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Date: Mon, 24 Apr 89 21:36:14 EDT
From: Henry_Edward_Hardy@ub.cc.umich.edu
To: Ralf.Brown@b.gp.cs.cmu.edu
Message-Id: <2982096@ub.cc.umich.edu>
Subject: Tesla, the Modern Prometheus

Nikola Tesla, the Modern Prometheus
by Henry E. Hardy
 -
 Imagine a world in which Tesla never lived. A world without radio. 
A world without efficient hydroelectric power. A world without Star 
Wars. A world without the familiar alternating current.
 -
 Now, imagine a world as Tesla might have envisioned it: A world in 
which wireless power is broadcast free all over the world. A world in 
which missiles and bombers are kept at bay by powerful beams and 
electromagnetic fields. A world in which Earth is in regular contact 
with extraterrestrial beings.
 -
 Tesla was born at midnight between July 9 and 10, 1856 in the 
village of Smiljan in Coratia, now part of Yugoslavia. From the age of 
five, he showed an uncanny talent for inventing things, and was also 
troubled by strange mental flashes. At first these flashes, as real as if 
actually perceived, were of past events. Later, Tesla's great 
inventions would appear to him in a flash, not only running, but 
worn by use.
 -
 In 1881, the young Tesla found employment as an engineer in the 
new telephone office in Budapest. Tesla as well as many others, had 
been struggling with the idea of a workable alternating current 
system of electrical transmission. One day in 1883, as Tesla was 
walking with a friend and reciting Goethe's Faust, he recited the 
following verse:
 -
 The glow retreats, done in the day of toil;
 It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
 Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil,
 Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
 -
 Tesla stopped waving his arms oracularly, and froze in midair as if 
he had suffered a seizure. His companion tried to lead him to a seat, 
but Tesla was frantic, and seized a stick and began to draw in the 
dirt. "See my motor here, watch me reverse it!" This was the system 
which was to stun the scientific community when he described six 
years later to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Tesla 
Polyphase System now used almost universally throughout the 
United States and much of the world.
 -
 Tesla's invention was a quantum improvement over previous 
alternating current schemes. By making use of the rotating magnetic 
field produces by two out of phase electrical currents, Tesla's system 
eliminated the need for as commutator to reverse the field. By 
exploiting the use of inductance, the need for brushes to carry the 
charge were also eliminated. By allowing much higher voltages to be 
safely transmitted and stepped down, the Tesla system allowed the 
transmission of electricity over large distances, unlike the direct 
current Edison system, its main rival. Although Tesla worked for 
Edison for a brief period after coming to America in1884, the two 
giants of electricity soon quarreled over a $50,000 royalty claimed 
by Tesla for work in redesigning Edison's dynamo's. When Tesla 
approached Edison after the completion of the work, Edison is 
reported to have said, "Tesla, you don't understand our American 
humor."
 -
 With that, Tesla walked out and began to seek independent backing 
for his radical new scheme of electrical power. He found this backing 
in the form of the inventor and industrialist George Westinghouse. 
Westinghouse agreed to buy Tesla's basic patentents for $60,000, 
plus a $2.50 royalty per horsepower generated and a $2,000 a month 
retainer. The "War of the Currents" had begun in earnest.
 -
 Westinghouse worked tirelessly promoting the efficiency of the 
Tesla system. Edison countered by frequent electrocutions of 
neighborhood stray pets found near his West Orange, N. J. laboratory. 
The animals, he said were being, "Westinghoused." A similar fate, 
Edison implied, was in store for the unwitting user of the dangerous 
new Tesla system.
 -
 Always a master showman, Tesla delighted in feats of electrical 
wizardry, whether for his friends like Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) 
and Robert Underwood Johnson or for huge crowds at busy 
expositions. In the next few years, Tesla developed and 
demonstrated a great many surprising machines, such as a radio-
controlled robot submarine, radio powered handheld florescent 
lamps, and the carbon button, or molecular bombardment lamp, 
which was the forerunner of both the point electron microscope and 
the cyclotron. However, Tesla's most sublime pleasure was to himself 
take the stage and display his technological mysteries.
 -
 Chauncey McGovern of Pearson's Magazine, gave a contemporary 
account of one such display in the Manhattan loft used by the 
eccentric inventor. "Not to stagger on being shown through the 
laboratory of Nikola Tesla," wrote McGovern, "requires the possession 
of an uncommonly sturdy mind..."
-
 "Fancy yourself seated in a large, well lighted room, with mountains 
of curious-looking machinery on all sides. A tall, thin young man 
walks up to you, and merely by snapping his fingers creates 
instantaneously a ball of leaping red flame, and holds it calmly in his 
hands. As you gaze you are surprised to see that it does not burn his 
fingers. He lets it fall onto his clothing, on his hair, into your lap, and 
finally, puts the ball of falme into a wooden box. You are amazed to 
see that nowhere does the flame leave the slightest trace, and you 
rub your eyes to make sure you are not asleep."
 -
 Tesla delighted in letting as much as two million volts of high 
frequency electricity play over his body. The light and streamers of 
fire which occasionally flashed forth from his workshop caused 
considerable concern among his neighbors, it was another of Tesla's 
mighty toys which finally led him to be persuaded to move from the 
city to a climate more congenial (or at least less populated,) for his 
experiments.
 -
 Another area of Tesla's invention concerned robotics and remote 
control devices. Tesla demonstrated his "teleautomation" boat and 
torpedo-firing submarine to thousands of people at great exhibitions 
like the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893, which was attended 
by 25,000,000 people, one third of all Americans then living. Tesla 
and Westinghouse provided the electrical system for the entire 
exhibition. Visitors could marvel at the model kitchen of the future, 
which boasted electric light, electric fans, and even an electric 
dishwasher. Tesla himself frequently appeared wreathed in electrical 
streamers produced by electrifying himself with his ubiquitous Tesla 
coils, operating at up to 200,000 volts.
 -
 Over the next two years, Tesla turned to an even more ambitious 
plan. He designed and tested a series of devices intended to make 
possible to reception of broadcast power anywhere on earth. He 
delighted in lighting a wireless lightbulb held in his hand or in 
demonstrating a variety of remotely powered and remote controlled 
machines. It was during this time that Westinghouse, under pressure 
from bankers to renegotiate the generous fee to be paid to Tesla, 
convinced the inventor to sell his rights outright for $216,000. After 
a fire destroyed much of his lab in 1895, Tesla turned to another 
massive project: the constructionof the world's first hydro-electric 
generating plant.
 -
 Built under the supervision of the Westinghouse Company, the plant 
was initially capable of generating 15,000 horsepower, an 
astonishing amount for that time. The use of Tesla's polyphase 
system paved the way for the eventual victory of Tesla's alternating 
current over Edison's direct current.
 -
 The lack of acceptance of many of Tesla's ideas was doubtless 
influenced by his many eccentricities. He was prone to fall into 
various kinds of fits or trances. He seemed to court death with a 
lifetime of outrageous stunts, and yet was miraculously unhurt. He 
had a phobia of germs, and insisted on having exactly eighteen clean 
napkins with every meal with which he would clean the silver and 
plates. He would compusively calculate the cubic contents of each 
portion before eating it.
 -
 Tesla also made a variety of unusual claims, such as his statement 
that he had invented a death ray that could destroy aircraft at a 
range of 250 miles or his belief that he had received communications 
from alien intelligences via radio. He also claimed to have designed a 
new generation of "teleautomatic" airplanes, which would use 
wireless broadcast power, and not rely on wings or aerodynamic 
surfaces for support. Perhaps because of such wideranging claims, a 
cult developed about Tesla which claimed that he had come as a 
Messiah from the planet Venus. Although Tesla attempted to 
discourage such speculations, his behavior and the popular 
mythology which surrounded him tended to support them.
One biographer referred to him as "The Man Who Fell to Earth."
 -
 During the late eighteen-nineties, Tesla used his new Colorado 
laboratory to explore a number of unique applications of his theories. 
Using giant Tesla coils as big as 55 feet in diameter, he produced 
artificial lightning 135 feet long, with potentials as high as 
12,000,000 volts at 1100 amperes. The resulting artificial storms 
could be seen and heard for many miles, and could induce continuous 
arcs an inch long in lightning rods twelve miles away. When the 
many natural storms which afflicted the local environment would 
strike, Tesla would be in ecstasy almost as great as during his own 
experiments.
 -
 It was also in Colorado that Tesla caried out a series of experiments 
in ultra-low frequency waves, of the type used by Project ELF in 
Northern Michigan and Wisconsin. In addition to world wide 
communication, Tesla claimed that such waves could be used for a 
variety of other effects, such as broadcast power, weather control, 
and remote control of robot craft. In 1900, Tesla approached J. P. 
Morgan with a novel proposition. He wanted to build a world-wide 
radiobroadcasting service. At this time, the emphasis was still on 
point to point transmission, rather than broadcasting. Tesla 
envisioned world-wide news, weather, and entertainment 
programming. Morgan, whose daughter was in love with Tesla, was 
persuaded to stake Tesla $150,000.
 -
 In 1901, Marconi startled the world with his transmission of a 
wireless signal across the Atlantic. Tesla's bitter complaint that the 
Italian inventor had used 17 of his basic patents was not resolved by 
the courts for many years.
 -
 Tesla worked on the "World Wireless Telephone Transmitter" for 
five years. Finally, the great tower at Wardenclyffe was abandoned 
in 1906 for lack of further financing. In 1917, he first described the 
principles for radar. Some of his later patents, such as his 1927 
patent of the VTOL, or vertical take off and landing aircraft, couldn't 
even be built for lack of capital.
 -
 Tesla lived until 1943, gradually withdrawing from the world until 
pigeons were his closest companions. One day, early in January, 
1943, he called his messenger boy, Kerrigan, and gave him an 
evelope addressed to, "Mr. Samuel Clemens." He close friend Clemens 
had been dead for 25 years, but Tesla insisted, "He was in my room 
last night. He sat in that chair and talked to me for an hour. He is 
having financial difficulties and needs my help. So, don't come back 
until you have delivered that envelope!"
 -
 Tesla died in his sleep on January 7, 1943, at the age of eighty-six. 
Althought Tesla had been a naturalized American citizen for more 
than 50 years, since July 30, 1891, his paper and effects were 
impounded by the FBI. They were then released into the custody of 
the Office of Alien Property (OAP).
 -
 Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show 
some of the reasons for the keen interest in the documents 
apparently shown by the U. S. Government. A letter from January 8, 
1943, from an agent in the New York Bureau, named Foxworth, to the 
head of the New York division of the agency described some of the 
reasons that the FBI wanted the documents secured:
 -
 Experiments and research of Nikola Tesla, deceased.
-
Espionage -- M. Nikola Tesla, one of the world's outstanding scientists 
in the electrical field, died January seventh, nineteen forty-three at 
the Hotel New Yorker, New York City. During his lifetime, he 
conducted many experiments in connection with the wireless 
transmission of electrical power...and what is commonly called the 
death ray.
 -
 Foxworth went on to describe other putative inventions of Tesla 
such as a "working model" of a "revolutionary type of torpedo" and 
perfected plans for his wireless power transmission scheme.
 -
 The bulk of Tesla's papers were later given into the custody of the 
Yugoslav government. However, some of Tesla's papers seem to have 
disappeared into the U. S. military research complex. As late as 
September 5, 1945, Col. Holliday of the Equipment Laboratory, 
Propulsion and Accessories Subdivision, wrote to Lloyd L. Shaulis of 
the OAP in Washington, confirming an agreement for the 
photocopying of documents in Tesla's and certifiing that the 
information would be used, "in connection with projects for National 
Defense by this department."
 -
 Since that time, the United States has denied knowing of the 
existence of any secret Tesla papers. However, one Tesla biographer, 
Margaret Cheney, has reported that many of the lost papers are kept 
in a secret library at a Federal Agency known to her, but unrevealed 
for reasons of national security. She states that she believes that the 
archives contain such lost Tesla works as, "Art of Telegeodynamics, 
or the Art of Producing Terrestrial Motions at Distance," "New Art of 
Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through Natural 
Media," and "A Method of Producing Powerful Radiations."
 -
 Although the U. S. Supreme Court finally decided on the June 21, 
1943, six months after Tesla's death, on the issue of the invention of 
radion by declaring Marconi's patents had been preceded by Tesla, 
this belated recognition did little to repair the swift slide of the 
inventor into obscurity.
 -
 In school as most of us were taught, Edison got credit for electricity, 
Marconi for the radio, and radar was invented by the British in 
World War II. In fact, it is difficult to catalogue even Tesla's 
innovations which were definitely proven to work. One list from a 
recent issue of the Smithsonian magazine gives a good selection of 
inventions for which Tesla is credited, "florescent lights,
 x rays, the electron microscope, microwave transmission, satellite 
communication, solar energy, guided missiles, computers, the 
automobile speedometer, television, vertical takeoff aircraft, and 
radar."
 -
 Interest in Tesla has been increasing since the early 1980's. The 
proposals for Star Wars and other Teslian technologies make his 
proposal for an electronic "Chinese Wall" around the United States 
look prophetic rather than pathetic.
 -
 At a recent Tesla symposium hold at the Colorado College in Colorado 
Springs, several papers suggested used for Tesla's technology which 
tend to confirm some of the inventor's claims. For instance, the New 
York Times reported that, in a paper entitled, "Star Wars Now!" 
Thomas E. Bearden, a retired nuclear engineer and army war games 
analyst, noted a number of designs for making weapons based on 
Tesla's more exotic ideas. The hypothetical devices included what he 
termed a Tesla Howitzer and a Tesla Shield that could allegedly stop 
Soviet missiles.
 -
 Thus, it seems, we have a paradox. There is intense interest in the 
military community in certain ideas proposed by Tesla. For instance, 
Project ELF. Tesla predicted weather control, remote localized 
electrical effects, and perhaps even mind control might be possible 
with such a device. Or "Star Wars." Tesla believed that it was possible 
to build a literal "wall" of what he called "teleforce" waves around 
the United States. His ideas of and electromagnetic mass driver and 
of charged particle beam weapons no longer seem improbable. Isn't 
it interesting that public awareness of such a man is virtually zero, 
due to the lack of attention paid to him in schools and by the 
government?
 -
 For those who are interested in more information on Tesla, the 
standard reference work on his life is Margaret Cheney's 1981 book 
"Tesla, Man Out of Time" (available in paperback.) For other recent 
articles on Tesla and his work, see Science, Vol 214, 30 Oct., 1981, 
pps. 521-525; New York Times, Aug. 28, 1984, sec. C. pps. 1,3; 
Smithsonian, June, 1986, pp. 121-133.