Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (47 page)

VTOLs can be grouped into four general categories. The aircraft could be tilted, the thrust could be deflected, the propeller or turbojet engine could be tilted, or a dual propulsion system could be utilized. Bell Labs began constructing propeller-driven VTOLs in the 1940s. Early models included the wing-tilted XC-142A, developed by Vought, Hiller & Ryan, and the X-19 propeller tilted craft, developed by Curtiss & Wright.

The New Weapons

Every service has its favorite new weapon, and the Marine Corp’s favorite is the V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that can take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane. Just the craft to ferry Marines quickly and far into the desert, argue its manufacturers, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and Boeing Vertol Co…[The vehicle can carry] 24 men and costs $40 million.
⁴⁴

Tesla’s invention of the helicopter-airplane, which he called the flivver plane.
(New York American,
February 23, 1928)

March 22, 1909

My dear Col. Astor:

I was very glad to know from the papers that you have returnedto the city and hasten to tell you that my steam and gas turbine, pump, water turbine, air compressor and propeller have all proved a great success. In the opinion of very competent men these inventions will create an enormous revolution. My gas turbine will be the finest thing in the world for a flying machine because it makes it possible to attain as much as 4 or 5 HP for each pound of weight. I have been hard at work on a design of the flying machine and it is going to be something very fine. It will have no screw propeller or inclined plane, rudder or wane—in fact nothing of the old, and it will enable us to lift much greater weights and propel them in the air with ever so much greater speed than has been possible so far. We are making up an automobile in which these new principles are embodied and I am also designing a locomotive for a railroad and am adapting my new propulsion scheme to one of the biggest Atlantic liners. All this information is confidential. I am merely writing knowing that you will be pleased with my success.

With kind regards, I am,

Sincerely yours,
Nikola Tesla

W
ith the death of the fragile poet Robert Watson Gilder in November 1909 came the advance in position from associate editor to editor in chief by Robert Underwood Johnson. Numerous dignitaries attended the somber affair, including Mark Twain and the latest
rising star in the world of poetry, the twenty-four-year-old “wonder child” George Sylvester Viereck. It was an undesirable way for Luka to gain the promotion, but clearly the trustees had never considered anyone else for the post. Gilder’s passing was yet another tangible sign of the end of an important era for the
Century.

Tesla came over for Christmas dinner, and the discussion drifted to the problems Robert would now have in boosting a steadily declining circulation. In competition with a new crop of plebeian journals, Luka was forced to lower his standards by allowing the introduction of such four letter words as “hell” to grace the
Century’s
pages.

Katharine was interested in discussing Sir Oliver Lodge’s recent contention that he had located a medium that had spoken to “dead members of the Society of Psychical Research,” but Tesla thought such form of “wireless communication” poppycock. He was more interested in tearing apart Professor Pickering’s supposition that he could erect a set of mirrors in Texas with $10,000 to signal the Martians.

“The idea that mirrors might be manufactured which will reflect sunlight in parallel beams, for the time being is beyond our range of ability. But there is one method of putting ourselves in touch with other planets,” Tesla said as the eyes of his hosts lit up once again with the idea of Wardenclyffe. Capital, of course, was the problem, so Tesla began to describe his newest moneymaking scheme; it was his latest invention.
²

Accused of being a visionary and dreamer, the consummate inventor “taxed his powers of concentration in the calm retirement of the night” to cultivate a way to bail himself out.
³
Often he would leave his Waldorf suite to walk the streets after hours and cogitate. His favorite sanctum was the colossal hall at Grand Central Station.
¹
There, in the slumbering chapel, at four in the morning, he could follow the echo of his solitary thoughts down and into the tunnels to where the trains were berthed or up and around the majestic marble staircases which overlooked the vast commuters’ arena and skyward to the starry dome, where the constellations and corresponding mythical gods were painted on the ceiling. This was
his
grand station for bouncing ideas off Pegasus or Hercules, Virgo, Centaurus, Gemini, Hydra, or Orion. Perhaps
Argus
(the ship) could provide a clue.

Wardenclyffe had become his obsession, and unless he was able to resurrect it in toto, he would never feel fulfilled. In-between measures were out of the question. Either he launched the entire edifice, or he would launch none of it. Scherff would visit the plant periodically with his wife, his father, and newborn baby and handle the money on the taxes and salary for Mr. Hawkins, who was retained as a guard.

But Tesla’s competition had now caught up and in some ways was surpassing, if not replacing his vision. Airplanes and zeppelins were dotting the skies, the powers opposing illuminants without filaments were
becoming more entrenched, and wireless transmitters were springing up like mushrooms at the banks of a woodland stream. In January 1908 the French placed a broadcast station atop the Eiffel Tower for the purpose of transmitting messages to Morocco. The director of operations predicted that such impulses “should theoretically go around the world [and] return to the tower.”
⁵
Lee De Forest began to gain momentum in the States and soon began contracting with the government and the millionaires for the erection of “radio-telephones,” which he placed on the roofs of the tallest structures in Manhattan. In 1907 he had aired the voice of Enrico Caruso, who was singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Most of the listeners were in nearby boats. Concurrently, De Forest had refined a way to boost the speed of Morse-code transmissions. He could now direct telegrams at the astonishing rate of six hundred words per minute.

“I can confidently predict,” De Forest proclaimed, “that within the next five years, every ship…will be equipped with the wireless telephone…I look forward to the day when by this means, the opera may be brought into every home. Some day, the news and even advertising will be sent out to the public over the wireless telephone.” De Forest went on to criticize Marconi’s devices, which still had not solved the problem of static interference, and predicted that his new system for tuning would eventually become standard.
⁶
The following year, he signed a contract for the “radio wireless” with Bell Telephone and installed operations between Philadelphia and New York.
⁷
Tesla was becoming a footnote to the field, Mr. Boldt hurling his own insult by hiring United Wireless to place two forty-foot wireless transmitters on the roof of the Waldorf and paying them $3,000 for the work.
⁸

Marconi, however, was still the man of the hour, his name a household word, as the
New York Times
boasted in every Sunday supplement, a crest banner above their masthead boldly depicting Marconi wireless transmitters traversing continents and seas.

The Prime Mover

The Tesla turbine is the apotheosis of simplicity. It is so violently opposed to all precedent that it seems unbelievable.
⁹

With his wireless “project…evidently far in advance of the times,” Tesla devoted himself “to other inventions which appealed more to practical men. After years of careful thinking, I found that what the world needed most…was an efficient prime mover.” Tesla was referring to his new invention of a powerful and lightweight turbine, one that could be used to replace the gasoline engine in the car, fitted on airplanes, torpedoes, or ocean liners, or converted into a pump for transporting air, solids, or fluids. This remarkable machine could be used to create liquid
oxygen or even be placed above incinerators to convert wasted heat into electricity. Born of Dane and Niko’s childhood play with waterwheels in Smiljan, the multifaceted and revolutionary device first became manifest in 1906-07. It was called the bladeless turbine.
¹⁰

Latest Marvel From the Monarch of Mechanics

Frank Parker Stockbridge

“You have got what Professor Langley was trying to evolve for his flying machine, an engine that will give a horse power for a pound of weight,” I suggested.

“I have got more than that,” replied Dr. Tesla. “I have an engine that will give ten horse power to a pound of weight. This is twenty-five times as powerful as the lightest weight engines in use today. The lightest gas engine used on aeroplanes weighs two and one half pounds [and produces one] horse power. With [that weight] I can produce twenty-five horse power.

“This means the solution of the problem of flying,” I suggested.

“Yes, and many more,” was the reply. “It is the perfect rotary engine. It is an accomplishment that mechanical engineers have been dreaming about ever since the invention of steam power.”
¹¹

The inventor thereupon proceeded to explain its principles. Having studied the properties of water and steam as they passed through a propeller, Tesla explored the relationship of
viscosity
and
adhesion
to the blade’s corresponding spin.

“The metal does not absorb any of the water, but [some of] the water adheres to it. The drop of water may change its shape, [yet its] particles remain intact. This tendency of all fluids to resist separation is viscosity,” the inventor explained. By exploiting these principles, Tesla had patented an entirely new kind of turbine which did away with the blades of an everyday propeller and replaced them with a series of disks thinly spaced apart like a stack of pennies on their side. Each disk had a hole in its center for removing the incoming fluid and for turning the central shaft. Whereas “skin friction impedes a ship in its progress through the sea or an aeroplane through the air,” Tesla exploited this seeming obstacle so that the spin of the turbine would be enhanced rather than retarded by the adhesion and viscosity of the medium. It was another stroke of genius from the master.

Spiral action was initiated at the periphery of each disk as the water formed a tighter and tighter corkscrew pattern as the center hole was approached thus augmenting spiral action. In this way, a fluid under
pressure, such as steam, could enter the sealed chamber which housed the horizontal stack of disks and cause them to rotate. Following the natural tendency to create a whirlpool (like water exiting a drain), the fluid would naturally spin faster and faster as it moved toward the center. Simultaneously, its property of adhesion would carry, or drag, the corresponding disk around and around at a faster rate, and this spin could be used, for instance, as a turbine to generate electricity; reversing the entire process would turn the instrument into a pump; and hooking it up to an induction motor could transform the instrument into a jet engine.

“One such pump now in operation, with eight disks, eighteen inches in diameter, pumps four thousand gallons a minute to a height of 360 feet…

“Suppose now we reversed the operation,” continued the inventor…Suppose we had water, or air under pressure, or steam under pressure…and let it run into the case in which the disks are contained—what would happen?”

“The disks would revolve and any machinery attached to the shaft would be operated—you would convert the pump into an engine,” I suggested.

“That is exactly what would happen—what does happen,” replied Dr. Tesla…

“Then too,” Dr. Tesla went on, “there are no delicate adjustments to be made. The distance between the disks is not a matter of microscopic accuracy…Coupling these engines in series, one can do away with gearing in machinery…The motor is especially adapted to automobiles, for it will run on gas explosions as well as on steam…

“With a thousand horse power engine, weighing only one hundred pounds, imagine the possibilities. In the space now occupied by the engines of the
Lusitania
twenty-five times her 80,000 horse power could be developed, were it possible to provide boiler capacity sufficient to furnish the necessary steam…Here is…an engine that will do things no other engine ever has done.”
¹²

In January 1909, George Scherff, who was now working for a sulphur company, sent off a pleading letter for financial aid to Tesla. “My creditors are hounding me hard. Anything you can do for me will be much appreciated,” Scherff wrote.
¹³

Instead of sending him money, Tesla sent a check for Mrs. Schwarz, yet another disgruntled investor. In need himself, Scherff tried to divert the funds, but Tesla, having been in Scherff’s position numerous times, wrote back lightheartedly, “I am sorry to note that you are losing your
equanimity and poise. Mrs. Schwarz is weak and you are fully able to fight your own battles. You must pull yourself together and banish the evil spirits.”
¹⁴
Shortly thereafter, Scherff sent off another note informing Tesla that he had prepared the taxes for Wardenclyffe. “A few nights ago,” Scherff added, “a burglar entered my house and cleaned all the cash out of my pockets.” Tesla took the hint and began recompensing his former secretary, sending a check in November.

November 11, 1909

Dear Mr. Tesla,

Thank you for the $200…What gives me more pleasure than the money is the concrete evidence it furnishes of your progress towards the success for which you have battled so long and hard.

Sincerely,
George Scherff
¹⁵

In March 1909, Tesla had formed the Tesla Propulsion Company with Joseph Hoadley and Walter H. Knight. With stock capitalized at $1 million, it was announced in
Electrical World
that turbines were being sold to the Alabama Consolidated Coal & Iron Company.
¹⁶
Tesla also set up other firms: the Tesla Ozone Company, capitalized at $400,000, which produced ozone, and the Tesla Electrotherapeutic Company, which marketed electrotherapeutic machines with Colonel Ray.

During a recent symposium marking the hundred years since Tesla’s arrival in America, G. Freibott, a medical doctor who used Tesla’s ozoneproducing equipment, stated that by injecting pure ozone directly into the bloodstream of a man afflicted with colon cancer, “thirty tumors were released.” According to Freibott, this form of oxygen, which is naturally produced by the sun’s action on the upper reaches of the atmosphere, contains “oxidizing, antiseptic and germicidal power…bringing palliative and curative results to many individuals.” When questioned about the dangers of creating embolisms, Freibott noted that “air embolisms” are not caused by bubbles of oxygen in the bloodstream, as is commonly believed, but rather by impurities carried by the oxygen. This work is new and controversial, although verification of these findings has been established by physicians.
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