I come from a very wiry and long-lived race. Some of my ancestors have been centenarians, and one of them lived 129 years. I am determined to keep up the record and please myself with prospects of great promise. Then again, nature has given me a vivid imagination…
NIKOLA TESLA1
Tesla’s lifework was his World Telegraphy Center. Partially materialized on the physical plane as Wardenclyffe, this was the inventor’s Holy Grail, the key to anointment. In 1917 the project was demolished, and in that sense, so was the inventor. Capable of recognizing the absurdities of life and drawing from transcendent energies, the mystic sought regeneration by consummating his grand plan in fantasy form and by seeking a new philosopher’s stone.
One year earlier, when Tesla’s project was at its bleakest, he had formed an alliance with one of his most ardent admirers, Hugo Gernsback, editor of Electrical Experimenter. Gernsback had first heard about Tesla when he was a child growing up in Luxembourg in the late 1890s. It was at this time that the ten-year-old came across the fantastic picture of the emblazoned electrician sending hundreds of thousands of volts through his body and the declaration in the accompanying article that he was the grandest wizard of the age. Considered by most futurologists to be the “founder and father of science fiction,” Gernsback studied electronics at Bingen Technicum in Europe, before immigrating to America, at the age of nineteen, in 1903.2
With his mind totally captivated by the fantastic union of science and fantasy, the exuberant youth wrote a spectacular tale which took place in the year 2660 called RALPH 124C41 +, which he serialized in his new magazine Modern Electronics. Simultaneously, he also opened up Hugo Gernsback’s Electro Importing Company, an all-purpose electronics shop located under the “el” at Fulton Street. There the new breed of amateur ham operators could buy whatever they wanted and browse through “the biggest bunch of junk you ever saw.”3
Gernsback’s first meeting with Tesla was in 1908, when he stopped at the inventor’s lab to view the new turbine.4
Gernsback wrote, “The door opens, and out steps a tall figure—over six feet high—gaunt but erect. It approaches slowly, stately. You become conscious at once that you are face to face with a personality of a high order. Nikola Tesla advances and shakes your hand with a powerful grip, surprising for a man over sixty. A winning smile from piercing light bluegray eyes, set in extraordinarily deep sockets, fascinates you and makes you feel at once at home.
“You are guided into an office immaculate in its orderliness. Not a speck of dust is to be seen. No papers litter the desk, everything just so. It reflects the man himself, immaculate in attire, orderly and precise in his every movement. Drest [sic] in a dark frock coat, he is entirely devoid of all jewelry. No ring, stickpin or even watch-chain can be seen.”5
In 1916 the inventor edited a consequential article for Gernsback on the magnifying transmitter. The inventor also promised to think more seriously about putting his life story down on paper; in fact, he wrote a short first draft for Scientific American which he embellished for the Edison Medal acceptance speech.6
By this time, Gernsback had also secured the talents of the gifted illustrator Frank R. Paul. Destined to be the most influential science-fiction artist of the twentieth century, Paul was able to “render the possible development of any invention [from]…a raw idea into a picture fantasy.” With a penchant for drawing futuristic scenarios such as Goliath-sized insects, spaceships orbiting planets, and a variety of humanoidian mad scientists conquering galactic empires, Paul advanced to become the premier cover artist for Electrical Experimenter, and later Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories.7 He was assigned the role of completing Tesla’s tower in picture form. The drawing, replete with fully functioning Wardenclyffe transmitters and Tesla wingless airfoils beaming down death rays to incoming ships, not only became a fantastic cover for Electrical Experimenter; it also became the centerpiece of the wizard’s new letterhead.
As alchemist, Tesla transformed the ruins of his station into a fantastic Gernsbackian World Telegraphy Center, as he also transformed himself, leaving New York City to begin anew with his next major creation.
Before he left, in June 1917, the inventor wrote Jack Morgan, hoping, optimistically, because of new developments, to pay off his debt to the financier “in about four months…My big ship is still to come in, but I have now a marvelous opportunity having perfected an invention which will astound the whole world.” Cryptically, Tesla said that the invention would “afford an effective means for meeting the menace of the submarine.” Whether he was talking about a long-range radar system, a remote-controlled torpedo, or some other invention is uncertain.8
The following month, Tesla moved to Chicago, and he stayed there through November 1918, working with Pyle National on the perfection of his turbines. Here, during the day, with the slate clean, the gangly mechanic could continue to battle the demons by plunging himself into a brand-new endeavor. At night, as creative author, the cognoscente sketched out the first draft of his expanded autobiography.
Most of the time, he drew from his own capital for fear of causing difficulties with the new partners.9 He knew he would eventually receive compensation because the Chicago company had signed an agreement promising “cash payments and guarantees” with the expiration of their option, but carrying costs were becoming a problem.10
To handle expenses in the interim, the inventor requested that Scherff step up the pressure on receiving royalties from the various wireless companies. His greatest source of income was probably the Waltham Watch Company, which was now in the active stage of marketing his speedometer. Even though the war was still going on, the inventor expected to receive compensation from Telefunken “after the hostilities cease,” even though he would have to “apply to the War Trade Board under the Trading with the Enemy act for a license to receive payment.”11
Progress on the turbines was hampered by numerous obstacles. Nevertheless, the inventor was delighted with the “extraordinarily efficient personnel” and overall organization of the Chicago firm. As the disks could rotate at speeds ranging from 10,000 to 35,000 rpm, the centrifugal force tended to elongate them. Thus, they were subject to fatigue and ran the risk of cracking after performing for long periods of time. Perceived by skeptical engineers as fatal flaws, Tesla endeavored to hammer home the point that stress was a factor in all engines.12 Thus, much of the time in Chicago was spent experimenting with different alloys and inventing means for instantaneously regulating orthorotational speed and centrifugal pressure to minimize the stress factor. “For instance, suppose that the steam pressure of the locomotive would vary from say 50 to 200 lbs, no matter how rapidly, this would not have the slightest effect on the…performance of the turbine.”13
In January 1918, the U.S. Machine Manufacturing Company inquired about placing one of Tesla’s turbines inside an airplane, and a few months later, the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company also expressed interest. Tesla was writing Scherff, expecting the invention to yield $25 million per year. However, there was still the difficulty of perfecting it, and Tesla was still not free of the numerous other problems of his life, such as the past debts and the continuing quagmire of litigation. During the summer, the inventor twisted his back and was laid up for several weeks.14
During Tesla’s time in Chicago, he calculated his operating expenses at $17,600, with revenues of $12,500. Pyle National tried to get out of their debt by sending a check for $1,500, but Tesla returned the token payment and threatened suit. Meanwhile, back at home, the sheriff took possession of the Woolworth office, so Tesla had to wrestle some capital from Pyle National to release his company. In New York, George Scherff continued to handle all of the details.
Concerning his relationship with the government (as stated in chapter 41), most of Tesla’s wireless patents had expired, and his 1914 patent was complicated by its clash with the Marconi claim. However, he was negotiating with the government on an engine for a plane, writing to the Bureau of Steam Engineering at this time.15 In litigation, Tesla won a few thousand dollars from Lowenstein, lost a $67,000 case against a Mr. DeLaVergne, in part, because he refused to travel back to New York to testify, and had to pay out $1,600 to A. M. Foster, for nonpayment of services rendered.16
Before returning to Manhattan for the last months of 1918, the inventor traveled to Milwaukee to visit the Allis Chalmers people. There he was met by the astute but pedantic head engineer Hans Dahlstrand. After providing various articles and records from his work at the Edison station and Pyle National, a contract was drawn up for Tesla to return to Milwaukee and develop the engine with Dahlstrand. Skeptical from the start, the learned head engineer reluctantly agreed to defer to Tesla’s wishes and begin a preparatory investigation of the turbine before he arrived.
Throughout the period 1917-1926, the inventor spent most of his time outside New York City. In the years 1917-1918, he was in Chicago with Pyle National; in 1919-22 he was in Milwaukee with Allis Chalmers; for the last month of 1922 he was in Boston with the Waltham Watch Company; and in the years 1925-26 he was in Philadelphia working on the gasoline turbine at Budd Manufacturing Company.17
Tesla also sold a motor which was used in motion-picture equipment to Wisconsin Electric in 1918 and a valvular conduit, or “unidirectional fluid flow tube,” to an unspecified oil company.18 This last invention, which can also be called a fluid diode, could not only be used to pump oil from the ground but also be attached to the bladeless turbine to turn it into a combustion engine. According to Tesla expert Leland Anderson, this invention “is the only valving patent without moving parts. It has been used in attempts to develop micro-miniature radiation hardened logic circuits and simple fluid computers.”19
Waltham Speedometers & Automobile Clocks
Every progressive automobile manufacturer is adding improvements to his car. This is why the only Air-Friction Speedometer in the world, invented by Nikola Tesla, perfected and developed by Waltham…has won the unqualified approval of the world’s great automotive engineers. You will find this…instrument upon such cars as the Cunningham, Lafayette, Leach-Biltwell, Lincoln, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Renault, Rolls-Royce, Stevens-Duryea, Wills-Sainte Claire and others.
The Speedometer of Instantaneous Accuracy20
The inventor arrived at the Copley Plaza in Boston to negotiate with Mr. May, the manager of the factory, the advance and royalty schedule.21 Concerning revenues, Tesla received $5,000 from Waltham, assigning them three of his patents in 1922 for a speedometer and tachometer. This agreement included royalties which he received until at least 1929. Pyle National eventually paid him $15,000, and maybe $30,000 in 1925; from Budd National, he received $30,000 for the turbines, and probably a similar amount from Allis Chalmers, from whom he was expecting profits on the order of a quarter of a million dollars per year.22 George Scherff received 5 percent from most of these contracts.
Tesla arrived back home at the tail end of 1918 in time for Christmas dinner with the Johnsons. He stayed for a brief time at the Waldorf and then moved to the Hotel St. Regis, where he lived off and on for the next few years. The great influenza epidemic was just in its beginning stages, and Katharine was one of the first to display signs of its ravages. In the next year, over a billion people were infected and 20 million died world-wide. She was lucky to survive. Her health deteriorated throughout the year, and by the following Christmas she experienced episodes during which she lost consciousness three times within a single day.23 Perhaps heightened by the severity of the situation and with new income from Waltham, Tesla paid Robert checks totaling at least $1,500 during this period.
Throughout 1919, Tesla’s autobiography appeared in serialized form in Gernsback’s Electrical Experimenter. Paired with photographs and a series of spectacular Frank Paul drawings, the story began as an unusual tale of a wizard-child growing up in another era in a faraway land. The account of the early years of Tesla’s life oozed charm and wit, with its numerous Mark Twainian depictions of amusing anecdotes, harrowing experiences, life with his inventive mother, preacher father, prodigal brother, and three doting sisters. Digging deep into his past, Tesla explored the tragedy of his brother’s death, how it impacted his career decision, the traumatic move away from the idyllic farm to the clutter of Gospić, his college years, engineering training in Europe before coming to America, and his early meetings with Edison, Westinghouse, and members of the Royal Society of London. Also included was an uncommon description of his peculiar powers of eidetic imagery, out-of-body experiences, childhood illnesses, phobias, and idiosyncrasies. In month after month of fascinating reading, the pundit detailed the development of his ideas, his physical breakdown and “opening up of the third eye” experience and accompanying revelation which led to the development of the rotating magnetic field, his creation of the telautomaton, work in Colorado Springs, and the grand Wardenclyffe world-wireless design.
This liaison with Gernsback supplied the inventor with a steady income and helped Electrical Experimenter boost its circulation to around 100,000. Simultaneously, My Inventions also provided the world with a notable autobiographical testimony of one of the most singular and controversial personalities of the age.
The year also saw numerous articles about Marconi’s recent experiences intercepting impulses possibly emanating from extraterrestrials. With Professor Pickering writing Elihu Thomson that he might have detected vegetation on the moon24 and a resurgence of interest in the “Canals of Mars” scenario, the press jumped at the Italian’s far-out declaration and grilled him for additional details.
Stealing Tesla’s thunder even on this front, Marconi proclaimed that he “had often received strong signals out of the ether which seemed to come from some place outside the earth and which might conceivably have proceeded from the stars.” As to the language problem of communicating with the Martians, Marconi said, “It is an obstacle, but I don’t think it is insurmountable. You see, one might get through some such message as 2 plus 2 equals 4, and go on repeating it until an answer came back signifying ‘Yes.’…Mathematics must be the same throughout the physical universe.”25
Seeking redress in a variety of ways, Tesla sought publicity in Electrical World, where he attributed the Italian’s signals to an undertone metronome effect emanating from other wireless operators. Anticipating the possibility that a critic might ascribe the same mechanism to his own extraterrestrial encounter of 1899, Tesla added: “At the time I carried on those investigations there existed no wireless plant [capable of]…produc[ing] a disturbance perceptible in a radius of more than a few miles.”26 This, of course, was a false premise, as Marconi at that time was already sending messages hundreds of miles.
Johnson wrote Tesla that “When Marconi repeats [your] idea, it is no longer laughed at,” but in some circles, this did not seem to be the case.
Celesial Movies
Mr. Tesla has small confidence in the Marconian idea of getting into communication by way of mathematics. He would prefer to send pictures by wireless: the human face, for example. But suppose Mars does not like your face. That would be a regrettable rebuff to scientific investigation. If civilization on Mars is as old as we are asked to believe, the Martians have no doubt acquired their own taste in faces.27
Although the Christmas dinner of 1919 was marred by Katharine’s ill health, it was overshadowed by good news: President Wilson had appointed Robert ambassador to Italy! With mixed emotions and Katharine apparently recovering her health, Tesla’s friends left for Europe, where they stayed throughout the following year.
Now, really alone, the wizard continued his slide from public scrutiny. Copied, mocked at, and ultimately abandoned by the world he helped create, Tesla tried to keep his life in perspective and contain his anger by doing his best to transform it; but over time the irony of it all took its toll and caused an already eccentric individual to exaggerate already strange ways. Tesla would become more fanatical about cleanliness and spend more time walking the streets after hours, circling his block three times before entering the St. Regis and avoiding stepping on cracks on the sidewalks. Some said he peeked in windows and liked to watch others in voyeuristic ways. Practicing “gastronomical frugality,”28 the celibate slowly turned away from the meat and potatoes of life and eventually from eating solids altogether. Now he would rarely write in pen, preferring the less definite pencil. He would spend more time by himself, feeding the pigeons at midnight by the Forty-second Street Library or stealing away via the Staten Island ferry to a quiet farm where he could block out the city and search once again for his fountainhead.29 With the Johnsons’ departure, he left for Milwaukee to consummate his relationship with Allis Chalmers.
Much of his time in Wisconsin was invested in trying to perfect the turbine. However, he had reached an impasse, what Sartre calls a “counterfinality,” or unforeseen event which opposes the goal intended, with Hans Dahlstrand, head engineer. Thwarted, Tesla had no recourse but to return to New York. So upset was he that he refused to talk about it when his biographer, Jack O’Neill, questioned him on the Milwaukee experience.30
Allis Chalmers had issued Dahlstrand’s detailed report describing a long list of serious problems, as he saw it, in the manufacture of the turbine. Aside from the fatigue and cracking of the disks, Dahlstrand also cited additional impediments, including only a 38 percent efficiency performance, a decrease of mechanical efficiency as steam pressure increased, a problem in designing attachment gears needed to join the turbine to other units, and a high cost of production. Another factor was that the present-day motors, such as the Parsons turbine which was being developed by Westinghouse, or the Curtis motor, being developed by GE, were operating satisfactorily.31
This question of the failure of the Tesla turbine was posed to a number of Tesla experts. Leland Anderson found that manufacturers interested in the Tesla turbine “all say it is a fine concept and an excellent machine, but there [are] too [many]…support systems…to be replaced for a machine not that much better in performance. And that is the point—the Tesla turbine is good, but not that much better.”32
C. R. Possell, president and chief engineer of the American Development & Manufacturing Company, one of the only existing organizations working on manufacturing Tesla bladeless turbines and pumps, offered a somewhat different explanation. Mr. Possell, who initially worked on the Tesla “boundary layer drag turbine” during the Korean War for the military and who has been actively trying to perfect the turbine for thirty-five years, stated that the main problem had simply to do with the high cost of research and development.
According to Possell, “Tesla was about twenty-five to thirty years ahead of his time. Metallurgy was not what it is today. Magnetic bearings are a whole new science. He didn’t have the right materials. Instrumentation [for measuring performance] was in its infancy, and it was hard to demonstrate the turbine adequately. Somewhere between the first prototype and the first use of it, you are going to have hundreds and hundreds of man hours, and the turbine didn’t get that.” Possell gave as just one example (and there are numerous others), the “millions of man hours” required to get a plane to fly at Mach One.
At present, the Tesla pump, based on the same technology, has been used by Jerry LaBine as a replacement for the motor in the jet ski recreational vehicle, and also, it has been further developed by Max Gurth, inventor of the “Discflo pump.” Utilizing Tesla’s basic idea and principles associated with the structure of a vortex (responsible for such events as whirlpools and tornadoes) and laminar flow, (i.e., the natural, gentle movement through fluids), Gurth has been able to increase the space between the disks. Thus, he has improved its ability to move such difficult products as solid waste and petrochemicals. Whereas a normal pump would have their blades pitted and corroded by coming into contact with the assorted troublesome products, the boundary layer drag pump has no blades and therefore avoids that entire problem!33
Possell not only sees a day when the pump will be used inside the human body, as, for instance, a heart valve, but also a day when the turbine is perfected. One of the great advantages of a bladeless Tesla engine is its ability to withstand extremely high temperatures. “Bladed turbines are about at their maximum,” Possell said, meaning that they can run at about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, “although GE is experimenting with turbines that can run at 2,200 degrees. If you could boost the temperature an additional 350 degrees, you would double its Horse Power output.” Possell is convinced that the bladeless turbine built with new ceramic components could run at about 2,700 degrees, which would effectively “triple the Horse Power performance.” Thus, Possell is also working to design an engine to compete with the Pegasus engine found in the VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) Harrier jet. This VTOL of the future has been named the Phalanx. The vehicle will not come about, however, without large funding and commitment from the highest levels of industry and government.34
The waiter was surprised to see an elegant gentleman sitting at the breakfast counter before the restaurant was officially opened. “Aren’t you Dr. Tesla,” the fellow inquired, amazed to see such an important man back in town after so many years.
Having received permission from the owner to eat as early as possible, Tesla replied in the affirmative. He had journeyed to Colorado Springs from Milwaukee, retracing his past and looking toward a possible future when he might erect another wireless station. With a key from Dean Evans of the local engineering school, the inventor was able to utilize the lab to work on some technical calculations. Enjoying the much-needed respite, and perhaps a quick jaunt in a hot spring, the inventor had returned to his beloved retreat. There the spry mountaineer could perch himself like a phoenix on a cliff, to sit and contemplate Thor’s design, and watch the lightning storms that crackled along the jagged horizon.35