Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah

by Nigel Cawthorne

  He said elsewhere that, if only Morgan would fund it, he would bring about world peace. But Morgan was adamant and Tesla sought refuge in Wardenclyffe, only venturing out to attend the funeral of Stanford White which, due to the scandalous circumstances, was shunned by most other New York socialites.

  More Rivals Emerge

  Marconi was not Tesla’s only rival. Lee De Forest had now completed his doctorate in electrical engineering at Yale. In 1901, he sent wireless messages across the Hudson River. He speeded up transmission to 30 words a minute, which was about as fast as a Morse-code operator could send them. By 1904, he could send a signal from Buffalo to Cleveland, a distance of 180 miles (290 km). Then in 1908, he succeeded in bridging the Atlantic.

  While Marconi and De Forest concentrated on sending messages in Morse code, sending brief bursts of signals, Canadian-born Reginald Fessenden realized that it was possible to modulate a continuous signal to follow the irregularities of sound. At the receiving station, it would then be possible to unscramble the signal and reconvert it to sound. This is what we now know as AM (amplitude modulated) radio. In 1906, he transmitted music down the Massachusetts coast. In 1910, De Forest was broadcasting the voice of Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso (1873 – 1921) from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. However, Tesla sued him for infringing his patents and won.

  The Million-Dollar Folly

  The newspapers began to call Wardenclyffe Tesla’s Million-Dollar Folly. Forced to close it down, Tesla had a nervous breakdown. He railed against the critics:

  It is not a dream. It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive – blind, faint-hearted, doubting world … Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer’s keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence – by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed – only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.

  Tesla retreated to his room at the Waldorf-Astoria where he nursed an injured pigeon he had found near the New York Public Library. However, at night, he sometimes stole out to Wardenclyffe to hook himself up to the high-frequency machinery. ‘I have passed 150,000 volts through my head,’ he told The New York Times, ‘and did not lose consciousness, but I invariably fell into a lethargic sleep sometime after.’ He found the electricity soothing.

  Seeing into the Future

  Although Wardenclyffe did not live up to his expectations, Tesla’s vision remained intact. In ‘The Future of the Wireless Art’ in Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony in 1908 he said:

  As soon as it is completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.

  Chapter 10 – Fresh Dreams of Flying

  On my slow return to the normal state of mind, I experienced an exquisitely painful longing after something undefinable. During the day I worked as usual and this feeling, though it persisted, was much less pronounced, but when I retired, the night, with its monstrous amplifications, made the suffering very acute … my torture was due to a consuming desire to see my mother.

  Nikola Tesla

  Slowly Tesla recovered. He would go out during the day, as dapper as ever, to have warm compresses applied to his face and his scalp massaged. He looked for new offices and delighted on travelling on the subway which was powered by his induction motors.

  In May 1907, Tesla was inducted into the New York Academy of Sciences. He managed to borrow some money and raise a few mortgages, including one with George C. Boldt, the proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria, where he had not paid rent for 3 years. Just as he seemed to be getting back on his feet came the ‘Panic of 1907’, when shares plunged 50 per cent from the peak the previous year, causing a run on the banks.

  Nevertheless, his imagination was as good as ever. The Wright brothers had made their first powered flight in 1903. Astor was also keen on flying machines and encouraged Tesla to take an interest. However, at a dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria at the beginning of 1908, he made another of his pronouncements:

  The coming year will dispel another error which has greatly retarded the progress of aerial navigation. The aeronaut will soon satisfy himself that an airplane … is altogether too heavy to soar, and that such a machine, while it has its uses, can never fly as fast as a dirigible balloon. Once this is fully recognized the expert will concentrate his efforts on the latter type, and before many months are passed it will be a familiar object in the sky.

  However, he was not entirely wrong as he went on to say: ‘Aerial vessels of war will be used to the exclusion of ships.’ He also said ‘the propeller is doomed’. It would, he said, have to be replaced by ‘a reactive jet’.

  Tesla’s Flying Machine

  Despite his gloomy prognostication, Tesla revealed in The New York Times of 8 June 1908 that he was working on a heavier-than-air machine of his own. By 1911, Tesla was ready to spell out his vision in a press interview:

  The flying machine of the future – my flying machine – will be heavier than air, but it will not be an airplane. It will have no wings. It will be substantial, solid, stable. You cannot have a stable airplane. The gyroscope can never be successfully applied to the airplane, for it would give a stability that would result in the machine being torn to pieces by the wind, just as the unprotected airplane on the ground is torn to pieces by a high wind.

  My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and oblivious of holes in the air or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air, even in a wind, for great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action.

  Tesla could not bear being left behind. In 1911, he said: ‘20 years ago I believed that I would be the first man to fly; that I was on the track of accomplishing what no one else was anywhere near reaching. I was working entirely in electricity then and did not realize that the gasoline engine was approaching a perfection that was going to make the aeroplane feasible.’

  His idea, naturally, was to have a plane powered by electricity, with power supplied by stations on the ground. ‘I have not accomplished this as yet, but am confident that I will in time,’ he said.

  The Flivver Plane Takes Off

  Tesla applied for a patent on a flying machine in 1921. Dubbed the ‘flivver plane’ – flivver was early 20th-century slang for a cheap car – it was said to combine the qualities of a helicopter and a plane, and could fly vertically as well as horizontally. According to a press report:

  It is a tiny combination plane which, its inventor asserts, wil
l rise and descend vertically and fly horizontally at great speed, much faster than the speed of the planes of today. But despite the feats which he credits to his invention, Tesla says that it will sell for something less than $1,000.

  The helicopter-airplane is a small structure, with two wings about 8 ft square. It may have one propeller and it may have several, to be driven by a light but powerful turbine motor of Tesla’s invention. When the plane rests on the ground the propeller will be overhead and the wings will be standing vertically. The motor is expected to generate a terrific power that will lift the plane into the air. This power can be sustained only a short while.

  At the desired height, the aviator begins to tilt his plane. The wings gradually are brought into a horizontal position that puts the propeller in front of the machine. During this operation the engine power is decreased, and, at this lower power, the helicopter becomes an airplane and is operated as such. The wings now are supporting surfaces, and, except when exceptional speed is wanted for a few moments, the engine will be run at a low rate.

  Seats for the pilot and three or four passengers are suspended from trunnions on which they can turn through an angle of 90 degrees. This enables those in the plane to sit in a normal position at all times. With two wheel bases at right angles, the helicopter-airplane is able to descend in a glide or vertically, landing easily either way. As a helicopter, it has a low landing velocity.

  Although he obtained more patents for The Flivver Plane in 1928, even by then, he still had not built a full-scale model.

  Becoming Yesterday’s News

  By 1909, Lee De Forest had perfected the radio-telephone which had been adopted by the navies of Britain, the US and Italy. He had cut out the spark and minimized the chances of the interruption of messages. By transmitting the speaking voice, he claimed, information could now be passed at a rate of 40,000 words an hour instead of 40 words a minute, which was the speed of the fastest Morse operator. Tesla was rapidly becoming a footnote in the history of wireless.

  Radio-telephones were being set up on top of tall buildings and, to add insult to injury, radio towers were erected on top of the Waldorf-Astoria. While Tesla took night-time rambles to Grand Central Station which would soon boast its astronomical ceiling, Professor William Pickering announced that he had raised $10,000 to erect a set of mirrors in Texas to send signals to Mars.

  Advanced Bladeless Turbines

  Considering his own experiments with wireless transmission ‘evidently far in advance of the times’, Tesla moved on to other inventions. He came up with a ‘bladeless turbine’ which, he believed, would replace the petrol engine in a car or could be used to power aircraft, ships or torpedoes. It also worked as a pump.

  Just as a rotating magnetic field dragged the rotor around in his AC motors, Tesla believed that it was possible to use steam or compressed air to turn a series of discs attached to a turbine. They utilized the property of viscosity – that is, a fluid’s resistance to flow. By adjusting the distance between the discs to match the viscosity and speed of flow of the fluid, Tesla believed that he could create an efficient engine.

  In Tesla’s engine, fluid entered at the edge of the disc and exited at the shaft in the centre. As the fluid spiralled down between the discs, it dragged them around with it. When the action was reversed, the fluid spiralled out from the centre and acted as a pump or a blower.

  Without blades, the engine would be cheaper to build and easier to maintain. What’s more it gave a vastly improved power to weight ratio. Tesla claimed that, while the lightest aeroplane engine produces one horsepower (746 watts) for each 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms), his engine would produce 25 horsepower (18,642 watts). In his own mind, he had solved the problem of flying.

  ‘I have accomplished what mechanical engineers have been dreaming about ever since the invention of steam power,’ said Tesla. ‘That is the perfect rotary engine.’

  That was all very well in theory, but it had taken Tesla years to go from the idea of a rotating magnetic field to the production of a functioning AC motor. Producing a bladeless turbine similarly required a great deal of meticulous engineering. All sorts of different materials and configurations would have to be tested. Nevertheless Tesla was confident that his new engine would be so successful that he would have the money to reopen Wardenclyffe.

  Coming Up with the Prototypes

  In 1906, Julius Czito, son of Tesla’s long-serving assistant Kolman, built the first prototype. It had eight discs each 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter. Weighing less than 10 pounds (4.5 kg) it developed 30 horsepower and would rotate at up to 35,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). At this speed, the metal disks began to distort. Nevertheless, in 1909, Tesla filed two patents – one for the turbine, the other for the pump.

  The following year, Czito produced a second prototype with 12 inch (30 cm) discs. With the speed limited to 10,000 rpm, it developed 100 horsepower. A third prototype was slightly smaller. Its discs were 9.75 inches (24.8 cm) in diameter. The speed was limited to 9,000 rpm, but it developed 110 horsepower. Tesla proclaimed that he had invented ‘a powerhouse in a hat’. Hooked up to an induction motor it could have made a jet engine.

  As he shuttled between various workshops in New York, Providence, Rhode Island, and Bridgeport, Connecticut – where most of the development was done – he became increasingly optimistic.

  ‘I am now at work on new ideas of an automobile, locomotive and lathe in which these inventions of mine are embodied and which cannot help [but] prove a colossal success,’ he said. ‘The only trouble is to get the cash, but it cannot last very long before my money will come in a torrent.’ Later he wrote, undaunted: ‘Things are developing very favourably, and it seems my wireless dream will be realized before next summer.’

  There is speculation that Tesla installed one of his engines on a ‘mysterious craft’ that Astor had moored on the Harlem River. ‘It seemed to embody an airship with a practical water craft,’ said The New York Times. However, after a year, it disappeared.

  Putting on a Public Show

  Astor refused to invest, so Tesla set up the Tesla Propulsion Company with Joseph Hoadley, whose Alabama Consolidated Coal and Iron company planned to use the Tesla pump as a blower in its blast furnaces. Certain his fortunes were on the up again, Tesla took offices in the new Metropolitan Life Tower on Madison Square, then the tallest building in the world.

  Eager to promote his new invention, Tesla arranged to give a public demonstration at the Waterside Station of the New York Edison Company. Tesla had two engines built with 18-inch (46-cm) rotors. They were just 3 ft (90 cm) long, 2 ft (60 cm) wide and 2 ft (60 cm) high, and weighed 400 pounds (181 kg). Revolving at 9,000 rpm, they each developed 200 horsepower.

  In the demonstration, the two turbines were connected by a torque rod. Turning in the opposite direction, the two motors would engage in a tug-of-war, with the power they developed registered on the torque rod. But in this configuration, with the two turbines pushing against one another, the motors did not actually turn, just strained against each other. The audience was not impressed and the story soon circulated that the test was a complete failure.

  Building Up High Hopes

  To Tesla, though, the test had been a success. He told the New York Herald Tribune: ‘One such pump now in operation, with eight discs, 18 inches in diameter, pumps 4,000 gallons a minute to a height of 360 feet.’

  As a motor, they would be run using water, air, steam, gas or any other fluid under pressure. ‘The motor is especially adapted to automobiles, for it will run on gas explosions as well as on steam,’ said Tesla. ‘Coupling these engines in series, one can do away with gearing in machinery. Factories can be equipped without shafting.’ The applications were limitless.

  ‘With a thousand horse-power engine, weighing only 100 pounds, imagine the possibilities in automobiles, locomotives and steamships,’ he said. ‘In the space now occupied by the engines of the Lusitania 25 times her 80,000 horse power could be developed, were i
t possible to provide boiler capacity sufficient to furnish the necessary steam.’

  The engine would also be perfect to power Tesla’s flying machine. Using the current reciprocating petrol engine, he said, ‘the aeroplane is fatally defective. It is merely a toy, a sporting plaything. It can never become commercially practical.’

  The problem was, of course, he needed money to develop it. Westinghouse was out of business; Astor was not interested. Then in 1912, Astor was lost on the Titanic. The following year J.P. Morgan also died. After his funeral, Tesla approached his son Jack for funding. Tesla was still hoping to get Wardenclyffe up and running again, but Jack showed no interest. However, he loaned the inventor $20,000 to develop his turbine.

  Tesla then moved into the Woolworth Building, which had taken over from the Metropolitan Life Tower as the world’s tallest building. On the wall of his office there, Tesla had the famous picture of him in his lab at Colorado Springs quietly reading while huge streaks of artificial lightning crack over his head. The picture is, of course, a cheat, taken using time-lapse photography.