Make a Tesla or buy a Tesla coil. I made one, find it…Get books on wireless telegraphy.
FROM THE PRIVATE NOTEBOOK OF THOMAS EDISON1
Throughout the late spring and summer, Tesla commuted regularly to Wardenclyffe, often with a servant of Serbian extraction and a box lunch from the Waldorf-Astoria.2 At night he returned to the city, where he could stop in at the Players’ Club, attend a concert, or dine at Delmonico’s or Sherry’s. In June, having to forgo yet another “Johnson blowout,” he apologized to Robert and Owen for being “unable to meet the lady who inspired the celebrated author of the Arrows of the Almighty.”3
White was on his yearly fishing vacation in Canada,4 so Tesla was on his own for the month. Some of the time was spent scouting out possible apartments to rent in Shoreham, and George Scherff also had to look for a place. In July the architect returned, and talks resumed concerning the construction of the tower. Having recently joined the Automobile Club of America, which had its headquarters in Locust Valley and counted Vice President Teddy Roosevelt among its members,5 White would motor out from the city to the club or to St. James in his new “steam-powered Locomobile,” which required a driver, or on his own in a fashionable “electric two-seater runabout.”6 With his estate just a few miles from Shoreham, the avid motorist could drive out past the endless flats of potato fields, along the same road that also led to the site of Wardenclyffe to oversee the work and perhaps take the inventor for a spin. The architect’s son recalled: “I remember Tesla well, as he often came down to stay with us on Long Island. He used to wander around at night in the garden in the moonlight; and when my mother asked him why he wasn’t asleep, he replied: ‘I never sleep.’ I also remember going to his laboratory [in the city] as a boy, and watching him put several million volts through his body lighting up two Crookes tubes which he held in his hand.”7
White made Tesla realize that a six-hundred-foot-high transmitter (roughly two-thirds the height of the Eiffel Tower) was simply out of the question, so Tesla dabbled with harmonic ratios of one-half and one-quarter that size. With prices so unstable, it would be difficult to calculate the new costs.
The Johnsons were as excited as Tesla about the purchase of Wardenclyffe. By July, with the land cleared, it became an opportune moment to visit the site—just a few miles from a lovely beach on the Sound at Wading River and also not far from Southampton on the Atlantic side. A weekend was set aside to coax Tesla into spending some time swimming. It was a delightful moment, a time to enjoy the salt water and picnic grounds and pose for whimsical photographs of their heads placed in the notches of standard billboard pictures of bodies in striped bathing suits or, gaily adorned, sitting in the seats of an imitation automobile.8
In August, with the frame up on the lab and plans for the facing under way, Tesla once again refused a respite in Maine with the Johnsons, writing a teasing letter that as a member of the Four Hundred he could not meet with “people whose fathers have been fruit peddlers and grocers.”9 Perhaps Katharine’s father had been such.10 With the tower now planned as a much larger venture and Morgan delaying payment of promised funds, Tesla pondered a way not only to obtain owed funds but also to get Morgan to increase his investment.
The monarch with the bulbous snout returned from Europe on the Fourth of July. Leaving the ocean liner from the stern in order to avoid the throng of reporters, Morgan ignored his home and moved to the Corsair, his 300-foot-long yacht, living there for the month and staying in Bar Harbor, Maine, through part of August.11 The art connoisseur was pleased with his recent acquisitions of paintings, gemstones, and rare manuscripts—he did not shorten his yearly European excursion on account of a Wall Street crisis—but he was irritable, irrationally perturbed with Harriman, and fearful that the press and public might threaten his empire, if not his life. Morgan was an opinionated man, fair-minded much of the time but dangerously stubborn at other times. Having detested Harriman for outwitting him not once but twice, he must have been furious when the world viewed him as the villain who had destabilized the economy because of a personal vendetta. A turbulent labor strike by the steel workers added to his unhappiness and the uncertainty of the times. Headlines such as the following caused him to seek armed protection:
The Rich Denounced by Socialist Labor
Thousands at Cooper Union
Cheer Wordy Assaults on Capital.
J. P. Morgan Accused of Trying to “Trustify the Earth.”
“This is the century,” said chairman Lucien Sanial, “in which there is going to be social revolution.”
Whoop went the audience waving hats and yelling madly for a minute or so…Charles Knoll [followed and] said he favored the adoption of such resolutions as would “chill and make to shiver the spinal column of the capitalists.”12
To end the Northern Pacific fiasco, Morgan and Harriman allowed investors to settle their accounts at $150 a share. The public was not supposed to notice that this price would yield hefty profits to the giants who had purchased their stock for one-third less than that price only days earlier. Instead, they were perceived as noble in their attempts to restore order and sanity to the economy. At first, the government wanted Morgan to return stocks to the original investors at original prices. In response, Morgan was quoted as saying that it would be quite a feat to “unscramble the eggs and return them to their original hens!” When accused of avoiding his responsibility to society, Morgan responded in anger, “I owe the public nothing.” For this remark, Morgan would be interrogated by the governmental investigative committees until his dying days, but he weathered the storm easily.
Before Morgan left for Maine, he met with the inventor. In a new satchel purchased for the occasion, Tesla brought his latest patent applications, drawings of the half-completed laboratory, and schematics for the tower. The secretary at 23 Wall Street ushered him in.
“Mr. Morgan, you have raised great waves in the industrial world and some have struck my little boat. Prices have gone up in consequence, twice, perhaps three times higher than they were and then there were expensive delays, mostly as a result of activities you excited.”13
“We’ve all suffered, Mr. Tesla,” Morgan said, already perturbed and testy because of the more important imbroglios he was enmeshed in.
Tesla pushed on, informing Morgan that he had decided to design a larger tower than agreed upon because of Marconi’s piracy. Morgan looked on, at first in detached amazement, as Tesla continued.
“Suppose a plant is constructed capable of sending signals within a given radius, and consider an extension to twice the distance. The area being then four times as large, the returns will become more valuable. Approximately computed, the average price will be tripled. This means that a plant, with a radius of activity twice as large, will earn twelve times as much. But it will cost twice as much…The greater the distance the greater the gain until, when the plant can transmit signals to the uttermost confines of the Earth, its earning power becomes, so to speak, unlimited.
“The way to go, [Mr. Morgan, is] to construct such a plant…It [will] give the greatest force to my patents and ensure a monopoly…[and] offer[s] possibilities for business on a large, dignified scale commensurate with your position in life and mine as a pioneer in this art, who has originated all essential principles.”14
“Let me understand you, Mr. Tesla. You have not exploited the lighting enterprise?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“You have not constructed a transmitting tower, but you have just about completed the construction of a laboratory?”
“Yes.”
“You have purchased, is this 200 acres? with an option on 1,600 more, and you have run out of funds?”
“Only temporarily, sir. Once you supply the balance…”
“And if I relinquish these funds, will that be enough for the creation of your ‘model city’?”
“No, as I explained…”
“If we double the size of the tower, I will earn twelve times as much. Is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“Get out, Mr. Tesla.”
“But, sir…,”
Raising his voice to a dull roar, Morgan reiterated his command. Quietly, Tesla packed his satchel and slipped away.
The inventor was in shock. One can only imagine which favored swear words Morgan, known “on Wall Street…for his gruffness and blunt expletives,”15 unfurled upon the prima donna who had pranced into his office with his fantastic scheme and high and mighty demands. Tesla required a few days to regain his composure. Morgan still legitimately owed him a significant amount of funds. The banker was upset, with the problems, with the Northern Pacific, and with the ensuing denigration by the press. It will pass, Tesla reasoned. The best thing to do would be to reestablish credibility. He forwarded Morgan his most recent patent assignments and then backed off.16
The following week, White telephoned to suggest that they go with a rough stone facing on the laboratory instead of brick, and the inventor agreed. “Please make sure they also put in a fireproof roof,” Tesla told his architect.17
“Let’s not rush the tower,” White cautioned. “I’m still calculating figures for you.”
As White was courting during these very weeks on a daily basis Evelyn Nesbit and also helping Tesla recalibrate the construction of the complex, it is possible that the tight-lipped inventor became privy to the architect’s intimate liaison.18
In a financial predicament, Tesla reported to White that he had visited the “American Bridge people to ascertain whether they will be able to construct the cupola of my [tower] without much delay. As this item will consume the longest time, it is necessary to take all the preliminary steps, so that the work may be begun just as soon as you have passed upon the plans.
“I believe that the American Bridge Company is the best concern to deal with in this matter,” Tesla continued, “but I beg you not to pay any attention to my suggestion, if you think otherwise. The Bethlehem Steel Company will furnish the sheets, but I cannot give the order until we have agreed upon all details.”19
“You must enjoy parting with your money, if you are negotiating with American Bridge,” White responded. “I implore you to let me handle the contracts. I should have the figures in a few weeks, but I can tell you right now, a 300 foot tower is out of the question so we do not know what size the cupola will be…You must also consider the extra cost for designing the tower so that each individual strut can be replaced if need be, without toppling the entire edifice.”
“[Please understand, Stanford,] I went to the American Bridge Company simply because of my anxiety to have the work pushed through as fast as practicable. I am only too glad to follow your advice, and beg you to consider yourself absolutely free in your choice and arrangements regarding this work.”20
On Friday, September 6, 1901, President William McKinley journeyed to Buffalo to attend an exposition and see firsthand the remarkable project instituted at Niagara. Dwarfed by the colossal Tesla turbines, the president wove his way back to the train station shaking hands with many of the onlookers. While waiting on the platform, a crazed anarchist lurched forward and fired at point-blank range. As McKinley struggled throughout the week at the edge of death, Tesla decided to write to the president’s old-time friend Morgan, sending the appeal on the inventor’s favorite day, Friday the thirteenth, the day the president died. “McKinley’s passing,” Morgan cried, “is the saddest news I have ever heard.”21
Beginning the letter with “I respectfully apologize for disturbing you at a time when your mind must be filled with thoughts of a more serious nature than usual,” the inventor imprudently reiterated his recent proposal, suggesting that if Morgan doubled his investment, Tesla would be able to send messages across the Pacific as well as the Atlantic, or better yet, if Morgan tripled the amount, the wizard could send messages to any point on the globe, “no matter what the distance.”22 On the same day, he also wrote to White, who had finally given him precise figures on his proposed monster-sized tower.
My dear Stanford,
I have not been half as dumbfounded by the news of the shooting of the President as I have by the estimates submitted to you, which, together with your kind letter of yesterday, I received last night. One thing is clear we cannot build that tower as outlined.
I cannot tell you how sorry I am, for my calculations show, that with such a structure, I could reach across the Pacific.
Tesla told White that because of the limitations on capital, he would have to “fall back on an older design…involving the use of two, and possibly three towers, but much smaller.” The design would be the same, only the dimensions would be reduced. “I shall make some calculations,” the inventor concluded, “to see how far I can reduce the height without impairing materially the efficiency of the apparatus, and will communicate with you as soon as practicable.”23
The following day, Tesla wrote White again, agreeing to construct a tower with a height of approximately 150 feet.24 Having worked with figures on a tower 600 feet high in May, Tesla probably reduced it by half by the time he saw Morgan in August, and then in half again after White told him that the costs of a 300-foot tower were prohibitive. Adding the figure of “1/6th larger,” which he mentioned to White in his last letter (or 25 feet), we come to 150 + 25, or 175 feet, which was just about the height of the actual tower. (After construction, it was 187 feet.) However, Tesla also constructed a well beneath the tower, with an accompanying spiral staircase, which ran ten stories below the ground, to a depth of 120 feet.25 Adding this figure to the total (i.e., 187 + 120), we come to a length of approximately 300 feet, or 1/2 the size of the original plan and therefore in a harmonic relationship to it. Even this tower, however, was too expensive to build, given the cost of the machinery, complex design of the housing, which required that it be fireproof, and the inflation produced by the crash.
In pondering these letters, it becomes apparent that Tesla was not too perturbed by the assassination of the president. Self-engulfed, he was utterly amblyopic when it came to negotiating with Morgan, a man enmeshed in two potentially epic crises and one history-altering tragedy. Theodore Roosevelt, who now became president, was not a man who was going to be particularly kind to big business.
To say that Tesla blundered here would be an understatement. His decision to alter his contract without telling Morgan and his resolution to proceed with the grand vision when he knew that his funds would be inadequate were addlebrained. One suspects that once Tesla had signed a contract with the greatest financial force on the planet, a deep-seated, subconscious complex was triggered involving an impatient egomaniacal streak that forced the inventor to place everything on the line when he should have proceeded in a more discerning way. Incapable of compromising and at the risk of self-obliteration, Tesla began construction of the tower after his falling out with Morgan. On the positive side, the inventor knew that he was in a race against pirates and for what he perceived as the “Holy Grail,” his peerless notch in history. Undaunted, the courageous inventor moved ahead with the conviction that his path was right and that he could not fail.
Tesla’s seemingly foolhardy decision must be understood in light of the fact that fortunes had already been reaped on his former inventions by Morgan and others. By 1901, for instance, Morgan’s General Electric Company was actually producing more induction motors than the Westinghouse Corporation; Morgan was involved, along with Westinghouse, in instituting an electric subway system in the bowels of Manhattan based on Tesla’s polyphase system; and then, of course, there was Niagara Falls. Every home in the world was going to be illuminated by Tesla’s system. The revenues pouring into the electric power companies for this new technology were staggering, but Tesla received not a cent. One way or another, he felt that Morgan should give him carte blanche.
It was a bleak autumn for the inventor when the ground was broken for the eighteen-story edifice, Tesla now naming it his “magnifying transmitter.” Although mostly constructed of wood, “50 tons of iron and steel” were also used, along with “50,000 bolts.”26 Taking into account the amount of lumber it took to line the well and build the staircase down, and the difficulty in digging it, one begins to visualize the enormous expenditures that were going to be involved. W. D. Crow stayed in charge of construction. Hoping for the best, Tesla wrote to Katharine on October 13:
My dear Mrs. Johnson,
13 is my lucky number and so I know you will comply with my wish…[to] come to the Waldorf. And if you do—when I transmit my wireless messages across seas and continents you will get the finest bonnet ever made if it breaks me…
I have already ordered a simple lunch and you must come en masse. We must exhibit Hobson…I know he likes me better than you.
Nikola Tesla
Electrical Engineer & Inventor27
In November, the inventor tried once again to approach Morgan, setting up a meeting at 23 Wall Street and bringing a succinct list of his latest patent assignments and his report on how the construction was going.
Dear Mr. Morgan,
Pardon me for trespassing on your valuable time…The practical significance of my system resides in the fact that the effects transmitted diminishes only in a simple ratio with the distance whereas in all other systems it is reduced in preportion to the square. To illustrate, if the distance be increased 100-fold, I get 1/100th of the effect, while under the same conditions others can obtain at the very best, 1/10,000th of the effect. This feature alone bars all competition.
In regard to [other advantages], there are only two ways possible of economically utilizing the energy transmitted…: either storing it in dynamic form as, for instance, the energy of well timed thrusts is stored in a pendulum, or by accumulating it in potential form, as for example compressed air is stored in a reservoir…My rights [through patents] on both are fundamental.
Referring particularly to telegraphy and telephone, I have still in the patent office two applications [pending]…In one I describe and claim discoveries relating to the transmission of signals through the earth to any distance no matter how great, and in the other a new principle which secures absolute privacy of messages and also enables the simultaneous transmission of any desired number of messages up to many thousands, through the same channel, be it the earth, or a wire or a cable. On this latter principle I have applied for patents in the chief foreign countries. I consider these inventions of extreme commercial importance.
Hoping that I shall be able to satisfy you that your generosity and confidence in me have not been misplaced,
I remain,
Yours very respectfully, N. Tesla28
Morgan’s continuing mistreatment of the inventor and lack of acknowledgment of the significance of the plans revealed were almost too much to bear. Tesla could not face the Johnsons or anybody for Thanksgiving and so declined their invitation. “Dear Luka,” Tesla wrote, “Kindly excuse and remember me with kind regards,” signing the letter, “Nikola Faraway.”29
Signor Marconi had been commuting regularly between England and the States throughout this period, looking for sites to place his wireless stations. Prime locations included the eastern tip of Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and Cape Cod. “In September 1901, the new equipment, including the immensely powerful transmitter, was installed at Poldhu [England] and a great 200-foot diameter ring of masts 200-feet high had risen like [a huge] skeleton…on the edge of the cliff. Test transmissions to other Marconi stations, in particular that at Crookhaven, Ireland, over two hundred miles away, had shown that the waves did—at least to this extent—follow the curvature of the Earth and not fly off into space. Across the Atlantic, at Cape Cod, the twin station was similarly nearing completion, and plans were made with quiet optimism for the experiment to take place in a few weeks’ time.”30
In September, gale-force winds leveled the aerial in Poldu, and in November the same thing occurred on the Cape. Tenaciously, Marconi pressed on, gambling with a less powerful but sturdier transmitter in England and abandoning the idea of constructing a twin in the States. Instead, the Italian would try simply to intercept the signals of the English transmitter by fashioning an aerial with kites, high-altitude weather balloons, and a sensitive coherer as a receiver.
On December 6, he landed, with a small crew, in Newfoundland, Canada, and floated up his receiving antenna on a spot designated appropriately as Signal Hill. December 12 was chosen as the day for the experiment, the beacon selected dot dot dot, the Morse code for the letter S.
On Friday the thirteenth, during a lull in a miserable storm of hail and rain, three faint taps were heard on his equipment. The world was rocked; Guglielmo Marconi’s name was irrefutably carved into the history books; the age of mass communication had begun.