Tesla: Master of Lightning Page #6

that you could work with.

Confident in the future, Tesla took up

residence in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel

and wrote a sensational article

for Century Magazine.

First, let us ask:

What is the spring that drives all?

All this energy emanates from one

single center, one single source:

the sun.

In this detailed futuristic vision,

he described the means of tapping

the sun's energy with an antenna.

He suggested that it would be

possible to control the weather

with electrical energy.

He predicted that wars would

soon be eliminated by machines.

And to unite all nations,

he proposed a global system

of wireless communications.

When wireless is fully applied

the Earth will be converted

into a huge brain

capable of response in

every one of its parts.

He tells us about a vision he had

for both power and communications

that he wasn't going to think small

he was going to think globally on this.

And that's all very nice if it works.

The idea of a global communications

network was very appealing to

one of the world's most powerful

men:
J. Pierpont Morgan.

He agreed to invest $150,000 into

Tesla's worldwide radio broadcast center.

But the inventor's real plan

was to transmit, without wires,

industrial levels of electrical power.

Tesla chose to keep this a

secret from his investor.

In the summer of 1900, Tesla

moved to Shoreham, Long Island

and began construction of a huge

tower and plant called Wardenclyffe.

This tower of dreams was made

entirely of large wood beams

and rose 187 feet

above the ground.

The plant next to the tower was

designed by the architect Stanford White

and was constructed under

strict secrecy.

He certainly could have sent signals

across the Atlantic with no trouble

with a station of that magnitude.

But he was still pursuing

wireless power transmission.

The tower would light up the night,

shooting sparks, making noises.

Such experiments, they alarmed

the whole area.

Then, on December 8th 1901,

Marconi took another step forward

and transmitted his famous

letter "S" across the Atlantic.

Tesla dismissed the Italian's advances.

Marconi is a good fellow.

Let him continue.

He is using 17 of my patents.

The simple fact about Marconi is that

he used Tesla's system to

transmit signals

and claimed that these were ideas

that he had developed himself.

Morgan began to doubt the

wisdom of his investment.

Marconi's system not only

worked, it was also inexpensive.

And technical problems were

beginning to catch up with Tesla.

He went back to Morgan again,

asked for more money.

Morgan says:
Where's the radio

transmissions across the Atlantic?

How's that coming along?

Well, it wasn't coming along.

Tesla was forced to tell

Morgan his real plan.

What I contemplate and what I can

certainly accomplish, Mr. Morgan,

is not a simple transmission of messages

but rather the worldwide

transmission of electrical power.

A single plant of but 100 horsepower

can operate hundreds

of millions of instruments.

But Morgan was a practical business man

and had already decided to back Marconi.

I have received your letter

and in reply would say that I should not

feel disposed at present to make

any further advances.

J. Pierpont Morgan

Word spread rapidly that the investor

had pulled out of Wardenclyffe

and Tesla was financially ruined.

Late one night in 1903,

the residents of Shoreham were

astonished to see bright light

emanating from the tower and an effect

in the air like the Aurora Borealis.

But, in fact, Tesla could not

transmit wireless power.

And his major defect was that

he was dreaming but he was doing

very few calculations on paper.

Because, on paper, he could have

realized that you can transmit power,

but not very much power.

You can transmit power to hear

the radio, or for television,

or for a telephone.

But once you want to start

turning on lights in which

you really need high currents

the power gets diluted

because space is very large.

To his dying day, Tesla

believed it could be done.

It is not a dream.

It is a simple feat of scientific

electrical engineering, only expensive.

Blind, faint-hearted, doubting world...

Wardenclyffe marked a turning

point in Tesla's career.

Like a modern Prometheus, he

had reached too high and failed.

In 1904, the U.S. patent office

suddenly reversed its previous decisions

and gave Marconi a patent for radio.

One year later, Tesla's

fundamental AC patents expired.

Now the inventions that powered the world

could be used by anyone free of charge.

The public didn't realize that he

had made this invention that had

made billionaires out of corporations

and that he himself was broke.

With no money to carry on his work,

Tesla began to sink into

an isolated world.

He was totally disinterested in business.

I think it not necessarily bored him,

but he didn't make the relationship

between the importance of business

and the importance of his invention

and discovery.

Occasionally he was seen in

public parks feeding the pigeons.

These are my sincere friends.

Tesla's melancholy turned

to anger in 1909

when Marconi was awarded

a Nobel Prize.

Mr. Marconi is a donkey.

The question of Tesla and radio is

certainly a very interesting one.

It's clear that Tesla, in terms of

certain basic notions of radio,

was very early, if not first,

in expressing them and even of getting...

of taking them to the patent stage.

In desperate need of money, Tesla

brought suit against the Marconi company

claiming that his patent

rights had been infringed.

But he lacked the resources to wage

a legal battle with a large corporation

and ultimately gave up.

Marconi had received the Nobel

Prize for work that Tesla correctly

believed to be his own.

I suppose everything is fair

in wireless as in warfare.

In 1915, the Nobel prize

entered Tesla's life once again.

The Swedish government has decided

to distribute the Nobel Prizes

next week, as follows:

Physics:
Thomas A. Edison

and Nikola Tesla

Even Tesla was surprised by the front-

page announcement in The New York Times.

I have concluded the honor conferred

upon me concerns

the transmission of electrical energy

without wires.

But one week later, the award was given

to William H. Bragg of Oxford, England

for his work with X-rays

and crystal structure.

The embarrassing situation

was never really explained.

A rumor spread that Tesla had refused

to share the prize with Edison.

The difference that the Nobel

Prize could have made in Tesla's life

soon became evident.

Testimony given by Nikola Tesla,

the electrical inventor,

in a judgment for $935 in back taxes

was filed yesterday.

Mr. Tesla said under oath that he was

penniless and had been living on credit.

In an attempt to give him

long overdue recognition

the American Institute of Electrical

Engineers

decided to award Tesla their

prestigious Edison Medal.

But, on the night of the presentation,

the guest of honor was missing

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