Dear Mr. Morgan,
How can I begin to thank you in the name of my profession and my own, great generous man! My work will proclaim loudly your name to the world. You will soon see that not only am I capable of appreciating deeply the nobility of your action, but also of making your primarily philanthropic investment worth a hundred times the sum you have put at my disposal in such a magnanimous and princely way!
With many many wishes from all my heart for your happiness and welfare, believe me.
Ever yours most faithfully,
N. Tesla1
In March 1900 there was a fire in the East Houston Street building that housed Tesla’s laboratory. “The Jews on the lower floor [were] burned out…[and this] frightened me nearly to death,” Tesla wrote the Johnsons. “It was a close shave, and if the misfortune had happened, it would have been probably the last of your friend Nikola.”2 Throughout this period the onslaught by the press also continued in an unbridled fashion.
February 25, 1901
My dear Mr. Tesla,
We never forget old friends and defend them against all malicious assailants at all hazards.
Yours truly,
Earnest Heinrich
One of the old guard from the Westinghouse corporation, Heinreich, included a newspaper clipping which he had written. “Anyone who is ignorant,” Heinreich wrote, “…does not know that Tesla stands in the front rank of electrical inventors by what he has actually accomplished.”3
Another who came to Tesla’s defense was T. C. Martin, who authored a word of praise in Science. “The ship was off its course,” Tesla wrote, “but I always had faith in the captain.”4
December 13, 1900
My dear Tesla,
I am delighted to get your kind favor of Dec. 12. I know of no change whatever in my sentiments towards you these many years from the beginning until now. I shall always be very proud
of my modest association with your earlier work…
As ever,
T. C. Martin5
Unfortunately, there was also bickering between Tesla and Martin about the previous editorial attacking Tesla in Martin’s journal and about Tesla’s slow progress on his other inventions. Concerning the vacuum lamps, Martin wrote: “I should be delighted to see you or any other man give us the commercial art.” Perturbed, Tesla cut off his correspondence, and so the friendship remained impaired.6
Just three months later, in March 1901, Tesla invited an admirer and disciple of Swami Vivekananda, Miss Emma C. Thursby, to his laboratory. “My light will then be permanently installed and you and your friends—Miss Farmer in particular—will be most welcome to see it.”7
Tesla’s New Surprise
Julian Hawthorne
Great preparations for an experiment upon a stupendous scale are being made at the wizard’s laboratory on East Houston Street…An unannounced visitor gained entrance today by chance. Tesla was not there. But what the visitor saw chained him to the spot.
A Wonderful Color
From a stout beam [from] the…ceiling hung three dazzling, pulsating clots of purple-violet light. The room glowed with the warmth of a strange, unearthly rich color—a hue that is not listed in the spectrum. Above and below the beams twisted long glass spirals closely coiled—snakes of beating violet flame…
One of Tesla’s workman found the unannounced visitor spellbound. A quick spring to the wall, a concealed button touched, and darkness.
Those who knew say this violet light is the wizard Tesla’s new flash signal to the Martians. He will reveal it to the world soon. It is even hinted around the corner of Mulberry St. at Police Headquarters that Tesla has already wig-wagged the red planet and had a response.8
Hawthorne was living in Yonkers and often took a train down to Manhattan, dining with Tesla at the beginning of the year.9 They shared a number of common friends, including Stanford White, whose father, Richard Grant White, had confessed to Hawthorne once “among other sacred confidences of a woman whom he had found and loved in New York.” The rumor, in essence, was that he had been essentially a bigamist, maintaining one home for his family and one for his concubine.10 Perhaps this explained Stanny’s penchant for philandering. The son, however, easily surpassed the father, as he was able to maintain five or six retreats, including an estate on Long Island, an apartment in Gramercy Park, the Garden Tower suite, “the Morgue” on West Fifty-fifth Street, which he and his compatriots, like Saint-Gaudens, “used in a pinch,” and his “most infamous haunt,” at 22 West Twenty-fourth St.11
In March, Stanford became smitten by the exotic charms of the sixteen-year-old Floradora siren, Evelyn Nesbit, who had been featured as a Gibson centerfold for Colliers and as a nearly bare-breasted Spanish dancer in a popular musical on Broadway. White watched her perform night after night for many weeks before he was able to arrange a rendezvous, which first took place in the heat of the summer at the Twenty-fourth Street studio.12
“Stanford had me put in an electric door,” the inventor told Hawthorne. “You press a button, and it automatically opens.”
White had decorated his bachelor den in shades of red, with velvet curtains on the windows, soft cushions on the floor, and tapestries, statues, and paintings, mostly nudes all around. In his loft, with the room set like a small forest, lit with a bright skylight, could be found a red velvet swing hanging from the ceiling, like one of Chaucer’s toys, with green ropes trailing down from the seat, like vines from a tree.13
Besides meeting with the mystical son of the renowned Gothic author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tesla dined with Stanford White and sometimes Mark Twain at the Players’ Club, or with Spanish-American War hero, Richmond Hobson, Rudyard Kipling, or, of course, the Johnsons throughout this period. Katharine was caught up in her interest in spiritualism and tried an experiment in thought transference without the inventor knowing. In jest, Tesla wrote back:
My dear Mrs. Johnson,
There was no telepathic influence this time. I never thought of you even for a moment.
Sincerely,
Millionaire Kid!14
Rooted in his materialistic philosophy, the superstitious “wizard who talks with other worlds”15 continued to repudiate the notion that human minds could interact by extrasensory means, even though he had recently saved some friends from a train wreck because of a premonition.16 Overtly, however, he would maintain that psychic phenomena was poppycock. Katharine would not only be teased for her mystical bent but also over possession of Hobson and over her looks.
My dear Luka,
When Mrs. Filipov is out of town I think of Mrs. de Kay as the most charming lady of my experience. It would be advisable, Luka, to keep both ladies in ignorance of this. A word to the wise is sufficient.17
Considered much like an uncle to the family, Tesla also expressed his continuing affection for the Johnson children. For Agnes, he would sign a New Year’s card “Nikola Hobson,” and for Owen, he took the time to read the youngster’s first novel, The Arrow of the Almighty. He also congratulated Owen on his impending marriage. Agnes would also later marry, and she would inherit the vast Johnson correspondence, much of which was donated to Columbia University. According to the present Mrs. Robert Underwood Johnson, the wife of Owen’s son (named after the grandfather), Agnes was “awful. I didn’t like her at all. Her daughter, however, was very beautiful. Paderewski felt that Ann had great talent…Owen was very dashing and attractive, and had a lot of his mother’s qualities. As a writer, he authored the Lawrenceville series and made a good living as a novelist.”
The present Mrs. Johnson stated that Katharine had “an Irish personality.” She could be “gay and lively and fun loving, but also depressive underneath.” The present Robert Underwood Johnson lived with his grandparents. “They had two Irish servants, Josie and Norah. Katharine would go into one of her moods, and just stay in her room and wouldn’t come down even for meals. Her depression became more severe…after World War I.” She said that Robert was considered to be “boring, very formal with old world manners…a fine old gentleman. Katharine was attracted to Tesla because he was imaginative and exciting from a European point of view. He might have brought more gaiety into the house.”18
Wardenclyffe
“Inventor Nikola Tesla has purchased a 200-acre tract at Wardenclyffe on the Sound, nine miles east of Port Jefferson for the establishment of a wireless telegraphy plant. The land and improvements will cost $150,000.”19
On March 1, 1901, Tesla officially signed his contract with Morgan. He was now able to begin construction of his laboratory and tower on Long Island, sixty-five miles from New York City. Two days later, Morgan officially announced the creation of U.S. Steel. No such announcement was made about the Tesla Company. The above article, which appeared in a local paper, the Long Island Democrat, was perhaps the only one to make reference to the correct figure of $150,000, which Morgan provided. When John O’Neill wrote his biography in 1944, he did not know the details of the Morgan-Tesla relationship, even though he had personally known Tesla for over thirty years. The inventor, whose papers were still under lock and key at the time of the completion of the biography, had told O’Neill that the financier provided the funds in his capacity as a philanthropist, although this was not the case at all. It was a simple business partnership.
Tesla celebrated the new connection by giving a large party at the Waldorf-Astoria. He had discussed with Oscar the details of the menu and participated in tasting the various sauces. Impeccably dressed, he reserved one of the smaller banquet halls, requesting his guests to arrive at seventhirty sharp. White was probably there, along with the Johnsons, Hobson, and perhaps Miss Merrington or Vivekananda acolytes Miss Thursby or Miss Farmer or Anne Morgan. As legend tells it, when it came time for dinner to be served, the maître d’ was forced to call Tesla aside to inform him that he owed the hotel back bills totaling more than $900. He was under orders. Dinner could not be served unless the matter was straightened out first. With an ace up his sleeve, Tesla nonchalantly welcomed his guests and then eased out to see the manager. Mr. Boldt was cordial but insistent, so Tesla made a call and put him on the phone with Morgan. Flustered, Boldt was nevertheless able to hold his ground. A check was sent immediately, and the inventor was saved from embarrassment.20
Soon after, Tesla met with real estate mogul Charles R. Flint, who arranged a meeting with James Warden, director of the North Shore Industrial Company. Warden, who was in control of an eighteen-hundredacre potato farm on Long Island Sound, in Suffolk County, provided Tesla with two hundred acres adjacent to what is today called Route 25A. The inventor was also given the option to purchase the remaining parcel. Perhaps to sweeten the deal or in lieu of certain other arrangements, the cite was named Wardenclyffe, after the owner, and a post office under that appellation was established on April 2. Five years later, in 1906, the name was officially changed to the Village of Shoreham.21
Electrical World & Engineer reported: “The company is offering its stock for sale at $100 per share, expecting to pay 15 per cent dividends…The Wardenclyffe Building Company shall have the first right
and privilege to do all building and make all constructional improvements…and shall have the first right of purchase of any additional land offered by it for sale.” Warden, who was interviewed for the article, predicted that “large profits will be realized in the future.” Describing Tesla as “the foremost electrician of the age, whose achievements in electrical science eclipse in practical importance all other discoveries of the century,” Warden noted that the inventor “has just closed a contract to expend…a very large sum of money in constructing electrical laboratories and the main station for his wireless telegraphy system of communication with Europe and Australasia. This development will require a large number of houses for the accommodation of the several hundreds of people whom Mr. Tesla will employ.”22
Tesla’s ultimate plan was to construct a “World Telegraphy Center,” with a laboratory, wireless transmitter, and production facilities for manufacturing his oscillators and vacuum tubes. He had negotiated with Morgan the first step, that is, to build the laboratory and a simple tower for reporting yacht races, signaling ocean steamers, and sending Morse-coded messages to England. Simultaneously, he discussed with McKim, Mead & White the construction of an entire metropolis, “a model city,” using the eighteen-hundred acres available, with homes, stores, and buildings to house upwards of twenty-five hundred workers.23 “Wardenclyffe will be the largest operation of its kind in the world,” Tesla told the local newspapers. “The laboratory will draw men from the highest scientific circles and their presence will benefit all of Long Island…24 With a staff of 75 draftsmen, the eminent architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White is well suited to the task,” Tesla concluded. They billed him $1,168 for blueprints.25
White, it appears, was placed in a precarious position: Morgan still had reservations about his connection with the flamboyant engineer. In his capacity as interior decorator, White, in February, had located a statue in London which he knew the financier was interested in. “My dear Commodore,” the engaging redhead wrote, “it is really like parting with a piece
of my heart to give it up…[Thus] I would honestly rather [present it to
you, than sell it]…as my only desire…is to please you.” But Morgan insisted on compensating him for the statue, paying White “double the normal commission” in order to show that he, too, felt their affiliation transcended “business.”26
Dear Nikola,
I send you with this a new revised plan for your power house, also a very close estimate which we have made ourselves in this office…The work could be done for about $14,000. I am very sure for a building of this size, that it would be impossible to get these figures down lower.
Affectionately,
Stanford White27
Bids were taken from Sturgis and Hill and also Mertz and Co., two contractors White often worked with. In May blueprints for the laboratory were sent over to Tesla for his approval, in June a contract with Sturgis and Hill was finalized,28 and in July the land was cleared, and a road was put in.29 White recommended one of his associates, W. D. Crow, as architect in charge. Crow would also do the actual construction of the tower.30
The sun was out bright one morning in the early spring as the inventor strutted down Peacock Alley and up Fifth Avenue toward Forty-second Street and Grand Central Station, to transfer to Pennsylvania Station and take an early train to Wardenclyffe. Golden shafts of light billowed through the upper windows of the cathedral-like edifice as Tesla crossed the mighty corridor and stepped aboard the luxury car. Ordering a pot of coffee, he began to peruse his mail. The train rattled out of the city, past Manhassett, Oyster Bay, where Vice President Roosevelt lived, St. James near Smithtown, where White had his family estate, Port Jefferson, and finally to Wardenclyffe. With stops at the various towns, the trip took about an hour and a half, the Connecticut shoreline sometimes visible across the Sound. It was when he reached page 280 of the Electrical Review that his jaw dropped and his cup of coffee spilled all over the prim white tablecloth.
Syntonic Wireless Telegraphy
Guglielmo Marconi
A large amount of inacurrate and misleading information is being published…even in the scientific press…[on] telegraphy through space…I shall endeavor to correct some of the[se] misstatements…
It is my intention to describe fully the efforts I have made in order to tune or syntonize the wireless system, efforts which, I am glad to say, have been crowned with complete success…
I first constructed an arrangement which consists of a Leyden jar or condenser circuit in which included the primary of what may be called a Tesla coil [and a] secondary [which] is connected to the earth or aerial conductor. The idea of using a Tesla coil to produce oscillations is not new. It was tried by the Post Office [i.e., with Preece] when experimenting with my system in 1898 and also suggested in a patent specification by Dr. Lodge dated May 10, 1897 (No. 11,) and by Professor Braun in…1899.31
Tesla described to Morgan in a letter written three years later how this information affected him:
When I discovered, rather accidentally, that others, who openly cast ridicule on what I had undertaken and discredited my apparatus were secretly employing it, evidently bent on the same task, I found myself confronted with wholly unforeseen conditions…Your [Morgan’s] participation called for a careful revision of my plans. I could not develop the business slowly in grocery-shop fashion. I could not report yacht races or signal incoming steamers. There was no money in this. This was no business for a man of your position and importance. Perhaps you have never fully appreciated the sense of this obligation.32
This passage displays misunderstanding by Tesla of Morgan’s personality. Unlike the inventor, whose ideas existed in abstract and futuristic forms, the pragmatic financier’s mind was on the present. Morgan loved sailing and yacht races and would resent another suggesting what a man in his position should or should not do.
Tesla reveals in this letter that he had to change his plans due to the “advantage shrewd competitors had” (e.g., due to Marconi’s pirating and connections with Pupin, Edison, European investors, and sovereign rulers). He thereupon decided to abandon the agreed-upon scheme of building a modest-sized transmitter and replaced it with the idea of constructing a skyscraping tower six hundred feet high, designs for which he scratched out on his fancy Waldorf-Astoria stationery.33 Ironically, for the ofttimes altruistic Tesla, it was his greed, vanity, and megalomania which drove him into the new venture. To have his ideas stolen from him was abhorrent. In his autobiography, Tesla would later refer to Marconi (although not by name) as a “parasite and microbe of a nasty disease.” It was at this moment that the inventor decided to scrap the trivial idea of sending mere Morse codes across the Atlantic. He would inaugurate a world communications enterprise to pulverize the vermin as a pachyderm would crush a toad.
Having reached the pinnacle of the ruling class, Tesla’s self-image swelled with the occasion, for he had conceived a telecommunications enterprise more efficient than the combined forces of today’s radio, television, wire service, lighting, telephone, and power systems! His ultimate plan even included the production of rain in the deserts, the lighting of skies above shipping lanes, the wireless production of energy for automobiles and airships, a universal time-keeping apparatus, and a mechanism for achieving interplanetary communication. Having attained cosmic consciousness, he offered this creation to the king of the financial world, and the king had accepted. To the inventor, it was simply a detail that this vision was not in agreement with the specifics of the contract or that Tesla never really told Morgan his greater scheme; this work, like White’s statue, transcended the traditional rules of business.
It was just sixty days since Tesla had signed his contract with Morgan, thirty days after Morgan sailed for Europe. Yet already Tesla had irreversibly changed his plans. Since he had been a gambler and pool player in his salad days and was now living among the most audacious of high rollers at the Waldorf, these old tendencies resurfaced now that he had “hooked the biggest fish on Wall Street.” He had calculated the odds based on certain assumptions about the stability of the economy and the quickness of his access to Morgan’s $150,000, and he proceeded boldly with the completion of the masterwork.
How could the inventor know that on May 10 the stock market would crash and that the main culprit in the catastrophe would be his backer, J. Pierpont Morgan?
The collapse of the stock market occurred because of a bitter rivalry that existed between Morgan and Ned Harriman. Morgan, who was in charge of the Northern Pacific Railroad, having tossed Henry Villard out a decade earlier, had bought control of an enormous line called the Chicago Burlington. This concern stretched its tracks from Atlantic ports to Chicago and down the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans. Harriman, who controlled the Union Pacific, or southern route to the west, wanted access to the Burlington as well, and he tried to negotiate with Morgan for a seat on the board of directors. Unfortunately, due to bitter disagreements stemming from an old railroad deal in which the crafty Harriman had outwitted the commodore, Morgan came to detest the man. Therefore, he would not share the Burlington and became irrational whenever Harriman’s name was mentioned.34
Thus, while Morgan enjoyed his art purchases in England and his mistress in France, Harriman, with the help of his broker, Jacob Schiff, clandestinely began purchasing Morgan’s Northern Pacific. Instead of trying to outbid Morgan for the Burlington, Harriman boldly bought Morgan’s own holding company out from underneath him! To accomplish this coup(!), it would take the adventuresome Harriman close to $100 million, which he raised by selling enormous blocks of Union Pacific bonds, and Harriman actually successfully carried out the operation. By the first week in May, Harriman owned more than 50 percent of Morgan’s precious company, which had been affectionately called the Nipper. When Morgan received the fateful telegram from his underlings while in France, he tossed his paramour off his lap and wired back the order to buy Northern Pacific back at any price, for Harriman did not yet own a majority of the voting common shares.
On May 9, the stock rocketed from $150 to $1,000 per share! A panic ensued as people who bought in on the Nipper were unable to obtain possession of their shares, as neither Morgan nor Harriman would release any; most of the other stocks dropped when investors sold in order to cover their losses. The end product was the tumbling of the market and the creation of extreme economic and political times and also monetary chaos. Stanford White was one of many who lost heavily in the market. For Tesla, costs increased dramatically, and credit was nearly impossible to obtain. The front page of the New York Times reported the calamity: “The greatest general panic that Wall Street has ever known came upon the stock market yesterday, with the result that before it was checked many fortunes had been swept away…”35
Even Morgan’s precious U.S. Steel dropped from its current price of forty-six to a low of eight dollars a share.36 Numerous investors were financially ruined, and some purportedly committed suicide. (One rumor concerning this famous event was that Morgan won back the company because Harriman’s broker, Jacob Schiff, was in the synagogue on the fateful Saturday when Morgan began buying more shares of Northern Pacific. Schiff, however, never intended to wrest the company from Morgan. His goal was simply to obtain a large enough percentage of the company to force Morgan to give Harriman a piece of the Chicago Burlington. Harriman, in his frenzy, wanted to change their plan so as to gain control over all three railroads, but Schiff overruled him. Thus, the skyrocketing of the stock and ensuing crash of the market were based solely on Morgan’s buy orders.)
The economic upheaval created heavy financial burdens on Tesla. However, he would not completely realize the increasing financial difficulties immediately, for the affects on construction costs, wages, and incidentals would ripple throughout the summer and fall.
Before Pierpont’s departure for England, in April, he had assured Tesla that now he “had no doubts” about the inventor’s abilities,37 and even if, by some fluke of misfortune, Morgan should not supply additional funds, Tesla still had his own money and the personality to attract additional investors. At forty-five years of age, wealthy, established as a leader of his field (however controversial), and rubbing elbows with the crème de la crème, the tall inventor was well equipped for the task he foresaw.