I am the future, it said. The future is here. Come build the future with me.
But I was too sensible for that. I had a plan and it did not include Nikola Tesla.
This trip to New York was for an interview at General Electric’s corporate headquarters. They wanted a look at this brand new electrical engineer who had graduated near the top of his class at MIT. I knew they would hire me. Truly, how could they not? I was smart, creative, and got along with everyone.
I’d done my research. General Electric was a company with a future. When Dow and Jones assembled their Industrial Average, they began by choosing twelve companies that best represented American industry. General Electric was one of those twelve. A company destined for growth, and I could grow with it. My future was assured and I was delirious with the possibilities.
But that tower…that tower jutting from the horizon. It called to me.
And if the great Nikola Tesla proved his theory…if he indeed began to send power wirelessly around the globe, then every other electrical company was in trouble.
The tenements of east New Haven soon blocked my view of the tower but I remained at the window, staring out, thinking.
I had my appointment with GE and I would keep it. But I would also make the trek out to the north shore of Long Island to visit Wardenclyffe.
Just for a look.
Just to satisfy my curiosity.
Nothing more.
* * *
My interview at GE went as expected: I was offered an entry position in their engineering department where I would be mentored before moving on to real responsibilities. The company set my starting date to coincide with the beginning of their third quarter: July 1.
That left me more than four weeks to find affordable lodging in the city itself or across the river in Brooklyn. Affordable might not be easy since my starting pay was low and I could not share my lodgings—my circumstances dictated that I live alone. Once I solved that problem, I’d move my meager belongings from my Boston rooming house.
But before I did anything, I wanted to visit Nikola Tesla’s facility at Wardenclyffe. So I boarded a train that took me seventy miles into the wilds of Long Island, past endless fields of corn and potatoes, past trackless pine forests, to a town called Shoreham. I had intended to ask at the station for directions to Wardenclyffe, but the tower’s looming presence dominated the sky as I stepped off. A dirt road ran that way so I followed it; an empty rail siding ran parallel to it.
A short walk brought me to a fenced-in field with a white frame gate like one might see on a cattle ranch. It opened onto a path that led to a red brick building I assumed to be the plant—two stories high with eight tall windows flanking the wide front door. A fanlight capped each of the windows and the door. A brick chimney with a rather ornate spherical damper jutted from the center of the roof, dwarfed by the tower beyond it. On the left toward the rear, an empty freight car sat idle at the end of the rail siding.
Had I known that Tesla kept an office on South Fifth Avenue in the city, I would have made a stop to arrange this visit, but ignorance is bliss, as they say, and by chance I arrived unannounced at a most opportune time.
I stepped through the open front door into a whirlwind of activity, a cacophony of hammering, sawing, shouting, a whining turbine, welding, and even a glassblower at work in a corner. I estimated the square interior at approximately one hundred feet on a side. A second level had been erected along the rear wall, but the front section remained open floor to the ceiling. The same large, fan-light windows along the front also lined the side walls, admitting generous illumination that obviated the need for artificial lighting on such a sunny day as this.
I flagged down a passing workman carrying a long two-by-four. “Is Mister Tesla here?”
“Not sure,” he said with a frown, then jerked a thumb toward the rear section. “Go ask George.”
“George?”
“George Scherff. He runs the place. He’ll know.”
I moved across the hot, smoky space to the rear where I spotted a florid-faced man in white shirt sleeves. His dark brown hair was wet with perspiration along his collar as he studied a blueprint.
“Mister Scherff?”
His troubled expression turned to annoyance when he looked at me.
“You cannot be in here,” he said. “No reporters.”
“I’m not a reporter. I—”
“I don’t care who you are, you’re trespassing. This is a private facility.”
I’d come a long way and was not about to be brushed off.
“I have not traveled from the city simply to satisfy idle curiosity. I have a professional interest.”
“‘Professional’? What profession?”
“I’m a graduate of MIT with a degree in—”
“MIT?” said an accented voice behind me. “What did you study?”
I turned to face Nikola Tesla himself.
I confess the sight of him struck me dumb for a moment. He was taller than I expected, but no mistaking the dark, center-parted hair, the thick black mustache, and those eyes, those piercing dark eyes. He too was in shirtsleeves, but wore the vest and trousers of a three-piece suit. And spats, of all things. Just a few years shy of fifty, he radiated the energy of a much younger man—a living Tesla coil.
“M-mister Tesla.” I confess to making a slight bow. “Charles Atkinson at your service.”
Now why did I say that?
He smiled. “At my service, is it? Do you plan to put your learning from MIT at my service?”
“No. Yes. I mean…” I was sounding like an idiot.
“What did you study there?”
“Electrical engineering.”
His dark eyes lit. “Ah! A kindred spirit. Then you have come to the right place.” He extended his hand. “Nikola Tesla, at your service.”
We shared a laugh as we shook, but he did not release my hand. Instead he turned it over and looked at my palm.
“Calluses? You have a tanned face and workingman’s hands, Mister Atkinson.”
Usually people remark on the size of my hands—they’re small—not the calluses.
“That is because I work, Mister Tesla. My scholarship at MIT did not cover private quarters. I prefer to live alone.”
He nodded. “Better for your studies, yes?”
That was not the main reason, but…
“Certainly.”
“What kind of work?”
“I work in a warehouse near the Boston docks all the summer when I have no classes and work what hours I can spare during the school year.”
He looked me up and down, inventorying my slight frame. I weigh eight and a half stone—about 120 pounds on a US scale.
“You certainly are not what I expect to see when someone tells me they are a warehouseman.”
Hard men and hard drinkers doing hard work. As a college boy I could never expect to be accepted by them, and I’d suffered my share of hazing at first—especially because of my size and baby face—but I’d learned never to back down. I could come off like a wolverine, cursing and snarling with the best of them, without striking a blow.
The key was I never shirked my work, and that gradually earned their respect, grudging though it might have been. They were always glad for an extra pair of ready hands, even my small ones. As an added benefit, the work hardened my muscles, while exposure to the elements—I took outside work whenever I could—weathered my baby face. I was happy for both.
He released my hand. “That does not leave much time for a social life.”
I forced a grin. “I have no social life, sir.”
I didn’t mention the loneliness—crushing at times. But that was my burden, not his.
He gave me an appraising look. “I was not much older than you when I quit Edison after he cheated me. I dug ditches until I found another job in the electrical field. A man does what he must to keep food in his belly, eh?”
I loved the “man” reference and experienced a
sudden kinship that went beyond our interest in electricity.
“You have an accent,” he said.
I wanted to tell him that he had the accent, just as I’d told all my classmates at MIT when they made fun of the Limey: It’s my language, I’d say, and I know how to speak it. It’s merely on loan to you. But I opted for politesse.
“It’s British—Mancunian to be specific.”
“You came with your family?”
“My parents have passed on to their greater reward.”
“Ah, mine too. Then we are both orphans and both immigrants.” Another bond. “Tell me your story.”
I gave him a heavily edited version, skipping the part that would have me thrown out the door.
“I was born in Manchester in 1878. My father died when I was twelve, my mother when I was nineteen. I sold our cottage and decided I needed a new life, a fresh start. America beckoned. I landed at Ellis Island, answered the 29 questions, and I was in. I sailed through, I believe, because I spoke English and looked healthy. Even in Manchester I’d heard of MIT. I’d excelled in maths in school and decided to try for it. My score of 90% on their entrance exam guaranteed my acceptance. I now have a degree.”
“Excellent. I am an American citizen now,” he added with obvious pride.
I nodded. “I intend to become one as soon as possible.”
“Good for you. So, what brings you to Wardenclyffe, young man?”
“I spotted the tower from across the Sound and decided I must see firsthand what you are doing.”
“No-no,” Mr. Scherff said. “We cannot allow that.”
Tesla then introduced him as his secretary and accountant and, for the past year or so, the plant manager here at Wardenclyffe.
“Perhaps we can, George.”
“But this is just a boy!” he said with a sneer.
Though the tone was pejorative, I wasn’t offended in the least. But I decided to show my wolverine face.
“Bollocks!” I raised a fist. “Want to step outside and see what this ‘boy’ can do to your face?”
He laughed but backed up a step. “Now-now. That won’t be necessary.”
Yes, a dollop of pugnaciousness could carry a long way.
“He has a degree, after all,” Tesla said.
Scherff wasn’t budging. He snorted. “Talk is cheap.”
“Indeed,” said Tesla, and then proceeded to quiz me.
He started at a very basic level with Ohm’s Law and progressed into more esoteric areas of practical and theoretical electrical concepts. After just a few minutes he smiled and gave a satisfied nod.
“You learned well. I will show you around myself.”
“But—” Scherff began.
“I have a good feeling about this young man, George.” He turned to me. “You understand that you cannot speak of what I am about to show you.”
“Of course.”
“Good.” He led me back to the littered main floor. “We have nothing terribly special out here. You can see the glass blower creating our vacuum tubes over there. We have an x-ray machine, a huge stock of wires and cables, as you can imagine. Three resonant transformers—”
“Tesla coils,” I said.
“As they are rightly called.” He seemed pleased that I’d recognized them. “And here is our coal-fired generator.”
“It looks like a Westinghouse.”
“It is. Leased from Mister Westinghouse. It supplies two-hundred watts.”
“Westinghouse is involved, then?”
“Somewhat.” I immediately sensed this was a thorny topic. “J. P. Morgan is our major source of funding.”
I spied an odd shape partially covered by a tarp. “Do my eyes deceive me or is that a boat?”
He frowned. “Yes. Last year I closed my Houston Street lab and moved its contents here. That is one of my autonomous craft. It can be controlled from shore or from another craft. I’ve tried to interest the Navy but they don’t see a practical use. Can you imagine?”
A plethora of uses leapt to mind and I said as much.
“See?” he said, slapping me on the back. “You have vision. Would that you were an admiral!” He turned and indicated the enclosed rear section. “Back here we have my office, a kitchen, a library, a laboratory, an instrumentation room with all our controls, a machine shop, a boiler room to supply heat in the winter.”
“And what of the tower?” I said. “It fascinates me.”
“Oh, it’s not just a tower,” he said with a sly grin. “What’s beneath the tower is just as important. Perhaps more so.”
He led me along a passage through the rear section and out the back door. I stopped and gazed up at the tower. It looked positively massive close up. A maze of crisscrossing struts and trusses formed the tapering octagonal base leading up to the circular platform that supported the intricately wired mushroom-cap cupola. A thick steel pipe ran up the center to the top.
“How tall is it?”
“The top of the cupola is exactly one hundred and eighty-seven feet above the ground. For aesthetic reasons we will eventually enclose the base, but the skin has no effect on function.” He waved an arm at the structure. “This is what everyone sees, this is what they love to depict in the newspapers. But they don’t see the rest of the tower, the part that goes down into the Earth.”
“Down?”
“Yes. One hundred-twenty feet. Come.”
We walked the hundred feet or so to the tower, then, ducking under trusses, we stepped onto the large concrete base, solid except for the ten-by-twelve-foot opening at its center. Moving closer I could see a shaft plunging into the earth. The pipe running up the center of the tower originated in the shaft. A staircase spiraled down along the steel-lined walls, disappearing into the darkness below. Tesla threw a blade switch on a nearby junction box and a vertical row of bulbs came to life along the length of the shaft.
“Shall we?” he said
“By all means!”
My hand shook as I grasped the rail and followed him down into the Earth. Here was a level of excitement I had not experienced in years—not since my first view of the Statue of Liberty as my ship from Liverpool approached New York Harbor.
Down and around we went along the inner surface of this shaft the height of a medium-size building. The air grew damp and dank, mold and mildew spotted the wood and metal walls. And still we descended.
When we reached the moist floor at the bottom, he said, “We stopped here before we entered the aquifer. This is where most of the money has gone.”
I saw four smaller brick-lined passages—wide enough to crawl through—heading off to who-knew-where from the center of each wall.
“What are those?”
“Tunnels running north, south, east, and west. They go back to the surface for ventilation. But this,” he said, tapping the central steel pipe, “this runs in the opposite direction. This pushes another three-hundred feet deeper into the Earth.”
I think my jaw dropped. We were already twelve stories down. Now another three hundred feet?
“W-what? Why?”
“To anchor the tower to the Earth. I’m going to make the planet quiver with energy, I’m going to turn the Earth itself into a giant conductor.”
He then launched into a frenetic lecture on creating terrestrial standing waves and transmitting power through the Earth itself from one resonance transformer to another. He was mesmerizing.
Here was a man who thought big and placed no boundaries on his imagination—who recognized no limits on what humanity could accomplish if it set its mind to it. A dreamer of fantastic dreams armed with the knowledge and intelligence and audacity to realize those dreams—dreams of worldwide wireless communication and power.
“Energy will be available to everyone,” he said. “Like the air we breathe.”
I knew at that moment that I had to be part of those dreams. I had to help him make them happen. I wanted my name on the rolls of those who made the dream a reality.
He kept talking theory as we made our way back up to the surface. I barely heard a word. I was seeing the global ramifications of wireless power.
“This will change the whole world!” I said as we reached fresh air again. “Transform civilization! Create a golden age of peace and prosperity!”
He laughed. “I would not be so sure about peace and prosperity—I am certain we’ll still find excuses to kill each other. But worldwide wireless will most certainly change the world as we know it.”
“Hire me!” I said, shocked that I’d had the audacity to blurt those two words.
He laughed. “I would love to. You have the credentials and you certainly have the enthusiasm. I, however, lack sufficient funds.”
“But you said J. P. Morgan—”
“The finances have become very complicated. With your degree I am sure you can secure a good-paying—”
“I already have one. With G.E. I start July the first. But I would gladly give it up to—”
He held up a hand. “Be smart and take that job. Learn all you can there. And perhaps in the future—the near future, I hope—we will have straightened out our finances here and you and I can talk again.”
I couldn’t give this up—I wouldn’t.
“I’ll be an unpaid intern. It can be my preceptorship, my apprenticeship in wireless energy.”
I had savings. I’d used some of the proceeds from the sale of the family cottage to come to America, but my frugal ways and warehouse earnings had allowed me to preserve a small nest egg.
He waved me off. “I could not possibly ask you to—”
“You’re not asking me—I’m asking you.”
“Where will you live?”
“Right here! Can we set up a cot on the upper landing? All I’ll need is some food.”
I could hardly believe I was saying this. I am convinced I’d gone a little barmy then.
He gave me a long look. “You are sure about this?”
I’d never been so bloody sure of anything in my life.
“I can always get a job with an electrical company,” I said. “But when will I ever get another chance to change the world?”
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