FOLLOWING A SERIES OF MEETINGS WITH PROMINENT SCIENTISTS in Europe and a visit with his family, Tesla returned to New York. With the departure of his friend Anthony Szigeti, the small size of his Grand Street laboratory, and his desire for more space, Tesla opened a more spacious facility at 33-35 South Fifth Avenue (now called LaGuardia Place) in 1899. Ironically the lab was located only blocks south of the Edison Electric Light Company's elaborate showroom and headquarters at 65 Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, where Edison's new products were on display.
Tesla was buoyed by his European sojourn. He stood out with his elegant attire, white gloves, and Continental manner. He took up residence in one of the country's most prestigious hotels, the Astor House, in Lower Manhattan near St. Paul's Chapel. Now a man of means, he dined regularly at Delmonico's, the most famous and exquisite restaurant in America. But he ate alone, indulging his idiosyncrasies. Phobic about germs, he would use two dozen cloth napkins in a single meal (adhering to his penchant for items divisible by three), wiping clean his dishes and silverware prior to eating.
Although his fame was spreading, he remained a loner. On occasion he would meet with Thomas Commerford Martin, by now his trusted publicist, or the engineers at Westinghouse who were working on projects associated with his patents. He was especially eager to apply the knowledge he had gained from his meeting with Vilhelm Bjerknes in Paris to his own research on wireless transmission. He plunged into his work, keeping a nocturnal schedule. His single-mindedness and aloofness become the stuff of legend. Transmission expert Frank Jenkins of the Duke Power Engineering Society remembered him like this:
He was not an easy person to work for because he expected almost as much from his help as he did from himself. Since he could depend entirely on his memory for all details, he believed others could too if they tried hard enough. He required his machinist to work from memory. He was unable throughout his life to cooperate with others in acquiring knowledge and conducting research ... but preferred to work independently.
Before he could become completely absorbed in wireless transmission, other problems that demanded Tesla's attention were looming on the horizon. For Westinghouse to continue implementing Tesla's AC system and motor, larger sums of capital would be required. Edison's propaganda campaign was in full swing now, and it had a ripple effect on Westinghouse's own backers. A number of them began to balk. Finally they delivered an ultimatum. Tesla had to modify Westinghouse's equipment to run on higher frequencies, and Tesla's royalty agreement had to be canceled. The demands left Westinghouse in a bind. To convince Tesla to nullify the contract would seriously jeopardize any prospects for Westinghouse to reap the benefits of an AC system in the future. As an inventor himself, moreover, he felt a strong sense of loyalty toward Tesla and understood the value of patent royalties.
Faced with the unpleasant task of confronting Tesla, Westinghouse diplomatically suggested the following: if Tesla did not relinquish the royalty clause, then he (Westinghouse) would lose control over Tesla's patents. The negotiations between the two men were vividly described by Tesla's personal friend and biographer John J. O'Neill:
“I believe your polyphase system is the greatest discovery in the field of electricity,” Westinghouse explained....
“Mr. Westinghouse,” said Tesla, “you have been my friend, you believed in me when others had no faith; you were brave enough to go ahead and pay me a million dollars when others lacked courage.... The benefits that will come to civilization from my polyphase system mean more to me than money involved. Mr. Westinghouse, you will save your company so that you can develop my inventions. Here is your contract and here is my contract – I will tear both of them to pieces and you will no longer have any troubles from my royalties.”
Matching his actions to his words Tesla tore up the contract.... Westinghouse, thanks to Tesla's magnificent gesture, was able to make good his promise to Tesla to make his alternating current system available to the world. (O'Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla)
At $2.50 per horsepower, Tesla lost an estimated $12 million with his act of generosity under this arrangement.
Westinghouse was able to begin making good on his promise. The Gold King Mine in Telluride, Colorado, was in desperate financial straits, having all but exhausted its means of powering mining activities. It had depleted neighboring forestland and could no longer afford to cart in coal to fuel its machines. Company manager L.L. Nunn had read about the successes of Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse with alternating current power and was impressed by their claims that AC could be transmitted much longer distances than DC.
Nunn was able to strike a deal with Tesla and Westinghouse to build the world's first commercial-grade alternating-current power plant in Ames, Colorado, near Telluride. Whereas electricity had been used in the past chiefly to power public lighting, the initial transmission line for the Colorado mine delivered enough power to operate a 100-horsepower synchronous motor, itself started by a Tesla AC induction engine. The Ames Power Plant began operation in 1891, and Nunn's venture would provide a model for the development of power distribution at Niagara Falls. For the time being, the word was out—AC power worked! It could be transmitted over many miles and power large equipment. The mine and the economy of Telluride were saved.
In 1890–1891, as Westinghouse was negotiating the deal with Nunn that led to the Ames plant, Tesla was hardly sitting idle. Since he had ceded his royalties to Westinghouse, he would not receive income from the success of the AC installation in Colorado. He would need to develop other sources of revenue, and his mind took off in three major directions. First, having successfully delivered his polyphase induction system, he would seek the means to deliver power wirelessly. Second, he would try to invent new methods of illumination. And third, he would investigate the wireless transmission of intelligence. These broad goals established the direction of work that would occupy Tesla for the next 50 years.
The pursuit of the wireless transmission began at his Grand Street lab as he was busy exploring Hertz's work on high-frequency electromagnetic waves. Tesla was determined to increase the frequency of electrical vibrations until they were equal to light. He hoped to produce light more efficiently than the wasteful process used in Edison's incandescent light bulb. In the delivery of electricity to an Edison bulb, only 5% of the power was effective; the other 95% was lost to heat waves.
Drawing upon Lord Kelvin's 1856 theory of condenser discharge, for which no apparent use had yet been developed, Tesla embarked upon his own production of electrical oscillations. Kelvin had theorized that when a condenser is discharged, its action is like the up-and-down bobbing that takes place when a weighted, stretched spring is released. The electricity, he showed, rushes from one plate into the other and then back again; the process continues until all the stored energy is used up in overcoming frictional losses. The back-and-forth surges take place at an extremely high frequency, hundreds of millions per second.
Tesla reasoned that if he could build a device that continuously emits electricity at higher frequencies, he would be able to achieve important technical advantages. Among these would be lamps that glow more brilliantly and the ability to transmit energy more efficiently. Tesla began his high-frequency investigations by replicating Hertz's apparatus for giving off an electric spark and propagating electromagnetic waves in space.
At the heart of Hertz's machine was a large induction coil, consisting of an iron core wound with two different thicknesses of wire. A battery with one lead would be connected to the iron core, and the other lead would run to a telegraph key. That, in turn, would be connected to the thicker of the two wires (primary). Each of two leads—one running from the thinner wire (secondary) and one running from the iron core—would be attached to each of two electrodes, with a gap separating them. Every time current flowing from the battery to the telegraph key was turned on or off, the induction coil produced high-voltage sparks between the two electrodes.
Into this apparatus, Tesla introduced a capacitor and took to manipulating the induction coil in and out. Eventually he would remove the iron core and rely on air cores for separate windings of both the primary and secondary wires, which were tuned to resonate. He would also replace the battery with an AC generator, as well as a step-up transformer.
Sending electricity a long distance would require higher voltage, basically to push the current through the wires. However, the use of high voltages in homes and factories would be dangerous. The step-up transformer made it possible to increase low-voltage, high-current AC to high-voltage, low-current AC at higher frequencies. This was not possible with direct current, however, since DC could only be distributed over short distances. Eventually a distribution transformer was introduced in the system to step down the higher voltages needed in factories, or for high-speed electric trains. For more modest domestic uses, a home-supply transformer would be introduced to further step down the distribution to 110 volts.
Tesla was attempting to manipulate the vibrations of every capacitor discharge and obtain higher voltages from the current produced by an induction coil. Tinkering in this way finally enabled him to control the amount of discharge as well as the frequency. He called his machine an oscillating generator. His findings were reflected in his application for Tesla PATENT 462,418 – METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR ELECTRICAL CONVERSION AND DISTRIBUTION, filed on February 4, 1891. It was granted on November 3, 1891. The invention would ultimately become known as the Tesla coil. With its primary and secondary circuits both tuned to vibrate in harmony, the Tesla coil would be one of his greatest inventions. It would be used in various forms for the future of radio and television.
“Awesome” could easily be the word for what Tesla observed next. Sparks of great length and frequency would spout from the coils in his lab not connected to the power-generating primary coil. Because the different secondary coils were tuned to the same wavelength or frequency of the primary coil, the secondary coils would erupt in sparks. Observing this, Tesla devised all shapes of coils that set the lab awash in streaking jolts of electricity. In working with such high voltages, he made sure to keep one hand in his pocket to avoid completing a circuit that could electrocute him on the spot. At last he was transmitting energy wirelessly! He planned a spectacular demonstration of the new principle, in which he would wave unconnected glass tubes that looked like flaming swords and could, to everyone's amazement, light up a room.
The Crookes radiometer loomed large in Tesla's thinking. English physicist and chemist Sir William Crookes's experiments and spiritual investigations in the 19th century greatly influenced Tesla's thinking. The Crookes radiometer, today considered a novelty item, was basically a glass globe with the air removed. Inside was a system of vanes, each blackened on one side and polished on the other, that rotated when exposed to radiant energy. Crookes developed the radiometer to utilize vacuum balance in his research on the element thallium. He never did provide a true explanation for the apparent “attraction and repulsion resulting from radiation.”
What might have attracted Tesla to the radiometer was Crookes's use early on of high-voltage current produced by an old-fashioned induction coil to achieve rotation. Tesla believed that he could achieve more far-reaching results by fashioning other devices for illumination: glass tubes that enclosed different gases such as argon and xenon, or had the air removed from them; an incandescent carbon button lamp (his single-electrode incandescent lamp); fluorescent tubes, and neon-filled tubes in the shape of letters.
Experimenting in this way, Tesla produced four new kinds of lamps:
Applying the strategy he learned from Peck and Brown, Tesla filed patent applications 454,622 – SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC LIGHTING, and 455,069 – ELECTRIC INCANDESCENT LAMP, in spring 1891. With that done, he was ready to demonstrate his endeavors publicly. He enlisted his friend Thomas Commerford Martin to launch a campaign to publicize his work on high-frequency AC.
Martin arranged for Tesla to deliver another lecture to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), on May 20, 1891, at Columbia College. Before the same body three years earlier, he had delivered his groundbreaking paper, “A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers.” This time he would be an even greater showman, beguiling his audience with fantastic, never-before-seen demonstrations of wireless illumination. To say that his display was mesmerizing would not do it justice. Was he using sleight of hand? Were there tricks up his sleeve? Quite the contrary. He was able to explain each of his demonstrations with prodigious mathematical formulas and detailed schematics. It was all science, and Tesla held his audience in thrall for over three hours.
Biographer Thomas Commerford Martin recorded this lecture and others in The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (1894). According to Martin's account,
Mr. Tesla did not hesitate to show many new and brilliant experiments, and to advance the frontier of discovery far beyond any point he had theretofore marked publicly. . . The ground covered by them is so vast that only the leading ideas and experiments can here be touched upon; besides, it is preferable that the lectures should be carefully gone over for their own sake, it being more than likely that each student will discover a new beauty or stimulus in them.
THE TESLA LECTURES
For the Columbia College lecture, he pulled out all the stops. Not only would he wave around his “flaming swords,” he would treat his audience to something very special. Witnesses would report:
With hundreds of thousands of volts of high-frequency currents surging across his body, he would hold in his hand a strangely powerful little “carbon-button” lamp. Energy from his body caused gas molecules in the tube to bombard a small button of carborundum until it glowed to incandescence, resulting in a light twenty times brighter than any other lamp in existence. The energy inside the bulb was so powerful that it vaporized diamonds and rubies. (Cheney and Uth, Tesla: Master of Lightning)
For dramatic effect, he held the carbon button lamp aloft like the Statue of Liberty. Although never produced or marketed for practical purposes, the carbon button lamp was used for experiments in which Tesla bombarded rubies with electrical or molecular energy—a forerunner of today's laser technology and atom smashing.
The Columbia lecture produced a groundswell of excitement and a rush to capitalize on his inventions. Still, the naysayers, doubters, and self-promoters came forward to dispute Tesla's findings or to claim credit for having covered the same ground in their own experiments. Tesla took on all challengers, but such prominent electrical engineers as Elihu Thompson and Michael Pupin (a fellow Serb) took the bait and insisted that they had discovered the high-frequency principles long before Tesla. In the end, Tesla's patents affirmed time after time that his work was original and path-breaking.
The full import and possibilities of the Tesla coil have remained undetermined to the present day, since Tesla worked out much of the mathematics in his head, never committing it to paper. Scientists, physicists, and electrical engineers continue in their efforts to unravel many of the secrets Tesla took to his grave. His investigations and trials with the Tesla coil is some of his least understood work.
Similarly, Tesla's work on high-frequency currents led to a number of discoveries that he never patented. Among the by-products are modern electric clocks, x-ray photography, and therapeutic deep-heat healing effects that laid the foundation for the medical field of diathermy. Yet even these advances took a backseat to his lifelong obsession with the wireless transmission of energy. Indeed it was his work in this area that ultimately earned him the labels of magician, sorcerer, wizard, shaman, mystic, “man with lightning in his hand,” “master of lightning,” and “electrical messiah.”
Just seven years after his arrival in the United States, Tesla's Columbia College lecture catapulted him to the forefront of this country's electrical inventors. With all the accolades and press coverage that followed his presentation to the AIEE, he was pressured to deliver lectures in Europe. Before doing so, however, he achieved what he considered one of his highest honors—U.S. citizenship. “The papers ... that conferred on me the honor of American citizenship,” he would later write, “are always kept in a safe, while my other orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other distinctions are packed away in old trunks.”
Ironically, Tesla's naturalization documents, dated July 30, 1891, listed him as residing at the Hotel Gerlach (currently the Radio Wave Building), at 49 West 27th Street in New York City. It was an early indication of his movements from hotel to hotel—a pattern that would continue for the rest of his life. He filled in his occupation as “civil engineer” and his former nationality as “Austrian”.
The pride Tesla took in his citizenship would be reflected just two days later, on August 1, 1891, when he filed his application for Patent 464,667 – ELECTRIC CONDENSER. In it he proudly identified himself as a “citizen of the United States.”
With that patent, Tesla set the record straight regarding improvements above and beyond his demonstration for the AIEE in which he passed gas-filled tubes that glowed between two electrically charged plates. Indeed it marked an important step forward in his efforts to transmit wireless energy over long distances.
Never one to gloat over the success of his lectures, Tesla was anxious to resume his research on wireless energy after the AIEE event. How currents pass through the Earth was a phenomenon he was especially eager to explore, as highlighted in his later account of the Columbia lecture.
While the spontaneous success of my lecture was due to spectacular features, its chief import was in showing that all kinds of devices could be operated thru a single wire without return. This was the initial step in the evolution of my wireless system. The idea presented itself to me that it might be possible, under observance of proper conditions of resonance, to transmit electric energy thru the earth, thus dispensing with all artificial conductors. (“The True Wireless,” Electrical Experimenter, May 1919)
Tesla did his best to shut out the many invitations, honors, and other flattering inducements being offered to him and ardently pursued his research in grounding. But the demands for personal appearances finally became irresistible, and Tesla agreed to address the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London.
On the night of February 3, 1892, he took the podium before a British audience in formal attire and rapt attention. Elegant as ever himself, Tesla rose to new levels of showmanship. His “magic wands,” button lamp, and gales of electrical sparks circling his body brought resounding cheers from the audience. His coup de grace was to take an apparatus similar to the Crookes radiometer and place it in the electric field generated between two electrified zinc plates, causing the vanes to begin spinning. Here was Tesla demonstrating the first wireless motor.
On hand for Tesla's demonstration were some of England's most prominent physicists and electrical engineers, including his heroes William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and Sir William Crookes. So ecstatic was the crowd that he was urged to repeat his lecture the following evening for an equally august body of leading scientists. Sir James Dewar, a Scottish chemist and physicist best known for his work with low-temperature phenomena and the inventor of the Dewar flask, was instrumental in bringing about the second lecture. Recounting his reluctance to stay on, Tesla wrote the following:
It had been my intention to leave immediately for Paris in compliance with a similar obligation, but Sir James Dewar insisted on my appearing before the Royal Institution. I was a man of firm resolve but succumbed easily to the forceful arguments of the great Scotchman. He pushed me into a chair and poured out half a glass of a wonderful brown fluid which sparkled in all sorts of iridescent colors and tasted like nectar. “Now,” said he, “you are sitting in Faraday's chair and you are enjoying whiskey he used to drink.” In both aspects it was an enviable experience. The next evening I gave a demonstration before that Institution. (My Inventions)
His stay in London also enabled Tesla to solidify his European electrical patents and to meet with many other physicists and electrical engineers. Most notable for him was the opportunity to present Lord Kelvin and Sir William Crookes with their own Tesla coils. His extended visit with Crookes was devoted to discussing their respective research, the potential uses of electricity, their personal backgrounds, and their religious beliefs. The discussion turned to the supernatural, of which Tesla was not an actual believer. Exhausted and under strain, he was not able to muster much of a defense against Crookes, who would later serve as president of the Society of Psychical Research. Indeed Tesla paused to consider. “I might not have paid attention to other men,” he later wrote, “but was susceptible to his [Crookes's] arguments, as it was his epochal work on radiant matter, which I had read as a student, that made me embrace the electrical career. I reflected that the conditions for a look into the beyond were most favorable.”
From London he rushed to Paris, where he was to deliver two scheduled lectures. To say that Tesla's lectures and demonstrations rocked the news media and scientific community would be an understatement. After the first of the two lectures in Paris, however, he returned to his hotel and received a message that his mother Djuka was in failing health back in Gospić. Tesla would not stay around to give the second lecture or to bask in all the attention, even if that was his style. The sheer effort of lecturing, answering questions, and dealing with patent issues, combined with his irregular sleeping habits, was catching up with him. He left Paris immediately.
The sleepless rush to Gospić caused a patch of Tesla's hair to turn white overnight, though it returned to its natural jet black color within a month. In any event, he arrived at his dying mother's bedside just in time.
Tesla never heeded the cautions of Sir William Crookes and others that he seemed on the verge of a physical or nervous breakdown. His condition at this time led to a harrowing experience that he recounted years later:
I had become completely exhausted by pain and long vigilance.... As I lay helpless, I thought if my mother died while I was away from her bedside she would surely give me a sign.... I reflected that the conditions for a look into the beyond were most favorable....
During the whole night every fiber in my brain was strained in expectancy, but nothing happened until early in the morning, when I fell in a sleep ... and saw a cloud carrying angelic figures ... one of whom gazed upon me lovingly and gradually assumed the features of my mother. The appearance slowly floated across the room and vanished, and I was awakened by an indescribably sweet song of many voices. In that instant a certitude, which no words can express, came upon me that my mother had just died.... This occurred long ago, and I have never had the faintest reason since to change my views on psychical and spiritual phenomena, for which there is absolutely no foundation. (My Inventions)
This would not be Tesla's first nor last journey into the psychic or supernatural world. Crookes's admonitions and own spiritual research were intrinsic to a great deal of Tesla's thinking thereafter, and ultimately would play a large part in his unraveling.
Following his mother's passing on April 4, 1892, Tesla suffered the predicted breakdown. He spent a number of weeks recovering and visiting with grieving family members. During the time in his home country, he was accorded special honors by various Serbian dignitaries and solidified his status as a national hero. Yet it was also a time of mental stocktaking, since he was unable to conduct any laboratory work and needed to restore his own energy.
Finally it was time to formulate plans and resume his work in America. With his health fully restored, Tesla mulled over advice he had been given in London by Lord Rayleigh:
I never realized that I possessed any particular gift of discovery but Lord Rayleigh, whom I always considered as an ideal man of science, had said so and if that was the case I felt that I should concentrate on some big idea.
One day, as I was roaming in the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm.... All of a sudden, there was a lightning flash and a few moments after a deluge. ... [T]he two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of lightning being much like that of a sensitive trigger.... If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it . . . this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature. It seemed a hopeless undertaking, but I made up my mind to try it and immediately on my return to the United States, in the summer of 1892, work was begun ... because a means of the same kind was necessary for the successful transmission of energy without wires. (My Inventions)
Tesla's time in Europe would prove pivotal. He set the English and French scientific communities abuzz, wrapped up family matters, and was ready to return to the United States with renewed vigor. Upon his arrival in New York, he settled into the Hotel Gerlach and increased his Fifth Avenue laboratory staff. He was ready to embark on global and perhaps interstellar research, as suggested by his discussions with Rayleigh and Crookes.
This time, however, he was interrupted by two lectures to which he had committed, at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in February 1893, and before the annual meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis in March 1893. Although much of the material was similar to his previous lectures, for the first time he expanded on the tuning of two different coils to the same frequency. In essence this was a rudimentary display of the essential components of radio: a transmitter, receiver, antenna, ground connection, and tuning device. The spark of one coil would transmit electric waves through the air that had been received by the other coil and then converted back into electricity. In his lecture at the Franklin Institute, titled “High Frequency and High Potential Currents,” Tesla told the audience:
I would say a few words on a subject which constantly fills my thoughts and which concerns the welfare of all. I mean the transmission of intelligible signals or perhaps even power to any distance without the use of wires. I am becoming daily more convinced of the practicality of the scheme.... I know full well that the great majority of scientific men will not believe that such results can be practically and immediately realized.... My conviction has grown so strong, that I no longer look upon this plan of energy or intelligence transmission as mere theoretical possibility, but as a serious problem in electrical engineering, which must be carried out some day. The idea of transmitting intelligence without wires is the natural outcome of the most recent results of electrical investigation.
As if these words were not enough to strike awe in his listeners, he brought them to the edge of their seats with a demonstration he described and explained in the lecture as follows:
On one set of the terminals of the coil, I have placed a large sphere of sheet brass, which is connected to a larger insulated brass plate.... I now set the coil to work and approach the free terminal with a metallic object held in my hand.... As I approach the metallic object to a distance of eight or ten inches, a torrent of furious sparks breaks forth from the end of the secondary wire, which passes through the rubber column. The sparks cease when the metal in hand touches the wire. My arm is now traversed by a powerful electric current, vibrating at about the rate of one million times a second. All around me the electrostatic force makes itself felt, and the air molecules and particles of dust flying about are acted upon and are hammering violently against my body. So great is this agitation of the particles, that when the lights are turned out you may see streams of feeble light appear on some parts of my body.... The streamers offer no particular inconvenience, except that in the ends of the fingertips a burning sensation is felt.... The streams of light which you have observed issuing from my hand are due to a potential of about 200,000 volts, alternating in rather irregular intervals, sometimes like a million times a second.
Years later, he would proudly sit in front of a camera to pose for the often reproduced photo of him holding a wirelessly illuminated light bulb—confirmation of his unofficial titles as “Father of the Wireless.”
During Tesla's absence overseas, Westinghouse faced dire financial problems. He found it financially burdensome to develop Tesla's polyphase AC system and was more interested in broadening the single-phase AC system, for which there was an existing market.
Westinghouse was on the verge of losing his status in the electricity industry, as larger electric companies were swallowing up smaller companies. Even Edison General Electric and the Thomson Houston Electric Company had merged in February 1892 to become General Electric (GE). J.P. Morgan, one of Edison's principal investors, attained even greater wealth and financial control with the merger. All but forgotten in the takeover was the fact that Morgan had been the first person to install Edison's incandescent lighting system in his home. Westinghouse, his credit overextended, needed to do something bold to regain credibility with his investors.
Looming on the horizon was the World's Columbian Exposition—the Chicago World Fair of 1893—to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World. Frederick Law Olmsted, America's foremost landscape architect, was responsible for laying out the fairgrounds, which occupied 639 acres next to Lake Michigan. It took three years to construct the fairgrounds and its 200 buildings. The exposition featured more than 250,000 displays and attractions, including the world's first Ferris Wheel, invented by George W. Ferris. Sophie Hayden, the first woman awarded a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), designed the famous Woman's Building. Only one structure from the original fairgrounds still stands today: the Palace of Fine Arts, transformed in 1931 into the Museum of Science and Industry.
A celebration of American industrialism and innovation, the fair would be lit by electricity. Bids were solicited, and the jousting was nasty—especially between Westinghouse (betting on an AC system) and General Electric (relying on DC). Here was the culmination of the War of the Currents. In the end, Westinghouse underbid all competitors and won the contract.
It was a bold move on many levels. First, Westinghouse stood to lose a fortune. Second, it would be a severe test to prove that Tesla's AC system was capable of lighting what amounted to a whole city. Failure would jeopardize chances of securing a contract for the pending Niagara Falls hydroelectric power generation project. Third, Edison held the patent on light bulbs and threatened to sue Westinghouse should Edison lamps show up among the 250,000 bulbs needed for fairground lighting.
Westinghouse retaliated by inventing his own device—the Westinghouse “stopper” bulb. As opposed to the one-piece fused-glass seal used in the Edison bulb, the Westinghouse innovation employed a ground-glass stopper mated to the bulb envelope for sealing. In the course of just a few months, Westinghouse feverishly produced thousands of these bulbs, a multitude of motors, and an entire two-phase Tesla AC system.
On May 1, 1893, atop a balcony of the fair's Administration Building, President Grover Cleveland ceremoniously pressed a gold-and-ivory telegraph key. A thousand feet away in Machinery Hall, an anxious group of Westinghouse engineers crowded around a 2,000-horsepower steam engine as it roared to life. The massive steam engine powered the Westinghouse generators, which pulsed electricity through the fairgrounds. The crowd roared with delight, as three huge fountains at the Court of Honor sent plumes of water soaring a hundred feet in the air.
For the Westinghouse crew, all was right with the world. The spectacle of buildings, walkways, and fountains gushing with shimmering, color-changing light was a fairyland vision. Westinghouse had succeeded beyond all expectations with Tesla's AC system. It was a resounding defeat for Edison and the death knell of the War of the Currents.
For the time being, Tesla remained behind the scenes and largely unheralded. When the Electricity Building opened on the fairgrounds in June, Westinghouse and Tesla would have the opportunity to beguile the American public with their vision of cheap power. It was a dream almost too momentous to imagine, revolutionizing the way people manage the physical world, how they spend their evening hours, and the very nature of work and leisure. Here for the first time, millions would see the electrical motors that would take over the burdensome physical tasks long performed by man or his animals, and the lamps that would light their houses.
Inside the Electricity Building, inventors rolled out their latest electrical gadgets, many of them dubious: electrically charged belts for a better sex life, electric body invigorators, and electrical hairbrushes. Edison displayed his phonograph and dazzled visitors with an eight-foot, half-ton incandescent light bulb. Ironically this was one of few Edison bulbs on display at the fair, since Westinghouse's stopper lamps were illuminating the grounds.
Tesla, too, would have his turn in the limelight. Soon he would take center stage as America's foremost Wizard of Physics. For the time being, he was back at his New York lab continuing his high-oscillation research. It would take a visit by Westinghouse to convince him how important it was to demonstrate his AC polyphase motor and machinery before the International Electrical Congress. Westinghouse reasoned that by demonstrating the AC systems, its commercial motors, and his oscillators, Tesla would cement his credibility with the foremost electricians in the world.
Tesla took the bait. He journeyed to Chicago that summer where a large part of the Westinghouse exhibit in the Electricity Building was devoted to his machinery. The display featured wireless-illuminated glass tubes shaped into the names of distinguished physicists; high-frequency currents sparkled magically around the room. According to the account of Thomas Commerford Martin, the apparatus represented the fruits of Tesla's labor over ten years:
It embraced a large number of different alternating motors and his earlier high frequency apparatus, disruptive discharge coils, and high frequency transformers. Among them a large ring intended to exhibit the phenomena of the rotating magnetic field [a large Egg of Columbus]. The field produced was very powerful and exhibited striking effects, revolving copper balls and eggs and bodies of various shapes at considerable distances and at great speeds. (The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla)
Although many of the devices appealed specifically to the thousand electrical cognoscenti in attendance, Tesla was about to dazzle the assembled throng with a display of unparalleled showmanship at his August 25 lecture. He looked gaunt and exhausted as he took the stage in a beautifully tailored gray-brown four-button cutaway suit. To anyone who noticed, his shoes were unusual—thick-soled with what looked like cork. Gauging the crowd like a seasoned showman, he delivered his lecture on mechanical and electrical oscillations at a methodical pace, supporting his theories with oscillators that could be used to transmit information or electrical energy. Building suspense, he beguiled the crowd with an Egg of Columbus that simultaneously spun balls, pivoted discs, and animated other devices that demonstrated principles of the rotating magnetic field and his theory of planetary motion. And then he put on a show, flashing giant sparks, lighting all sizes and shapes of protofluorescent lamps, and finally lighting himself up with a million volts of electricity passing through his body. Unharmed, he dramatically disproved Edison's charge that alternating current was deadly. It was theater of the highest order (Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World).
Over 25 million people attended the World's Fair, and many were seeing electricity for the first time. The excitement that Tesla ignited at the World's Columbian Exhibition has continued to influence electrical invention to the present day. His spectacle brought waves of adulation and made him a media darling in the burgeoning years of newspaper and magazine publishing. Society at large, people in influential places, scientific intelligentsia worldwide, and, most importantly, potential investors wanted a piece of him.
Elated but exhausted, Tesla returned to New York. He had a lot of work in front of him and needed large amounts of money to fund his research. T.C. Martin stepped in to orchestrate the next step in fund-raising. With the inventor's cooperation, he collected ten years of Tesla's lectures, articles, and discussions and readied them for publication. The compendium detailed all of Tesla's inventions up to December 1893, particularly those bearing on polyphase motors and the effects obtained with currents of high potential and high frequency.
Yet even Martin was reluctant to include material on Tesla's work on wireless transmission. Like many others, Martin considered the prospects far-fetched. As Tesla would recount in a 1919 article for the Electrical Experimenter, he was prevented from publishing all but the scantest information on the wireless transmission of energy.
I only need to say that as late as 1893, when I had prepared an elaborate chapter on my wireless system, dwelling on its various instrumentalities and future prospects ... friends of mine emphatically protested against its publication on the ground that such idle and far-fetched speculations would injure me in the opinion of conservative business men. So it came that only a small part of what I had intended to say was embodied in my address of that year before the Franklin Institute and National Electric Light Association under the chapter “On Electrical Resonance.” This little salvage from the wreck has earned me the title of “Father of the Wireless” from many well-disposed fellow workers, rather than the invention of scores of appliances which have brought wireless transmission within the reach of every young amateur and which, in a time not distant, will lead to undertakings overshadowing in magnitude and importance all past achievements of the engineer.
Martin's manuscript, running nearly 500 pages, was published in 1894 as The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla. In the short term, the publication bolstered Tesla'scredibility and spurred new interest among potential investors. Beyond that, the collection documented Tesla's pioneering work for succeeding generations of scientists and inventors.
