p. 263.
22. Ibid.
23. “What J. Skelton William Thinks of T. F. Ryan,” New York World, June 18, 1905, Editorial Sec., p. 1.
24. H. Satterlee, p. 426.
25. Stephen Birmingham, p. 328.
26. G. Wheeler, p. 266.
27. Marc Seifer and Howard Smukler, “The Tesla/Matthews Outer Space Connection: An Interview With Andrija Puharich,” Pyramid Guide, Parts I & II, May and July, 1978.
28. Andrija Puharich, in The Zenith Factor, video by Sky Fabin, 1984.
29. New York World, Sunday sec., March 8, 1896.
30. Robert McCabe, personal correspondence, January 15, 1991, Flint, Michigan.
31. On a number of occasions, Tesla stated that Wardenclyffe was set up primarily for transmitting telephone conversations. Apparently his plan was to create identical magnifying transmitter-receivers at strategic points around the globe. These would be connected by means of wireless; however, individual subscribers could be linked to the central stations by means of conventional wires although a wireless connection to the local central station was also possible. So, for instance, a subscriber in Australia calling up America would make the wireless connection via the main intercontinental trunk line. Thus, the problem of providing free electricity was easily circumvented (My Inventions, p. 178).
32. Margaret Coit, Mr. Baruch (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 123.
33. “From 1905…to 1931 inclusive, the output was $2,871,300,000.” John Hays Hammond Sr., Autobiography (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1935), p. 518.
34. Edwin Hoyt, The Guggenheims and the American Dream (United States: Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), p. 158.
35. NT to JPM, December 7, 1903 [LC].
36. R. Chernow, p. 140.
37. Ann Morgan to NT, April 26, 1928 [NTM]. Literary license taken on conversation. Adapted from John Kennedy, “When Woman Is Boss—An Interview with NT,” Colliers, January 30, 1926.
38. Conversation recreated from NT to JPM December 11, 1903
and two undated communiques from the same period [LC].
39. Robert was publishing a paper by Madam Curie which Tesla was reading over. Tesla also conferred with Curie through the mail concerning her most recent discovery of radiant energy.
40. KJ to NT, December 20, 1903 [NTM].
41. NT to JPM, January 13, 1904 [LC].
42. NT to JPM, January 14, 1904 [LC].
43. NT to William Rankine, April 10, 1904 [Profiles in History Archives, Beverly Hills, Calif.].
44. NT, “The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires,” Electrical World and Engineer, March 5, 1904, p. 429-31 [condensed].
Chapter 35: Dissolution, pp. 307-323
1. NT, “The House of Morgan,” in Tesla Said, p. 243.
2. K. Mannheim, The Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul, 1952).
3. J. Goethe, Faust, C. Brooks, ed./transl. (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1856).
4. NT, “Man’s Greatest Wonder,” circa 1930 [KSP].
5. NT to JPM, possibly not sent, circa 1903 [LC].
6. “Langley Airship Proves a Failure,” New York Herald, January 8, 1903, 5:2.
7. NT, “Mr. Tesla Praises Professor Langley,” New York Herald, October 9, 1903, 8:6.
8. Marincic, “Research on L. I. Laboratory,” 1989/90, p. 26.
9. NT to GS, December 9, 1903 [BLCU].
10. Ibid.
11. P. Baker, p. 339.
12. NT to GS, March 21, 1904 [BLCU].
13. NT to John S. Barnes, April 20, 1904 [NYHS].
14. John Flynn, God’s Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932).
15. P. Baker, p. 313; literary license taken on conversations between White and Tesla.
16. Alfred Cowles, “Harnessing the Lightning,” The Cleveland Leader, March 27, 1904.
17. NT to Kerr, Page and Cooper, April 8, 1904 [NYHS].
18. NT to GS, June 1, 1904 [BLCU].
19. GW announcement, October 28, 1958 [KSP].
20. NT to JPM, July 22, 1904 [LC].
21. NT to GS, June 1, 1904 [BLCU].
22. NT to JPM, September 9, 1904 [LC].
23. H. Satterlee, p. 413.
24. NT to JPM, October 13, 1904 [LC].