Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (8 page)

Although unable to interest Edison in his AC motor, Tesla was able “within a few weeks [to win]…Edison’s confidence.” Tesla’s greatest success came when he fixed a badly broken set of dynamos on Henry Villard’s ocean liner, the
Oregon,
the first boat ever to have electric lighting. “At five o’clock in the morning, when passing along 5th Avenue on my way to the shop,” Tesla recalled, “I met Edison with Batchelor and a few others who were returning to retire.

“‘Here is our Parisian running around at night,’ he said. When I told him I was coming from the
Oregon
and had repaired both machines he looked at me in silence…But when he walked some distance I heard him remark: ‘Batchelor, this is a damn good man,’ and from that time on I had full freedom in directing the work.”
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Alternately spending time at the Pearl Street Station or the Goerck ironworks, Tesla installed and fixed indoor incandescent lamps and outdoor arc lamps, reassembled many of Edison’s DC generators, and designed twenty-four different types of machines that became standards which replaced those being used by Edison.
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At the same time, he worked on patents on arc lamps, regulators, dynamos, and commutators for DC
apparatus, trying to devise a way to approach his boss with his new invention, obtain a raise, and gain compensation for the lump sum he had allegedly been promised.

The atmosphere was informal, Tesla occasionally dining with Edison, Batchelor, and other higher-ups, such as Edward Johnson, president of the Edison Illuminating Company, or Harry Livor, another engineer and small-time entrepreneur in machine-works manufacturing. Their favorite spot was a small restaurant opposite the Edison showroom at 65 Fifth Avenue. There they would swap stories and tell jokes.
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Afterward, some would retire to a billiard house where Tesla would impress the fellows with his bank shots and vision of the future.
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Livor boasted of an agreement with Edison and Batchelor resulting in a company capitalized at $10,000, formed for the manufacture of shafting. Edison and Batchelor provided the machinery and money, Livor, the tools and services.
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Impressed, Tesla asked for advice, particularly how to obtain a raise from his present modest salary of eighteen dollars per week to a more lucrative twenty-five dollars. “Livor gladly undertook this service…to intercede with Batchelor…but greatly to his surprise was met with an abrupt refusal.”

“No,” replied Batchelor, “the woods are full of men like [Tesla]. I can get any number of them I want for $18 a week.” Tate, who began employment as Edison’s secretary shortly after this episode, which Livor related to him, noted that Batchelor “must have been referring to the woods I failed to find in the vicinity of Harlem.”
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Tesla’s version of the story is somewhat different: “For nine months my hours [at the Edison Machine Works] were 10:30 A.M. till 5 A.M. the next day. All this time I was getting more and more anxious about the invention [AC induction motor] and was making up my mind to place it before Edison. I still remember an odd incident in this connection. One day in the latter part of 1884 Mr. Batchelor, the manager of the works, took me to Coney Island, where we met Edison in the company of his former wife. The moment that I was waiting for was propitious, and I was just about to speak, when a horriblelooking tramp took hold of Edison and drew him away, preventing me from carrying out my intentions.”
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In analyzing this story, a discrepancy as to the timing was discovered, for Edison’s wife caught typhoid fever in July 1884 and died on August 9. Since Tesla had arrived in May or June, and if Edison’s wife was present, then the event took place in late June or early July, only a few weeks after he began his employment. In a close working environment, with the hours as described, even a few weeks could seem like a very long time. One way or another, with the death of Edison’s wife and Edison’s extreme dislike of such AC men as Elihu Thomson and George Westinghouse, no time for discussing an AC invention may have been “propitious.” The “horriblelooking
tramp” who grabbed Edison away was probably Edison himself, who was known to dress like a “Bowery bum,” Tesla using a euphemism to soften the story. “The manager had promised me fifty thousand dollars [for redesigning equipment], but when I demanded payment, he merely laughed. ‘You are still a Parisian,’ remarked Edison. ‘When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke.’”
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If a “completion agreement”
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had truly been made with Edison, Tesla should have had it put in writing. It seems unlikely that this amount of money for a somewhat ambiguous bargain would be offered, but it was well within Edison’s nature to make “expensive if indefinite promises of rewards as a way of getting the men to work for low wages.” Edison, who could be more deaf than he actually was, at times, was known to “put on” his college-educated ‘sperts, as when he convinced the chemist Martin Rosanoff that his first lightbulb filament was made out of Limburger cheese! Deeply hurt, Tesla left the company and set out on his own.
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There were many days when [I] did not know where my next meal was coming from. But I was never afraid to work, I went to where some men were digging a ditch…[and] said I wanted to work. The boss looked at my good clothes and white hands and he laughed to the others…but he said, “All right. Spit on your hands. Get in the ditch.” And I worked harder than anybody. At the end of the day I had $2.

N
IKOLA
T
ESLA
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A
lthough Tesla felt cheated when he departed from the Edison Machine Works in the early months of 1885, his time spent there had enabled him to study the master at work. Simultaneously, it allowed Tesla to begin to organize his own company and write up first drafts in a notebook on advances in arc-lighting design and on the construction of DC commutators. It also enabled him to see that Edison was mortal and fallible and that he, Tesla, had a scheme significantly more advanced. A new confidence began to emerge.

In March 1885, Tesla met with the well-established patent attorney Lemuel Serrell, a former agent of Edison’s, and Serrell’s patent artist, Raphael Netter.
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Serrell taught Tesla how to break down complex inventions into individualized improvements, and on the thirtieth of the month they applied for Tesla’s first patent (no. 335,786), an improved design of the arc lamp which created a uniform light and prevented flickering. In May and June they applied for other patents on improvements on the commutator for the prevention of sparking and for regulating the current by means of a novel independent circuit coupled with auxiliary brushes. In July yet another arc-lighting patent was filed. This one enabled exhausted lamps to automatically separate themselves from the circuit until such time as the carbon filaments could be replaced. Unfortunately, the design had been anticipated by Elihu Thomson. Although “embarrassed” by having
been unaware of the state of the art in America at this time, Tesla was able to create novel refinements, and they were patentable.
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During his trips to Serrell’s office, the inventor met with B. A. Vail and Robert Lane, two businessmen from New Jersey.
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With ambiguous assurances that they were also interested in the AC motor, Tesla agreed to form a lighting and manufacturing company with them in Tesla’s name in Vail’s town of Rahway, New Jersey. There, after nearly a year of toil working with Paul Noyes, from Gordon Press Works, he completed the installation; this, his first and only municipal arc-lighting system, was used to illuminate the streets of a town and some factories.
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The efficiency and original approach of the system attracted the attention of George Worthington, editor of
Electrical Review,
who “took pleasure” in featuring the company on the front page of the August 14, 1886, issue.

For the next few months, the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing Company reciprocated by advertising in the journal. Vail hired the mechanical artist Mr. Wright of New York City to draw the lamp and dynamo and at the same time, along with Tesla’s help, created bold copy which claimed: “the most perfect…and entirely new [arc lighting] system of…automatic self-regulat[ion]” In a display ad four times the size of most other electrical concerns, the Tesla system guaranteed “absolute safety and great saving of power…with no flickering or hissing.”
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Having obtained stock in the company and with a little money in his pocket, Tesla moved into a garden apartment in Manhattan. Decorating the grounds “in the continental fashion with colored glass balls on sticks,” the cosmopolitan’s delight was short-lived. “Children broke in and stole the balls, so Tesla replaced them with metal ones. The stealing continued, however, so Tesla ordered his gardener to bring them into the house every night.”
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Unfortunately, neither Vail, who was president of the company, nor Lane, who was vice president and treasurer, cared about Tesla’s other creation. To them, an AC motor was a seemingly useless invention. The sensitive inventor became incensed, for he had postponed exploiting the AC system until the Rahway project was completed under the assumption that his backers would support that quest as well. To his shock, Tesla was forced out of his own concern and handed “the hardest blow I ever received.”
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“With no other possession than a beautifully engraved certificate of stock of hypothetical value,”
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the inventor was bankrupt. Betrayed by men he trusted, the inventor came to consider the winter of 1886-87 a time of “terrible headaches and bitter tears, my suffering being intensified by my material want.”
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He was forced to work as a ditchdigger. The occupation was particularly demeaning for the self-perceived aristocrat. “My high education in various branches of science, mechanics and literature seemed to me like a mockery.”
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Tesla’s crisis abated in the spring. Having interested the foreman in his engineering prowess, he was introduced to Alfred S. Brown, a prominent engineer who worked for Western Union Telegraph Company. Brown, who himself held a number of patents on arc lamps,
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had probably seen the article and advertisements on Tesla in
Electrical Review.
Well aware of the limitations of the prevailing DC apparatus, he became immediately impressed with the “merits” of Tesla’s AC inventions and thereupon contacted Charles F. Peck, “a distinguished lawyer” from Englewood, New Jersey.
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Peck “knew of the failures in the industrial exploitation of alternating currents and was distinctly prejudiced to a point of not caring even to witness some tests.”

“I was discouraged,” Tesla recalled, “until I had an inspiration. Do you remember the ‘Egg of Columbus?’ I asked. The saying goes that at a certain dinner the great explorer asked some scoffers of his project to balance an egg on its end. They tried in vain. He then took it, and cracking the shell slightly by a gentle blow, made it stand upright. This may be a myth, but the fact is that he was granted an audience by Isabella, the Queen of Spain, and won her support.”

“And you plan to balance an egg on its end?” Peck inquired.

“Yes, but without cracking the shell. If I should do this, would you admit that I had gone Columbus one better?”

“All right,” he said.

Having finally gained the lawyer’s attention, Tesla cut to the quick. “And would you be willing to go out of your way as much as Isabella?”

“I have no crown jewels to pawn,” Peck retorted, “but there are a few ducats in my buckskins and I might be able to help you to an extent.”
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After the meeting, Tesla rushed to the local blacksmith with a hardboiled egg and had a mate cast in iron and brass. When he returned to the lab, he constructed a circular enclosure with polyphase circuits along the perimeter, and when he placed the egg in the center and turned on the current, the egg began to spin. As the egg’s speed of rotation increased, its wobbling ceased, and it stood on its end. Not only was Tesla able to “go Columbus one better,” he was also easily able to display the principles behind the idea of his rotating magnetic field. Peck was won over, and together the three men formed a new electric company in Tesla’s name.

Peck, who had connections with John C. Moore, a banker with connections to J. P. Morgan, provided the bulk of the capital, and Brown provided technical expertise and located the laboratory at 89 Liberty Street, adjacent to what today is the World Trade Center. In return, Tesla agreed to split his patents on a fifty-fifty basis. In actuality, the three equally shared one patent for an AC dynamo, Peck and Tesla split five more patents on commutators, motors, and power transmission, and the balance of inventions conceived during this period were placed in the
name of the Tesla Electric Company. Their first patent was filed on April 30, 1887.
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Finally, Tesla had arrived. He would begin an unprecedented excursion into the field of invention, a flow of intense activity which would continue unabated for fifteen years.

Driven by his wish to maintain priority in a variety of areas and upon the realization that new technologies could influence the course of history, Tesla began a vigorous schedule that frightened those around him. On many occasions, he drove himself until he collapsed, working around the clock, with few breaks. “Tesla produced as rapidly as the machines could be constructed three complete systems of AC machinery—for single-phase, two-phase, and three-phase currents—and made experiments with fourand six-phase currents. In each of the three principal systems he produced the dynamos for generating the currents, the motors for producing power from them, and transformers for raising and reducing the voltages as well as a variety of devices for automatically controlling the machinery. He not only produced the three systems but provided methods by which they could be interconnected and modifications providing a variety of means of using each of the systems.”
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He also calculated, in fundamental fashion, the mathematics behind these inventions.

On May 10, Anthony Szigeti landed in New York, and by the end of the week he was working at Liberty Street. With Tesla as designer, Brown as technical expert, and Szigeti as assistant, they began manufacturing their first AC induction motors. Peck, who along with Brown would be associated with Tesla for the next decade as a quiet backer, helped implement the patent applications by seeing investors in California, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Within a few weeks,
Electrical World
editor T. C. Martin stopped by the shop and coaxed Tesla into writing his first article on the invention. Immediately taken by him, Martin described the long-limbed electrician as having “eyes that recall all the stories one has read of keenness of vision and phenomenal ability to see through things. He is an omnivorous reader, who never forgets; and he possesses the peculiar facility in languages that enables the educated native of eastern Europe to talk and write in at least half a dozen tongues. A more congenial companion cannot be desired…the conversation, dealing at first with things near at hand and next…reaches out and rises to the greater questions of life, and duty, and destiny.”
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T. C. Martin, with heavy emphasis in his signature on the C, was a complex person who would come to play a significant role in Tesla’s life. In 1893 he edited the most important compilation of Tesla’s writings assembled during his lifetime. Flamboyantly mustachioed and with large, round, soulful eyes and a shaved head, Martin, now married, had been a former seminary student who had emigrated from England when he was
only twenty-one. Born in the same year as Tesla, Martin had worked for the Wizard of Menlo Park in the late 1870s before moving to the island of Jamaica. Returning to New York in 1883, he quickly became editor of
Operator and Electrical World.
Started in 1874 by the well manicured W. J. Johnston from a “little four-page telegraph sheet prepared and issued by Western Union operators in New York City, for circulation among their fellows,”
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the
Operator
began to gain prominence after Thomas Edison started contributing significant pieces. As soon as Martin was hired, the paper’s name was changed simply to
Electrical World.

The following year, in 1884, T. C. Martin became vice president of the newly formed American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), and in 1886 his first book appeared,
The Electrical Motor and Its Applications.
A few months later, he was elected president of the AIEE.
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With his newfound prominence and very British attitude, T. C. Martin’s sense of self-worth rose to the occasion. In very deliberate fashion, he organized a rebellion at
Electrical World,
with his coeditor Joseph Wetzler and a few other workers, against the owner, the proper, pedantic, and overbearing W. J. Johnston.
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A capable editor in his own right, Johnston was forced to fire his editors and work on the journal himself, “as if Martin had never existed.”

Along with Wetzler, Martin gained employment with
Electrical Engineer,
a competing company which gained great prominence when the duo climbed aboard. As a friend of Edison, and with his new base of operations, Martin was prepared to seize the moment. “An industrious writer with graceful style,”
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T. C. Martin had the capability to cross over into higher social circles. He was a leader, an opportunist, egoist, and charmer. He was also one of the most influential personalities in the glamorous futuristic field of electrical engineering. Having discovered this new volcano of vision in Nikola Tesla, Martin approached him with the idea of helping choreograph Tesla’s entrée into the electrical-engineering community.

The Serb was mysterious. He could rebuff lesser mortals and enjoyed the habits of a recluse. But Thomas Commerford Martin had tact and tenacity of purpose. He helped arrange for the esteemed engineering professor William Anthony, of Cornell University, to come to Liberty Street and test the new AC motors for efficiency. And Tesla reciprocated by traveling to Cornell to display his motors to Anthony and three other professors, R. H. Thurston, Edward Nicholas, and William Ryan. Anthony, who was twenty years their senior and a graduate of both Brown and Yale universities, had just retired from Cornell after fifteen years in order to take a position designing electrical measuring instruments for Mather Electrical Company in Manchester, Connecticut. Soon to be president of the AIEE himself, Anthony was pleased with his tests. Along with Martin,
he helped coax Tesla into presenting his motor before the newly formed electrical society.

Martin had great difficulty persuading Tesla “to give any paper at all.” Martin said that “Tesla stood very much alone, [as] the majority [of the electricians] were entirely unfamiliar with [the motor’s] value.” In haste, Tesla wrote out his lecture the night before in pencil. It had not been easy for him to construct an efficient machine, but having finally succeeded and having passed all of Professor Anthony’s stringent tests for efficiency, “nothing now stood in the way of [its] commercial development…except that they had to be constructed with a view to operating on the circuits then existing which in this country were all of high frequency.”
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