Spark of Genius Page 2

children's quiz in the reception hall, and you will be convinced that this must be the case. But Faraday didn't invent our electrically powered world of today. He simply carried out experiments that showed that electricity and magnetism always appeared together and wrote an important book, Researches in Electricity. The man who gave electricity to the world was Nikola Tesla – the man who made the electric-shock machine that so intrigued me as a boy.

How then did he come to die alone and poor in a hotel room? Why was his body not found for two days, so that the date of his death is as uncertain as he considered the date of his birth? Why do most of the beneficiaries of his inventiveness not even know his name?

Partly, his lack of fame was his own creation. Unlike Edison, Westinghouse, Marconi and Morgan - whose companies preserve their names and keep their achievements in view - Tesla left no such monuments. The general public, if it remembers him at all, only remembers him as an outrageous contributor to newspaper columns. Look at some of the titles of his later writings: "Tesla's Tidal Wave to Make War Impossible". "Sleep From Electricity". "How to Signal Mars". "Mr Tesla on The Future". "Nikola Tesla Plans to Keep 'Wireless Thumb' on Ships at Sea". "Wonders of the Future". "Famous Scientific Illusions". "Nikola Tesla Tells How We May Fly Eight Miles High at 1,000 Miles an Hour". "Can Radio Ignite Balloons?" "Signals to Mars Based on Hope of Life on Planet". "Chewing Gum More Fatal Than Rum". "Breaking Up Tornadoes". "Nikola Tesla Tells How He Would Defend Ethiopia Against Italian Invasion". "Sending Messages to Planets Predicted by Dr Tesla on Birthday".

In the 26 years between getting the Edison Medal and his death in 1943, the public's view of Tesla changed completely. He ceased to be regarded as a serious engineer and became a "wild" old man who predicted miracles. The fact that most of these miracles eventually happened never seems to have counted in his favour. He never understood how to deal with people, either as individuals or in a crowd. His wildest statements were always based on theoretical reasoning. Sometimes he explained his thoughts, at other times he played the "Great Man" and expected his readers to accept everything he said. He often moved on to a new idea without ever completing his work on an earlier one, and this gained him a reputation as a "butterfly" mind. Occasionally, however, the world did remember and honour him.

On his 75th birthday, for example, in 1931, he made the cover of Time magazine when he was traced to the Governor Clinton Hotel in New York, where he was living on the goodwill of the manager after having been evicted from previous hotels for non-payment of his bills. Soon after this, he left the Governor Clinton without paying his bill and had to forfeit his luggage. The Great Depression had clearly not helped his finances, and he only found a "home" for the rest of his life when the Yugoslavian government, taking pity on its most famous son living in poverty, awarded him a small pension of $7,200 per year. Even so, he still had to change hotels regularly because he encouraged pigeons into his room by feeding them on his desk.

I sit here in my study utilising this man's legacy: lit by fluorescent electric light, listening to music on my mains radio ...

He often claimed that he had taken a vow as a child to devote himself to work and never to waste time on marriage. But, as he got older, more garrulous and less respected, he must have regretted the lack of a close family to provide him with an audience. The only member of his family he saw in his final years was a nephew, Sava Kosanovich, whom he did not seem to get on well with. Obviously lonely, he took to befriending young male science reporters and ringing them up to talk for hours at all times of the day and night.

In his 70s, when he started to celebrate the birthday he had previously claimed not to have, he invited these reporters to dinners he could not afford. The group would take over popular New York restaurants where he would force the reporters to listen to his long speeches about the future. He remained physically active until 1936 when, at 80 years old, he was struck by a New York taxi cab while crossing the street and his health started to decline.

On his 81st birthday, instead of speaking at a dinner party, he issued a written statement. Although this was soon after the auto accident, his mind was obviously still capable of mounting an attack on Einstein's theory of relativity: "I have worked out a dynamic theory of gravity in all details and hope to give this to the world very soon. It explains the causes of this force and the motions of heavenly bodies under its influence so satisfactorily that it will put an end to idle speculations and false conceptions, as that of curved space.

According to the relativists, space has a tendency to curvature owing to an inherent property or presence of celestial bodies. Granting a semblance of reality to this fantastic idea, it is still self-contradictory. Every action is accompanied by an equivalent reaction and the effects of the latter directly opposite to those of the former. Supposing that the bodies act upon the surrounding space causing curvature of the same, it appears to my simple mind that the curved spaces must react on the bodies and, producing the opposite effects, straighten out the curves. Since action and reaction are coexistent it follows that the supposed curvature of space is entirely impossible. But even if it existed it would not explain the motions of the bodies as observed. Only the existence of a field of force can account for them and its assumption dispenses with space curvature. All literature on this subject is futile and destined to oblivion."

It is a great pity that Tesla never published his dynamic theory of gravity. Modern thinking about gravity suggests that when a heavy object moves it emits gravitational waves that radiate at the speed of light. These gravity waves behave in similar ways to many other types of wave. Tesla's greatest inventions were all based on the study of waves. He always considered sound, light, heat, X-rays and radio waves to be related phenomena that could be studied using the same sort of maths. His differences with Einstein suggest that he had extended this thinking to gravity.

In the Eighties he was proved to be right. A study of energy loss in a double neutron star pulsar called PSR 1913 + 16 proved that gravity waves exist. Tesla's idea that gravity is a field effect is now taken more seriously than Einstein took it. But, unfortunately, Tesla never revealed what had led him to this conclusion, never explained his theory of gravitation to the world. The attack he made on Einstein's work was considered outrageous by the scientific establishment of the time, and only now do we have enough understanding of gravity to realise that he was right.

Tesla subsequently went on to make another outrageous claim, and the following statement helped to consign him to total obscurity after his death: "I have devoted much of my time during the year to the perfecting of a new small and compact apparatus by which energy in considerable amounts can now be flashed through interstellar space to any distance without the slightest dispersion. I am expecting to put before the Institute of France an accurate description of the devices with data and calculations and claim the Pierre Guzman Prize of 100,000 francs for means of communication with other worlds, feeling perfectly sure that it will be awarded to me. The money, of course, is a trifling consideration, but for the great historical honour of being the first to achieve this miracle I would be almost willing to give my life."

He didn't get the prize and never explained the work. The French government never heard from him as events overtook them both. Hitler was starting to expand his influence in Europe and France was invaded by 1940. But the device Tesla was talking about was either an early laser or a plasma gun to produce high-energy particles in the upper atmosphere. His notes show that he was aware of both possibilities, and these devices would have been a logical consequence of his lightning experiments.

In 1940, just after his 84th birthday, he gave an interview to The New York Times that was published on 22 September: "Nikola Tesla, one of the truly great inventors, who celebrated his 84th birthday on 10 July, tells the writer that he stands ready to divulge to the United States government the secret of his 'teleforce', with which, he said, plane motors would be melted at a distance of 250 miles, so that an invisible Chinese Wall of Defence would be built around the country."

The article passed without comment by fellow scientists. By now his reputation for seeking publicity far outweighed his ability to be believed, and with Hitler's advances causing concern there were other things to worry about.

By 1941, the US had entered the war and Tesla must have been concerned when his native land fell to German invaders. What was he to do with his "Death Ray", as the paper had dubbed his "teleforce" weapon? He wanted to give it to the US government to help support his adopted country and his homeland.

On 5 January 1943, Tesla rang the US war department and spoke to a Colonel Erskine, offering him the secrets of his "teleforce" weapon. Erskine,