Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah

by Nigel Cawthorne

  There was a problem with this. James Clerk Maxwell’s equations predicted the speed of light at 186,000 miles a second (300,000 km a second). At first, it was assumed that this speed was relative to the background ether that electromagnetic radiation propagated through. But the Michelson-Morley experiment showed there was no such thing as ether. Einstein realized that this meant the speed of light was an absolute – and there was no such thing as a speed faster than light.

  Tesla railed against Einstein and relativity. He would not accept the concept of curved space, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, either. But Einstein, with his Nobel Prize, was the new star in the scientific firmament. Tesla, Edison, who died in 1931, Bell, who died in 1922, and the Wright brothers, who died in 1912 and 1948, were old hat.

  Business As Usual

  Despite the rejection of their plans in Washington, Flowers and Tesla went to Detroit to try and sell his ‘flying automobile’ to General Motors. Tesla also tried to sell his speedometer to Ford, but its high cost made it better suited to luxury cars. In Detroit, Tesla met his nephew Nicholas Trbojevich and there was an incident that became part of family lore. The two were going for a late snack in an expensive hotel. The head waiter suggested that they wait five minutes. Then the $5 cover charge would be lifted. This was in the middle of the Great Depression when $5 would feed a family for a week. But Tesla was not prepared to wait. When Trbojevich questioned his uncle over the matter of the cover charge, Tesla said: ‘I’ll never die rich unless the money comes in the door faster than I can shovel it out of the window.’

  Tesla held talks with US Steel concerning installing his bladeless turbines on the exhaust from the blast furnaces, generating huge amounts of electricity. But, apparently, a test did not go ahead. Then in Buffalo, Tesla conducted some top-secret experiments. It was said that the petrol engine of a Pierce-Arrow sedan was replaced by an AC induction motor. A ‘power receiver’ using 12 vacuum tubes was set in the dashboard connected to a 6 ft (2 m) antenna. There is other speculation that it was powered by a steam or petrol-driven turbine, but no physical evidence of either design has been found.

  While experimenters were using Tesla Coils to try and split the atom, Tesla himself was making more outlandish predictions, saying that all the machinery on Earth could be powered by cosmic rays. Unlimited quantities of power could be transmitted through wires or wirelessly from a central station to anywhere on the globe, eliminating the need for coal, oil, gas or any other terrestrial energy source. Already the central source of energy on Earth was the Sun, he said, but the new source of power would not be turned off at night.

  Heralding a New Industrial Revolution

  With just five days to go to his 75th birthday, Tesla said that he would soon announce ‘by far the most important discovery’ of his long career. ‘It will throw light on many puzzling phenomena of the cosmos,’ he said, ‘and may prove also of great industrial value, particularly in creating a new and virtually unlimited market for steel.’

  He said that he had been wonderfully fortunate in coming up with new ideas that he was sure would be remembered by posterity. He was confident that his rotating magnetic field, induction motor and wireless system would live on long after he was gone, but he still considered his latest discoveries the most important. They would mark a new departure in science, be of great practical values and inaugurate a new industrial revolution, he said.

  He had already succeeded in proving his theories by experimentation and, if the calculations based on them turned out to be true, the world would have a new source of energy in practically unlimited amounts, available at any point on the globe. But, again, he was tantalizingly vague when it came to the details:

  I can only say at this time that it will come from an entirely new and unsuspected source, and will be for all practical purposes constant, day and night, and at all times of the year. The apparatus for capturing the energy and transforming it will partake both mechanical and electrical features, and will be of ideal simplicity. At first the cost may be found too high, but this obstacle will be overcome. Moreover, the installment will be, so to speak, indestructible, and will continue to function for any length of time without additional expenditures.

  The press had heard such promises from Tesla before and wanted to know when he was going to make an official announcement of his new discoveries. But the great man was unwilling to be pinned down. These ideas had not come to him overnight, but as the result of intense study and experimentation for nearly 36 years. He said he was anxious to give the facts to the world as soon as possible, but wished to present them in a finished form. That may take a few months, or a few years, he said.

  All the energy that the Earth receives from all the suns and stars of the universe is only about one-quarter of one per cent of that which it receives directly from the Sun. Therefore, it would be incomparably more rational to harness the heat and light rays of the Sun than attempt to capture the insignificant energy of this radiation … We can do it now, and we are doing it to a certain extent. But the tremendous handicap is found in the periodic character of this kind of energy supply. Many attempts have been made in this direction, but invariably it was found that the power was too expensive.

  Dismissing Atomic Energy

  Having rejected Einstein’s theory of relativity, Tesla also dismissed the idea of atomic energy. ‘The idea of atomic energy is illusionary,’ he said, ‘but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds that, although I have preached against it for 25 years, there still are some who believe it to be realizable.’

  He claimed to have disintegrated atoms in his experiments with the high-potential vacuum tube he developed in 1896, which he considered one of his best inventions. He operated at a range of potentials from 4 million to 18 millions volts. More recently, he said, he had designed an apparatus that would work at 50 million volts, which should produce results of great scientific importance. ‘But as to atomic energy, my experimental observations have shown that the process of disintegration is not accompanied by a liberation of such energy as might be expected from present theories,’ he said.

  Cosmic Rays and Beyond

  Tesla claims to have discovered cosmic rays while investigating X-rays and radioactivity in Colorado Springs in 1899, but his findings were in disagreement with theories advanced more recently:

  I have satisfied myself that the rays are not generated by the formation of new matter in space, a process which would be like water running up hill. Nor do they come to any appreciable amount from the stars. According to my investigations the Sun emits a radiation of such a penetrative power that it is virtually impossible to absorb it in lead or other substances. It has, furthermore, other extraordinary properties in regard to which I shall express myself at some future date. This ray, which I call the primary solar ray, gives rise to a secondary radiation by impact against the cosmic dust scattered through space. It is the secondary radiation which now is commonly called the cosmic rays, and comes, of course, equally from all directions in space.

  He also dismissed the idea that radioactivity resulted from activity within radioactive substances. It was caused by rays emitted from the Sun. If radium could be screened effectively from this ray, it would cease to be radioactive, he said. He had also been designing rocket-ships that he said could attain speeds of nearly a mile a second – 3,600 miles an hour (5,793 km per hour) – through the rarefied medium above the stratosphere. Again, he hoped his rocket-ships would bring world peace:

  I anticipate that such machines will be of tremendous importance in international conflicts in the future. I foresee that in times not too distant wars between various countries will be carried on without a single combatant passing the border. At this very time it is possible to construct such infernal machines which will carry any desired quantity of poisoned gases and explosives, launch them against a target thousands of miles away and destroy a whole city. If wars are not done away with, we are bound to come eventually to this
kind of warfare, because it is the most economical means of inflicting injury and striking terror in the hearts of enemies that ever has been imagined. Densely populated countries, like England and Japan, will be at a great disadvantage as compared with those embracing vast territories, such as the United States and Russia.

  Although some of Tesla’s ideas in later life can be dismissed as the ravings of a mad scientist, sometimes he shows remarkable prescience.

  Sending Signals to the Stars

  When Time magazine put the ageing and eccentric inventor on their cover of the 20 July 1931 issue to celebrate his 75th birthday, Tesla did not disappoint. He told them of his new invention, the Tesla-scope, that he could use to signal to the stars, saying:

  I think that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day, and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind, and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself.

  Asked when this would happen, he said: ‘I have been leading a secluded life, one of continuous, concentrated thought and deep meditation. Naturally enough I have accumulated a great number of ideas. The question is whether my physical powers will be adequate to working them out and giving them to the world.’

  He also claimed that with 15 million volts – ‘the highest ever used’ – he split atoms over and over again, but no energy was released. The Time article carried several other amusing stories about Tesla. It said that he left the ‘swank’ Hotel St Regis after the maids complained that he kept four pet pigeons in his roll-top desk and that, while walking down an icy Fifth Avenue, ‘he slipped, threw himself into a flying somersault, landed on his feet, unperturbed kept on walking’. Time reported more eccentricities:

  At the Hotel Governor Clinton where he now lives, if someone rings him up on the telephone or knocks at his door and he does not want to answer, he locks himself in the bathroom, turns the water loudly on. He is very sensitive to sensory stimuli. When he gets excited, blinding lights flash through his mind. He retreats to bed. A lifelong bachelor, habitually he goes to bed at 5.30 am, rises at 10.30 am. But he does not sleep the whole period. Proudly, yet almost plaintively, he explains: ‘I roll around and work on my problems.’

  The Plaudits of Peers

  Birthday accolades flooded in. Over a hundred letters of congratulation were received from other scientists or inventors including Sir Oliver Lodge, Lee De Forest and Albert Einstein. Notably absent were birthday greetings from Marconi and Pupin. And none could match the tribute bestowed on Edison when he died 3 months later and the lights of New York were dimmed in reverence.

  Naturally, Tesla was full of new predictions. ‘I feel that we are nearing a period when the human mind will perform greater wonders than ever before,’ he said. ‘This is due to the continuous refinement of means and methods of observation and ever-increasing delicacy of our perception.’

  We were about to conquer nature, contact beings on other planets and transmit huge amounts of power vast distances. A reporter from The New York Times again asked when he was going to make his discovery public. ‘There was a trace of regret in his voice as he answered,’ said the paper, ‘and the look of a man who has work enough for centuries and only a few years to do it in.’ Tesla then quoted Goethe. ‘He had not read Goethe for 40 years, he said, and he quoted it from memory.’

  He was also at odds with the new ideas of quantum mechanics. ‘There is no chance in nature,’ he said, ‘although the modern theory of indeterminacy attempts to show scientifically that events are governed by chance. I positively deny that. The causes and effects, however complex, are intimately linked, and the result of all inferences must be inevitably fixed as by a mathematical formula.’

  Waves in Time and Space

  He re-asserted that human beings were automatons completely under the control of external forces and he denied the existence of individuality, saying:

  It took me not less than 20 years to develop a faculty to trace every thought or act of mine to an external influence. We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.

  He also denied the existence of the soul or spirit, saying they were merely expressions of the functions of the body. ‘These functions cease with death and so do soul and spirit,’ he said. ‘What humanity needs is ideals. Idealism is the force that will free us from material fetters.’

  Photographing Thought

  At 77, Tesla told a journalist from the Kansas City Journal-Post that he expected soon to be able to photograph thoughts, explaining:

  In 1893, while engaged in certain investigations, I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought must, by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might possibly be read by suitable apparatus. This brought me to my system of television, which I announced at that time. My idea was to employ an artificial retina receiving the image of the object seen, an ‘optic nerve’ and another such retina at the place of reproduction. These two retinas were to be constructed after the fashion of a checkerboard with many separate little sections, and the so-called optic nerve was nothing more than a part of the earth.

  An invention of mine enables me to transmit simultaneously, and without any interference whatsoever, hundreds of thousands of distinct impulses through the ground just as though I had so many separate wires. I did not contemplate using any moving part – a scanning apparatus or a cathodic ray, which is a sort of moving device, the use of which I suggested in one of my lectures.

  Now if it be true that a thought reflects an image on the retina, it is a mere question of illuminating the same property and taking photographs, and then using the ordinary methods which are available to project the image on a screen. If this can be done successfully, then the objects imagined by a person would be clearly reflected on the screen as they are formed, and in this way every thought of the individual could be read. Our minds would then, indeed, be like open books.

  As always, he claimed to have discovered a new source of power. He was not ready to go into details. He had to check his findings before they could be formally announced. But he had been working the underlying principles for many years. From the practical point of view, his generator would require a huge initial investment, but once a machine was installed it would work indefinitely and the cost of operation would be next to nothing.

  But this time he gave more details. The design was relatively simple – ‘just a big mass of steel, copper and aluminium, comprising a stationary and rotating part, peculiarly assembled’. The electricity would then be distributed long distances by his AC system which, he said, already distributed 30 million horsepower of waterpower, and there were projects then going on all over the world which would double that amount.

  ‘Unfortunately, there is not enough water power to satisfy the present needs,’ he said, ‘and everywhere inventors and engineers are endeavouring to unlock some additional store of energy.’

  The Formula for a Long Life

  In his eighth decade, Tesla still expected to live a long time and reflected on life and longevity.

  Quite early in life I set about disciplining myself, planning out a programme of living for what I considered the most sane and worthwhile life. Since I love my work above all things, it is only natural that I should wish to continue it until I die. I want no vacation – no surcease from my labours. If people would select a life work compatible with their temperaments, the sum total of happiness would be immeasurably increased in the world.

  Many are saddened and depressed by the brevity of life. ‘What is the use of attempting to accomplish anything?’ they say. ‘Life is so short. We may never live to see the comple
tion of the task.’ Well, people could prolong their lives considerably if they would but make the effort. Human beings do so many things that pave the way to an early grave.

  First of all, we eat too much, but this we have heard said often before. And we eat the wrong kinds of foods and drink the wrong kinds of liquids. Most of the harm is done by overeating and under-exercising, which bring about toxic conditions in the body and make it impossible to throw off the accumulated poisons.

  My regime for the good life and my diet? Well, for one thing, I drink plenty of milk and water. Why overburden the bodies that serve us? I eat but two meals a day, and I avoid all acid-producing foods. Almost everyone eats too many peas and beans and other foods containing uric acid and other poisons. I partake liberally of fresh vegetables, fish and meat sparingly, and rarely. Fish is reputed as fine brain food, but has a very strong acid reaction, as it contains a great deal of phosphorus. Acidity is by far the worst enemy to fight off in old age.

  Potatoes are splendid, and should be eaten at least once a day. They contain valuable mineral salts and are neutralizing. I believe in plenty of exercise. I walk 8 or 10 miles every day, and never take a cab or other conveyances when I have the time to use leg power. I also exercise in my bath daily, for I think that this is of great importance. I take a warm bath, followed by a prolonged cold shower.

  Sleep? I scarcely ever sleep. I come of a long-lived family, but it is noted for its poor sleepers. I expect to match the records of my ancestors and live to be at least 100. My sleeplessness does not worry me. Sometimes I doze for an hour or so. Occasionally, however, once in a few months, I may sleep for 4 or 5 hours. Then I awaken virtually charged with energy, like a battery. Nothing can stop me after such a night. I feel great strength then. There is no doubt about it but that sleep is a restorer, a vitalizer, that it increases energy. But on the other hand, I do not think it is essential to one’s well being, particularly if one is habitually a poor sleeper.