Richard Munson - Tesla: Inventor of the Modern

ALSO BY RICHARD MUNSON

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The Business of Power and What It Means for the Future of Electricity

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The Men and Women Who Control Government Spending

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The Power Makers:
The Inside Story of Americas Biggest Business...
and Its Struggle to Control Tomorrows Electricity

Copyright 2018 by Richard Munson

All rights reserved
First Edition

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Book design by Daniel Lagin
Production manager: Julia Druskin
JACKET DESIGN by 344 DESIGN
JACKET IMAGES: (front) The Granger Collection, New York; (back) Kenneth M. Swezey
Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Munson, Richard, author.
Title: Tesla : inventor of the modern / Richard Munson.
Description: First edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017055596 | ISBN 9780393635447 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Tesla, Nikola, 18561943. | Electrical engineersUnited StatesBiography. | InventorsUnited StatesBiography. | Electrical engineeringHistory.
Classification: LCC TK140.T4 M86 2018 | DDC 621.3092 [B]dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017055596

ISBN 978-0-393-63545-4 (e-book)

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To Kathryn

We wind a simple ring or iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit, and direct energy at will.

NIKOLA TESLA , 1892

CONTENTS

T E S L A

N ikola Tesla is known as an eccentric genius, even a visionary. The question is, did his eccentricities eclipse his genius? Does it matter? Larry Page, a founder of Google, praises him as a hero. Elon Musks car and company bear his name.

Entrepreneurs like Page and Muskmultibillionaires and brilliant discovererspoint to Nikola Tesla as the one who launched our modern era of electricity, radio, and robots. They consider him an inventors inventor, something of a folk legend.

Teslas electric motors run our appliances and factories, so why is Thomas Edison the more famous of the two? Likewise, Guglielmo Marconi gets popular credit for inventing the radio, yet the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Teslas patents first described the system for transmitting wireless signals over long distances.

Who was this farsighted, if underappreciated, mastermind?

Perhaps the best introduction occurred in 1891, on a spring night in New York City, when hundreds crammed into an auditorium on the Columbia College campus to witness a key battle in the War of the Currents. Serbian-born Nikola Tesla had declared that his method of harnessing electricity could outperform and outdistance Thomas Edisons system. Once an employee and now a rival of Edison, Tesla also claimed he could transmit sound with electrical charges. The scientists and engineers came to see Teslainventor and scientific magicianwield his wondrous power.

The thirty-five-year-old Tesla was invited to the stage by the two Columbia School of Mines professorsthe university had only started an electrical engineering program two years earlier. Theyd arranged for Tesla to install his innovative high-frequency alternator offstage, in a nearby building called the cowshed. The plan was for Tesla to unveil his latest discoveries with great showmanship in front of a huge audience.

Tesla expected controversy from the crowd, which included several Edison supporters. Edisons direct current, or DC, and incandescent bulbs had become the standard and were backed by J. P. Morgan and other powerful bankers. Twelve years had passed since Edison introduced his lamp with a glowing carbon filament within a vacuum and nine years since he opened the first central power station on Pearl Street in New York City. Yet DCs one-directional charge could be distributed for only a mile or so, and Edisons lamps were notoriously inefficient and prone to burning out. Could Teslas new ideas overcome Edisons financial and commercial advantages?

Nearly a decade younger than the self-taught Edison, Tesla had an impressive and extensive education. He wrote poetry, recited complete books from memory, and spoke eight languagesEnglish, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, German, French, Italian, and Latin. This polyglot reveled in the excitement of discovery. I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success, he said. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Tesla had already challenged Edison and his supporters in publications, claiming he could build bigger generators, longer transmission lines, and more reliable lamps. In opposition to Edisons direct current, Tesla championed alternating current, or AC, which periodically reversed the direction of the electrical charge. His breakthrough, the Tesla coil, could reliably deliver high-frequency, high-voltage electricity. And with that ability, Tesla predicted, companies could transmit power over long distances.

The eager crowd arrived early at the auditoriumlocated in a gray-slab Greek Revival building between Madison and Park Avenues on 49th Street. Having heard about Teslas man-made lightning, they wanted to see if someone subjected to ten thousand volts, delivered via alternating current, would burst into flames or shoot sparks from his fingertips. Despite the circus-like atmosphere, such lectures were formal affairs, with the audience of male scientists in black suits; a few accompanying wives accented the scene with an occasional plume or lace jabot.

After a short introduction by one of the professors, Tesla approached the stage haltingly. He was a slender man who dressed with a European formality, and for this demonstration he wore his usual dapper four-button, dark-brown cutaway suit, a white monogrammed silk shirt, gray suede gloves, and a black tie, arranged in the old-fashioned, four-in-hand style. At six feet three inches, he towered over his introducer. Tesla had a thick, neatly trimmed mustache, angular face, and wavy hair severely parted down the middle. Surviving severe bouts of malaria and cholera in his teens had left Tesla with a lifelong fear of germs. Walking onstage, he avoided shaking hands, keeping his own clasped behind him, but he bowed politely to a few colleagues. His deep-set, pale, and glimmering eyes stilled the audience.

When he opened his mouth, his high, almost falsetto voice must have surprised the crowd; he spoke in what he called pure, nervous English. Tesla began by praising a few of the distinguished scientists, including two he knew felt threatened by his new system. More surprisingly, he admitted that he did not fully understand electricity. Of all the forms of natures immeasurable, all-pervading energy, which ever and ever change and move, like a soul animates an innate universe, electricity and magnetism are perhaps the most fascinating.