Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah

by Nigel Cawthorne

  During the second half of the 20th century Tesla was overlooked by the history books. Unlike Marconi and Edison, he did not have large companies named after him. Westinghouse could have honoured him, but not unnaturally they give their plaudits to George Westinghouse himself. Also unlike Westinghouse, Edison and the Wright Brothers, Tesla was not born in America so he could not be seen as a shining example of ‘Yankee ingenuity’. Those great Americans were also seen as practical men who made things that ordinary people could understand. Few people in the general populace understand what AC is, how an induction motor works or what the principles behind the propagation of radio waves are.

  With Tesla’s seemingly science-fiction ideas towards the end of his life, he was seen as a mystic and, more than anything, the ultimate mad scientist with his middle-European accent and his eccentric personal habits. However, in the 1950s, Tesla’s fame grew in the burgeoning counter-culture. An electrical engineer name Arthur H. Matthews claimed to have made a Teslascope to communicate with the inhabitants of other planets. He said that Tesla was a Venusian born on a spaceship travelling from Venus to Earth in July 1856, revealing all in Wall of Light: Nikola Tesla and the Venusian Spaceship. In 1959, Margaret Storm published the occult biography of Tesla, Return of the Dove. Her story also involved flying saucers which were very much in vogue.

  In the 1970s, Ralph Bergstresser, who had known Tesla for the last 6 months of his life, produced ‘Tesla Plates’ which are marketed by the Swiss Tesla Institute. These, in some fashion, are supposed to tap into the energy of the universe. As Tesla’s ideas, especially in later life, drew on thinking from both the East and the West, he became of interest to New Age thinkers. His striking, dark, middle-European looks and his development of willpower also appealed.

  With the energy crisis of the 1970s, Tesla’s idea of free energy had renewed appeal and a researcher named Robert Golka tried to recreate Tesla’s Colorado experiments. In 1984, the first International Tesla Symposium was held in Colorado Springs. The group met annually for the next 14 years. It spawned the International Tesla Society whose membership grew to 7,000 worldwide, but it went bust in 1998. Devotees have found new homes in the Tesla Memorial Society of New York, the Tesla Engine Builders Association and the Tesla Universe website. Tesla and his inventions still fascinate fans of science fiction and computer games, and he has been celebrated in documentaries on his life and the War of the Currents on America’s PBS and the BBC.

  In 2003, Tesla Motors began producing electric vehicles in California, using engines based on Tesla’s designs. They are now quoted on the NASDAQ stock exchange and have a European Headquarters at Maidenhead in the UK.

  Tesla Magazine was launched on 10 July 2013. At the same time, the Tesla Science Foundation joined forces with Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Museum to create a travelling exhibition called Tesla’s Wonderful World of Electricity which toured the United States and Canada. Its aim was to get Tesla the recognition he deserves in America. With new movies being made about his life, it is possible that it is not too late – this goal may still be achieved.

  Appendixes

  Electrifying Science Facts

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  Electrical Science in 1875

  The ancient Greeks discovered that you could produce static electricity by rubbing amber with silk. In the 18th century, scientists such as the American Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 90) and the Briton Henry Cavendish (1731 – 1810) made a systematic study of the phenomenon.

  In 1791, the Italian Luigi Galvani (1737 – 98) discovered electricity in animal tissue when he saw a frog’s leg twitch when touched by two different metals. This led his friend Alessandro Volta (1745 – 1827) to make the first electric battery in 1800.

  Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777 – 1851) discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism in 1820 when he saw a compass needle being deflected when an electric current was turned on and off. French physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775 – 1836) developed this into the science of electrodynamics.

  In 1831, British scientist Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) demonstrated the laws of electromagnetic induction, producing a current in a coil by moving a magnet back and forth inside it. This led to the development of both the electric motor and the generator where coils of wire were mounted in a rotor, or armature, within a magnetic field.

  As the magnetic effect is only apparent when the current is turned on and off, an electric motor has a commutator – that is, a split ring with electrical contact, or brushes, resting on either side. As the motor turns, contacts switch, reversing the current flow in the coil. Similarly, a generator needs a commutator to prevent the current reversing as the rotor turns.

  The Gramme Dynamo

  With the rapid development of the telegraph system in the 1840s and 1850s, what was needed was direct current (DC) that flowed in only one direction. This is the type normally produced by batteries.

  Even with a commutator, introduced by Parisian instrument-maker Hippolyte Pixii (1808 – 35) in 1832, the current delivered by a generator, while not reversing, was not smooth and constant like that from a battery. It builds to a peak then drops back to zero again. However, Belgian electrical engineer Zénobe-Théophile Gramme (1826 – 1901) demonstrated his Gramme dynamo at the French Academy of Sciences in 1871. By increasing the number of coils on the rotor and the number of sections on the commutator, it could produce a near constant direct current.

  Shown at the International Exhibition in Vienna, one Gramme dynamo was connected to another one which acted as a motor. Until then, motors had only been powered by expensive batteries. Gramme’s business partner, French engineer Hippolyte Fontaine (1833 – 1910) had demonstrated that power could be transmitted from one place to another without the inefficient shafts, belt, chains or ropes used to connect steam engines to machines – with obvious advantages for industry.

  What is Alternating Current?

  The electricity from a battery, lightning or a Van de Graaf generator that produces a static charge is direct current. It flows in only one direction. Alternating current flows in one direction, then the other. It cycles through peaks and troughs as it changes direction.

  With a direct current, when a switch is thrown a magnetic field builds up around the wire, inducing a current in any conductor nearby. This only occurs when the field is building up or when the field collapses when the current is switched off. With an alternating current, the electric current is effectively being switched on and off all the time, inducing an alternating current in the secondary conductor. This property is utilized in an induction motor, where a current is induced in secondary coils on the rotor, and in a transformer, where the voltage is stepped up and down.

  Pearl Street Power Station

  The first electric lights were arc-lamps that gave off light from electric sparks. But in 1879, Edison came up with the improved incandescent lamp. Arc lamps had been connected in series – if one failed, all of them went out. Edison connected his lamps in parallel, so each faulty bulb could be replaced individually. This had created an astonishing demand for electric power. Edison built his first DC power station on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan in 1882, initially to power 400 lamps owned by 85 customers. It quickly became a monopoly and by 1884 it was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps. The electricity was carried above ground on poles with dozens of crooked crossbeams supporting sagging wires. The exposed electrical wiring was a constant danger and unsuspecting children climbing the poles would suffer lethal electric shocks. In spite of the perils, wealthy New Yorkers rushed to have their homes wired, the most important being the banker, J.P. Morgan, who had invested heavily in Edison.

  The Transformer

  The transformer uses the same principles of electromagnetic induction employed in electric motors and generators. Two coils of wire are wound around a single iron core. When an electrical current is passed through one of them, it m
agnetizes the iron core. This, in turn, induces an electric current in the other one. The voltage is stepped up or stepped down according to the ratio of the number of turns of wire in each coils. However, induction only works when the electrical current is being switched on and off again, so an alternating current rather than a direct current must be used.

  The transformer is a vital component of any power distribution system as transmission losses are much smaller when the voltage is higher – as less current is needed to convey the same amount of energy. So electricity generated at a power station is stepped up in voltage using a transformer before it reaches the transmission lines. Then, at its destination, it is stepped down for use in the home or factory.

  Harold Brown - Dying in the Name of Science

  Under the headline: ‘Died for Science’s Sake – A Dog Killed With The Electric Current’, The New York Times of 31 July 1888 reported on one of Harold P. Brown’s demonstrations. In Professor Chandler’s lecture room at Columbia’s School of Mines, Brown told an invited audience that he represented no company and no financial or commercial interest. He also maintained that he had proved by repeated experiments that a living creature could stand shocks from a continuous current much better than from an alternating current. He had applied 1,410 volts of DC to a dog without fatal results, but had repeatedly killed dogs with 500 to 800 volts of alternating current.

  Brown then brought out a Newfoundland mix weighing 76 pounds (34 kg). The dog was muzzled and tied down inside a wire cage. The newspaper reported:

  Mr Brown announced that he would first try the continuous current at a force of 300 volts [DC]. When the shock came the dog yelped and then subsided. A relay has been attached to the apparatus, which shut off the current almost as soon as it was applied. When the dog got 400 volts he struggled considerably, still yelping. At 700 volts he broke his muzzle and nearly freed himself. He was tied again. At 1,100 volts his body contorted with the pain of the brutal experiment. His resistance to the current then dropped from 1,500 to about 2,500 volts.

  ‘He will be less trouble,’ said Mr Brown, ‘when we try the alternating current. As these gentlemen say, we shall make him feel better.’ It was proposed the dog be put out of his misery at once. This was done with an alternating current of 330 volts killing the beast.

  When Brown brought out another dog, an agent from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stepped in. Meanwhile, the assembled electricians said that the dog had been weakened by the DC current before the AC was applied. But Brown insisted that the only places AC should be used were ‘the dog pound, the slaughter house and the State prison’.

  What is Viscosity?

  All fluids have viscosity. Thick fluids such as molasses have a high viscosity; thin ones, such as air, a low viscosity. All fluids, to a greater or lesser extent, stick to solid surfaces. The molecules near to the surface adhere to it and travel at the same velocity. Molecules a little further away are slowed by a viscous interaction with those stuck on the surface. Further away still, the fluid flows freely. The transition between the layer stuck to the surface and the free-flowing stream is called the boundary layer. Tesla found that he could use ‘viscous shear’ in the boundary layer to transfer energy from the fluid to the turbine.

  Explaining Standing Waves

  A standing wave is caused by the combination of two waves moving in opposite directions and is usually found where a wave is reflected from a surface or the end of a wire. The two waves are superimposed and either add together or cancel each other out. A vibrating rope tied at one end will produce a standing wave. At some positions along the rope there is no movement. These points are called nodes. Either side, where the movement is the greatest, are antinodes.

  The Edison Medal

  The Edison Medal was created in 1904 by a group of Edison’s friends and associates as an annual award to be given to a living electrician for ‘meritorious achievement in electrical science and art’. In 1909, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers agreed to present it as their highest award. The first recipient was Tesla’s rival Elihu Thomson. George Westinghouse and Alexander Graham Bell also received the award. The medal is now presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, formed when the AIEE merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers.

  Tesla’s Friends and Contemporaries

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  Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931)

  Born in Ohio, Edison had little schooling. At the age of 12 he got a job on the railroad where he learned telegraphy. He went on to develop the duplex system that sent two messages at once and a printer that converted electrical signals into letters.

  He quit and went into business for himself, developing the quadruplex system, which sent four messages at once for Western Union and their rivals. With the help of his father, he established a laboratory and machine shop at Menlo Park, New Jersey, which became the world’s first industrial research facility. There he developed underwater cable for the telegraph, set about improving the primitive telephone developed by Alexander Graham Bell, and inventing the phonograph. This brought him worldwide fame as the Wizard of Menlo Park.

  He worked on the incandescent light bulb, though battles over patents ensued. He also developed electric motors and generators to power his lighting systems, first on the steamship Columbia, then on buildings in New York and London.

  A pioneer in motion pictures, he also developed batteries for submarines and the Model T Ford. In all, he took out a world record 1,093 patents and remains the most famous inventor in American history.

  Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922)

  Edinburgh-born Bell first visited the USA in 1871 where he demonstrated his father’s method of teaching speech to the deaf. The following year he opened a school for teachers of the method in Boston.

  With young technician Thomas Watson, he set to work on developing ways of using electricity to transmit sound, getting his patent for the telephone in 1876. Hundreds of patent suits followed. Nevertheless, the Bell Telephone Company was established the following year, successfully fighting off suits by two subsidiaries of the Western Union Telegraph Company.

  Bell also invented the photophone, which transmitted sound on a beam of light, and the Graphophone, that recorded sound on wax cylinders. He experimented with sonar detection, huge flying kites and hydrofoils, while continuing to find ways to aid the deaf.

  George Westinghouse (1846 – 1914)

  George Westinghouse was a descendent of the aristocratic Russian von Wistinghousen family. His father was also an inventor with six patents for farming machinery to his name. In his father’s machine shop in Schenectady, New York, the young Westinghouse experimented with batteries and Leyden jars – glass jars coated with metal foil, used for storing electrical charge. At 15, he made his first invention, a rotary steam engine. After serving in both the US Army and Navy during the American Civil War, he attended the nearby Union College, but soon dropped out. In 1865, he patented his rotary engine, and a device for putting derailed freight cars back on the tracks. Soon after, he designed a reversible cast-steel frog which prolonged the life of railroad track switches.

  Having been involved in a near collision on the railway, he put his mind to improving the braking system which, until then, had depended on a brakeman on every carriage. His first system, using steam, proved impractical. But then in 1869 he came up with air-brakes that soon became standard in the US and Europe.

  He then worked on signalling, devising an electrical system. With the aid of Tesla, Westinghouse entered the ‘War of the Currents’, championing AC against Edison’s DC system. By 1889, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation was a global company, employing over 500,000 people. However, in the financial panic of 1907, he lost control of the companies and retired altogether in 1911.

  Lord Kelvin (1824 – 1907)

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sp; Scottish engineer, mathematician and physicist, William Thomson was knighted in 1866 and made a peer in 1892 for his services to science and engineering. He helped develop the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the mathematical analysis of electricity and magnetism, the electromagnetic theory of light, the geophysical determination of the age of the Earth and the basics of hydrodynamics. His work on submarine telegraph cables helped make Britain the hub of global communications. He perfected the mariner’s compass and worked out the correct value of absolute zero. The units of the absolute temperature scale are named Kelvins in tribute to him.

  James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79)

  Born in Scotland, James Clerk Maxwell had already demonstrated colour photography and worked on the standardization of electrical units when, in 1865, he published A Dynamical Theory of Electrical Field. In it, he sought to convert the physical laws of electromagnetic induction discovered by Faraday into mathematics. His famous equations showed that electric and magnetic fields travel through space as waves moving at the speed of light. This led him to propose that light was electromagnetic radiation and predicted the existence of radio waves.

  Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 – 94)

  Like many scientists of the day, Helmholtz worked in multiple fields, including physiology, optics, meteorology, hydrodynamics and the philosophy of science. He is best known for the Law of Conservation of Energy. Between 1869 and 1871, he studied electrical oscillation, and he noted the oscillations of electricity in a coil when it was connected to a Leyden jar. He sought to measure the speed of electromagnetic induction, but left the determination of the length of electric waves to his star pupil, Heinrich Hertz.