Tesla Widened Range of Power

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a three-part series on Nikola Tesla, whose electrical genius made possible the first long-distance power transmission from the Adams plant here in 1896. The greatness this city has achieved as an electrical center is in great part to be credited to this Croatian immigrant who became the greatest enemy of Thomas Edison and lived to see that the great inventor could be wrong.)

By BILL NELSON
Gazette Staff Writer

THE NAMES of most inventors trigger the memory, bringing to mind inventions, anecdotes of trials and successes and labors to add to the comfort of man through the ages.

But we unconsciously forget the name of an inventor with an incident, a chance object encountered in daily life; a ride in a pullman, the word “cotton,” the turn of a radio dial or the “dit-dah,” sound of Morse code.

Yet the name of the one man who more than any other made possible our modern technology, a man whose inventions enter into the lives of everyone of us, every day, has been forgotten.

He died in 1943, alone and penniless, in a cheap New York City hotel room under the dim light of one shaded incandescent bulb — a ceaseless vigil for its inventor, a cold candle, glowing through all the rest of the countless lights in New York City, in wordless acknowledgement that this and other cities in this nation are illumined with electricity transmitted over many miles because of the genius of this Croatian immigrant who found final rest in poverty.

IT WAS NIKOLA TESLA. His name today lives only in the mentions as “Tesla coil” and then there is no recognition in the heart or mind between the name of the coil and the name of the man who in his fruitful life owned more than 500 patents.

Tesla is as close to everyone of us as the nearest electrical outlet, for he alone, solved the greatest engineering problem of the 1890’s — how to transmit power over wires without “line loss.” The filament bulbs of Edison glowed with power from direct current generators, located near each city.

The lights of the country cousins outside the cities glowed too, but it was a barely perceptible glow 10 miles from the city.

Man’s dream of harnessing the great cataracts of the world and piping current across this great nation remained just that until Mr. Tesla conceived the rotary magnetic field, brilliantly adapted it to the induction motor and devised polyphase alternating current systems capable of harnessing Niagara Falls.

Mr. Tesla opened the door to the modern world of electrical achievement. His polyphase system of alternating current, the first practical one invented — is still in use today, more than 80 years after he laid down a book of Goethe’s “Faust,” and picked up a twig to diagram a new concept of an induction motor, in the sand of a Budapest park.

THERE, in the shadow of the Old World, he worked out the details of a motor that was to change the very way of life for the New World, as well as the Old.

Hardly enough to immortalize him in the hearts of man?

It was only one of his many contributions that we accept and often erroneously attribute to the wrong man.

For it was Mr. Tesla, not Thomas Edison, who invented the fluorescent light.

It was Mr. Tesla who gave us neon lighting and arc lights.

It was Mr. Tesla who gave us transformers, capacitors and coils that hum today in every radio and television. It was Mr. Tesla who conceived the idea of radar. He built the first remote-controlled boat, thus becoming the father of radio-guided torpedoes and missiles.

The life and death of Mr. Tesla was one of the greatest tragedies of the last century.

WE HAVE but an inkling of how great a tragedy in these facts: He relinquished his right to $12 million for a friend.

He received the Edison Medal for first lighting the lights of New York City with power from Niagara Falls.

He turned down the Nobel Prize for Physics — because he was named with Mr. Edison, a man he despised, to receive the award.

The only mourners at his deathbed were the pigeons he cared for in his last years, fluttering about his window ledge in the bitter January cold, seeking the warmth, food and affection he lavished upon them.

To the work at large, his passing aroused not even curiosity, but in the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the news of his death was received with alarm.

A FLYING SQUAD of G-men descended on the hotel room.

They seized every memento, every scrap of paper they could find, and carried them off to bury them in government secrecy. For this was wartime and there were German agents lurking about.

Only the year before, at a press conference attended by a few bored reporters hard-put to find any news, he had spoken of a “death ray,” he had conceived, that would “kill a million enemy troops and destroy a thousand aircraft.”

If the press had had its tongue in cheek, the government did not, for there were a few in high places who knew of the patents he held, the seeming miracles he had accomplished in a thankless life of giving.

What those papers contained, perhaps the government alone knows. Without the mind of Mr. Tesla to interpret them, the papers, wherever they are today, probably are useless.

HE EVOLVED a theory, in the years when Albert Einstein was still unknown, and told reporters in 1900, “every object exists not by itself, but in relation to other objects.”

He also told reporters 65 years ago, “Gentlemen, the aurora borealis is due to a barrage of electrical particles from the sun, particles too small to see.” (This was 10 years before Robert Milliken first announced his theory.)

“The world exists on unseen waves or vibrations,” he said.

He wanted to open the door to the study of the relationship of vibrations, color, sound, light, electricity to each other.

He said vibrations “could be stronger than a solid building” and that he could shake down the tallest building in less than 15 minutes by an “engine” small enough to hide in his pocket.

This he proved, although his proof at the time almost landed him in jail.

HE HAD A LABORATORY in the loft of a building in New York City and his experiments were a constant source of complaint to the nearest precinct station.

Thus, it was not strange that one day when the pictures at the station began to vibrate and change position, the desk sergeant yelled, “Tesla’s at it again,” and a handful of policemen dashed down the block and up the stairs.

As they reached the stairway, plaster fell about them and the stairs heaved.

They burst into the loft laboratory in time to see Mr. Tesla swing a sledge hammer and demolish a small device fastened to a steel pole. It was an oscillator which sent a vibration down through the building’s foundation into the earth. As the vibration returned, it was magnified and sent down again.

HE HAD BEEN so eager to test his first working model that he had not bothered to install a cutoff switch and as the mounting vibrations began to shake the building to pieces, he destroyed it.

In June, 1884, Mr. Tesla, aflame with his concept of a new way of producing efficient electrical current, sold his beloved library of books and set sail for the New World.

In his pocket he had four cents and his meager possessions included a book of his original poems, two articles he had written on flying machines and a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison.

The great man was skeptical and not too impressed by this enthusiastic young man who wanted to change the world overnight and whose ideas, it was evident from the first, were diametrically opposed to his own.

BUT MR. EDISON needed an assistant with a knowledge of electrical engineering, so he hired him, probably with many misgivings and undoubtedly with many later regrets.

In any event, he offered him a job at $18 a week at the Edison Machine Works.

During the day, Mr. Tesla designed direct current dynamos for the Edison Co. and every night, until about 5 a.m., he worked on his own special project, a dynamo that would increase the output of electricity to 10 miles, the distance at which direct current all but faded.

When Mr. Edison learned what he was doing in his spare time, he told the young engineer:

“Solve this problem for me and I’ll give you $50,000.”

It was a challenge made in jest and one that Mr. Edison did not expect Mr. Tesla to meet.

It took Mr. Tesla one year, working on his own time, to perfect a generator that tripled the output of any previous dynamo.

Jubilantly he presented it to Mr. Edison and naively said nothing when Mr. Edison praised his accomplishment, but omitted any mention of payment. He waited several days before pressing his request for the money Mr. Edison had promised him.

“You don’t understand American humor, boy,” Mr. Edison told him.

Mr. Tesla was crushed. Wordlessly he walked out of the laboratory, never to return. For a week the benumbed inventor sat in his room, still unbelieving, before going out to seek new employment.

Three decades later, when he was offered the Nobel Physics Prize, Mr. Tesla refused it, because he had been named to share it with Mr. Edison, a bold affront to European pride. To friends he confided, “He is but an inventor. I am a discoverer.”