Nikola Tesla

Important points

1. Nikola Tesla invented or developed many of the electrical technologies which form the basis of modern life, including:
   1. alternating-current (AC) power transmission and electric motors
   2. high-frequency (HF) communications
      1. He patented the technology for wireless communications that is used in all radio and television broadcasting.
   3. the basis for radio and television
   4. neon and fluorescent lighting
   5. remote radio-control
   6. X-rays
   7. guided missiles
   8. the Strategic Defense Initiative
2. But his technical skill was countered by his lack of business acumen and eccentric personality.
3. He was a foreigner, an immigrant who arrived in America with only his dreams.
4. A proud and sometimes arrogant man, he worked and locked horns with some of the most powerful people of his day.
   1. Thomas Edison, who resented his ideas,
      1. Tesla supports AC current
      2. By that time, Edison already set-up infrastructure based on DC current.
      3. So, Edition was not willing to support the ideas that Tesla was proposing.
      4. Edison considered Tesla a threat to Edison.
      5. During the late 1880s Edison began a negative media campaign to discredit the alternating current system of electricity being developed by Westinghouse and Tesla. It became known as The War of the Currents.
   2. Guglielmo Marconi, who capitalized on his inventions.
      1. Tesla came up with the ideas for radio communication.
      2. But Marconi gained credit for it.
   3. George Westinghouse, who created the Westinghouse Electric Company with Tesla’s patents, and
      1. One of the few men who understood was the Pittsburgh industrialist George Westinghouse. He visited Tesla’s laboratory and, on the spot, he offered to purchase all the patents dealing with the alternating current system for one million dollars. Westinghouse also proposed a royalty of $2.50 for each horsepower generated by a Tesla invention.
      2. Tesla formed a partnership with Westinghouse.
      3. However, when Westinghouse’s company was not doing well, Tesla said that the company doesn’t have to pay the royalties that it owes to him.
   4. the great financier, J. Pierpont Morgan, who supported and then abandoned him.
      1. J.P.Morgan initially promised to provide funds for Tesla’s projects.
      2. But later, he pulls out and goes back on his promise.
5. Tesla was a technological visionary. He could envision great things and make them work. He was a visionary genius.
6. Tesla captured the power of Niagara Falls with his alternating current system and made it possible to transmit electricity to all of America and the world.
7. Tesla’s inventions helped America grow into a powerful industrial nation. His ideas created billion-dollar corporations.
8. Always driven toward the next great breakthrough, he failed to protect his commercial interests. In the end, others made fortunes with his inventions and he wound up penniless and rejected.

Books

1. My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla
2. Wizard, The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer
3. The Tesla Papers by Nikola Tesla
4. The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla by Thomas Commerford Martin, Nikola Tesla
5. The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla
6. The Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla by Jim Glenn
7. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla by John J. O’Neill
8. Nikola Tesla, Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900 by Aleksandar Marincic
9. Nikola Tesla and his Pioneering Work in Electrical Science by Slavko Boksan
10. Light and other High Frequency Phenomena by Nikola Tesla
11. Famous Scientific Illusions by Nikola Tesla

Tesla: Master of Lightning

https://www.scripts.com/script/tesla:_master_of_lightning_19553

Synopsis: Nikola Tesla invented or developed many of the electrical technologies which form the basis of modern life, including: alternating-current (AC) power transmission and electric motors; high-frequency (HF) communications, the basis for radio and television; neon lighting; remote radio-control; and X-rays. But his visionary genius and technical skill was countered by his lack of business acumen and eccentric personality. After dying penniless in 1943, his “missing papers” regarding the construction of a ‘death ray’ became the focus of international intrigue. His research on particle beam weapons led to several American and Soviet military research programs, including the Strategic Defense Initiative, known as SDI or “Star Wars”.

When you think of electricity you think of Edison. When you think of radio you think of Marconi. But there is one electrical genius who is nearly forgotten, a man who dreamed of giving the world an unlimited supply of energy. His name was Nikola Tesla and he was the master of lightning.

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. - Nikola Tesla, 1919

This is the story of a modern Prometheus who changed the world with electricity. It was Nikola Tesla who captured the power of Niagara Falls with his alternating current system and made it possible to transmit electricity to all of America and the world. It was Tesla who patented the technology for wireless communications that is used in all radio and television broadcasting. His incredible legacy can be seen in everything from remote control to neon and fluorescent lighting, X-rays, guided missiles and even the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Yet somehow history has overlooked this remarkable man.

Tesla was indeed a genius of the first magnitude. He was a technological visionary. He could envision great things and make them work. He was a foreigner, an immigrant who arrived in America with only his dreams. A proud and sometimes arrogant man, he worked and locked horns with some of the most powerful people of his day. Thomas Edison, who resented his ideas, Guglielmo Marconi, who capitalized on his inventions, George Westinghouse, who created the Westinghouse Electric Company with Tesla’s patents, and the great financier, J. Pierpont Morgan, who supported and then abandoned him. At the height of his career, Tesla was one of the most famous men in the world. His inventions helped America grow into a powerful industrial nation. His ideas created billion-dollar corporations.

But Tesla was not a practical man. Always driven toward the next great breakthrough, he failed to protect his commercial interests. In the end, others made fortunes with his inventions and he wound up penniless and rejected.

Money does not mean to me what it does to other men. All my money has been invested in inventions to make man’s life a little easier. - Nikola Tesla

He was a visionary genius. There aren’t many of them, and he was willing to give his life to his visions.

We have to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores that are forever inexhaustible. What I intend to show you now, step-by-step, is how I finally reached my dream. This is the house in which, by coincidence bizarre, I was born on the stroke of midnight between July 9 and 10, 1856. A fierce electrical storm raged that night.

Nikola Tesla was born of Serbian parents on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in what is today Croatia. His father, Milutin, was an Orthodox priest who expected his son to follow him in the clergy. There were only two choices for children in those days one being to go in the army and the other being to become a priest. Tesla was not attracted by either of them, which was very distressing to his father.

My father was a very erudite man. The training he gave me comprised of guessing one another’s thoughts and repeating long passages of verse. My mother descended from one of the oldest Serbian families in the country. She invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread. Her fingers were nimble enough to tie three knots in an eyelash.

Early on, Tesla began to demonstrate an extraordinary imagination.

In my boyhood, I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images often accompanied by strong flashes of light. I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not. To give an example, I was fascinated by a description of Niagara and I pictured in my imagination a big wheel run by the falls. I told my uncle that one day I would go to America and carry out this scheme.

Then, at the age of 17, while preparing for the seminary, Tesla contracted cholera and a brush with death changed his life forever.

In one of the spells, which was thought to be my last, my father rushed into the room.

Perhaps, I said, I may get well if you will let me study engineering. You will go to the best technical institution in the world, he solemnly said. I came to life, like another Lazarus, to the utter amazement of everyone.

In 1877, at the age of 21, I travelled to Graz, Austria to begin my college education. Here I quickly became obsessed with the science of electricity. I wanted to know more of this wonderful force. Every spark produced a thousand echoes in my brain.

In 1831, in England, Michael Faraday had discovered the principal of electro-magnetic induction, which made it possible to generate electricity. Faraday discovered that if you have an electric circuit in a changing magnetic field, it would induce an electric current to run in the wire. So this was the invention of the method of inducing, of creating, oscillating or AC electric currents. And it was that invention that Tesla later harnessed into the electrical system that drives our civilization.

Early electric motors operated on direct current electricity but required a system of sparking connections to induce a rotary effect in the machine. I remarked to my professor that the design of generators and motors could be greatly improved by using currents that alternated. He embarrassed me, greatly, in front of my classmates saying: Mr. Tesla will never accomplish this, it is a perpetual-motion scheme.

Meanwhile, in America, Thomas Alva Edison had begun to experiment with vacuum tubes, producing the first commercial incandescent light bulb in 1878.

Edison and Tesla would soon cross paths in a gargantuan technological struggle between direct and alternating current electricity. In 1880 Tesla moved to Budapest, where he found employment with the central telegraph office. Here his idea for an AC motor began to haunt him.

In my room, I could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between me and the timepiece. A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body. The whistle of a distant locomotive vibrated so strongly in my ears that the pain was unbearable. To recover from these attacks, I took long walks in the city park. One afternoon, which is ever- present in my recollection, the sun was just setting and reminded me of Goethe’s glorious passage:

The glow retreats done is the day of toil… Upon its track to follow follow soaring.

As I uttered these inspiring words, the idea came to me like a lightning flash. I felt to my knees and drew a diagram in the ground.

Tesla perceived a whirling field of energy. He suddenly knew he could recreate this rotating field by powering the coils of a motor in different steps or phases like the pistons of an engine. The resulting forces of magnetic attraction and repulsion would literally twist the rotor in a circle, the electrical equivalent of the wheel.

And all this was accomplished with alternating currents. It would soon turn the wheels of industry around the world.

The strength of Tesla’s mind was almost certainly in his sense of visualization, to be able to see things move in front of him.

You see, It was not a perpetual-motion scheme. It had been the height of my ambition and my most ardent wish to see America and come in contact with the great Thomas Edison. Accordingly, I undertook the voyage and, after losing my money and tickets, and passing through a series of mishaps, including a mutiny in which I almost lost my life, I landed on these blessed shores with four cents in my pocket.

Tesla arrived in New York on June 6th, 1884. A 28-year-old immigrant, he was filled with dreams of success in this strange new land. In his pocket he carried a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, one of Edison’s associates in Europe.

My dear Edison, I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man.

Tesla came to America because he had tried to get his alternating current motor produced in Germany and, I believe, in France as well, without any success. And he realized that there was probably only one person in the world who could help him with it and that was Thomas Edison.

New York had had electricity since the late 1870s. Edison installed his first DC power station on Pearl Street near the financial district in 1882. He did this with help from the great Wall Street financier J. Pierpont Morgan. But the system was far from perfect. Electricity was a very new thing; most people didn’t understand what it was all about. They were very afraid of it. There were fires breaking out. The horses on the streets would get shocks through their shoes and run away. So it was a very exciting time for Edison.

I was thrilled to the marrow meeting Edison. This great man had revolutionized the world with his incandescent lamp. And I was burning to show him my motor that ran on alternating currents.

Edison had built his business on the direct current system and any talk of alternating currents was an aggravation to him. The problem with direct current is that you can’t change the voltage. What you’d generate, that’s what you’d get. And if you generated the power at too high a voltage, you would blow out lamps at the other end. If you generate at the proper power for the lamps and you want to go any great distance, then you need copper wire that’s as thick as your arm. and the Edison people said: Well, that’s all right, well just have a power station every mile or so. DC was sufficient to power lights and run motors but it could not be transmitted efficiently over long distances. By raising and lowering the voltage, AC could solve the problem of distance but a working AC motor did not exist.

In spite of their differences Edison hired Tesla to improve the performance of his DC generators. Tesla said he was promised $50,000 if he was successful. The offer seemed too good to be true.

I entered the Edison Machine Works where I undertook the design of DC dynamos and motors. My regular hours were from 10:30 am till 5:00 am the next day. When I completed the task, I went to Edison for payment and he laughed. Edison was very amused by this and said:

You just don’t understand our American sense of humor, Mr. Tesla.

So Tesla had had enough by that time and he picked up his hat and walked out. Tesla paid dearly for his pride.

I lived through a year of bitter tears and hard labor digging ditches for Edison’s underground cables. But he was still determined to develop his AC motor. With help from a group of investors he opened a laboratory on Liberty Street, only a few blocks from the Edison’s offices. There he began to assemble a prototype of the motor he had envisioned seven years earlier. Along with it he developed all the components of the system of AC power generation and transmission still used today. In May of 1888, Tesla was ready to unveil his motor to the world.

The subject which I now have the pleasure of bringing to your notice is a novel motor which I am confident will at once establish the superior adaptability of alternating currents.

Over the next five years 22 U.S. patents were awarded to Nikola Tesla for AC motors, generators, transformers and transmission lines the most valuable patents since the invention of the telephone.

One of the few men who understood was the Pittsburgh industrialist George Westinghouse. He visited Tesla’s laboratory and, on the spot, he offered to purchase all the patents dealing with the alternating current system for one million dollars. Westinghouse also proposed a royalty of $2.50 for each horsepower generated by a Tesla invention.

The young Serb was on his way to fortune and fame while other inventors looked on with fascination and with envy.

In all my troubles, I did not neglect to become a real American citizen, making me a proud and happy man.

During the late 1880s Edison began a negative media campaign to discredit the alternating current system of electricity being developed by Westinghouse and Tesla. It became known as The War of the Currents.

Edison: My personal desire would be to prohibit entirely the use of alternating currents. They are as unnecessary as they are dangerous.

Edison employees demonstrated the dangers of alternating current by electrocuting animals in public demonstrations.

Edison: Just as certain as death, Westinghouse will kill a customer within six months after he puts in a system of any size.

Tesla: None of his plans worry me in the least.

An Edison associate suggested using alternating current as a means of executing criminals. A test took place at New York’s Auburn State Prison in 1890. Several gruesome attempts were required to kill the victim. Disgusted witnesses claimed his spinal cord burst into flame.

The infliction of the death penalty is not only barbarous and inhuman but unnecessary as a factor in the scheme of modern civilization.

The war of the currents came to a dramatic head in 1893. The Columbian Exposition in Chicago was to be the first World’s Fair lighted by electricity. The Edison Company, the Thomson-Houston Company, they all got together and formed General Electric Company 1892. One of the first things they did of course was put in the bid for the job at the Fair. Their bid was roughly a million dollars. The Westinghouse bid was about half a million dollars, and naturally Westinghouse got the job. In retaliation, GE refused to sell Westinghouse any of their Edison light bulbs. And they got some judge to say that Westinghouse couldn’t use any one-piece lamps of any description at the Fair. Westinghouse frantically devised a two-piece stopper lamp by Fair time and saved the day.

Now Tesla had a chance to make history in Chicago. His large AC generators would supply all of the Fair’s electricity and prove that his system would work on a large scale.

On May 1st, 1893 100,000 eager spectators filed into the fairgrounds, awed by the gleaming neo-classical architecture. Night fell, President Grover Cleveland pressed a button and the fairgrounds exploded with brilliant tube lighting and multicolor searchlights the most incredible display of lighting the world had ever seen. In the great hall of electricity, the public could see that the Tesla-Westinghouse system made it all possible.

To overcome the impression that AC was dangerous, Tesla put on remarkable demonstrations. He created a device called the Egg of Columbus to show the rotating magnetic field created by his AC motor. In his room, he had cork-soled shoes on and a tuxedo and white tie and a top hat. And he would put his hand on a terminal which would flash electricity through his body creating a great shower as his whole body was encompassed in flame. And people were quite impressed by this, to say the least.

The Chicago exposition left an indelible impression on the American imagination. This was the gleaming new city of the future, and it was powered by the inventions of Nikola Tesla.

Since childhood, Tesla had dreamed of harnessing the power of the great natural wonder called Niagara Falls. The famous British physicist Lord Kelvin was now head of an international commission to find a way to use the falls’ power. He had sent a cable to all the other members of this commission and it said: Trust you avoid the gigantic mistake of alternating current.

But all this dramatically changed when Lord Kelvin attended the Chicago exposition and saw the AC system in operation. A contract was immediately awarded to Westinghouse Electric to power the mighty cataract with AC. The technical challenge was daunting. The Niagara plan called for three 5,000-horsepower alternators, the largest generators ever made. Tesla and Westinghouse engineers had heated disagreements about the operating frequency. Even when the system was finally installed, Tesla was the only person who was certain it would operate. The technical details have been completely worked out. All that now remains is for the switch to be thrown. In 1896 the system went online and the Electrical Age began. The waters of the upper Niagara turned enormous water turbines connected by shafts to the massive 5,000-horsepower generators. The current from the generators was stepped up with transformers to 22,000 volts and sent out over long-distance lines then stepped back down to light municipalities and power motors of Tesla’s design.

The Niagara Falls Gazette proclaimed:

This morning the streetcars of this city are moving by falls power. Hereafter the falls must work to earn their living.

Imagine my surprise when, 30 years later, I saw my boyhood plan carried out at Niagara and wondered at the unfathomable mystery of the mind.

Within a few years the number of generators at Niagara was increased to 10. By the turn of the century, the power lines stretched 360 miles to New York City. The war of the currents was over and Tesla was the winner. By the time Tesla effectively arrives on the scene with his motor, Edison is out of the business. He’s basically written out of his own company. This was something Edison would not soon forget.

In spite of the success of AC, Westinghouse had over-extended his company’s resources leading to severe financial difficulties. In order to save the company, Tesla said that he tore up his royalty contract for $2.50 per horsepower generated. Today this agreement would be worth trillions. Had the inventor been tricked again? This is something we’ve never found any record of in the Westinghouse annals. We do have something which is a Memorandum of Agreement about that, but it was never signed. But Tesla was ready to move on.

I had already perceived enough to get the idea that energy could be transmitted and received without connecting wires in between.

He was convinced his next invention would make him a millionaire once more.

My services with Westinghouse being no longer essential, I resumed experimental work in a laboratory on Grand Street, where I began immediately the design of high-frequency machines.

Following the success of Niagara, Tesla was at the height of social acclaim. Everyone wanted to know more of this mysterious foreigner who was transforming the world with his electrical inventions. So far as personal appearance goes, no one can look upon him without feeling his force. His cheekbones are high and prominent, the mark of the Slav. His eyes are blue, deeply set, and they burn like balls of fire.

Franklin Chester, The Citizen

Why was he so well known and so popular? It’s because the technological advance that he made were so directly related to the relief of the drudgery that people had to endure in their work lives. They could see what he did helped them personally.

Every evening Tesla showed up at Delmonico’s, the most expensive restaurant in town, to be shown to his special table. He is fanatical about his dress, usually sporting a fine waistcoat white leather gloves and a derby hat on his head. He is meticulous about his health and drinks a glass of whisky a day saying it will increases his life expectancy to 150 years of age. Tesla hobnobbed with the leading politicians, millionaires and celebrities of the era. This was the best way for independent inventors to find support for their projects. His friends were the New York elite: John Jacob Astor, William K. Vanderbilt, and the writer Mark Twain.

I have just seen the drawings and description of an electrical machine lately patented by Mr. Tesla which will revolutionize the whole electric business of the world.

One of Tesla’s closest friends was Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of the prestigious Century Magazine. Johnson’s wife was deeply in love with Tesla.

My dear Niki, do leave aside the millionaires and Fifth Avenue for some simple pleasures. From one distinguished only by a great weakness, Katharine Johnson.

In fact, the world-famous inventor was also New York’s most intriguing bachelor. The fact that he never married, I think, had almost nothing to do with his interest in women. It appeared that he was always very interested and was attractive to women. Many women sought his attention. The beautiful and wealthy socialite Flora Dodge, and even the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt. But in spite of his charisma, Tesla was only interested in his inventions. He had so many phobias that he couldn’t have had close relationships with women. He didn’t like most of the jewelry that they wore or the perfume and he couldn’t bear to touch hair. And these… and in fact he didn’t like to shake hands. And so these are all things that do tend to discourage intimate relationships. The inventor even claimed that he destroyed his sexuality at the age of 40.

A certain French actress kept coming to me and made it impossible for me to concentrate. It’s a pity too, for sometimes I feel so lonely.

Throughout the 1890s, alongside his work on AC power technology, Tesla was also experimenting with high-frequency electricity.

In 1873 James Clerk Maxwell in England had proven mathematically that light was electromagnetic radiation. Light was electricity vibrating at an extremely high frequency. To explore this unknown world, Tesla invented a unique device, still known today as a Tesla coil.

The Tesla coil is an instrument that can step up voltages to high voltages at high frequencies that essentially transmits a radio signal.

Tesla invited friends and potential investors to late-night demonstrations in his laboratory. In experiments, he would permit his guests to pass thousands of volts of electricity through their bodies to light a lamp or melt a wire in their hands. Mark Twain was always a willing subject.

Thunder is good. Thunder is impressive. But it is lightning that does the work.

Even today it would be a little bit scary to go into Tesla’s laboratory and, in those days, when people didn’t know anything about electricity, it must have been terrifying.

With high frequencies, Tesla developed some of the first neon and fluorescent illumination. He also took the first X-ray photographs. But these discoveries quickly paled one day in 1890 when a vacuum tube illuminated in his hand without any wire connection.

To me, it was the first evidence that I was transmitting energy through the air.

This was the beginning of Tesla’s lifelong obsession: The wireless transmission of energy.

In 1892, Tesla was invited to Europe to present the results of his high-frequency experiments. In London and Paris, he amazed scientists and engineers with lighting and electrical effects that looked more like magic than science. He also announced a remarkable new possibility.

I would say a few words on a thought which fills my mind and concerns the welfare of all. I mean the transmission of intelligence and even power without the use of wires. I am becoming more convinced daily of the practicality of this scheme.

The race for radio was about to begin. In 1888 the German physicist Heinrich Hertz had demonstrated that currents of high frequency emit electro-magnetic waves, or radio waves, into space. But creating a practical means of wireless communication would require a quantum leap in imagination. Hertz created the first radio transmitter and the first receiver. He had shown that you could create an electrical signal in one place and detect it in another place with nothing in between.

While in England, Tesla befriended Sir William Crookes, the discoverer of radiant matter. Crookes was a mystic and believed that human beings could communicate telepathically when they were attuned to high-frequency brainwaves.

Tesla was skeptical. But one night in his bed he had a powerful and disturbing vision.

I saw a cloud carrying angelic figures, one of whom gradually assumed the features of my mother. In that instant, a certitude, which no words can express, came upon me that my mother had died.

And that was true.

Tesla was convinced that he and his mother were tuned to the same frequency. His otherworldly experience would soon lead him to another revolutionary invention.

On his return to New York in 1893, Tesla banished himself from social life and disappeared into his new laboratory on south Fifth Avenue. Following his uncanny intuition, he soon discovered that Tesla coils would transmit and receive powerful radio signals when they were tuned to resonate at the same frequency. Tuning is the key to all radio and television transmission.

In my laboratory, I could take in my hands a coil tuned to my body and collect three-quarter horsepower anywhere in the room without any tangible connection. Sometimes I would produce flames shooting out from my head, and run a motor in my hands or light six or eight lamps.

By early 1895, Tesla was ready to transmit a signal 50 miles to West Point, New York. He could now produce one million volts with his new conical coil.

But that year, on the Ides of March, disaster struck. Fire broke out in the building which housed Tesla’s laboratory. Everything was lost. Utterly disheartened and broken in spirit, Nikola Tesla, one of the world’s greatest electricians, returned to his room in the Gerlach yesterday morning and took to his bed. He has not arisen since.

I was devastated. What could I say? The work of a lifetime lost in a fire that lasted only an hour or so.

The timing could not have been worse. In England, a young Italian experimenter named Guglielmo Marconi had been hard at work and created a device for wireless telegraphy. Concerned that Marconi would exploit his ideas, Tesla opened a new laboratory and rushed to complete his own system for wireless communication.

This patent, filed by Tesla in September 1897, is the fundamental technology for radio. But it would be 50 years before Tesla got credit for his invention.

Various people in various different countries had the idea of exploiting this as a means of communication. But I think Tesla was the one with the real vision, in which he would broadcast signals on a definite carrier frequency and you would have a series of antennas sensitive to one frequency only tuned to a certain frequency, and it would detect only one of these signals and make an intelligible transmission.

And, once again, his vision describes the world that we live in.

I was so blue and discouraged in those days that I do not believe I could have borne up but for the regular treatments of electricity which I applied to myself. It puts into a tired body what it needs most: life force.

Following the destruction of his laboratory, Tesla developed a deeper interest in eastern thought and spiritualism. Mr. Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic prana and akasha and the kalpas which he claims are the only theories modern science can entertain. Inspired by the Hindu teacher Swami Vivekananda, Tesla began to look at the universe as a symphony of vibrations and waves.

We are whirling through endless space with an inconceivable speed. Everything is spinning. Everywhere there is energy. There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more completely.

In 1898 an unusual experiment took place in Tesla’s laboratory. He attached a small mechanical oscillator to an iron pillar. Precisely timed pulses from the device made the entire building tremble. Windows started crashing around the area and he, being at the epicenter, didn’t notice anything happening until some police came bursting into his laboratory.

It was just at the moment where he’d picked up a sledgehammer and broken the oscillator. He just said to the policeman that: Oh, too bad that they had just missed an interesting experiment.

Tesla was, I would say, obsessed with frequency, the notion of resonance.

The story where he takes the device and puts it on the girder in his office and, you know, gets the frequency of the building and… I mean, it’s an apocryphal story, I’m sure.

But it gets right at the core that, Hey! If I’ve got the right frequency, I can move the world. And indeed he wants… He talks about the frequency of the Earth and that if he can do that he can, you know, almost literally split the Earth in half. Meanwhile, Marconi was doing more practical things, and succeeded in transmitting a signal five miles on the Salisbury Plain in England.

Not to be outdone, Tesla decided to introduce an entirely new invention.

In a specially constructed pool, potential backers were amazed to see the inventor controlling the motions of a small mechanical boat with no wires attached to it. This was the world’s first radio-controlled device. The machine even seemed to think. Someone threw out the question: What is the cube root of 64? and four flashes came back. The audience was so surprised, Tesla had to remove the lid to prove no one was inside.

Tesla developed his radio-controlled boat in 1898 and patented it and thought it was an armament for war. He rationalized this as a means of ending war. The military who looked at it thought it was too complicated and vulnerable. Soon after the demonstration, Mark Twain wrote from Austria:

Dear Mr. Tesla, Have you the Austrian and English patents on that destructive terror which you have been inventing and thus make war henceforth impossible? If so, won’t you set a price on them and commission me to sell them? Sincerely yours, Mark Twain

But I have no desire to be remembered as the inventor of a purely destructive device. I prefer to be remembered as the inventor who abolished war. That will be my highest pride.

In the summer of 1899, Tesla moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado to conduct a series of secret experiments. He told curious local reporters that he intended to send a wireless message from Pikes Peak to Paris for the Paris Exposition of 1900, but his plans were even more ambitious.

I came to the conclusion that it would be ultimately possible, with very little elevation, to transmit electrical power through the upper atmosphere.

Just outside the city, he constructed an experimental station with sliding roof panels. A quote in Italian from Dante’s Inferno hung by the entrance of the strange wooden structure.

It read: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

During the construction phase, Tesla studied lightning. Now I can understand Tesla’s fascination with it, because what happens in lightning is that electricity is being transmitted from one place to another. Electric power, not just electric signals, but real electric power, is being transmitted from one place to another. And the way it happens is that the air itself breaks down, ionizes, and becomes what is called plasma and therefore for a moment it’s a conductor, and it’s actually conducting electricity the way a wire conducts electricity.

Inside the station, he began to assemble the largest Tesla coil ever built, which he called the magnifying transmitter. An antenna rose 145 feet above the building, crowned with a copper-foil sphere. The entire station was, in effect, a machine to create lightning. Late one evening, Tesla put his transmitter to the test. He signalled to an assistant to close the switch. Huge streamers of electricity shot out of the coil and darted through the room. The sound of the exploding discharges was deafening. Outside, above the building, bursts of artificial lightning more than 100 feet long began to shoot out of the ball atop the antenna. Its thunder could be heard 20 miles away in the small mining town of Cripple Creek.

Suddenly the lightning stopped and the entire city of Colorado Springs was plunged into darkness. The experiment had set fire to and destroyed the local power company’s generator. Residents were furious and began to fear this mysterious stranger. Undaunted, Tesla continued his wireless power experiments for six more months.

Late one night, an unusual event took place. Tesla noticed a repeating signal being received by his apparatus. To his own amazement, he believed it was an extra-terrestrial communication.

In a letter to the American Red Cross he wrote:

Brothers, we have a message from another world. It reads: One… Two… Three…

The press had a field day. If the mystical “One, Two, Three” was impulsed from Mars, as Tesla says, they certainly showed most excellent taste in choosing Colorado Springs.

It is a rule in inventional science: When you’re going to tell one, tell a good one and men have become great in this way.

Colorado Springs Gazette

Though widely ridiculed for his claim, Tesla may have been the first to detect radio waves from space.

I believed that Tesla could have gotten these signals from space. We are getting them today and these are the radio telescopes. That’s what radio telescopes do today: receive signals from space. They are not from alien civilizations but they are from the sun and from the stars.

On January 7th 1900, Tesla boarded a train back to New York City. Perhaps he had mastered the power of lightning. Or, at least, that’s what he believed.

The law which I discovered in Colorado is wonderful and it means that results undreamed of before will be possible as soon as a large plant is constructed in accordance with my plan.

See the excitement coming. When Tesla arrived home it was a brand new century. Electricity was fueling the tremendous growth of the city. And now there was talk in the air about the new art of wireless communication. Marconi arrived in New York in 1900 to attract investors for his new company, Marconi America. He filed a US patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. But it was rejected because it was similar to Tesla’s invention.

It became obvious, I think, to Marconi as well as to other experimenters of the time that the Tesla system was an efficient, powerful resonator that would produce electromagnetic waves 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 and Edison was conveniently away on business.

They found Tesla across the street by the New York Public Library feeding the pigeons.

Later that night he was persuaded to accept his medal and announced that he had finally completed his invention to transmit wireless power.

The energy goes to a distant place and you will see something like the Aurora Borealis.

To conclude, we are coming to great results.

The audience thought Tesla was losing touch with reality.

I refuse to accord to some small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are nothing more to me than microbes of a nasty disease.

Well, by that time, you know, Tesla had ceased to have any financial means. He was virtually dependent on being helped by hotels and people that he knew. He began to bring injured birds back to his hotel room to nurse them. He had more companionship with pigeons in that time of his life than with human beings.

Working as a consulting engineer, Tesla managed to maintain a small office and laboratory in the Metropolitan Tower. To change his thoughts, he frequently attended movies in Times Square. Here he could see his futuristic ideas appearing on the screen. But his ideas were only accepted in science-fiction movies and magazines.

In 1924, there was a news report that while at Colorado Springs, Tesla had invented a death ray machine that shot bolts of lightning. The inventor was strangely quiet on the topic.

Meanwhile, a new scientific star, Albert Einstein, had captured the world’s attention with his theory of relativity.

Tesla continuously attacked the validity of Einstein’s work. Scientists today wander through equation after equation that have no relation to reality. If we were to release the energy of atoms, instead of a blessing, it might bring disaster to mankind. But no one took him seriously.

I think that every generation of scientists feels that the new ideas that come along that replace their own ideas represent a loss rather than a gain.

Tesla believed that Einstein was taking us intellectually in the wrong direction. Rejected by traditional science, Tesla’s interest again turned to the esoteric. His intellect seemed to embrace a lot of different areas quite easily. What he lacked were the social skills. And that’s an enormous shame because it interfered with his ability to use that genius to be practical.

Though nearly a recluse, he would occasionally attend dinner parties at the home of the German poet and mystic George Sylvester Viereck and he always intrigued the guests.

While we were in the midst of talking, an apparition seemed to come into the room. He walked so softly and he struck us as almost an unearthly creature.

And he talked of all sorts of, seemed to me at that time, unreal things more in the nature of the psychic rather than scientific.

Tesla wrote a strange poem called Fragments of Olympian Gossip and dedicated it to Viereck.

While listening on my cosmic phone

I caught words from Olympus blown…

The latest tells of a cosmic gun.

To be pelted is very poor fun.

The meaning of the poem would soon be explained. I inherited from my father an ineradicable hatred of war. But war can be stopped, not by making the strong weak, but by making every nation, weak or strong, able to defend itself.

Thomas Edison, America’s best-known inventor, died in 1931.

That same year, Tesla came back to life. His friends threw him a 75th birthday celebration. Time magazine put his picture on the cover. Letters of admiration poured in from scientists around the world, including a generous Albert Einstein.

I congratulate you for your great success on your lifetime task.

Basking in the attention, Tesla announced at a press conference that he had discovered a completely new source of power. The idea, when it first burst upon me, was a tremendous shock. And let me say that it has nothing to do with releasing so-called atomic energy.

I think that a lot of the proposals that he made in his later life were so esoteric as to be impractical in that time, and even in the current time.

When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Tesla decided that the time was right to reveal his new source of power: a man-made form of lightning called teleforce that could shoot an airplane from the sky.

Nikola Tesla, electrical wizard and radio pioneer, announced that he was working on a machine to create a powerful electrical death beam which could wipe out armies in a flash and destroy huge fleets of ships or planes.

The concept of using lightning bolts as a weapon certainly is millennia old; it goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Think of Zeus throwing lightning bolts.

The main contribution that Tesla had was to come up with a true scientific rational… at least concept… of coming up with controlling these lightning bolts and projecting them over long distances. Tesla had experimented with this idea while at Colorado Springs. Now he intended to build it on a large scale. His plan was to charge small particles of tungsten or mercury then accelerate them with lightning force through a special gun with one end open to the atmosphere. Tesla’s death beam stirred the public’s imagination when it was featured in a Superman cartoon, the Electrothanasia-Ray.

But the idea was more than science-fiction. Tesla tried to sell this concept to various governments:

England, the Soviet Union and the United States all allied powers and against Germany.

He offered his system to England for $30 million and they entered negotiations. When Tesla demanded payment before sending the final plans, the deal fell through. The British attempted to build their own death beam but the project was soon abandoned.

As the Nazis surrounded Yugoslavia, Tesla attempted to sell a beam weapon system to his former country. There should be needed nine stations. Four for Serbia, three for Croatia and two for Slovenia, and it will protect our dearest homeland. At this point, even Tesla’s countrymen thought he was just a crazy old man.

One day in 1937, Tesla started out from his hotel room to feed his pigeons. Suddenly, a few blocks from the hotel, he was hit by a taxi and thrown to the ground. Three of his ribs were broken. He was 81 years old. Remembering what he did for their company, Westinghouse executives agreed to pay his room and board for the rest of his life. The inventor also received a small stipend from the Yugoslav government.

During the Christmas season of 1942, Tesla’s death was imminent. Again he attempted to interest the United States in his beam weapon concept. At the recommendation of two government engineers, a meeting of high-level officials was scheduled at the White House for January 8th 1943 to consider his plans. But the meeting never took place.

Nikola Tesla, inventor of the Tesla coil, the induction motor and hundreds of other electrical devices, died last night in his suite at the Hotel New Yorker. On last Thursday night, here in our city of New York, a man who was 87 years of age died in his humble hotel room. On January 10th 1943, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York paid tribute to Tesla on the radio.

He died in poverty but he was one of the most useful and successful men who ever lived. Were we to eliminate from our industrial world the result of Tesla’s work the wheels of industry would cease to turn and our electric trains and cars would stop. Our towns would be dark, our mills and factories dead tonight. But Tesla is not dead. The real, the important part of Tesla lives in his achievement, which is great, an integral part of our civilization, of our daily lives, of our current war effort.

Ironically, only five months after Tesla’s death, the United States Supreme Court declared elements of the Marconi patent invalid. The decision confirmed Nikola Tesla’s patent priority for the fundamental technology of radio.

Unknown subjects, equipment, experiments and research of Nikola Tesla deceased. Espionage.

Following Tesla’s death, fears rapidly increased that he might have invented a powerful new weapon. FBI special agent in charge, P. E. Foxworth, was called in to investigate. He had been informed that Tesla’s papers were not secure. Tesla is reported to have completed and perfected his experiments in the radio transmission of electrical power commonly referred to as the death ray.

A distant relative of Tesla named Sava Kosanovich is taking steps to get possession of these important documents and plans.

Tesla’s nephew Kosanovich was an up-and-coming Yugoslav diplomat with suspected connections with the communists. He insisted that his uncle’s effects be returned to Yugoslavia. Kosanovich had asked a locksmith to come and open the safe thinking there might be a testament, a will, in the safe. A will was never located. And there was a lot of talk then about secret weapons and negotiations with the USSR.

It was all kinds of talk, you know.

Shortly before his death, Tesla showed a delivery boy a box in his room that he said contained a powerful weapon.

A number of people called me and asked me, did I ever see in the hotel room a certain kind of a box, you know… They were looking for some secret contraption that Tesla had invented. I never saw anything like that.

The U.S. Office of Alien Property immediately seized all of Tesla’s possessions until their ownership could be established. There’s every evidence that they did look through all his papers because the papers were not in order and certain things were missing.

All his technical papers on beam weapons were secretly microfilmed by U.S. military agents.

On August 6th 1945, the first atomic bomb was exploded on Hiroshima, Japan. Soon after, the bomb would be in the Soviets’ hands. During this period, copies of Tesla’s papers on the beam weapon were shipped to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. There, a top-secret research program began called “Project Nick” to find a defense against nuclear-missile attack.

Copies of his… Some of his papers were sent to Wright-Patterson in 1945, not to my facility, not even to a predecessor of my facility, but to another part of the base, for analysis.

And then they vanished. Nobody seems to know what happened to them. In 1952, Sava Kosanovich obtained permission from U.S. authorities to return Tesla’s estate, still stored in New York, to the inventor’s homeland.

I personally believe that the U.S. government may have overlooked some things of value in the Tesla papers before they were released to the Yugoslav government.

A Tesla museum was opened in Belgrade by Yugoslavia’s president, Marshal Tito. But during the Cold War, the museum was off-limits to western scientists and scholars.

Then, in 1960, Soviet Premier Khrushchev announced that the USSR had developed a powerful new weapom. There was concern in the U.S. that the Russians may have access to Tesla’s missing papers on beam weapons in Belgrade and elsewhere. It’s possible that these papers on the particle-beam weapon were obtained by the Soviet Union. But that wasn’t the only topic. In other words, I think that the United States has always had Tesla’s papers on particle-beam weaponry. An American beam weapon program began at Lawrence Livermore laboratories. But engineers could not produce an effective directed-energy weapon.

I’ve always been a sort of a fan of Nikola Tesla, an admirer, and definitely he had the concept of a charged particle-beam weapon back in the 1930s. I haven’t a clue, to be quite honest, how he meant to actually do it.

In 1978 evidence suggested that the Soviets were attempting to build a huge beam weapon near Semipalatinsk in the Ukraine. Soon after, President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983.

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

Tesla’s concept for a beam weapon defense shield was finally taken seriously by the United States to combat the destructive threat of atomic weapons. In spite of circumstantial evidence, there is no direct proof that Tesla’s ideas or plans were used in the Strategic Defense Initiative.

And even today, after decades of investment and research, scientists still disagree on whether beam weapons are realistic.

Basically, let me just make a short statement. It’s all I’m really at liberty to say. A considerable amount of effort has taken place in the United States and in a number of other countries trying to get these things up to a real weaponizable status. And we stopped at that point. No U.S. government archive has any record of Tesla’s technical papers, which were copied immediately after his death.

And what has become of Tesla’s great dream to transmit electrical power without wires? This is the Navy and Air Force High- Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, in Gakona, Alaska. The large antenna array is designed to beam high-energy microwaves into the ionosphere.

Tesla was a genius, because way before anybody knew or even understood the physics of the Earth and what we call today the ionosphere, which is a layer of ionized particles about 80 kilometers above the Earth, he conceived it, and he tried to use it to produce a variety of new concepts.

The HAARP project evolved from a patent filed in 1987 in which Tesla’s work is referenced. It proposed using the ionosphere like an enormous electrical circuit to transmit power around the planet. It even described a means of changing the weather by super-heating portions of the upper atmosphere with microwave energy.

Tesla proposed that it might be possible to modify the weather by using radio waves.

I believe that this is impossible. Ionospheric modification is still in its early experimental stages. But microwave technology has already made it possible to transmit wireless power with the use of satellites.

We go to Alaska, and in Alaska there is natural gas. In order to send it somewhere you have to create a pipeline. That’s very expensive. So we said, all right, let’s go into Alaska, create microwaves from the natural gas, send them to a satellite at a particular geosynchronous orbit, put a reflector there and send it to Japan. And in Japan, you get an antenna which transforms these microwaves into 60 Hz and you get electricity. So you make actually Tesla’s dream.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter: for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He was special; he was unique. He was unusual in all sorts of ways. And if we are to understand our own creativity, our own ability to invent there is an awful lot to be learned by studying the way in which he created.

The day when we shall know exactly what electricity is will chronicle an event probably greater, more important, than any other recorded in the history of the human race. Then, it will be a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

See the excitement coming!

Nikola Tesla: The Genius Who Lit the World (Article)

https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/nikola-tesla-genius-who-lit-world-article

Nikola Tesla: The Genius Who Lit the World (Article)

by Dr. Ljubomir Vujović, American Srbobran, November 17th, 1993

Page number(s): 6

Nikola Tesla symbolizes a unifying force and inspiration for all nations in the name of peace and science. He was a true visionary far ahead of his contemporaries in the field of scientific development. The year 1993 is proclaimed Nicola Tesla Year in Yugoslavia. New York State and four other states in the U.S.A. proclaimed July 10th, Tesla’s birthday, Nikola Tesla Day. The street sign “Nikola Tesla Corner” was recently placed on the corner of the 40th Street and the 6th Avenue in Manhattan. There is a large photo of Nikola Tesla in the Statue of Liberty Museum. A hydroelectric power plant that was recently built in Colorado Springs has Tesla’s name. The Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey, has a daily science demonstration of the Tesla Coil creating million watts of electricity before the spectators’ eyes. Many books were written about the Siberian genius Nikola Tesla. Margaret Cheney’s recent book “Tesla, Man Out of Time” has contributed significantly to his fame. A documentary film “Nikola Tesla, the Genius Who Lit the World,” produced by the Tesla Memorial Society and the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, is another tribute to the greatest Serbian genius.

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Lika, a region that became part of Yugoslavia in 1918.* His father Milutin Tesla was a Siberian Orthodox priest and his mother Djuka Mandic was a sister of a Serbian Orthodox bishop from Bosnia. Young Nikola Tesla came to the United States in 1884 with an introduction letter from Charles Batchelor to Thomas Edison: “I know two great men,” wrote Batchelor, “one is you and the other is this young man.”

Tesla died on January 7, 1943 in the Hotel New Yorker, on the 34th Street and the 8th Avenue in Manhattan, where he lived for ten years. He was cremated in Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York. His ashes are in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.

Tesla astonished the world by demonstrating the wonders of alternating current electricity at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Alternating current became standard power in the twentieth century. This accomplishment changed the world. He designed the first hydroelectric power plant in Niagara Falls in 1895. Tesla was a pioneer in many fields. He invented the “Tesla coil” and the alternating current induction motor (which is considered one of the greatest discoveries of all times). Among his discoveries are: fluorescent light, laser beam, wireless communication, wireless transmission of electrical energy, remote control, robotics, Tesla’s turbine, and vertical take-off aircraft. Tesla is the father of the radio and the modern electrical transmissions systems. He discovered rotating magnetic field. The international unit of magnetic flux density bears Tesla’s name. Every magnetic resonance imaging machine is calibrated in Tesla Units. Tesla registered over 700 patents worldwide. His vision included exploration of solar energy and the power of the sea. He foresaw interplanetary communications and satellites.

Ljubo Vujovic, MD is the secretary for New York and New Jersey of the Tesla Memorial Society.

Nikola Tesla: The Genius Who Lit the World (Documentary)

This is the documentary film about Nikola Tesla, the scientist and inventor, one of the greatest men in history. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10,1856 in Smiljan, Lika in what later became Yugoslavia. His father, Milutin Tesla was a Serbian orthodox priest and his mother Djuka Mandic was an inventor in her own right of household appliances. Tesla studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria and the University of Prague. He began his career as an electrical engineer with a telephone company in Budapest in 1881.

Before going to America, Tesla joined Continental Edison Company in Paris where he designed dynamos. While in Strassbourg in 1883, he privately built a prototype of the induction motor and ran it successfully. Unable to interest anyone in Europe in promoting this radical device Tesla accepted an offer to work for Thomas Edison in New York.

Young Nikola Tesla came to the United States in 1884. Tesla will spend the next 59 years of his productive life living in New York. Tesla set about improving line of dynamos while working in Edison’s lab in New Jersey. It was here that his divergence of opinion with Edison over direct current versus alternating current began. This disagreement climaxed in the Battle of Currents as Edison fought a losing battle to protect his investment in direct current equipment and facilities.

Direct current flows continuously in one direction; alternating current changes direction 50 or 60 times per second, and can be stepped up to very high voltage levels, minimizing power loss across great distances. The future belongs to the alternating current. Nikola Tesla developed polyphase alternating current system of generators, motors and transformers and held 40 basic U.S. patents on the system, which George Westinghouse bought, determined to supply America with Tesla system. In February 1882, Tesla discovered rotating magnetic field, a fundamental principle in physics and the basis of nearly all devices that use alternating current.

Tesla’s A-C induction motor is widely used throughout the world in industry and household appliances. This motor started the industrial revolution at the turn of the century. Electricity today is generated, transmitted and converted to mechanical power by means of his inventions. Tesla’s greatest achievement is his polyphase alternating current system, which is today lighting the entire globe.

Tesla’s “Power Banquet” Speech

On this day in 1897, Nikola Tesla gave a speech at a gala celebrating the inauguration of power service from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, New York, held at Buffalo’s new Ellicott Club. The affair was termed the “Power Banquet” by Pierre Berton in his book Niagara – A History of the Falls. Two months earlier, Tesla had succeeded in using his alternating-current system to transmit hydroelectric power from the Falls—an incredible feat. The New York Tribune suggested at the time that the achievement might be justly regarded as one of the triumphs of the century, heralding the great future awaiting the Niagara frontier when electric power reached its fullest development.

The 400 guests in attendance at the celebration included engineers, inventors, manufacturers, capitalists, and the cream of Buffalo’s upper class. The front-page headline in The Buffalo Courier read “‘Electric Buffalo’s’ Banquet – Predictions of its Great Future.” The article called the power transmission “the most important event in Buffalo’s history — an event without parallel in the history of the world,” describing Tesla as “the weird electric genius of the nineteenth century whose brains have made Electric Buffalo a fact.”

Here is the full transcript of Tesla’s speech (as printed in The Electrical Review, January 27, 1897):

I have scarcely had courage enough to address an audience on a few unavoidable occasions, and the experience of this evening, even as disconnected from the cause of our meeting, is quite novel to me. Although in those few instances, of which I have retained agreeable memory, my words have met with a generous reception, I never deceived myself, and knew quite well that my success was not due to any excellency in the rhetorical or demonstrative art. Nevertheless, my sense of duty to respond to the request with which I was honored a few days ago was strong enough to overcome my very grave apprehensions in regard to my ability of doing justice to the topic assigned to me. It is true, at times—even now, as I speak—my mind feels full of the subject, but I know that, as soon as I shall attempt expression, the fugitive conceptions will vanish, and I shall experience certain well known sensations of abandonment, chill and silence. I can see already your disappointed countenances and can read in them the painful regret of the mistake in your choice.

These remarks, gentlemen, are not made with selfish desire of winning your kindness and indulgence on my shortcomings, but with the honest intention of offering you an apology for your disappointment. Nor are they made—as you might be disposed to think—in that playful spirit which, to the enjoyment of the listeners is often displayed by belated speakers. On the contrary, I am deeply earnest in my wish that I were capable of having the fire of eloquence kindled in me, that I might dwell in adequate terms on this fascinating science of electricity, on the marvelous development which electrical annals have recorded and which, as one of the speakers justly remarked, stamp this age as the Electrical Age, and particularly on the great event we are commemorating this day. Unfortunately, this my desire must remain unfulfilled, but I am hopeful that in my formless and incomplete statements, among the few ideas and facts I shall mention there may be something of interest and usefulness, something befitting this unique occasion.

Gentlemen, there are a number of features clearly discernible in, and characteristic of, human intellectual progress in more recent times—features which afford great comfort to the minds of all those who have really at heart the advancement and welfare of mankind.

First of all the inquiry, by the aid of the microscope and electrical instruments of precision, into the nature of our organs and senses, and particularly of those through which we commune directly with the outside world and through which knowledge is conveyed to our minds, has revealed their exact construction and mode of action, which is in conformity with simple and well established physical principles and laws. Hence the observations we make and the facts we ascertain by their help are real facts and observations, and our knowledge is true knowledge. To illustrate: Our knowledge of form, for instance, is dependent upon the positive fact that light propagates in straight lines, and, owing to this, the image formed by a lens is exactly similar to the object seen. Indeed, my thoughts in such fields and directions have led me to the conclusion that most all human knowledge is based on this simple truth, since practically every idea or conception—and therefore all knowledge—presupposes visual impressions. But if light would not propagate in accordance with the law mentioned, but in conformity with any other law which we might presently conceive, whereby not only the image might not bear any likeness to the object seen, but even the images of the same object at different times or distances might not resemble each other, then our knowledge of form would be very defective, for then we might see, for example, a three-cornered figure as a six or twelve-cornered one. With the clear understanding of the mechanism and mode of action of our organs, we remove all doubts as to the reality and truth of the impressions received from the outside, and thus we bar out—forever, we may hope—that unhealthy speculation and skepticism into which formerly even strong minds were apt to fall.

Let me tell you of another comforting feature. The progress in a measured time is nowadays more rapid and greater than it ever was before. This is quite in accordance with the fundamental law of motion, which commands acceleration and increase of momentum or accumulation of energy under the action of a continuously acting force and tendency, and is the more true as every advance weakens the elements tending to produce friction and retardation. For, after all, what is progress, or—more correctly—development, or evolution, if not a movement, infinitely complex and often unscrutinizable, it is true, but nevertheless exactly determined in quantity as well as in quality of motion by the physical conditions and laws governing? This feature of more recent development is best shown in the rapid merging together of the various arts and sciences by the obliteration of the hard and fast lines of separation, of borders, some of which only a few years ago seemed unsurpassable, and which, like veritable Chinese walls, surrounded every department of inquiry and barred progress. A sense of connectedness of the various apparently widely different forces and phenomena we observe is taking possession of our minds, a sense of deeper understanding of nature as a whole, which, though not yet quite clear and defined, is keen enough to inspire us with the confidence of vast realizations in the near future.

But these features chiefly interest the scientific man, the thinker and reasoner. There is another feature which affords us still more satisfaction and enjoyment, and which is of still more universal interest, chiefly because of its bearing upon the welfare of mankind. Gentlemen, there is an influence which is getting strong and stronger day by day, which shows itself more and more in all departments of human activity, and influence most fruitful and beneficial—the influence of the artist. It was a happy day for the mass of humanity when the artist felt the desire of becoming a physician, an electrician, an engineer or mechanician or—whatnot—a mathematician or a financier; for it was he who wrought all these wonders and grandeur we are witnessing. It was he who abolished that small, pedantic, narrow-grooved school teaching which made of an aspiring student a galley-slave, and he who allowed freedom in the choice of subject of study according to one’s pleasure and inclination, and so facilitated development.

Some, who delight in the exercise of the powers of criticism, call this an asymmetrical development, a degeneration or departure from the normal, or even a degradation of the race. But they are mistaken. This is a welcome state of things, a blessing, a wise subdivision of labors, the establishment of conditions most favorable to progress. Let one concentrate all his energies in one single great effort, let him perceive a single truth, even though he be consumed by the sacred fire, then millions of less gifted men can easily follow. Therefore it is not as much quantity as quality of work which determines the magnitude of the progress.

It was the artist, too, who awakened that broad philanthropic spirit which, even in old ages, shone in the teachings of noble reformers and philosophers, that spirit which makes men in all departments and positions work not as much for any material benefit or compensation—though reason may command this also—but chiefly for the sake of success, for the pleasure there is in achieving it and for the good they might be able to do thereby to their fellow-men. Through his influence types of men are now pressing forward, impelled by a deep love for their study, men who are doing wonders in their respective branches, whose chief aim and enjoyment is the acquisition and spread of knowledge, men who look far above earthly things, whose banner is Excelsior! Gentlemen, let us honor the artist; let us thank him, let us drink his health!

Now, in all these enjoyable and elevating features which characterize modern intellectual development, electricity, the expansion of the science of electricity, has been a most potent factor. Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge. Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses. Electrical science, too, by its fascination, by its promises of immense realizations, of wonderful possibilities chiefly in humanitarian respects, has attracted the attention and enlisted the energies of the artist; for where is there a field in which his God-given powers would be of a greater benefit to his fellow-men than this unexplored, almost virgin, region, where, like in a silent forest, a thousand voices respond to every call?

With these comforting features, with these cheering prospects, we need not look with any feeling of incertitude or apprehension into the future. There are pessimistic men, who, with anxious faces, continuously whisper in your ear that the nations are secretly arming—arming to the teeth; that they are going to pounce upon each other at a given signal and destroy themselves; that they are all trying to outdo that victorious, great, wonderful German army, against which there is no resistance, for every German has the discipline in his very blood—every German is a soldier, But these men are in error. Look only at our recent experience with the British in that Venezuela difficulty. Two other nations might have crashed together, but not the Anglo-Saxons; they are too far ahead. The men who tell you this are ignoring forces which are continually at work, silently but resistlessly—forces which say Peace!

There is the genuine artist, who inspires us with higher and nobler sentiments, and makes us abhor strife and carnage. There is the engineer, who bridges gulfs and chasms, and facilitates contact and equalization of the heterogeneous masses of humanity. There is the mechanic, who comes with his beautiful time and energy-saving appliances, who perfects his flying machine, not to drop a bag of dynamite on a city or vessel, but to facilitate transport and travel. There, again, is the chemist, who opens new resources and makes existence more pleasant and secure; and there is the electrician, who sends his messages of peace to all parts of the globe. The time will not be long in coming when those men who are turning their ingenuity to inventing quick-firing guns, torpedoes and other implements of destruction—all the while assuring you that it is for the love and good of humanity—will find no takers for their odious tools, and will realize that, had they used their inventive talent in other directions; they might have reaped a far better reward than the sestertia received. And then, and none too soon the cry will be echoed everywhere. Brethren, stop these high-handed methods of the strong, these remnants of barbarism so inimical to progress! Give that valiant warrior opportunities for displaying a more commendable courage than that he shows when, intoxicated with victory, he rushes to the destruction of his fellow-men. Let him toil day and night with a small chance of achieving and yet be unflinching; let him challenge the dangers of exploring the heights of the air and the depths of the sea; let him brave the dread of the plague, the heat of the tropic desert and the ice of the polar region. Turn your energies to warding off the common enemies and danger, the perils that are all around you, that threaten you in the air you breathe, in the water you drink, in the food you consume. It is not strange, is it not shame, that we, beings in the highest state of development in this our world, beings with such immense powers of thought and action, we, the masters of the globe, should be absolutely at the mercy of our unseen foes, that we should not know whether a swallow of food or drink brings joy and life or pain and destruction to us! In this most modern and sensible warfare, in which the bacteriologist leads, the services electricity will render will prove invaluable. The economical production of high-frequency currents, which is now an accomplished fact, enables us to generate easily and in large quantities ozone for the disinfection of the water and the air, while certain novel radiations recently discovered give hope of finding effective remedies against ills of microbic origin, which have heretofore withstood all efforts of the physician. But let me turn to a more pleasant theme.

I have referred to the merging together of the various sciences or departments of research, and to a certain perception of intimate connection between the manifold and apparently different forces and phenomena. Already we know, chiefly through the efforts of a bold pioneer, that light, radiant heat, electrical and magnetic actions are closely related, not to say identical. The chemist professes that the effects of combination and separation of bodies he observes are due to electrical forces, and the physician and physiologist will tell you that even life’s progress is electrical. Thus electrical science has gained a universal meaning, and with right this age can claim the name “Age of Electricity.”

I wish much to tell you on this occasion—I may say I actually burn for desire of telling you—what electricity really is, but I have very strong reasons, which my coworkers will best appreciate, to follow a precedent established by a great and venerable philosopher, and I shall not dwell on this purely scientific aspect of electricity.

There is another reason for the claim which I have before stated which is even more potent than the former, and that is the immense development in all electrical branches in more recent years and its influence upon other departments of science and industry. To illustrate this influence I only need to refer to the steam or gas engine. For more than half a century the steam engine has served the innumerable wants of man. The work it was called to perform was of such variety and the conditions in each case were so different that, of necessity, a great many types of engines have resulted. In the vast majority of cases the problem put before the engineer was not as it should have been, the broad one of converting the greatest possible amount of heat energy into mechanical power, but it was rather the specific problem of obtaining the mechanical power in such form as to be best suitable for general use. As the reciprocating motion of the piston was not convenient for practical purposes, except in very few instances, the piston was connected to a crank, and thus rotating motions was obtained, which was more suitable and preferable, though it involved numerous disadvantages incident to the crude and wasteful means employed. But until quite recently there were at the disposal of the engineer, for the transformation and transmission of the motion of the piston, no better means than rigid mechanical connections. The past few years have brought forcibly to the attention of the builder the electric motor, with its ideal features. Here was a mode of transmitting mechanical motion simpler by far, and also much more economical. Had this mode been perfected earlier, there can be no doubt that, of the many different types of engine, the majority would not exist, for just as soon as an engine was coupled with an electric generator a type was produced capable of almost universal use. From this moment on there was no necessity to endeavor to perfect engines of special designs capable of doing special kinds of work. The engineer’s task became now to concentrate all his efforts upon one type, to perfect one kind of engine—the best; the universal, the engine of the immediate future; namely, the one which is best suitable for the generation of electricity. The first efforts in this direction gave a strong impetus to the development of the reciprocating high speed engine, and also to the turbine, which latter was a type of engine of very limited practical usefulness, but became, to a certain extent, valuable in connection with the electric generator and motor. Still, even the former engine, though improved in many particulars, is not radically changed, and even now has the same objectionable features and limitations. To do away with these as much as possible, a new type of engine is being perfected in which more favorable conditions for economy are maintained, which expands the working fluid with utmost rapidity and loses little heat on the walls, an engine stripped of all usual regulating mechanism—packings, oilers and other appendages—and forming part of an electric generator; and in this type, I may say, I have implicit faith.

The gas or explosive engine has been likewise profoundly affected by the commercial introduction of electric light and power, particularly in quite recent years. The engineer is turning his energies more and more in this direction, being attracted by the prospect of obtaining a higher thermodynamic efficiency. Much larger engines are now being built, the construction is constantly improved, and a novel type of engine, best suitable for the generation of electricity, is being rapidly evolved.

There are many other lines of manufacture and industry in which the influence of electrical development has been even more powerfully felt. So, for instance, the manufacture of a great variety of articles of metal, and especially of chemical products. The welding of metals by electricity, though involving a wasteful process, has, nevertheless, been accepted as a legitimate art, while the manufacture of metal sheet, seamless tubes and the like affords promise of much improvement. We are coming gradually, but surely, to the fusion of bodies and reduction of all kinds of ores—even of iron ores—by the use of electricity, and in each of these departments great realizations are probable. Again, the economical conversion of ordinary currents of supply into high-frequency currents opens up new possibilities, such as the combination of the atmospheric nitrogen and the production of its compounds; for instance, ammonia and nitric acid, and their salts, by novel processes.

The high-frequency currents also bring us to the realization of a more economical system of lighting; namely by means of phosphorescent bulbs or tubes, and enable us to produce with these appliances light of practically any candle-power. Following other developments in purely electrical lines, we have all rejoiced in observing the rapid strides made, which, in quite recent years, have been beyond our most sanguine expectations. To enumerate the many advances recorded is a subject for the reviewer, but I can not pass without mentioning the beautiful discoveries of Lenart and Roentgen, particularly the latter, which have found such a powerful response throughout the scientific world that they have made us forget, for a time, the great achievement of Linde in Germany, who has effected the liquefaction of air on an industrial scale by a process of continuous cooling: the discovery of argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsay, and the splendid pioneer work of Professor Dewar in the field of low temperature research. The fact that the United States have contributed a very liberal share to this prodigious progress must afford to all of us great satisfaction. While honoring the workers in other countries and all those who, by profession or inclination, are devoting themselves to strictly scientific pursuits, we have particular reasons to mention with gratitude the names of those who have so much contributed to this marvelous development of electrical industry in this country. Bell, who, by his admirable invention enabling us to transmit speech to great distances, has profoundly affected our commercial and social relations, and even our very mode of life; Edison, who, had he not done anything else beyond his early work in incandescent lighting, would have proved himself one of the greatest benefactors of the age; Westinghouse, the founder of the commercial alternating system; Brush, the great pioneer of arc lighting; Thomson, who gave us the first practical welding machine, and who, with keen sense, contributed very materially to the development of a number of scientific and industrial branches; Weston, who once led the world in dynamo design, and now leads in the construction of electric instruments; Sprague, who, with rare energy, mastered the problem and insured the success of practical electrical railroading; Acheson, Hall, Willson and others, who are creating new and revolutionizing industries here under our very eyes at Niagara. Nor is the work of these gifted men nearly finished at this hour. Much more is still to come, form fortunately, most of them are still full of enthusiasm and vigor. All of these men and many more are untiringly at work investigating new regions and opening up unsuspected and promising fields. Weekly, if not daily, we learn through the journals of a new advance into some unexplored region, where at every step success beckons friendly, and leads the toiler on to hard and harder tasks.

But among all these many departments of research, these many branches of industry, new and old, which are being rapidly expanded, there is one dominating all others in importance—one which is of the greatest significance for the comfort and welfare, not to say for the existence, of mankind, and that is the electrical transmission of power. And in this most important of all fields, gentlemen, long afterwards, when time will have placed the events in their proper perspective, and assigned men to their deserved places, the great event we are commemorating today will stand out as designating a new and glorious epoch in the history of humanity—an epoch grander than that marked by the advent of the steam engine. We have many a monument of past ages: we have the palaces and pyramids, the temples of the Greek and the cathedrals of Christendom. In them is exemplified the power of men, the greatness of nations, the love of art and religious devotion. But that monument at Niagara has something of its own, more in accord with our present thoughts and tendencies. It is a monument worthy of our scientific age, a true monument of enlightenment and of peace. It signifies the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man, the discontinuance of barbarous methods, the relieving of millions from want and suffering. No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. Our economists may propose more economical systems of administration and utilization of resources, our legislators may make wiser laws and treaties, it matters little; that kind of help can be only temporary. If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies. With sufficient power at our disposal we can satisfy most of our wants and offer a guaranty for safe and comfortable existence to all, except perhaps to those who are the greatest criminals of all—the voluntarily idle.

The development and wealth of a city, the success of a nation, the progress of the whole human race, is regulated by the power available. Think of the victorious march of the British, the like of which history has never recorded. Apart from the qualities of the race, which have been of great moment, they own the conquest of the world to—coal. For with coal they produce their iron; coal furnishes them light and heat; coal drives the wheels of their immense manufacturing establishments, and coal propels their conquering fleets. But the stores are being more and more exhausted; the labor is getting dearer and dearer, and the demand is continuously increasing. It must be clear to every one that soon some new source of power supply must be opened up, or that at least the present methods must be materially improved. A great deal is expected from a more economical utilization of the stored energy of the carbon in a battery; but while the attainment of such a result would be hailed as a great achievement; it would not be as much of an advance towards the ultimate and permanent method of obtaining power as some engineers seem to believe. By reasons both of economy and convenience we are driven to the general adoption of a system of energy supply from central stations, and for such purposes the beauties of the mechanical generation of electricity can not be exaggerated. The advantages of this universally accepted method are certainly so great that the probability of replacing the engine dynamos by batteries is, in my opinion, a remote one, the more so as the high-pressure steam engine and gas engine give promise of a considerably more economical thermodynamic conversion. Even if we had this day such an economical coal battery, its introduction in central stations would by no means be assured, as its use would entail many inconveniences and drawbacks. Very likely the carbon could not be burned in its natural form as in a boiler, but would have to be specially prepared to secure uniformity in the current generation. There would be a great many cells needed to make up the electro-motive force usually required. The process of cleaning and renewal, the handling of nasty fluids and gases and the great space necessary for so many batteries would make it difficult, if not commercially unprofitable, to operate such a plant in a city or densely populated district. Again if the station be erected in the outskirts, the conversion by rotating transformers or otherwise would be a serious and unavoidable drawback. Furthermore, the regulating appliances and other accessories which would have to be provided would probably make the plant fully as much, if not more, complicated than the present. We might, of course, place the batteries at or near the coal mine, and from there transmit the energy to distant points in the form of high-tension alternating currents obtained from rotating transformers, but even in this most favorable case the process would be a barbarous one, certainly more so than the present, as it would still involve the consumption of material, while at the same time it would restrict the engineer and mechanic in the exercise of their beautiful art. As to the energy supply in small isolated places as dwellings, I have placed my confidence in the development of a light storage battery, involving the use of chemicals manufactured by cheap water power, such as some carbide or oxygen-hydrogen cell.

But we shall not satisfy ourselves simply with improving steam and explosive engines or inventing new batteries; we have something much better to work for, a greater task to fulfill. We have to evolve means for obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. Upon this great possibility, which I have long ago recognized, upon this great problem, the practical solution of which means so much for humanity, I have myself concentrated my efforts since a number of years, and a few happy ideas which came to me have inspired me to attempt the most difficult, and given me strength and courage in adversity. Nearly six years ago my confidence had become strong enough to prompt me to an expression of hope in the ultimate solution of this all dominating problem. I have made progress since, and have passed the stage of mere conviction such as is derived from a diligent study of known facts, conclusions and calculations. I now feel sure that the realization of that idea is not far off. But precisely for this reason I feel impelled to point out here an important fact, which I hope will be remembered. Having examined for a long time the possibilities of the development I refer to, namely, that of the operation of engines on any point of the earth by the energy of the medium, I find that even under the theoretically best conditions such a method of obtaining power can not equal in economy, simplicity and many other features the present method, involving a conversion fo the mechanical energy of running water into electrical energy and the transmission of the latter in the form of currents of very high tension to great distances. Provided, therefore, that we can avail ourselves of currents of sufficiently high tension, a waterfall affords us the most advantageous means of getting power from the sun sufficient for all our wants, and this recognition has impressed me strongly with the future importance of the water power, not so much because of its commercial value, though it may be very great, but chiefly because of its bearing upon our safety and welfare. I am glad to say that also in this latter direction my efforts have not been unsuccessful, for I have devised means which will allow us the use in power transmission of electromotive forces much higher than those practicable with ordinary apparatus. In fact, progress in this field has given me fresh hope that I shall see the fulfillment of one of my fondest dreams; namely, the transmission of power from station to station without the employment of any connecting wire. Still, whatever method of transmission be ultimately adopted, nearness to the source of power will remain an important advantage.

Gentlemen, some of the ideas I have expressed may appear to many of you hardly realizable; nevertheless, they are the result of long-continued thought and work. You would judge them more justly if you would have devoted your life to them, as I have done. With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look—for dizzier heights. I have attempted to speak to you on “Electricity,” its development and influence, but I fear that I have done it much like a boy who tries to draw a likeness with a few straight lines. But I have endeavored to bring out one feature, to speak to you in one strain which I felt sure would find response in the hearts of all of you, the only one worthy of this occasion—the humanitarian. In the great enterprise at Niagara we see not only a bold engineering and commercial feat, but far more, a giant stride in the right direction as indicated both by exact science and philanthropy. Its success is a signal for the utilization of water powers all over the world, and its influence upon industrial development is incalculable. We must all rejoice in the great achievement and congratulate the intrepid pioneers who have joined their efforts and means to bring it about. It is a pleasure to learn of the friendly attitude of the citizens of Buffalo and of the encouragement given to the enterprise by the Canadian authorities. We shall hope that other cities, like Rochester on this side and Hamilton and Toronto in Canada, will soon follow Buffalo’s lead. This fortunate city herself is to be congratulated. With resources now unequaled, with commercial facilities and advantages such as few cities in the world possess, and with the enthusiasm and progressive spirit of its citizens, it is sure to become one of the greatest industrial centers of the globe.

The Secret Life of Nikola Tesla (1980) - full transcript

https://subslikescript.com/movie/The_Secret_Life_of_Nikola_Tesla-79985

Life and times of Nikola Tesla, famous scientist whose inventions were stolen, but whose greatest contribution to mankind remain a mystery to this day.

THE SECRET OF NIKOLA TESLA

There are statements I made when I believed people would listen to me, at least as regard certain things which are important for us all, but now it makes no difference.

But how come you are here at all? I mean in my hotel room… I haven’t been visited by anyone for a very long time. Which paper will you be publishing this in?

As a matter of fact, I’m a freelance reporter. Mr. Tesla, you were once a very wealthy man. You worked with JP Morgan, didn’t you?

We were given a great opportunity.

And what was that opportunity?

It had to do with the course mankind had chosen and the one that might have chosen, which would have led in a very different direction.

Mr. Tesla, is it true that you once received some unidentified signals from space in Colorado Springs?

I have already made a very full statement on that.

And when was that?

At a press conference, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, that was in 1890.

Just one more question, if you don’t mind. At one time, you worked very closely with George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison. Is it true that you gave up 10 million dollars owed to you by Westinghouse?

Young man, Edison and Westinghouse are very different men. George and I still see each other often.

Mr. Tesla, George Westinghouse is dead. He died a long time ago.

I suppose you’re going to tell me that Mark Twain is dead too.

He’s been dead for over 30 years, Mr. Tesla.

It’s 1943 now.

Well, you see, I was speaking to him just yesterday. But the man I really want to talk to is Morgan. And now, young man, I should be grateful if you would leave.

Than you very much, Mr. Tesla.

Morgan… the others were always happy to speak with me, but Morgan, after all these years, he still refuses to answer. All these terrible things, they need never have happened. I told him that. I showed him what the world could be. He’d let me know, he said, when he was ready. I’m still waiting.

LOS ANGELES COVERED IN SMOG

Here you are, sir. Welcome to the United States of America. Next. Here you are, sir. You’re all set. Welcome to the United States of America. Are all these children yours? You’re their legal guardian?

(speaking Italian)

All the children are healthy. We had a checkup in Italy, on the Piroska. We are all healthy, sir. No one in our family had ever been ill. These are all the documents. Thank you.

(speaking Italian)

The man asked if you were responsible for all those kids.

What a question! Who else should be responsible for my kids?! We’ve come to America for their sake, good God.

There you are. Welcome to the United States. Thank you, sir.

Let’s go, kids. Now we’re in America. Now we have everything.

Nikola Tesla, from Paris. Born in Smiljan, Croatia, Austria.

And how big a family have you got, sir? No family at all. I’m not married.

All right.

You’re all set. Welcome to the United States of America, Mr. Tesla.

• Thank you very much, sir.

• All right. Who’s next?

It’s just like magic, Tom. Every time I hear that voice right of yours it just seems more wonderful than ever.

Yeah, thank you, Katherine.

I’ve got a new name for it: a phonograph.

What do you think?

Whatever you call it, it’s another one of our miracles.

• Maybe the greatest.

• You know, Bob… we’re all friends, you and Katherine, I feel I can confide in you. I got a hunch that this Niagara project could be about as important as anything I have ever done.

You’re the only man on Earth who could pull it off. We can be sure of that.

Sorry to bother you, folks.

Yes, Albert. What is it?

It’s that fellow from France. He was here yesterday, but you were too busy. Now he’s back again.

Well, I’m busy again.

Tell him to try early next week.

Poor man.

Don’t put him off because of us.

It seems like every inventor in Europe is heading straight for America.

He has a letter for you.

From the manager of your company in Paris.

Oh…

well, ok, ok. Let him in.

Mr. Tesla, Mr. Edison will see you now.

All right, fella…

• is this the letter?

• Yes, Mr. Edison.

Well, it says here, this one introduce Mr. Nikola Tesla. Ok, Tesla, consider yourself introduced.

Mr. Tesla, welcome to America.

• Thank you, Miss.

• It’s Mrs. I’m Mrs. Robert Johnson and this is my husband. Maybe he’d rather see you alone.

Oh, no, I would be happy if you’d stay, Mrs. Johnson.

What I would like to talk about can be of benefit to the whole of humanity.

If you said that anywhere else, Mr. Tesla, I might not be inclined to believe you.

But this is the birthplace of many wonderful things.

Here we’ve become accustomed to see the impossible come true.

Better mind (?), sonny.

This man is none other than the editor of Sentry Magazine.

Well, I don’t suppose Mr. Tesla has even heard of Sentry where he comes from.

You’re French, aren’t you?

I’ve been working there but I was born in Lika.

Well, who knows? Maybe Lika is another birthplace of wonderful things.

• What do you say, Tom?

• Never heard of the place.

It’s on border between Austria and Turkey. Lika is the province. Smiljan is the town.

Well, you know what it says here? This is from the manager of my company in Paris. It says dear Mr. Edison, I know of only two really great men in this world. You are one of them… and the young Nikola Tesla is the other. Ok, Tesla, let’s come down out of the clouds. You got something to show me?

Here, Mr. Edison. As you see, this is a rotating magnetic field.

What’s it for?

It cuts the coils at point A and induces a current, which flows to the contact rings at point B.

You expect that to start your motor?

Of course, and there is no waste of power from long distance transmission.

You’ve seem to forgotten something, sonny.

You don’t have a commutator.

There’s no need for one. This is alternating current, Mr. Edison.

• Alternating?

• Yes. Using direct current, you’d need over a hundred power stations to light up the city of New York, and even then, the outskirts are left in darkness, because direct current cannot reach that far. But with my system, I guarantee that just one power station can light the whole city… and the whole state as well. We are throwing the power given to us by nature to the winds. Electric power in its present form is not only imperfect, it’s unnatural. As I know you’ll agree, Mr. Edison, we are out of step with nature’s harmony. With alternating current, we are talking about energy in an undreamt of degree. We will built new power stations and demolish old ones. It’s a giant step forward. It will transform the whole world.

Demolish all my power stations… just because of this little motor of yours?

But Tom…

Do you know what they call me, Tesla? They call me the king of electricity. I transformed the world already… and everything I have accomplished has been based on direct electric current. You’re heading up the wrong street with this thing, believe me, it’s a dead end.

Where are you going?

I’m sorry… I’m very sorry to have taken up your time.

Well, I thought you wanted to work for me. You have an original mind… maybe even a brilliant one. Just because you made one little mistake, doesn’t mean I ought to throw you out of our ear. I can use all the bright people I can get. You be here tomorrow morning, 7 o’clock, sharp.

Thank you. I’m so grateful. Good-bye.

I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other, Mr. Tesla.

I hope so.

So do I.

Tom, you’re a big man.

Hm-mm.

Yes, I’m glad you were so generous.

He’s a very young and interesting person and he came all the way to America just to work with you. I would have hated to see him lose the chance.

Well, I’ve got an eye for brains, Katherine. He’s a bit wrongheaded but… got something all the same. I will knock some sense into him, you will see.

Do you see what I see?

Mr. Tesla?

Good afternoon, Mr. Johnson.

Mrs. Johnson.

Is this some kind of a scientific experiment or are you actually doing what it looks like you’re doing?

I am digging a ditch, Mr. Johnson.

That’s very obvious.

Then you must no longer be with Edison.

That’s obvious too.

What happened?

There were differences between us.

I’ll go see him right away, then fix it up.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, but in some ways, this is better than the place I left.

If you are really through with Edison, Bob will find something for you on the magazine, won’t you, Bob?

• Yes.

• Give him your card.

And please, Mr. Tesla, come up out of that ditch. We don’t stop work until 5, Mrs. Johnson.

Then 7 will be fine. We’ll see you at our house, the address is on the card.

You promise?

Yes, I promise.

Has Katherine fully explain what I had in mind for you?

It’s most kind of you and indeed I’m very grateful.

You don’t want the job?

Is that what you’re telling me?

I’m afraid so.

Do you really prefer digging those ditches to being on the editorial staff of Sentry Magazine?

Anyone would be honored, Mr. Johnson.

• Bob.

• Bob.

But it could only be temporary and it wouldn’t be fair to you.

Well, I…

Don’t go yet, Nicky.

Stay for a moment and tell Bob some of the things you’ve been telling me. About that first induction motor… About you and your family and that place where you were born.

• Lika, isn’t it?

• Yes.

Nicky spoke five languages when he was only a child and his mother has invented all kinds of things too. But she can’t read or write, can you imagine? And his father was a priest. Of course, in the orthodox Church they’re allowed to marry. You aren’t marry, are you, Nicky?

Not yet?

If I ever did marry, it could only be with someone like you. And, of course, that’s impossible.

Good night.

Thank you both.

Please, see Mr. Tesla to the door.

He must be very poor. Yet he bought me these flowers.

• He’s working in that ditch over there.

• Well, let’s go see him.

There, that’s Tesla.

My name is Hiram Brown, president of Western Union Telegraph Company.

Nice to meet you, Mr. Brown.

I’m prepared to finance the development of your motor, Mr. Tesla.

Are you prepare to finance all further work on alternating current as well?

I hadn’t really thought about that.

Let’s see what happens with the motor first.

I will construct it only in my own workshop.

Would you expect to build it for you?

I’ll build it Mr. Brown.

You just pay for it.

You’re pretty cocky, aren’t you, Tesla? They told you would be. Exactly how much would you be needing?

Thirty thousand dollars and my own workshop.

Well, then quit playing ditch digger and get up here and I’ll make out a check.

• Here, Renato.

• Va Bene, Nikola. (speaking German)

Gramm’s machine wastes a lot of energy. I’m sure there must be some simpler natural principle whereby energy may be obtained.

Go right ahead, Mr. Tesla. Nature is at your disposal. What’s stopping you? Discover your simple principle. We’d all be delighted.

(speaking Serbian)

Antall, I’ll go crazy if this goes on. I didn’t sleep last night. The slightest noise sounds like thunder to me.

Don’t worry, you’re just too sensitive. You’ll get over it.

There’s something wrong with my senses. I hear everything louder than the other people.

(speaking German)

The glow retreats,

Done is the day of toil.

It yonder hastes,

New field of life exploring.

(speaking Serbian)

You must be feeling better if you can recite Faust.

Turn it back…

We must turn it back.

It should flow back in

order to produce light.

The magnets should rotate

like the Earth revolving

around the Sun.

These are the coils.

If the reversed magnetic

field moves in this direction,

the electricity will

flow in this one.

There’s no need for a commutator.

This is alternating current.

Undreamt of supply of energy!

I’ve made a discovery!

I can see every little detail.

This motor is in harmony with nature.

I can see it.

I can see it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

to convince you that this theory will work,

I’ll turn off the

direct current for a moment

and will light up this

hall with my system.

Turn out the lights.

This, ladies and gentlemen,

is alternating current.

You see how much power was

produced with this small generator.

And now imagine what

would be like if we had

an enormous generator that

could fill up this hall.

Well, we’d be able to light

the entire state of New York,

more even than that.

We could have power for the factories,

all of public transportation,

all of industry.

Once we’d accomplished that,

greater discoveries lie ahead,

just as long as we keep

in step with nature.

Each new discovery will lead to another

and we will revolutionize life on our planet.

Look, Mr. Tesla…

can you back up your theories

with a few guarantees?

You don’t really believe that we’d put out

our money without knowing the results?

Can you show us evidence

that this thing will work?

Gentlemen, I can make no guarantees

other than my discoveries.

I am not an insurance company.

You must take my word.

You will have to rely on instinct,

intuition and imagination.

And now,

I shall switch back to direct current.

(indistinct conversations)

Mr. Edison,

what is your opinion on Mr. Tesla?

Oh, very best.

Extremely capable engineer.

What could be the practical

application of his generator?

Well, I’m sorry to say it has

no practical application at all.

I have said before, gentlemen,

that I do not consider fantasy

to be any kind of conception.

At least of all a scientific one.

That’ll be all.

Thanks, Mr. Edison.

Oh, Mr. Edison, one last question, please.

Enough for today, gentlemen.

Another time.

If the thing had any value you can

bet Edison would have grabbed it.

He’d bet on the wrong horse.

Mr. Tesla, Thomas Edison

claims your electrical system

has no practical application.

Do you have any comment?

Mr. Edison is a very practical man.

I’m sorry he feels that way.

It was a real pleasure to meet you, Mr.

Tesla. Let me congratulate you once again.

I wish you good luck.

Yes, so do I.

Thanks for your demonstration.

It was most impressive,

even if it is impractical.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Mr. Tesla, could you explain

a little more clearly?

I don’t think I have

anything more to say.

That’s all for today.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Bye, gentlemen.

Mr. Tesla?

Allow me to introduce myself.

I’m George Westinghouse,

president of Pittsburgh Electric.

How do you do?

I’d be happy if you would have

dinner with me at the Waldorf.

That would be a pleasure,

Mr. Westinghouse.

Call me George.

• Call me Nikola.

• Nikola.

All right… Nikola.

Delicious.

So…

to put it in a nut shell,

Mr. Tesla,

I’m prepared to buy all your patents for

alternating current for a million dollars.

The important thing is that you’ll

be able to decide for yourself

how your invention is to be used,

while I will function

as a kind of money bag.

And an open money bag.

What do you think of that?

Bring me a dozen napkins,

would you please?

• A dozen napkins, sir.

• Thank you, that’s fine.

I hope you find the dinner to

your satisfaction, Mr. Tesla.

I think you are being somewhat hasty,

Mr. Westinghouse.

Possibly.

There can be no scientific

progress without some risk.

People have been known

to risk their lives.

What then is my money to that?

Do you really sincerely

believe in the project?

I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.

What if, on top of that

million dollar sum,

I asked you to pay me one dollar

for every horsepower we produce?

I would agree.

We’ll put it in the contract.

Don’t be so quick to agree.

You realize that we are talking

about calculess units of horsepower.

And how about Edison?

He won’t take it without a fight.

As long as he is opposed to it,

how do you introduce our system?

I’ll be able to manage

it with your patents.

The point is you have

truth on your side.

Tell me the truth, Mr. Westinghouse.

Are you helping me because you

believe this will be a value

to science and civilization,

or are you in it for the profit?

Listen to me, my friend.

I’m an inventor myself,

but I never forget

that without money…

I cannot put my

inventions into practice.

So, what if I do hope

to make a little profit?

I’m happy you got angry,

I’m beginning to believe you.

Some Swiss cheese and an apple.

And make sure the apple is

washed with boiling water.

A creamy caramel and… some fruit.

Coffee, of course, and…

cheers, Tesla, to your health.

You seem to be drinking my wine.

You’re right. I’m so sorry.

You’re confusing me, Tesla.

Can I assume then that

we have an agreement?

That you accept?

• I was joking.

• What do you mean?

No charge for horsepower.

But I wasn’t joking.

You will get a dollar for

every horsepower generated.

You got to be rich, Tesla.

So that you can be free and independent.

What’s wrong, Tesla?

Peaches, please, take them away.

They make me ill.

Waiter… Fred, Fred!

The peaches, take the peaches away!

No dessert of any kind.

Gentlemen,

I would suggest a short break.

• Those in favor?

• Aye (all).

I could use a break.

George, now why do you think

Adams wanted a break at this point?

Come on, Billy,

don’t pretend such innocence.

It isn’t Adams who was

chairing this meeting,

but one who’s more conspicuous by his

absence and we all know who that is…

Oh, yes, only too well.

Can you hear me?

• Yeah, I hear you, Adams.

• The preliminary is over.

• As Edison made his speech yet?

• No.

• George Westinghouse?

• Not yet.

Well, call on Edison to speak first,

then Westinghouse,

then put forward proposal number 2

and close the meeting, is that clear?

Yes, yes, proposal 2.

Gentlemen, we are fortunate to have

Mr. Thomas Alva Edison here

in the capacity of advisor.

It would be most helpful

to hear his opinion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Now, gentlemen, I’ll say this:

at whether we pipe water to the plant

or built the plant near Niagara Falls,

is a matter to be discussed.

But there is only one system.

Direct current has already been

adopted throughout the world.

• Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman?

• Mr. Westinghouse.

Gentlemen, direct current is not

the only system in existence.

There is also Mr. Nikola Tesla’s

alternating current.

It can guarantee the transmission

of power over enormous distances.

It is simple. It is practical.

It is the system

that Mr. Tesla himself has perfected

along with 40 registered patents.

Now, I have here a…

Gentlemen, that system is nothing but

pure fantasy… a dangerous fantasy that…

That is a subject for discussion,

Mr. Edison.

It’s a subject I would be happy to

discuss with you, Mr. Westinghouse.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen!

We’re discussing a matter

of great importance.

I think it would be best to have

an international competition.

Mr. Edison, you are the best qualified

among us to name the man

who would have the panel of judges.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Gentlemen, there’s only one such man

in the world, I’m sure you all agree,

physicist, mathematician and great inventor,

Lord Kelvin of Great Britain.

Will the International Exposition in Paris

be another triumph for you, Mr. Edison?

Well, my electrical current

will light up the whole fair.

And will your principles be

applied at Niagara Falls?

I was not aware of the possibility of

any other principle was being applied.

Young man,

the whole of Europe uses my system.

• The whole world, in fact.

• Well, what about alternating current?

Oh, that system shouldn’t

even be considered.

Alternating current is

a danger to human life.

Start the generator.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have just

seen alternating current in action.

Now, it is a cruel fact that

we had to kill this little dog.

But we did it as a preventive measure…

in order to ensure that in the

future people will not fall victim

to alternating current in the same way.

Now, we need devices to help

improve humanity, not kill it.

I’m going to ask Congress to put a

ban on the use of alternating current.

Thank you, thank you.

• Edison, Nick! That damned Edison!

• What’s happened, George?

Oh, the committee… the committee

is to be chaired by Lord Kelvin.

He’s Edison’s stooge,

that’s why he picked him.

But, listen to this:

alternating current used at Sing Sing.

The condemned man William Kemmler

did not have a painless death after all.

The electric current had to

be switched on several times.

Those who constructed the electric chair

failed to calculate the voltage required.

Now, isn’t that disgusting?

Go back where you came from!

Let me take care of this, Mr. Tesla.

I’ll go teach them a lesson.

Let them be, Zito. It’s not their fault.

George,

get together all the people you know

as quickly as possible and bring them here.

Tell them Tesla is going to torture

his guests with electricity.

They will all come, you will see.

Mr. Enrico Caruso, Mr. Nikola Tesla.

(speaking Italian)

Bravo, Tesla, mio caro!

• Mr. Ignas Pederesky, Mr. Nikola Tesla.

• How do you do?

Mr. Samuel Clemmons,

alias Mark Twain, Mr. Nikola Tesla.

What a pleasure, Mr. Tesla.

For all the pleasure you

have given me in your books,

I’m very much indebted to you,

Mr. Clemmons.

I’m glad to hear I have one debtor,

mostly, I’m blessed with creditors.

Is there anything you need,

Mr. Clemmons?

I have hoped I’d see a

few of my critics here.

I was thinking I’d recommend

them for the electric chair.

• Won’t you sit down?

• Thank you.

George.

• Katherine… Bob…

• Hello, Nick.

I’m curious, Nicky.

What is it that you plan to do this evening?

Katherine,

I am now considered an executioner.

I never believed that for a moment.

Mr. Jack Wilson, Mr. Nikola Tesla.

What is it, George?

Thank you.

No, thank you.

No, thank you.

No, thanks, I have mine.

Ladies and gentlemen,

here in front of me

you see two electrodes.

When I switch on the electric current,

there will be a tension of

1 million volts between them.

That is alternating current.

Now, if I touched the

electrodes with my hands,

what do you think would happen?

Ladies and gentlemen,

if my electric current kills,

then I deserve to be its victim myself.

Nicky, don’t, please, I beg you.

Mr. Morgan is waiting in his study.

He’s here, commodore.

Bring him in.

• Who’s that?

• A friend of yours.

Mr. Tesla.

You don’t shake hands,

they tell me.

• Why?

• For reasons of health, commodore.

Edison here tells you’re always

washing your hands 20 times a day

and every time there’s

gotta be a fresh towel.

I don’t have to ask if

you two know each other…

Oh, we know each other, all right.

He also tell me you don’t take any

coffee or tea, so what can I offer you?

• Some whiskey, perhaps.

• Oh…

makes you sound almost… human.

Tom, give a friend here some whiskey.

You know…

some people are sure

that you’re crazy…

others think you’re a faker.

Now, both those things could be

true and you’re still could be…

some kind of… genius.

Sit down, Mr. Tesla.

I’d like to know what makes you tick.

You know what Edison

says about genius?

Yes, one his pet quotations.

Genius is 1% of inspiration and

99% of perspiration. He says you…

don’t perspire enough.

And, for scientific conclusion,

he says, ahm,

you don’t use any brain work at all.

Instead… how did you put it, Tom?

Well, ask Tesla. According to him,

he says he gets mental pictures.

Mental pictures,

that’s the word with everything

complete down to the

smallest the detail.

Is that how it happened with that

brushless, commutatorless motor of yours?

Says here, Tom, that the whole

thing just… appeared to Mr. Tesla.

• Some king of vision?

• It was really more like a flash of lightning.

And you got this vision or…

a flash, suddenly… in the middle of a poem

you happen to reciting out in

the streets somewhere in Hungary?

Yes, it was Goethe.

At what?

He’s a German author.

I’ll send you a translation, if you like.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Tesla.

The motor, it was turning in a huge…

• Have your whiskey, Mr. Tesla.

• Oh, thank you very much.

The motor has spun in a huge whirlwind of

electricity, a rotating magnetic field.

Tremendous energy produced by a

balance of alternating current.

Alternating current.

He got the patent 6 years later and

every detail was just the way it

appeared to him in that first mental picture.

Adams got the whole story for me.

What is that thing

you’re reading there?

It’s the file…

we put together on Mr. Tesla.

I never go into anything blind, Tom.

You know me well enough to know that.

It says here,

when he was still working for you,

you gave Mr. Tesla a

problem to solve for you.

Well, what of it?

I give my people problems all the time.

Well,

this one must have been important.

Maybe something you couldn’t

work out for yourself?

Who says so?

Where did you get that story?

We talked to people in your shop.

Oh, I could have solved that thing easily,

but, as it so happens,

I was busy with all other problems

of the time, like I always am.

The way we heard it, you told Mr. Tesla

if he worked it out you’d give him

50,000 dollars, then, when he did,

you said he didn’t…

understand the American sense of humor.

That is not the reason we quarreled.

I’m not interested in money.

Aren’t you? Well, I am.

The point is that you

quit working for Edison.

Now, it’s been suggested that

you start working for me.

Sit down, Tom,

I haven’t quite finished yet.

Yes, Tom?

Frankly, commodore…

I’m beginning to wonder what

the hell I’m doing here.

Well, I didn’t take it to be fair to

hold this meeting without you.

Well, am I right?

It’s about the steelworks in Pittsburgh?

Well, I’m still waiting for the electric

power, Tom, they can’t wait forever…

Well, neither can I…

it’s been over 5 months now since I

submitted my plans to the committee.

• Mr. Tesla has some different ideas.

• Different?

Well, I guess that’s one word for it.

You know what he did at

the Chicago World’s Fair?

It’s all in here.

Yes, up to that time, there were no

large poliphase generators in existence.

• I’d rather hear it from Mr. Tesla.

• Oh, sorry.

Well, I took 24500-horsepower generators.

Single phase generators, that is.

Coupled them all in pairs

and then hooked them up so the circuits

would be 90 degrees out-of-phase.

Ahm, translate that in English.

It means I made the equivalent

of 122-phase generators,

each with a thousand horsepower.

It was the first world fair in

history to be lit by electricity.

Well, wasn’t that funny?

Right up to this very minute,

I was always under the impression

that electric light was

something that I invented.

Of course.

And now I find that Mr.

Tesla here discovered it.

Where the hell you come

off with a report like that

on a subject that you couldn’t

even begin to comprehend?

I just collected information,

Mr. Edison.

I certainly don’t pretend to

be an educated man of science.

Educated?

Like Tesla?

You mean he is educated and I’m not?!

No, Tom, nobody said that.

Oh, you don’t have to say it.

Everybody knows it.

Well, we know you’re a self-made

man and so is Tesla, he…

came to this country with four

cents and a book of poetry.

Yeah…

well, I never got near a university.

I had to teach myself as I went along.

Yes, and the first thing I learned was

respect for the scientific process.

Reasoning based on

provable assumptions.

Controlled experimentation…

trial and error.

But… your educated man of science…

he does everything by guess work.

He doesn’t even have ideas,

he has hunches!

No wonder he’s gotten hay wired

over this AC business.

• AC, alternating current, right, Tom?

• There’s nothing right about it at all!

Mr. Edison’s whole system has been based

right from the beginning on direct current.

Tesla?

Despite all evidence,

he is convinced the system of

alternating current will never work.

Oh, I see…

the man of visions and

lightning flashes feels that

Thomas Edison is

suffering from delusions.

(?) down, Tom. Tell us about Frankfurt.

Frankfurt, Germany, Tom. Oh, don’t

you know what happened in Frankfurt.

Adams, tell Mr. Edison what

happened Frankfurt, Germany.

A man called Dolivo…

and another man called…

The hell with the names.

Just tell him what they did.

They’ve just managed to transmit

electricity over a distance of 160 km.

And they were using… Tesla’s system.

(?) in Europe, for God’s sake.

We got Tesla right here under our noses!

You get together with General Electric,

and I’ll take care of the financial side.

We’re gonna build that power

station in Niagara right away.

And…

what system are you going to use?

Well, Tom…

what’s wrong in giving it a try?

It’s a useless complication,

that’s what’s wrong with it.

Besides, that is dangerous.

And if I have it my way…

I’d have the goddamned

thing prohibited by law.

Oh, I hope you aren’t leaving.

We haven’t finished our card game.

Just don’t slam the door.

He does it every time.

My friend Edison is a stubborn man, Tesla.

He’s also…

the greatest inventor in

the history of the world.

And if you can prove him wrong…

just once, I won’t say I’ll be happy…

but I’ll tell you this:

you and I are in business.

Incredible things are happening, Nick.

Edison has had to join

up with General Electric.

But they won’t swallow us up, Nick.

We’ll swallow them.

We’ve got the patents, Nick.

The Niagara Project can’t

be started without us.

You realize that is quite possible

to get a hundred thousand?

Or even a million electrical

impulses per second?

Can’t you see what

fantastic possibilities

that could open to us

for the use of energy?

Nick, did you hear what I said about General

Electric, about Edison, about Niagara?

• I know what Morgan told me.

• Don’t listen to him, Nick.

He plays with people like

their child playing with dolls

and he brakes them like dolls.

The hell with Morgan.

A million electrical impulses

per second.

All right, Nick.

All right.

Dream as much as you want to.

But just be sure you wake up in time

for that opening of the power station.

After that…

just let somebody try to stop you.

George, how could anything stop me?

Well, I guess I don’t

have an answer for that.

All the same,

for a man who’s that damned sure of himself,

• you don’t look very happy.

• How can I be?

• George?

• What’s wrong, Nick?

For several days now,

I’ve been seeing pictures.

Could you please ring up Mr. Tesla,

it’s very urgent.

• I have to see him immediately.

• I cannot disturb him.

If I wake him now,

I’ll hold you responsible, Mr. Zito.

Nothing can save it.

I guess we may as well let him

sleep in peace while he still can.

I’ll tell him later.

Can I ask what the trouble is, Mr. Zito?

After all, this hotel’s his home.

It’ll break Mr. Tesla’s heart.

His laboratory’s on fire.

It’s gonna be completely burned.

All his work will be gone.

His inventions, his equipment,

his plans, everything up in smoke.

Ladies and gentlemen,

America has today put into operation

her first electric power station

generating alternating current.

We must thank all those who have

helped to create this power station.

However, ladies and gentlemen, we should

not forget that without Nikola Tesla,

the great visionary and inventor,

none of this would exist.

The celebration I’ve been waiting for.

Bravo, Nick, bravo.

Well, speak to them, Nick.

Your audience is waiting.

When all is said and done, this power

station is not terribly important.

It simply makes practical use of

theories we have long known about.

Rather than congratulate ourselves,

we should all feel ashamed

that it was not built earlier.

The real work is yet to come.

Now we must destroy distance.

Our senses tell us about

things that are close by.

To know what is happening far away,

we must be able to transmit scenes

from other places over long distances.

Pictures, the news, energy and…

why not matter too?

Now, we must liberate thought.

We must set it free of limitations

that space and time impose on it.

And yet, keep its principal characteristics.

Now, and in future centuries,

here on Earth and thousands of

light years into the unknown.

Excuse me, please, I…

Tesla… Tesla,

what am I supposed to tell the commodore?

• Tell him that I’m going to Europe.

• Europe? Who’s in Europe?

My mother and sister.

(speaking Serbian)

Dane! Dane!

Mother!

It’s cold out tonight, you’re not kidding.

Hey, look.

• We’re gonna have a smoke.

• Yeah.

Hey, baby, come on, be nice.

George?

What is it?

Thank you, Katherine.

Come.

• Yes, but…

• Please… this way.

Why don’t you go in?

• He won’t let me.

• I explained to Mr. Westinghouse.

I’m not to let anyone in the laboratory.

But this is ridiculous.

Those are Mr. Tesla’s orders.

I’m desperate, Katherine.

I simply got to see him.

My whole future is at stake.

But why did you send for me?

Because of Nikola. He’s in a terrible state.

Ever since his mother died.

I’m afraid he may have

gone out of his mind.

I’m serious, Katherine.

Zito…

I know how much you love Mr. Tesla.

So do we.

He must know that.

And don’t you think is

in need of our help now?

Yes.

I admit I’ve been worried about him,

Mrs. Johnson.

Then open the door, Zito.

Attraction and repulsion,

Katherine, a strange effect.

Very stimulating and exciting.

Electricity and magnetism, George,

are unique forces in nature.

How are you, Nick?

Nick…

please, listen to me.

I’m…

well,

I’m at the end of my rope.

There’s nothing left for me

but to ask for your help.

Nick, there’s a crisis on.

Pullman has laid off

4,000 workers in Chicago.

Yesterday, the National Guard was out

shooting people down in the streets.

I can’t get any more credit, Nick.

Everybody is pulling out.

They’re charging me with a debt

of over 10 million dollars.

Now, that’s the money I owe you,

Nick, remember?

A dollar for every horse power?

General Electric is behind it all.

Morgan wants to swallow me, so does Edison.

I can’t let them do it, Nick.

My company is my whole life.

And I thought, Nick,

if we could share the loss… a little…?

• This is the contract, George.

• Yes.

Nick, I can’t let you do that!

I owe you that money, it’s yours!

You don’t owe me anything, George.

When nobody listened,

you believed in me.

You held out your hand when

others turned their backs.

Thank you, Katherine.

Thank you…

my friend.

That was generous, Nicky.

Maybe a little too generous.

Of course you want to help George

Westinghouse when he’s in such trouble,

but how can you…

just tear up 10 million dollars?

I don’t have a family, Katherine.

I just need to get on with my work.

All that money would

only get in my way.

Put it to the right.

Now to the left.

Can you make it go down to the end?

And then back toward us?

But where are the wires, Mr. Tesla?

By this time, Mr. Adams,

I thought you understood.

I’m afraid I don’t.

What do you want me

to tell the commodore?

Just tell him what you’ve seen.

And about the wires…

tell him there aren’t any.

Tesla?

Ahm… this little boat of yours…

Adams has been telling of

all the tricks you can do…

the same thing will work on a bigger scale,

you could actually…

move energy,

electrical energy from one place to another,

you can take the power, you…

harness from Niagara and move it

to my steelworks in Pittsburgh?

Without any wires at all?

There is no limit to the possibilities.

Communication… over great distances?

Anywhere,

Europe even and without using cables.

I didn’t call you on the phone,

Adams, let me hear it from Tesla.

Ships at sea, Tesla?

Everything, the human voice, pictures…

they’re all just electrical impulses.

And what’s this place where

you wanna go and work on it?

Colorado Springs.

It’s rich in natural electricity.

Look, Tesla…

you fix it so I can send

words without wires…

from one city to another and

over the ocean without a cable,

just give me that and you can go to…

Colorado Springs or Timbuktu.

The sooner you get started,

the better.

That was Morgan… he’s agreed.

This is really a turning point,

Nicky, isn’t it?

Pictures… and voices…

moving through the air…

without wires.

Does he really want

me to swallow that?

You must believe it yourself,

commodore,

why else would you be

investing your money?

Giving money to Tesla is

like playing roulette.

It’s a game.

I play it to amuse myself and…

out of a certain… curiosity.

Is he a lunatic or a (?) artist?

He promises miracles…

We’re gonna see now if

he can deliver them.

If in a thunderstorm the

earth is struck by lightning,

the force creates concentric waves

which slowly expand to circle the world

until they come back

to where they started.

This proves to us that the earth’s crust

is a conductor of electrical energy.

Now, if we were to produce large

quantities of electrical energy

and if we directed it

into the earth’s crust,

then that energy would

travel in concentric waves.

There were rumors you

went to Colorado Springs

in order to contact Mars,

is that true?

It is possible for us to send out waves

which can travel around the world.

There are waves as well

which can travel into space.

• How are you going to talk with them?

• I never intended to.

However, I recorded certain

electrical impulses of unknown origin

and these were repeated at

constantly timed intervals.

It’s possible they were a

kind of signal from space.

And did you in turn

sent them a message?

• Ask the Martians that question.

• But you did send some sort of signal.

A signal which might not be

received for a million years.

Therefore, Mr. Tesla, you do believe

communication with distant worlds

may some day be possible?

Perhaps they’ve been sending us messages

for ages but we aren’t aware of it.

Mr. Tesla, what’s that big pile

of papers down there on the floor?

• My file on the work in Colorado Springs.

• Can you tell us what’s in it?

It’s a new electrical system,

completely different.

As yet, it hasn’t been finished.

In just what way is it different?

How it’ll affect us?

Well, a great deal of

it is merely guesswork,

but it might have an important

impact on the future.

I hope it will lead to a decisive

answer to the problem of energy.

• Good day, gentlemen.

• Mr. Tesla… (indistinct talking).

Not more today…

no more questions, please.

I come tell you how

much it means to me

that I can once again

have the opportunity to see

the greatest of the great,

the genius Nikola Tesla.

I’m terribly sorry,

but I don’t recall having met you.

Mr. Tesla,

my name won’t mean much to you…

I’m a humble follower of your work.

I heard your lecture in London when I

was a student. It’s my greatest memory.

You’ve been a big influence.

Permit me to introduce myself,

Marchezzi Guglielmo Marconi.

Well, I’m pleased to meet you,

Marchezzi Marconi.

And how may I be of service to you?

Mr. Tesla, I perceive ideas which

I know are true but I can’t formulate.

You seem aware of such things.

I think I might be of some use in

the field of telecommunications.

If that is what interest you,

Mr. Marconi, then you’ve chosen wisely.

Always trust your own instinct.

Not that knowledge lead you astray(?)

can be deceptive.

Mr. Tesla, I came all the

way to America to meet you.

Would it be possible to come and

watch you while you’re working?

Why, certainly.

You’d be very welcome.

My laboratory and all of my

notes are at your disposition.

Thank you, Mr. Tesla, it’s a great honor.

Thank you.

Zito, would you be please

look after Mr. Marconi.

Whatever you say, Mr. Tesla.

Tell me the truth, Tesla…

does anybody really

understand what this is about?

I certainly hope so, commodore.

I ought to… after all these

years, let’s see… energy.

According to you,

energy is the big problem of the future.

A life and death problem.

And what we’re using now, ahm…

the sources of energy are not inexhaustible…

And they are poisoning our planet.

Oh, I hadn’t noticed that.

Believe me, you will.

Perhaps we can survive the poison,

but there will come a day when

the sources of energy will dry up.

And then what? The whole shebang?s

gonna run down like a clock?

Not with my project. I can give

the world all the power it can use…

clean power.

• I was afraid of that.

• Afraid?

Yes, I was afraid

that after all this time

I was really going to begin to

understand what you’re talking about.

But this… psychic business…

Pardon me, I don’t understand.

These weird stories about you that keep

getting into the papers like the…

the train wreck and this fella…

what’s his name?

• Brown, commodore.

• Yeah, how’d that one go?

Mr. Tesla is supposed to

have told him that he mustn’t

on any account take the

certain train and he didn’t.

The train was wrecked and

everybody on it was killed.

That really happened?

People said that it could

have been a coincidence.

I don’t care what it was… to the

public mind, science or the supernatural

don’t make you either

a serious inventor

or a gipsy fortuneteller

with a crystal ball.

I don’t presume to tell people’s

fortunes and I’m not an inventor.

• And what the hell are you?

• I’m a discoverer.

Columbus.

Yes, I guess he must have

sounded quite a bit like you.

Sometimes, before his discovery,

and there must have been quite a lot

of Columbuses we don’t know about,

who just sailed away in the wild blue

yonder and never were heard of again.

Is there where you’re going to go, Tesla,

to get lost in the wild blue yonder or…

Mars, for God’s sake?

You told me I could reach a ship

by wireless and now you’re

telling the newspapers

that you’re reaching outer space

somewhere out there in the stars.

There’s a strong possibility that…

The hell with your possibilities,

Tesla, keep all that…

• wild guessing to yourself.

• It’s not just guessing, commodore.

No?

Well, as long as I am backing you,

I can’t afford to let the world

think I’m associated with a nut.

Ok, fellas, here comes Mr. Tesla.

You’re having whiskey as usual, Nick?

I’ll have champagne with you,

Bob, with pleasure.

Good. Let’s drink to this

new project of yours.

We’ll drink to you, Bob,

our new ambassador in Rome.

(indistinct talking)

Our boat sails early tomorrow

morning and I wouldn’t dream

of leaving until you

tell us all about it.

There isn’t much to tell.

What he means is there’s

not much he wants to tell.

Why all the secrecy?

It’s Morgan’s idea.

He made it a condition.

You two are playing cat and mouse together.

I think Morgan’s afraid of you.

Afraid of Morgan? Never.

Maybe you outta be.

I think Nick is still sure that

he’s going to change the world…

• and I hope he’s right.

• Of course I’m right.

You’re an incurable optimist.

I wouldn’t want to cure him.

What you mean is that you

wouldn’t ever want to see an end

to all those beautiful dreams of his.

But darling, you know yourself that

you’re always asking him to face reality.

My tower… that is reality.

You will see.

We’re on the verge of world war, Nick.

War? What’s all this about war?

I hope Tesla isn’t concentrating on

that subject. He’s much too clever.

He’ll (?) to blow us to kingdom come.

That’s just the opposite, Mr. Twain.

Instead of sending human armies

marching out to the battlefields, we could

make robots to do the fighting force.

Look, Tesla, if you ever invent

a robot to do our drinking force,

then I for one will

fight you to the death.

Excuse me.

Do you really think there

is going to be a war?

• That doesn’t have to be.

• No… not if people use their heads.

And who knows?

Someday,

if we are lucky and there isn’t war…

perhaps we’ll be able to get away

for long enough to pay a visit

to that far off place

where you were born…

to Lika.

You see, I still remember the name…

I wish you could have known my mother.

I wish I could have known you, Nicky.

I mean in ways that

haven’t been possible.

There were times when I thought

that everything was possible.

Remember what your mother said that time

when you made yourself a pair of wings

and climbed upon the roof of

your house and tried to fly?

“You’re not a bird, Nikola”,

she told you,

“you’re a man”.

Don’t bother me about money.

The workers should know that they’ll

be paid. We’ve got Morgan behind us.

Yes, Mr. Tesla.

Mr. Tesla,

I’ve been instructed to show you this.

Just in case you didn’t

happen to see it.

Mr. Tesla…

he wants to see you right away.

There was one promise,

with all the damned visions

and lightning flashes of yours,

one odd promise I thought I could count on:

I was gonna be able to send messages

to distant places without any wires…

and now, sure enough,

the thing’s been invented,

but not by you, Tesla,

no, by some Italian…

• Marconi.

• Whatever.

Well, he’s made some kind of box

he’s talking to England with it

and I’ve gotta buy patents from him!

What if he did steal it from you?

You’re not the only one with ideas, you know,

there’s a Jew over in Germany…

Einstein.

The whole scientific world is

talking about that new theory of his.

• And in Paris, what’s that about Paris?

• They have split the atom.

Whatever that means.

It could mean a whole

new source of energy.

Such energy is created by

destroying natural elements.

That is a serious crime

against nature and one day

it’s going to bring on catastrophe.

The world is at a crossroads right now.

And if we pass up this chance, we shall be

held responsible by future generations.

Chance? Chance with what?

Commodore, we send energy…

all energy to the outer shell of the Earth,

the ionosphere…

Energy from the sea,

the wind, energy from the sun…

We no longer need to

burn or destroy anything.

We simply take what already exist and put

it to our use in unlimited quantities!

And you want me to believe

all of this is possible.

But I have proved it already!

Everything is in that file!

All we have to do is apply it.

• Adams…

• Yes, commodore?

• You’ve seen all this?

• Yes, commodore.

One single…

source of energy,

that’s what this means.

Right, Tesla?

Yes, that is right.

And anyone can draw it

anywhere in the world.

The Earth’s outer shell, remember,

goes around the whole planet.

Yes… power will belong to everyone,

like the air we breathe.

There’s some financial details

we are go over… Tesla…

I won’t keep you any longer, I… know how

anxious you are to get back to your work,

we’ll send this stuff (?)…

I forgot you… never shake hands.

Supposing…

just supposing he isn’t crazy…

that man could… turn the world

upside down standing on its head.

Yes, I do believe he could.

It’s a wonderful prospect.

Wonderful?

(?) lunatic can really do

what he says he can do,

• do you have any idea of what’s gonna happen?

• No, sir.

One source of energy,

that’s what’s gonna happen, just one.

So anybody, anybody at all… can just

stick an antenna on his backyard and…

(?) we won’t have anything

left to sell but antennas.

We’ll producing the power and anyone who

feels like it can milk our cow for free…

Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Tesla,

I’m not contributing to that charity.

Write him a letter, Addams, and have

it ready for me to sign in the morning.

Yes, commodore.

• What shall I tell him?

• Tell him…

tell him goodbye.

After all these years,

he still refuses to answer.

I showed him what

the world could be.

He’d let me know, he said,

when he was ready.

I’m still waiting.