Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah

by Nigel Cawthorne

  Over the radio New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1882 – 1947) read a eulogy written by Slovene author Louis Adamic. After the service, Tesla’s body was taken to Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York, and was later cremated.

  Tributes to Tesla

  Tesla had always been loved by the popular press for his shocking experiments and outrageous pronouncements. On his death, the New York Sun wrote:

  Mr Tesla was 86 years old when he died. He died alone. He was an eccentric, whatever that means. A non-conformist, possibly. At any rate, he would leave his experiments and go for a time to feed the silly and inconsequential pigeons in Herald Square. He delighted in talking nonsense; or was it? Granting that he was a difficult man to deal with, and that sometimes his predictions would affront the ordinary human’s intelligence, here, still, was an extraordinary man of genius. He must have been. He was seeing a glimpse into that confused and mysterious frontier which divides the known and the unknown ... But today we do know that Tesla, the ostensibly foolish old gentleman at times was trying with superb intelligence to find the answers. Probably we shall appreciate him better a few million years from now.

  More tributes came rolling in. Hugo Gernsback wrote: ‘We cannot know, but it may be that a long time from now, when patterns have changed, the critics will take a view of history. They will bracket Tesla with Da Vinci, or with our own Mr Franklin … One thing is sure. The world, as we run it today, did not appreciate his peculiar greatness.’

  The President of RCA David Sarnoff said: ‘Nikola Tesla’s achievements in electrical science are monuments that symbolize America as a land of freedom and opportunity … His novel ideas of getting the ether in vibration put him on the frontier of wireless. Tesla’s mind was a human dynamo that whirled to benefit mankind.’

  Edwin Armstrong, who went on to sue RCA for infringing his patents, said:

  Who today can read a copy of The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, published before the turn-of-the-century, without being fascinated by the beauty of the experiments described and struck with admiration for Tesla’s extraordinary insight into the nature of the phenomena with which he was dealing? Who now can realize the difficulties he must have had to overcome in those early days? But one can imagine the inspirational effect of the book 40 years ago on a boy about to decide to study the electrical art. Its effect was both profound and decisive.

  Nine months after Tesla’s death the USS Nikola Tesla – a Liberty ship, vital to the Allied war effort – was launched in Baltimore.

  The Missing Papers

  The papers from the safe in Tesla’s room were lodged with the Office of Alien Property. This was unusual as Tesla was a US citizen. The day after Tesla died Abraham N. Spanel, the designer of floating pontoon stretchers, got in touch with FBI agent Fredrich Cornels about the Tesla papers, fearing that, via Kosanovic, they might fall into Communist hands. Before he had started the International Latex Company of Dover, Delaware (who later made space suits), Spanel had worked as an electrical engineer and considered that some of Tesla’s unmade inventions might play a vital role in the war. He made waves in high places, contacting others in the White House and the FBI.

  Spanel also got in touch with the young electrical engineer Bloyce Fitzgerald who had also contacted Cornels. Fitzgerald had been writing to Tesla for some time. Finally he got to meet Tesla just a few weeks before his death. At the time, Fitzgerald was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working on the ‘dissipation of energy from rapid-fire weapons’. Around the same time Tesla had complained that someone had been trying to steal his invention. His room had been entered and his papers examined, but ‘the spies had left empty handed,’ he said.

  Fitzgerald told Cornels that, among Tesla’s papers, were complete plans for his death beam, along with specifications and explanations of how the thing worked. There was also ‘a working model … which cost more than $10,000 to build in a safety deposit box of Tesla’s at the Governor Clinton Hotel’.

  Charles Hausler, one of Tesla’s pigeon handlers, also said that Tesla kept a large box in his room near his pigeon cages. ‘He told me to be very careful not to disturb the box as it contained something that could destroy an airplane in the sky and he had hopes of presenting it to the world,’ Hausler said.

  Trunks Full of Alien Property

  According to Fitzgerald, Tesla had claimed that he had some 80 trunks in various places around the city. It was vital for the war effort that the government get their hands on the Tesla papers. He also expressed doubts about the loyalty of nephews Sava Kosanovic and Nicholas Trbojevich. There was even talk of having Kosanovic and Swezey arrested for theft, but as the papers were now with the Office of Alien Property, this seemed unnecessary.

  Cornels’ boss P.E. Foxworth, assistant director of the New York FBI office, was called in to investigate. The government, he said, was ‘vitally interested’ in preserving Tesla’s papers.

  The legality of the OAP holding onto Tesla’s papers was questionable. Although legal title had fallen to Kosanovic, who was a foreigner, the government agency was not permitted to seize ‘enemy assets’ without a court order. Nevertheless Alien Property custodian Irving Jurow got a call ordering him to impound all of Tesla’s belongings as he was reputed to have invented a death ray that disintegrated enemy planes in the sky and German agents were after it. Along with agents from Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence and the FBI, Jurow visited the Hotel New Yorker, the Governor Clinton, the St Regis, the Waldorf-Astoria and the storage facility where Tesla had kept the rest of his things. Papers in possession of John J. O’Neill, who was preparing a biography of Tesla, were also confiscated. These were perused by various branches of the military.

  Dr John G. Trump, an electrical engineer with the National Defense Research Committee of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, was also called to analyze the Tesla papers in OAP custody. Following a three-day investigation, Dr Trump concluded that Tesla’s ‘thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results’. However, in his report, he admits that he had not bothered to open many of the trunks, so confident was he that nothing of value would be found.

  The Particle Beam

  However, among the papers was the still unpublished ‘The New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through Natural Media’. This was classified top secret and distributed to Naval Intelligence, the National Defense Research Council, the FBI, MIT, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base – where the V1 flying bomb was reverse engineered – and, probably, the White House.

  The paper described in detail the new features, including how to create a non-dispersive beam of particles:

  I perfected means for increasing enormously the intensity of the effects, but was baffled in all my efforts to materially reduce dispersion and became fully convinced that this handicap could only be overcome by conveying the power through the medium of small particles projected, at prodigious velocity, from the transmitter. Electro-static repulsion was the only means to this end and apparatus of stupendous force would have to be developed, but granted that sufficient speed and energy could be realized with a single row of minute bodies then there would be no dispersion whatever even at great distance. Since the cross section of the carriers might be reduced to almost microscopic dimensions an immense concentration of energy, irrespective of distance, could be attained.

  Then there was a diagram of the open-ended vacuum where, he said:

  It will be observed that in this tube I do away with the solid wall or window indispensable in all types heretofore employed, producing the high vacuum required and preventing the inrush of the air by a gaseous jet of high velocity. Evidently, to secure this result, the dynamic pressure of the jet must be at least equal to the external static
pressure.

  The high-potential generator, creating a charge of up to 100 million volts, worked on the principle of a Van de Graaf generator – with the belt replaced by a high-speed stream of ionized air. The charges would be stored in specially shaped bulbs around the top of a 100 ft (30 m) tower. In the super-gun itself, tungsten wire would be fed into the high-vacuum firing chamber. Under the huge electrostatic forces generated, tiny droplets of metal would be sheared off and projected out of the chamber at over 400,000 feet per second (120 km per second).

  John Trump also went to the Hotel Governor Clinton to examine the working model that Tesla had said he left there. Tesla had told the management that the box containing a secret weapon that was rigged to detonate if it was opened by an unauthorized person. Trump approached with trepidation. All he found inside was ‘a multi-decade resistance box of the type used for Wheatstone bridge resistance measurements – a common standard item to be found in every electrical laboratory before the turn of the century’. Trump took no further interest.

  The Vanishing Death Ray

  In 1937, Tesla had claimed that he had built his death beam, saying: ‘It is not an experiment. I have built, demonstrated and used it. Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the world.’ At the time, he did have two secret labs where journalists were not allowed.

  Mrs Czito, whose husband’s father and grandfather both worked for Tesla, said that her father-in-law said Tesla had a device that could bounce a beam off the Moon. There is also a story that the deBobula design was taken to Alcoa Aluminium who said they would furnish the material required once the capital had been raised.

  There is, of course, a conspiracy theory to account for the missing model. When the safe in Tesla’s room was opened, the locksmith was asked to change the combination. Inside the safe, when it was locked again, was a set of keys and Tesla’s 1917 Edison Medal. The new combination was given to Kosanovic and no one else. When the safe was finally shipped to Belgrade and opened some 10 years later, the medal and the keys were missing. The medal has never been found, but the keys were found in one of the numerous cases of documents that accompanied the safe in the shipment.

  According to the Office of Alien Property, the two representatives of the hotel management who were present were Mr L.O. Doty, credit manager, and Mr L.A. Fitzgerald, assistant credit manager. We have already met Bloyce Fitzgerald in connection with Tesla, but Tesla’s biographer Marc Seifer has also unearthed a letter from a Colonel Ralph E. Doty, chief of the Washington Branch of the Military Intelligence Service. Dated 22 January 1946, it is addressed to the Alien Property Custodian and reads:

  Dear Sir: This office is in receipt of a communication from Headquarters, Air Technical Service Command, Wright Field, requesting that we ascertain the whereabouts of the files of the late scientist, Dr Nikola Tesla, which may contain data of great value to the above Headquarters. It has been indicated that your office might have these files in custody. If this is true, we would like to request your consent for a representative of the Air Technical Service Command to review them. In view of the extreme importance of these files to the above command, we would like to request that we be advised of any attempt by any other agency to obtain them. Because of the urgency of this matter, this communication will be delivered to you by a Liaison Officer of this office in the hope of expediting the solicited information.

  If the Fitzgerald and Doty at the opening of the safe were government agents, they might easily have got hold of the combination and the keys. It seems that Spanel was already under surveillance by the FBI for his pro-Communist sympathies. In November 1942, he met Fitzgerald at an engineering meeting, shortly before Tesla’s death. At the time Fitzgerald was an army private at Wright Field. The FBI report later describes him as ‘a brilliant 20-year-old scientist who spent hours with Tesla before his death … Fitzgerald had developed some sort of anti-tank gun’. Spanel tried to form a partnership with Fitzgerald to sell the weapon to the Remington Arms Company, but the deal fell through when a more lucrative offer came from the Eiogens Ship Building Company.

  Fitzgerald was fired by Eiogens in November 1943 and returned to Wright Field as a private. According to his FBI file, in 1945, he was ‘engaged in a highly secret experimental project at Wright Field … In spite of his rank as private, Fitzgerald is actually director of this research and is working with many top young scientists … on the perfection of Tesla’s ‘death ray’ which in Fitzgerald’s opinion is the only defence against the offensive use by another nation of the atomic bomb.’

  The files that Colonel Doty requested did find their way to Wright Field because, on 24 October 1947, the Director of the Office of Alien Property wrote to the commanding officer of the Air Technical Service Command, asking for them back. The following month, a Colonel Duffy wrote back, saying: ‘These reports are now in the possession of the Electronic Subdivision and are being evaluated. This should be completed by January 1, 1948. At that time your office will be contacted with respect to final disposition of these papers.’

  Belgrade Bound

  In 1946, Sava Kosanovic had become Yugoslavian ambassador to the US after the US recognized Tito’s Communist government. But by 1950, he was still not allowed access to Tesla’s effects. He made official representations and in 1952, 80 trunks containing Tesla’s papers, equipment and other belongings were shipped to Belgrade. Five years later, Tesla’s ashes followed. In the Tesla Museum they were placed in a spherical urn as this was Tesla’s favourite shape.

  This did not stop American Scientist being interested in Tesla’s papers. Regularly individuals contacted the FBI who were thought to have made microfilm copies of everything sent to Yugoslavia. In the 1970s, it was thought that Tesla’s fireballs might be a way of containing nuclear fusion. During the Cold War, both sides again investigated the possibility of making a particle beam to disable incoming nuclear missiles. Naturally Tesla’s work would have been a starting point.

  In 1977, Aviation Week & Space Technology published an article called Soviets Push for Beam Weapon. In it, the retired head of Air Force Intelligence, General George J. Keegan said that the Soviet Union was attempting to develop a charge-particle beam at the test facility near the city of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. The editor of Aviation Week, Robert Holtz said:

  The Soviet Union has achieved a technical breakthrough in high-energy physics applications that may soon provide it with a directed-energy beam weapon capable of neutralizing the entire United States ballistic missile force and checkmating this country’s strategic doctrine … The race to perfect directed-energy weapons is a reality. Despite initial skepticism, the US scientific community is now pressuring for accelerated efforts in this area.

  The news got through to the White House, but President Jimmy Carter (1924 – ) said: ‘We do not see any likelihood at all, based on our constant monitoring of the Soviet Union, that they have any prospective breakthrough in a new weapons system that would endanger our country.’

  Nevertheless, under the Carter administration, work began on a major space-based laser programme. Under the direction of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the ALPHA chemical laser project was begun in 1978. Contracts for the TALON GOLD targeting system were awarded in 1979, and the Large Optics Demonstration Experiment (LODE) started in 1980. These programmes formed the basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative – aka ‘Star Wars’ – announced by President Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004) in 1983. SDI added X-ray lasers and neutral particle beams, all of which were reminiscent of Tesla’s ‘Chinese wall’. While this work was going on, fresh applications were made to the FBI to release any copies of the Tesla files they had, if only to know what the Soviets may had learned about beam weapons in Belgrade.

  However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union it was discovered that the test site outside Semipalatinsk was not working on a beam weapon at all, but rather on nuclear-powered rockets. John Pike, defence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said that t
he misidentification of the Semipalatinsk test site ‘must rank as one of the major intelligence failures of the Cold War’.

  Chapter 16 – Posthumous Recognition

  I misunderstood Tesla. I think we all misunderstood Tesla. We thought he was a dreamer and visionary. He did dream and his dreams came true, he did have visions but they were of a real future, not an imaginary one.

  John Stone Stone

  In 1943 – a few months after Tesla’s death – the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla’s radio patent number 645,576. The Court had a selfish reason for doing so. The Marconi Company was suing the United States Government for use of its patents in World War I. The Court simply avoided the action by restoring the priority of Tesla’s patent over Marconi. Nevertheless, it re-established the situation that had applied 40 years earlier when Tesla was recognized as the inventor of radio whose patents had been infringed by Marconi.

  In 1956, the Nobel laureate Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962), father of quantum physics, spoke at a centennial congress held in Tesla’s honour. In Yugoslavia, a commemorative stamp was issued. Tesla appeared on the 100 dinar note and the ‘Tesla’ became the unit of magnetic flux density. The asteroid 2244 Tesla was named by Serbian astronomer Milorad Protic in Belgrade when he discovered it on 22 October 1952. The Tesla Crater on the far side of the Moon was named after him when five Lunar Orbiters photographed the other side in 1966 and 1967. The IEEE has presented the Nikola Tesla Award for outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power annually since 1976. Nikola Tesla Corner is located in the heart of Manhattan, at the corner of West 40th Street and 6th Avenue reminding New Yorkers that the great man used to roam those very streets. Niagara Falls also celebrates the legendary inventor with two monuments, one on Goat Island was unveiled in 1976, while in 2006 a statue of Tesla standing on an AC motor was erected in Queen Victoria Park on the Canadian side of the falls. Finally, back in Serbia, Belgrade International Airport was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in 2006.