Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (45 page)

February 17, 1905

Dear Mr. Morgan,

Let me tell you once more. I have perfected the greatest invention of all time—the transmission of electrical energy without wires to any distance, a work which has consumed 10 years of my life. It is the long sought stone of the philosophers. I need but to complete the plant I have constructed and in one bound, humanity will advance centuries.

I am the
only man
on this earth
to-day
who has the peculiar knowledge and ability to achieve this wonder and another one may not come in a hundred years…Help me to complete this work or else remove the obstacles in my path.

I was heartily glad to see you in such splendid health yesterday. You are good for another 20 years of active life.

Faithfully yours,
N. Tesla
³¹

Pressures continued to mount. Warden’s lawyer pressed for a mortgage payment, and one of Tesla’s previous workers, a Mr. Clark, was suing for past wages. When some of the bad news arrived at his Waldorf suite, the inventor “tore the letter sufficiently to prevent any undesirable person
[from] read[ing] the terrible open secret of Wardenclyffe.” Tesla tried to maintain a balance by persevering with the development of his oscillators and other inventions, such as a transformer, a condenser, and a steam turbine, but these operations were long-range projects that would not provide immediate payoffs on the order needed to reopen the wireless operation. “The obstacles in my way,” Tesla wrote Scherff, “are a regular hydra. Just as soon as I chop off a head, two new ones grow.”
³²

Tesla began to write exclusively in pencil during this period, his writing becoming less distinct, lacking the boldness and clarity which had characterized it at earlier periods. Beginning to feel run-down on a more regular basis, Tesla likened his task to that of a weight lifter. “Every ounce counts now,” he told his manager.

March 10, 1905

My dear Luka,

Won’t go to dinner [with you]. I am hard at work to get [Mrs. Filipov] that fine automobile.
³³

At the end of March, Tesla was “thunder struck at the Waldorf” when Warden’s lawyer stormed the premises demanding immediate payment. The raising of even one of Mr. Boldt’s eyebrows was enough to unsettle the struggling entrepreneur. “Hope to get out [to Wardenclyffe] Sunday.” Tesla wrote Scherff. “Need it badly.”
³⁴

Tesla set to work with his lawyers in April, finalizing patent applications for England, France, and Italy. But his inability to adequately compensate his workers on Long Island was creating a “[de]moral[izing] effect at Wardenclyffe. Perhaps we are nearing a revolution down there?” he inquired of Scherff. “Disappointments…and dangers…troubles and troubles again” continued to plague him.
³⁵
He was beginning to crumble.

May 1, 1905

My dear Tesla:

I know it will please you to hear of the great happiness that has come to me. Miss Grizelda Houston Hull…has consented to become my wife and the wedding has been [planned] for May 25th…Do you know, my dear Tesla, you are the very first person, outside of my family that I thought of and which the ceremonies will be very simple, I wish to feel you present in standing close to me on this occasion so full of incoming in my life.

Indeed, I could not feel the occasion complete without you.

Sincerely yours,
Richmond Pearson Hobson
³⁶

The joyful occasion was a needed respite, Tesla “chatting” with Hobson’s mother-in-law, hiding his worries, and characteristically teasing his friend. “Hobson,” he declared, “now that you are married, your career is over.”
³⁷
This, of course, was far from the truth, as rumors had long been circulating about the possibility of grooming the charismatic lieutenant for the presidency.

“I must do something for our dear Mr. Tesla,” Katharine told Robert on the ride home.

“What could you do that he hasn’t?”

“Appeal to the king,” she answered wistfully. Upon their arrival home, Katharine ran to the house to hide her tears.

While Morgan was away in Europe for his summer sojourn, Tesla met with Jacob Schiff, a man in the midst of lending the Japanese large sums of money in their war against the Russians. “S. said that perhaps he may take it himself,” Tesla wrote hopefully to Scherff. “I believe that he will be a valuable man to me.”
³⁸

In August, Morgan returned. Tesla sent Scherff to hand-deliver his newest list of patents granted, which the octopus grabbed in his tentacles and tossed into the wastebasket.

November 11, 1905

Dear Mr. Scherff,

Thirteen seems to be my lucky number. First of all, I met with Mr. F. just for a moment as he was going out of his office. He was most friendly and said that he was sorry he had to go out, but he will talk with me some other day. I HAVE MY MAN as sure as the law of gravitation. I know it.
³⁹

December 14, 1905

My dear Mr. Tesla,

I have received your letter of the 13th and in reply would state that I am
not
willing to invest any more money in the enterprise. I should be very glad if Mr. Frick would join you. You could have no better associate and I should be very glad to work with Mr. Frick in the matter, putting in what I have against his $100,000 to which you allude.

Yours very truly,
J. Pierpont Morgan
⁴⁰

Christmas was approaching, and Tesla had apparently struck a deal with another of the superrich. Frick, we remember, had earned upward of $60 million in 1901, when U.S. Steel was created. Ryan and Schiff were also involved in this new potential syndicate. Tesla wrote Morgan to thank him for allowing the liaison to come about. “You and Mr. Frick can take
whatever you like. [I shall be satisfied] with a very small interest,” Tesla wrote in a first draft. “I understand your attitude perfectly. You adhere strictly to principles. Never in my life have I [met] a man who even in a small [way can approach] the state [as described] by Goethe.”
⁴¹

Yet again Tesla reviewed their relationship, his decision to change the contract, and his ultimate wish to transmit power for industrial purposes. Why? Morgan sidestepped a meeting with Frick in December. An ill wind was blowing. Tesla began to crumble, his handwriting now barely legible, written as a meager, wispy stroke in pencil.

December 24, 1905

Dear Tesla,

I have been sorry to hear of your recent illness—well concealed from your friends and the public—and I am also now very glad to hear of your recovery. Please stay well and strong.

Yours sincerely,
T. C. Martin
⁴²

January 24, 1906

Dear Mr. Morgan,

I have just learned that the Germans have commenced the construction of a plant in all respects similar to mine which they expect to complete in a year…Now, Mr. Morgan, you do not wish such a horrible thing to happen. If Frick will aid me, I can without delay, put my plant in operation by July next. Please see him at your earliest opportunity. I have not much time to lose.
⁴³

With the Johnsons just back from Europe and a meeting with “His Majesty in Rome,” Kate decided to seize the moment. Completely on her own, Mrs. Robert Underwood Johnson called a hansom. “Twenty-three Wall Street,” she said boldly. Morgan would not see her.
⁴⁴

February 2, 1906

Dear Mr. Morgan,

Please see Mr. Frick…He is going to call on you. Time is flying.
⁴⁵

A fortnight later, Tesla wrote again, pleading with Morgan to allow the formation of “a reasonable foundation upon which I am justly entitled.” Tesla requested that Morgan agree to take one-third of the enterprise, thereby reducing his share by approximately 20 percent. “Please do not spoil the letter by unnecessary reference to your unwillingness of furnishing more money. The whole town knows it.”
⁴⁶

Morgan did his best to scuttle the deal, and with it Tesla fell. His body shook violently, and his eyes began to bulge out of his head. Forgetting to shave or even shower, the ailing engineer grabbed the first train to
Shoreham and ran from the station to his precious tower, just a few hundred yards away. Clutching the girders for support as he climbed, the pulverized sorcerer ascended fifteen stories to the apex and looked out at the flat land which lay undisturbed for miles in every direction.

April 10, 1906

Dear Mr. Tesla,

I have received your letter and am very glad to know that you are vanquishing your illness. I have scarcely ever seen you so out of sorts as last Sunday; and I was frightened.

Yours sincerely,
George Scherff
⁴⁷

In May there was a portentous explosion in Bridgeport which caused a shock wave that was felt in Shoreham. “I hope my tower will not be subjected often to such tests,” Tesla wrote Scherff. It was less than a month after the great San Francisco earthquake, but the jolt served to reawaken a new reserve of energy. Working with Scherff and a few men at the plant, Tesla continued development of his condenser and steam turbine which he was planning on placing inside a torpedo.

Concerned about the stability of the buildings America was constructing, Stanford White wrote the city of San Francisco, telling them to pass “stringent laws…The hot riveted steel building stood the shock wonderfully,” he concluded.
⁴⁸

White, like Tesla, was a victim of financial misfortune and he began drinking heavily. Only fifty-four, his health was in decline, and he was suffering from tuberculosis. In February the architect had planned to auction off $300,000 worth of his tapestries, sculptures, and paintings in order to reduce his debt by half, but a fire wiped out the uninsured holdings just two weeks prior to the sale.

Harry Thaw, having married Evelyn Nesbit, was having White followed day and night. On June 25, 1906, with Evelyn present, Thaw snaked his way down the aisle of the Roof Garden restaurant at Madison Square Garden, pearl-handled pistol in hand. While entertainer Harry Short sang “I Could Love a Thousand Girls,” Thaw spotted and shot the “Beast” between the eyes. Stanford White, designer of Madison Square Garden, the agriculture building at the Chicago World’s Fair, the Niagara Falls power plant, the Capitol in Providence, the Washington Arch in New York, Rosecliffe and the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, the Casino in Narragansett, the Boston train station, the Players’ Club, numerous churches and other mansions, the new extension on the White House, and Wardenclyffe was dead.

Few attended White’s funeral for he had been accused of raping a
sixteen-year-old girl. But Tesla came.
⁴⁹
The dream vanquished; the Gilded Age ended.

Throughout the year, Tesla’s handwriting began to unglue, and by August it completely disintegrated, supporting the hypothesis that he suffered a nervous collapse at that time.
⁵⁰
Entering his own private hell, the inventor was forced to endure an emotional enervation which caused a corresponding dysfunctional shift in his personality. Self-alienation took hold, bitterness and displaced anger became manifest as the quirks in his nature became more pronounced. Letters even to his closest friends would be signed N. Tesla, not Nikola. The untimely death of William Rankine at the age of forty-seven in September was another nail in the coffin of his dreams.

In a barely legible letter dated October 15, 1906, the last in this incredible series to Morgan, Tesla informed the Wall Street monarch that Messieurs Ryan, Schiff, and Frick were all willing to enter the partnership.

Every opportunity is there…I have high regards for you as a big and honorable man…There is greater power in the leaf of a flower then in the paw of a bear. That is as much as I’ll ever say…You are reputed as a builder of properties, but if you prefer in this instance to chop down poles…go ahead.
⁵¹

F
AUST
:
Gnash not so thy greedy teeth against me!—Great and glorious spirit, thou that deniest to appear to me, who knowest my heart and soul, why yoke me to this shame-fellow, who feeds on mischief and feasts on ruin?

M
EPHISTOPHELES
:
Who was it that plunged her into ruin? I or thou?

I do not hesitate to state here for future reference and as a test of the accuracy of my scientific forecast that flying machines and ships propelled by electricity transmitted without wire will have ceased to be a wonder in ten years from now. I would say five were it not that there is such a thing as “inertia of human opinion” resisting revolutionary ideas.

N
IKOLA
T
ESLA
, M
AY
16, 1907
¹

“I
t’s three o’clock in the morning, Mr. Tesla,” George Scherff rasped into the phone as his wife grumbled in her sleep.

“The sheriffs seized the land.”

“You owed Warden a hundred ninety-nine dollars!” Scherff said in amazement.

Fighting back a flood of tears, the inventor rasped, “I don’t have it.”

“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Tesla.”
²

“Thank you,” Tesla said as his hand limply hung up the line. His hair disheveled, his clothes scattered about, the former man of the hour was going to have to let the maid in soon. What would she say about the drapes he had placed over the mirrors? And then there was the tower. He had to go back
there
to seal up the property. Would he have the strength to make the journey?

His appetite all but gone, Tesla hadn’t seen his friends for months. He managed a letter to Katharine as he rang room service to send up breakfast. “I’m ever in so much greater trouble,” he scratched out on his letterhead.
³
But he would allow no one to truly know the hell he had entered. No sunlight must enter his room. He sat in the shadows and
petted a wounded pigeon he had found floundering by the New York Public Library. If Boldt ever knew, the bird would have to be smuggled back out.

The withered man reached over to the envelope addressed to him in a feminine hand. Carefully he removed the letter and theater ticket. Marguerite Merrington had invited him to her new play
Love Finds a Way.
He stared at the title and broke down once again into uncontrollable sobs.
⁴

Reconciling the torment, Tesla eased himself back into the social net as 1907 commenced. As part of his therapy, the recluse would surreptitiously board a moonlight train to Wardenclyffe. There, in the wizard’s chambers, the Balkan genie would hook up high-frequency apparatus to his skull and thereby impress macabre waves of soothing electrical energy through his brain. “I have passed [150,000 volts]…through my head,” Tesla told the
New York Times,
“and did not lose consciousness, but I invariably fell into a lethargic sleep some time after.”

In May, Tesla was inducted as a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
⁶
Slowly, he began to see once again that perhaps his grand plan could be resurrected. To raise the capital to keep his ship afloat, the inventor took out a series of mortgages, subdividing the enterprise into a string of hypothetical parcels. In the spring of 1904 he had borrowed $5,000 from Thomas G. Sherman, a law partner of Stanford White’s brother-in-law, and in the winter of 1906 he obtained $3,500 from Edmund Stallo, a son-in-law of one of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil partners; but those funds had long disappeared. Having dodged the Waldorf management for nearly three years, he took out another mortgage for an additional $5,000 against the rent he owed with the proprietor, George Boldt.
⁷
And thus began a fresh plan for continuing to live in the lap of luxury without laying out another dime.

Boldt had done exceptionally well for himself. Having hobnobbed with the megarich for many years, the Waldorf manager had been able to take advantage of a number of inside opportunities. By 1907, a millionaire in his own right, he had expanded his base to become a banker, orchestrating the creation of the Lincoln Trust Company, which was located across the street from Madison Square Garden.
⁸

Everyone except Tesla seemed to be flourishing. Morgan, through Jacob Schiff, had finally iced his deal with the Guggenheims to form the “Alaska Syndicate,” an enormous corporation which had been set up to exploit a copper find in the inviolable northern wilderness. Whereas the Guggenheim mountain in Utah contained only 2-3 percent ore, this lode, according to John Hays Hammond’s report, was 75 percent pure copper! A site of incalculable wealth, it would take a fleet of steamships, a thousandman crew, and an up-front capital investment of $25 million to construct a railroad just to reach the find.

But copper was not all the “Morganheims” had their eye on. They also began purchasing coal and iron reserves and hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland. “Thus the press, the few environmentalists active at the time, and a significant portion of the American people began to vigorously oppose the Guggenmorganization of Alaska.”
⁹

With the growing need for copper wire came also a demand for insulation. Seizing the opportunity, Thomas Fortune Ryan and Bernard Baruch went to Europe to sign a contract with the king of Belgium (the former Prince Albert, an acquaintance of Tesla’s). Their plan was to take over the rubber industry in the African Congo. The financiers negotiated an even split, with the king allocating 25 percent for his country and retaining 25 percent for himself. As Baruch returned to Wall Street to handle marketing, Ryan traveled to Africa to oversee the product’s manufacture. Naturally, the tire companies were just as interested as the electrical concerns.

Once it was realized that Tesla’s plans to do away with transmission lines had been abolished, it seemed as if there began a feeding frenzy on copper stocks, as this market was now assured a continually increasing demand.

The first signs of economic distress was heralded in August, when John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil was fined the staggering sum of $29 million for price gouging and illegal tariffs. Suddenly, Wall Street became edgy. In October, F. Augustus Heinze, a well-known speculator and enemy of the Guggenheim syndicate, began dumping large blocks of United Copper onto the market. Heinze miscalculated in his attempts to buy back the stock at a much lower price, and his shifty scheming resulted in a drop in the market and a run on his bank, the Mercantile Trust Company. Due to Heinze’s links to other financial institutions, the hysteria spread, and the Panic of 1907 began. Depositors emptied out every bank they could get into.

J. Pierpont Morgan called an emergency conference of all the bank and trust presidents, gathering them together in his newly constructed library in an all-night vigil. Sitting among his tapestries, original manuscripts, paintings, and jewels, the Wall Street monarch did his best to orchestrate a bailout of those institutions that were salvageable. Some, however, were beyond repair, and the stronger banks would go only so far in dipping into their reserves. Charles Barney, director of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, and father of “two awfully pretty sisters,” pleaded for assistance, but he was rebuked. Barney went home and put a pistol to his head. This act produced a wave of suicides, particularly among the
Knickerbocker’s eighteen thousand depositors. With Henry Clay Frick acting as liaison, President Theodore Roosevelt would transfer $25 million into Morgan’s control. Although this figure matched the pledge of the stronger institutions, the new influx could only stretch so far. Boldt’s bank, the Lincoln Trust, along with the Knickerbocker, the Mercantile, and half a dozen others, had gone under by the end of the week.
¹⁰
Now Tesla’s chances of resurrecting his own enterprise became even more remote.

“These are simply awful times,” Tesla told Scherff. “I cannot understand at all how Americans who are so daring and reckless in other respects can get scared to such a degree. My ship propulsion scheme is really great, and I feel sure that it will pull me out of the hole. Just how, I do not see as yet because it seems almost impossible to [amass] any money at all.”

“We’re still waiting to hear from the International Mercantile Marine Company,” Scherff said.

“Be patient, my man. They are certainly interested, but make conditions which I am unable to accept for the present. If I had just a little capital I would not worry about finishing my place.”

“What about Astor?”

“He told me over the phone, that he would see me as soon as possible, but up to present, nothing has materialized. I know now, that if I am to get capital, I can only get it from some fellow who has not less than a hundred million.”

“Then, Mr. Tesla, let’s hope for the best.”
¹¹

“Dulled by [his] own suffering,”
¹²
Tesla began edging himself out of his depression by producing a number of acerbic essays for the electrical journals and local newspapers. Covering a wide range of topics, the inventor sought to vindicate himself and thereby try and make sense out of an absurdly ironic situation. Simultaneously, he sought to explain the Wardenclyffe vision yet again in the vain hope that some financier with a transcendent vision would come to his rescue. He was searching for a hero, not only for selfish desires but, in his eyes, for the future of the planet.

Under the guise of commenting on Commodore Perry’s exploration of the North Pole, Tesla explained in detail the modus operandi of his world wireless scheme.
¹³
For
Harvard Illustrated,
he discussed Lowell’s Martian discoveries and the way to signal the nearby planet;” for the
World
and
English Mechanic & World of Science,
he described how a tidal wave could be created by using high explosives to set the entire earth in oscillation and discussed how this wall of water could be harnessed to “engulf” an advancing enemy;
¹⁵
and for the
New York Sun
and
New York Times
he drafted a flurry of letters to the editor on such topics as his dirigible wireless torpedo,
¹⁶
the transmission of voice by means of wireless, the “narcotic influence of certain periodic currents” when transmitted through the body for therapeutic reasons, the inefficiency of Marconi’s
system, and the piracy of his oscillators by Marconi and another wireless inventor Valdemar Poulsen. Tesla also declared that the telephone was invented by Philip Reis before Bell and the incandescent lamp by King and J. W. Starr before Edison.
¹⁷

Unlike Bell and Edison, Tesla wrote, “I had to cut the path myself, and my hands are still sore.” After reviewing his bitter battle for vindication as the true author of the AC polyphase system against such “feeble men” as Professor Ferraris, the wizard went on to discuss his seminal work in wireless telegraphy. “It will never be possible to transmit electrical energy economically through this [planet] and its environment except by essentially the same means and methods which I have discovered,” he declared, “and the system is so perfect now that it admits of but little improvement…Would you mind telling a reason why this advance should not stand worthily beside the discoveries of Copernicus?”
¹⁸

This was a new Tesla—resentful, indignant, defiant, petulant. He was the discoverer of the AC polyphase system, the induction motor, fluorescent lights, mechanical and electrical oscillators, a novel steam propulsion system, wireless transmission of intelligence, light, and power, remote control, and interplanetary communication. He was an original discoverer, whereas Bell and Edison had merely modified the works of others. How dare the world deny him his due?

Tesla’s inventions were even at the heart of the new electric subway system which had just opened its doors beneath the thriving metropolis. Flooding, however, was a continual problem which marred this newest Tesla spin-off. The public had to be warned lest water cause corrosion of vital components, thereby increasing the risk of causing an explosion, and so another article advised the authorities on ways to cure the problem.

After one of his biweekly trips to his esteemed tonsorial artist for the warm compresses on his face and vigorous head massage to stimulate brain cells,
¹⁹
Tesla picked up his walking cane and strolled out in his green suede high-tops to Forty-second Street, to the entranceway of the freshly tiled Interborough catacombs. He was looking for new office space. Descending the staircase, the creator was overtaken with a pompous sense of pride as he stood by the tracks to await the next train. It was an almost magical experience for him to drop down in one part of the city, only to pop up majestically in another spot a few minutes later.

While waiting at a stop one ordinary day in 1907, he was approached by a lad and asked if he were the great Nikola Tesla. Catching a gleam in the inquirer’s eye, the inventor answered in the affirmative.

“I have many questions to ask you,” the youngster said as Tesla moved forward to step aboard the train.

“Well, then, come on,” Tesla responded, unable to understand why the boy hesitated.

“I do not have enough money for the fare” was the embarrassed reply.

“Oh, is that all,” the electronic savant chuckled as he tossed the youngster the required sum. “What’s your name?”

“O’Neill, sir, Jack O’Neill. I’m applying for a job as a page for the New York Public Library.”

“Good. We can meet there and you can help me research the history of some patents I am investigating.”

O’Neill, who also had a keen interest in psychic phenomena, would go on a decade later to become a science reporter for the Long Island paper, the
Nassau Daily Review Star.
Eventually he took a position at the
Herald Tribune,
where he won the Pulitzer Prize before penning
Prodigal Genius.
²⁰

In June came yet another legal suit, again from Warden, only this time from his heirs, as he had passed away. The amount was for $1,080, for money owed on an option Tesla had on four hundred acres adjacent to the two hundred he controlled.

“This is an old case which has been dragging in the courts for years,” Tesla told the
Sun
reporter. “I [had] intended to use this land for an agricultural experiment in fertilizing soil by means of electricity. I thought that by the use of certain electrical principles [in producing nitrogen], the soil could be increased very much, [and thus I had] agreed to take a certain option. But subsequently [I] discovered that the person who entered into the agreement had no right to make such a disposition…I told him the option was off…[but] the heirs of the owner had simply pressed the claim, and it is very likely that it will have to be paid.”
²¹