Chapter 5 – Father of the Wireless
A mass in movement resists change of direction. So does the world oppose a new idea. It takes time to make up the minds to its value and importance. Ignorance, prejudice and inertia of the old retard its early progress. It is discredited by insincere exponents and selfish exploiters. It is attacked and condemned by its enemies. Eventually, though, all barriers are thrown down, and it spreads like fire. This will also prove true of the wireless art.
Nikola Tesla
While in Europe, Tesla visited the Ganz works in Budapest to see a 1000-volt alternator they were building. He also visited Belgrade where the Serbian King Alexander I conferred the special title of Grand Officer of the Order of St Sava on him and the Serbian poet Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj wrote a poem in tribute to him.
On the return leg of his journey he went to Berlin to visit
Hermann von Helmholtz, who developed the mathematics of electrodynamics, then went on to Bonn to see
Heinrich Hertz, who was the first man to transmit and receive radio waves. Hertz had conducted his experiments with a simple sparking apparatus that could transmit radio waves across his lab. However, Hertz was a theoretical physicist who simply wanted to investigate the theories of
James Clerk Maxwell, not an electrical engineer who wanted to put them to a practical use. Tesla had already duplicated Hertz’s experiments and, from them, developed the
Tesla Coil which was capable of transmitting wirelessly over long distances.
On board ship on the way back to the US, Tesla had one of his epiphanies. He was thinking about an experience he had while walking in the Alps. Observing an oncoming thunderstorm, he noticed that rain held off until the first flashes of lightning and wondered whether he could use electricity to control the weather.
When Tesla arrived back in New York after his triumphal trip, he was greeted with a photograph of Edison signed: ‘To Tesla from Edison.’ Then Westinghouse dropped by with the news that they had won the contract to provide the power for the forthcoming 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.
The Wireless Transmission of Power
Hertz had conducted his experiments with a battery and a simple circuit interrupter, like a Morse key, connected to an induction coil – a small transformer – to produce a high-voltage spark. This could be detected using a copper loop with a spark gap.
Tesla quickly realized that, instead of a battery with a circuit interrupter, it would be better to use an AC current. While a circuit interrupter would only give a frequency of, at best, a few hundred cycles per second, an alternator could give 10,000 or 20,000 cycles per second. However, once an alternator reached that speed it began to fly apart, but higher frequencies could be generated electrically.
He had already used induction coils and capacitors – electrical storage devices such as a Leyden jar – to give split-phase AC currents to run his motors. These could also be used to increase the frequency even higher. Putting a connecting capacitor across the terminals of a coil produced a circuit that resonated, giving a spike in output. He called this the oscillating transformer, though other experimenters began calling it the Tesla Coil. A coil coupled to a capacitor that resonates at a specific frequency is the basis of all wireless transmission.
Refining his oscillating transformers, he earthed one terminal to the city’s water main, he moved around New York detecting the electromagnetic waves generated at various frequencies. Abandoning Hertz’s primitive spark gaps, he used other tuned circuits and vacuum tubes as detectors. However Tesla’s aim was not to transmit an intelligible signal as we use radio waves now. His goal was the wireless transmission of power.
The Skin Effect
Early in these experiments, Tesla accidentally touched a high-voltage terminal and, to his surprise, was unhurt. At high frequencies, electricity exhibits what is known as the ‘skin effect’. The magnetic field created pushes the current to the outside of a conductor, so it does not run through the body, damaging the nerves and muscles. Instead it travels across the surface, leaving the internal structure undamaged. In his public demonstrations, he touched one terminal of a high-frequency apparatus generating tens of thousands of volts and illuminated a bulb or tube held in the other hand. This also showed that alternating current, if at a sufficiently high frequency, was safer than direct current.
On the Road
Tesla and his lectures hit the road in 1893, and pulled in huge audiences with his dazzling demonstrations and novel ideas. In Philadelphia, he outlined a method of transmitting pictures – that is, television. The secret of wireless transmission, he said, was resonance. Wires become unnecessary as electrical impulses jump from a sending device to a receiver if they are tuned to the same frequency, and he presented a diagram showing aerials, transmitters, receivers and earth connections, all the elements of a modern broadcast system.
This was not just theory. He gave practical demonstrations. On one side of the stage he had a high-voltage transformer connected to a bank of Leyden jars, a sparking gap, a coil and a length of wire hanging from the ceiling. On the other side was an identical length of wire and an identical coil and bank of Leyden jars. But instead of the sparking gap there was a Geissler, or discharge tube that glowed when electricity was passed through it, like a primitive neon light.
Not only was the demonstration dazzling, it was full of strange sounds. When electricity was fed to the transformer, the core strained, making odd groaning sounds. Corona sizzled around the edges of the foil on the Leyden jars and sparks cracked across the sparking gap. But the radio waves travelled noisily from one antenna to the other and the Geissler tube lit up.
Tesla was advised to play down the possibilities of his wireless system. It seemed so fanciful it might deter conservative businessmen who might otherwise be interested in his motors or his lighting systems. Nevertheless, he said, it earned him the title of ‘Father of the Wireless’ among fellow researchers. Others had investigated the phenomenon of wireless transmission before him, but
Tesla had pioneered the use of the tuned circuit, the aerial and the ground connection. He was giving these demonstrations of wireless transmission a full year before
Guglielmo Marconi even began experimenting.
In 1896, Tesla received a letter from Sir William Preece (1834 – 1913) of the Imperial Post Office in London, asking Tesla for two wireless sets for trial. But Marconi was in London by then. He intervened, telling Preece that he had tried the Tesla system and it had not worked. Nevertheless, Tesla filed a patent for wireless transmission in September 1897.
Conspiring with the Devil
In St Louis, Missouri, 4,000 copies of a small-circulation electrical journal were sold because it carried an article about Tesla. When Tesla came to town, 80 electrical utility wagons paraded down the street. The 4,000-seat Grand Music Entertainment Hall was filled to overcapacity as several thousand more packed in. Tickets were being sold by scalpers for between $3 and $5 ($80 and $130 at today’s prices). Tesla did not disappoint, passing 200,000 volts through his body. He described the experiment in his published lecture:
I now set the coil to work and approach the free terminal with a metallic object held in my hand, this simply to avoid burns. As I approach the metallic object to a distance of 8 or 10 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 my 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. When such a streamer breaks out on any part of the body, it produces a sensation like the pricking of a needle. Were the potentials sufficiently high and the frequency of the vibration rather low, the skin would probably be ruptured under the tremendous strain, and the blood would rush out with great force in the form of fine spray or jet so thin as to be invisible, just as oil will when placed on the positive terminal of a Holtz machine [electrostatic generator]. The breaking through of the skin though it may seem impossible at first, would perhaps occur, by reason of the tissues under the skin being incomparably better at conducting. This, at least, appears plausible, judging from some observations.
I can make these streams of light visible to all, by touching with the metallic object one of the terminals as before, and approaching my free hand to the brass sphere, which is connected to the second terminal of the coil. As the hand is approached, the air between it and the sphere, or in the immediate neighbourhood, is more violently agitated, and you see streams of light now break forth from my fingertips and from the whole hand. Were I to approach the hand closer, powerful sparks would jump from the brass sphere to my hand, which might be injurious. 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. A vibration of the same amplitude, but four times as fast, to maintain which over three million volts would be required, would be more than sufficient to envelop my body in a complete sheet of flame. But this flame would not burn me up; quite contrarily, the probability is, that I would not be injured in the least. Yet a hundredth part of that energy, otherwise directed; would be amply sufficient to kill a person…
Waving various shaped tubes in the powerful electromagnetic field his oscillating transformer had produced, Tesla created beautiful effects like the ‘spokes of a wheel of glowing moonbeams’, the Electrical Engineer said.
Towards the end of the performance, Tesla held up one of his
phosphorescent lamps, the precursory of fluorescent lights, and announced that he would illuminate it by touching the terminal of his oscillating transformer with his other hand. When he did, the lamp lit up.
‘There was a stampede in the two upper galleries and they all rushed out,’ said Tesla. ‘They thought it was some part of the devil’s work.’
An All-American Joke
Returning to New York, Tesla acquired his US citizenship. To get back at Edison for his jibe years earlier of ‘You are still a Parisian’, Tesla decided, now that he was a fully-fledged American, to find out if Edison could take an all-American joke. He set up an experiment pitting a carbon-filament incandescent light that Edison had invented against an identical bulb that was empty.
Applying a current at a frequency of around one million cycles per second, the empty bulb glowed brightly – more brightly than Edison’s bulb which was being run on direct current. What’s more, the empty bulb stayed cool to the touch. Edison was far from amused and, once again, Tesla had shot down his former mentor in the popular press.
An incandescent light bulb is only 5 per cent efficient. The other 95 per cent is lost in the form of heat. This waste, Tesla said, was ‘on a par with the wanton destruction of whole forests for the sake of a few sticks of lumber’.
Tesla Keeps Inventing
However, to Tesla, the attention of the press was a distraction. He went to work increasing the power of his oscillators until he reached one million volts. Then he immersed a high-frequency oscillator in a vat of oil. By modulating the frequency he could get the oil to rotate at different rates.
Tesla then invented a new steam-driven generator that produced as much power as one 40 times its size. Instead of using the piston action of the steam engine to turn a crankshaft and flywheel, which then turn the generator, he put the cylinder inside the coils of the generator so that the metal pistons moving up and down generated electricity.
Chicago World’s Fair 1893
Westinghouse had won the contract to light the World’s Columbian Exposition, aka the Chicago World’s Fair, in May 1893 by putting in a bid much lower than that of General Electric, which now owned Edison’s patents. The buildings at the fair were to be illuminated with 200,000 bulbs, so this was an ideal opportunity to demonstrate how Tesla’s AC system could be used to light an entire city.
GE had initially estimated that it would cost $1.8 million to light the fair. When this was rejected, they revised it down to $554,000. Westinghouse came in at $399,000. At that price, Westinghouse had to devise a more economical system. In less than six months, they designed and built bigger generators than had ever been built before. Using AC at high-voltage, they could distribute this throughout the fair on thin wires, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of copper. The fair site would be a blaze of light and consume three times the amount of electricity then being utilized by the whole of the city of Chicago.
Westinghouse also had come up with a new design for an incandescent lamp to avoid infringing Edison’s patents and manufactured 250,000 of them. Consequently when Westinghouse went to see Tesla when he arrived back in New York, he had not put much thought to promoting his motors or his polyphase system. But realizing the importance of the World’s Fair as a showcase, Tesla went to Pittsburgh, he said, ‘to bring the motor to high perfection’.
Words Are Not Enough
The Columbian Exposition covered almost 700 acres (283 Hectares) and attracted some 28 million visitors from all over the world. The centre-piece was a Ferris wheel standing 264 ft (80 m) high that could carry over 2,000 people. It revolved on the largest one-piece axle ever forged. But it was Westinghouse’s illuminations that took the breath away. Former governor of Illinois, Will E. Cameron said:
Inadequate words have been found to convey a realizing idea of the beauty and grandeur of the spectacle which the Exposition offers by day, they are infinitely less capable of affording the slightest conception of the dazzling spectacle which greets the eye of the visitor at night … Indescribable by language are the electric fountains. One of them, called ‘The Great Geyser’, rises to a height to 150 ft [45 m], above a band of ‘Little Geysers’ … so bewildering no eyes can find the loveliest, their vagaries of motion so entrancing no heart can keep its steady beating.
Visiting the Electricity Pavilion
At the Chicago World’s Fair, the Electricity Pavilion rose to 169 ft (52 m) and covered 3.5 acres (1.4 Hectares) – the size of two soccer fields. In it, AEG exhibited the equipment they had used to transmit AC the record-breaking 109 miles (175 km) from Lauffen to Frankfurt in Germany. GE also demonstrated their new AC system. Both were technically infringing Tesla’s patents, but Westinghouse made no objection as it helped demonstrate the superiority of AC. Instead, they erected a 45-ft (14 m) high monument to the ‘Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Tesla Polyphase System’.
Not to be outshone, GE erected a 82-ft (25 m ) Tower of Light in the centre of the Electricity Pavilion, with 18,000 bulbs around the pedestal, which was topped by a huge Edison light bulb.
Other stands showed electric body invigorators, charged belts and electricity hairbrushes. It was then thought that electricity could cure all ills. Elihu Thomson exhibited a high-frequency coil that could produce a spark 5 ft (1.5 m) long. Alexander Graham Bell launched a telephone that transmitted sound on a beam of light, while Elisha Gray (1835 – 1901) unveiled a prototype fax machine called the teleautography – for a few cents, you could have your signature reproduced electronically at a distance. Edison himself exhibited his phonograph, the multiplex telegraph and his kinetescope, which produced moving pictures for an individual viewer.
On the Westinghouse stand, Tesla exhibited AC motors and generators, and had the names of famous electrical pioneers – Franklin, Helmholtz, Faraday, Maxwell and Henry – all spelt out in phosphorescent tubes, along with that of Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj (his old friend, the Serbian poet). Huge flashing neon signs saying Westinghouse and Welcome Electricians were lit by discharges of artificial lightning that made a deafening sound. Among the flashing sparks and the tubes, lit wirelessly, was a large Egg of Columbus spinning furiously.
The Wizard of Physics
Tesla visited the World’s Fair in August to put on a week of demonstrations and to attend the International Electrical Congress being held there. Its honorary chairman was Helmholtz, who Tesla showed his personal exhibit. A thousand electrical engineers attended, including most of the leaders in the field. Ten dollars were offered for seats to see Tesla, who was introduced as the ‘Wizard of Physics’. However, entrance was limited to those who could produce the appropriate credentials.
Tesla demonstrated mechanical oscillators and steam generators that were so small it was said they could fit in the crown of a hat. He produced motors that could run so precisely they could be used as electric clocks and a continuous-wave radio transmitter, the implications of which were lost on most of his distinguished audience. He also exhibited a version of his Egg of Columbus which demonstrated his theory of planetary motion. The Electrical Experimenter said:
In this experiment one large, and several small brass balls were usually employed. When the field was energized all the balls would be set spinning, the large one remaining in the centre while the small ones revolved around it, like moons about a planet, gradually receding until they reached the outer guard and raced along the same field.
But the demonstration which most impressed the audiences was the simultaneous operation of numerous balls, pivoted discs and other devices placed in all sorts of positions and at considerable distances from the rotating field. When the currents were turned on and the whole animated with motion, it presented an unforgettable spectacle. Mr Tesla had many vacuum bulbs in which small, light metal discs were pivotally arranged on jewels and these would spin anywhere in the hall when the iron ring was energized.
The Columbian Exposition had proved to its 28 million visitors that AC was safe. From then on, over 80 per cent of all electrical devices bought in the US worked on alternating current.
Tesla’s Famous Friends
As a result, Tesla was proclaimed ‘Our Foremost Electrician’ and hailed as the ‘New Edison’. But Tesla’s health was failing again, due to overwork. Tesla’s friend, Thomas Commerford Martin introduced him to socialites Robert and Katherine Underwood Johnson who took him under their wing. Tesla began calling them ‘the Filipovs’ after a Serbian poem, Luka Filipov, he had translated for them. Robert Johnson was associate editor of the prestigious Century magazine that ran a new profile of Tesla.
His regular dinners with the Johnsons, particularly those at Thanksgiving and Christmas, became the closest thing he knew to home life. He would arrive in a hansom cab, which would have to wait outside for hours to take him back to his hotel which was only a few blocks away. The Johnsons were the only people with whom he was on first-name terms, except for the railroad-heir William ‘Willie’ K. Vanderbilt (1849 – 1920) who would let Tesla use the Vanderbilt box at the Metropolitan Opera House. Apart from opera, Tesla enjoyed theatrical comedies, particularly those featuring actress Elsie Ferguson who, he said, ‘knew how to dress and was the most graceful woman he had ever seen on the stage’. Gradually, he stopped going to the opera and the theatre, going to the movies instead.
It was through the Johnsons that Tesla met the writer
Mark Twain, who was an admirer. Tesla told Twain that his books had saved his life when he was a boy of 12, struck down with a bout of malaria. This, apparently, brought tears to the author’s eyes.
Visiting Tesla’s laboratory, Twain asked whether the inventor could come up with a high-frequency electrotherapy machine that he could sell to rich widows in Europe on his next visit. Tesla said he already had a machine that would aid their digestion. It vibrated in sympathy with the peristaltic waves that moved food through the gut. Enthusiastic, Twain insisted that he tried it out. It worked – too well – and sent the great writer dashing for the lavatory.
‘I think I will start with the electrotherapy machine,’ said Twain when he returned. ‘I wouldn’t want the widows to get too healthy all in one shot.’
The Johnsons also introduced Tesla to the hero of the Spanish-American War,
Richmond Pearson Hobson, who became a life-long friend, naturalist
John Muir, who invited him out to Yosemite Valley, and writer
Rudyard Kipling, who had come to live in Vermont. After dining with the author in 1901, Tesla wrote to Mrs Johnson: ‘What is the matter with ink-spiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and cockroaches in the soup.’
With Twain and other notables in the laboratory, the first photographs under phosphorescent light were taken. However, despite his overwork, Tesla refused to accept the Johnsons’ invitation to take a holiday with them at their home at the Hamptons on Long Island.
Fame, But No Fortune
With Tesla’s help, Thomas Martin published The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla in 1894. But Tesla kept giving copies away free. Both Martin and the Johnsons were worried that Tesla made no effort to make money out of his work and suggested that he should, at least, tell the newspapers about taking photographs under phosphorescent light so he would get the credit. Meanwhile, Martin had to lend Tesla money from his share of the book – money that Tesla would never repay.
The University of Nebraska offered Tesla an honorary doctorate, but this was considered too trifling an accolade for the great inventor. Instead, Johnson organized an honorary doctorate from Columbia. One from Yale soon followed.
To boost his fame, Martin arranged for Tesla to have his voice recorded on a phonograph, an honour already bestowed on the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba (1861 – 1931) and Sarah Bernhardt. He also got Tesla to sit for a sculptor and do interviews with the mainstream media. Journalists flocked around. Joseph Pulitzer (1847 – 1911) – who later established the Pulitzer prizes but was then publisher of the New York World – sent a young reporter named Arthur Brisbane (1864 – 1936) to interview Tesla in one of his favourite haunts, Delmonico’s Restaurant where, for many years, he ate every night. Brisbane noted the famous restaurateur lowered his voice at the mention of Tesla’s name. According to Brisbane, Charles Delmonico said in hushed tones:
That Tesla can do anything. We managed to make him play pool one night. He had never played, but he had watched us for a little while. He was very indignant when he found that we meant to give him 15 points. But it didn’t matter much, for he beat us all even and got all the money. There are just a few of us who play for 25 cents, so it wasn’t the money we cared about, but the way he studied out pool in his head, and then beat us, after we had practised for years, surprised us.
Brisbane said he found that Tesla ‘stoops – most men do when they have no peacock blood in them. He lives inside of himself. He takes a profound interest in his own work.’ However, the engraving that accompanied the article famously showed Tesla erect and unbowed.
When asked what it was like to subject himself to such huge voltages, Tesla said: ‘I admit that I was somewhat alarmed when I began these experiments, but after I understood the principles, I could proceed in an unalarmed manner.’
Later he explained the spectacle presented when he was connected to an AC voltage of two-and-a-half million volts. It was, Tesla said:
…a sight marvellous and unforgettable. One sees the experimenter standing on a big sheet of fierce, blinding flame, his whole body enveloped in a mass of phosphorescent wriggling streamers like the tentacles of an octopus. Bundles of light stick out from his spine. As he stretches out the arms, thus forcing the electric fluid outwardly, roaring tongues of fire leap from his fingertips. Objects in his vicinity bristle with rays, emit musical notes, glow, grow hot. He is the centre of still more curious actions, which are invisible. At each throb of the electric force myriads of minute projectiles are shot off from him with such velocities as to pass through the adjoining walls. He is in turn being violently bombarded by the surrounding air and dust. He experiences sensations which are indescribable.
Vow of Chastity
Tesla also became a close friend of society architect Stanford White, designer of Madison Square Garden, the Washington Memorial Arch and the New York Herald Building. They met in 1891 when piano virtuoso Ignacy Paderewski (1860 – 1941) played at Madison Square Garden for five nights. White even put Tesla up at his club, The Players, which became one of the inventor’s favourite haunts. But it was a strange friendship. While Tesla was thought to be chaste, White, though married, invited him to one of his parties where naked girls emerged from pies. White was later shot dead by Harry Thaw, the jealous husband of White’s mistress showgirl Evelyn Nesbit.
It seems from their correspondence that Katherine Johnson took some amorous interest in Tesla. He was also seen dining out with women. However, he had become interested in Buddhism and seems to have sworn a vow of chastity after meeting Swami Vivekananda (1863 – 1902) at a dinner with Sarah Bernhardt. Swami was in America for the Congress of World Religions held at the Chicago World’s Fair and preached chastity as a path to enlightenment.
Both Bernhardt and Vivekananda visited Tesla’s laboratory in New York. Tesla also studied the theosophical theories of the spiritualist Madame Blavatsky (1831 – 91), now widely seen as a charlatan.