Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah (14 page)

The moment you construct a device to carry into practice a crude idea you will find that you will be engrossed with the details and effects of the apparatus. As you go on changing and constructing, you will lose the forces of concentration, and you will lose sight of the great underlying principle. You obtain results, but at the sacrifice of quality. I did not construct. When I got an idea, I started right away to build it up in my mind. I changed the structure, I made improvements, I experimented, and I ran the device in my mind.

It is absolutely the same to me whether I place my turbine in my mind or have it in my shop actually running in my test. It makes no difference. The results are the same. In this way you see I can develop and perfect an invention without touching anything, and when I have gone so far that I have put into that device every possible improvement I can think of, that I can see no fault in it any more, I then construct it, and every time my device works as I conceived it would, my experiment comes out exactly as I plan it, and in 20 years there has not been a single, solitary experiment which did not come out exactly as I thought it would.

Chapter 12 – Destroying the Dream

 

I have received reports which have completely confounded me all the more as I am now doing important work for the government with a view of putting the plant to a special moment… I trust that you will appreciate the seriousness of the situation and will see that the property is taken good care of and that all apparatus is carefully preserved.

Nikola Tesla

 

Tesla had signed over Wardenclyffe to the Waldorf-Astoria as he could not pay his hotel bill which had now reached $20,000 ($400,000 at today's prices). However, he still hoped it would be returned when he raised the money to pay the bill, but the hotel management was determined to demolish the tower and sell off parts. Tesla's response was to emphasize the tower's usefulness in the event of war. It was, after all, home to his death ray and could shatter armies with its ‘Bolts of Thor'. Nevertheless, he was told that the demolition of the tower was to go ahead. With the US now in World War I, there would be no more money. As part of the war effort, Westinghouse, American Marconi and AT&T were allowed to pool their patents and produced each other's equipment without compensating the original inventors. ‘A great wrong has been done,' he wrote later, ‘but I am confident that justice will prevail.'

In July 1917, Tesla left the Waldorf-Astoria where he had lived for 20 years. After persuading the management to let him keep many of his personal effects in the basement, he took the train to Chicago where he planned to continue work on his bladeless turbines. There he moved into the Blackstone Hotel next door to the University of Chicago.

The following month, Tesla received a letter from George Scherff, his secretary, telling him that explosives experts had placed charges on major struts of the tower at Wardenclyffe and had blown them up.

 

Suspicions of Espionage

Meanwhile the story was circulated that suspected German spies had been using the tower for radio communication. The
Electrical Experimenter
said: ‘Suspecting that German spies were using the big wireless tower erected at Shoreham, L.I., about 20 years ago by Nikola Tesla, the Federal Government ordered the tower destroyed and it was recently demolished with dynamite. During the past month several strangers had been seen lurking about the place.'

And the
New York Sun
gleefully reported: ‘The destruction of Nikola Tesla's famous tower … shows forcibly the great precautions being taken at this time to prevent any news of military importance getting to the enemy.'

Tesla was upset by the implication that he was disloyal to his new country. He had argued that the structure should have been preserved to help locate and destroy enemy submarines. If the tower had been destroyed to curb spying, Tesla pointed out that he should have been compensated by the government for the large amount of money he had put into it. As it was, he made no public protest when the US was at war. However, 2 years later he wrote that his dream had been destroyed by rivals, saying:

I am unwilling to accord to some small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by the laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.

 

Telephony Takes Over

With Tesla's World Telegraphy Centre now in pieces, representatives of American Marconi, AT&T, Westinghouse and GE got together behind closed doors in Washington and formed RCA. At the end of the war, radio stations were returned to their rightful owners, favouring RCA. Using Marconi patents, Westinghouse set up independently. In 1920, Tesla wrote, offering his services. They were refused. However, a little later, Westinghouse wrote again, asking Tesla if he would like to broadcast to their ‘invisible audience' one Thursday evening.

Tesla replied that, 20 years earlier, he had promised his friend J.P. Morgan that his ‘world system' would enable the voice of a telephone subscriber to be transmitted to any point on the globe. ‘I prefer to wait until my project is completed before addressing an invisible audience,' he said proudly.

 

The Science Fantasy Factor

Though Tesla's tower was in ruins, the idea would live on. Before leaving New York, Tesla teamed up with long-term admirer
Hugo Gernsback
, the editor of
Electrical Experimenter
. He had met Tesla in 1908 when he visited his lab to see a bladeless turbine. Eleven years later, Gernsback recorded his impressions in
Electrical Experimenter
:

The door opens and out steps a tall figure – over 6 ft high – gaunt but erect. It approaches slowly, stately. You become conscious at once that you are face-to-face with a personality of a high order. Nikola Tesla advances and shakes your hand with a powerful grip, surprising for a man over 60. A winning smile from piercing light blue-grey eyes, set in extraordinarily deep sockets, fascinates you and makes you feel at once at home.

You are guided into an office immaculate in its orderliness. Not a speck of dust is to be seen. No papers litter the desk, everything just so. It reflects the man himself, immaculate in attire, orderly and precise in his every movement. Dressed in a dark frock coat, he is entirely devoid of all jewellery. No ring, stickpin, or even watch-chain can be seen.

Tesla speaks – a very high almost falsetto voice. He speaks quickly and very convincingly. It is the man's voice chiefly which fascinates you.

As he speaks you find it difficult to take your eyes off his own. Only when he speaks to others do you have a chance to study his head, predominant of which is a very high forehead with a bulge between the eyes – the never-failing sign of an exceptional intelligence. Then the long, well-shaped nose, proclaiming the scientist.

How does this man, who has accomplished such tremendous work, keep young and manage to surprise the world with more and more new inventions as he grows older?

How does this youth of sixty, who is a professor of mathematics, a great mechanical and electrical engineer and the greatest inventor of all times, keep his physical as well as remarkable mental freshness?

Gernsback employed the artist
Frank R. Paul
to show the world what Tesla's tower would have looked liked if it had been completed. For the cover of the
Electrical Experimenter
Paul added transmitters and Tesla's wingless flying machines zapping nearby ships with their death-rays. Tesla was so thrilled, he used the illustration as his letterhead.

In 1919,
Electrical Experimenter
serialized Tesla's autobiography
My Inventions
. This too was illustrated by Frank Paul's drawing, along with photographs of the equipment. This boosted the circulation of the magazine to around 100,000 and provided Tesla a modest income. However, Tesla felt he had been underpaid and when Gernsback sought to put him on the cover of
Electrical Experimenter
again, Tesla refused, saying: ‘I appreciate your unusual intelligence and enterprise, but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more, and then again.'

Nevertheless, Gernsback never stinted in his praise of Tesla, running his articles in several of his magazines. He even latched on to some of Tesla's more outlandish ideas. While Tesla did not believe in extra-sensory perception or mind-reading in the psychic sense, he did think it possible to read another person's thoughts by attaching television equipment to their retina. Paul depicted this on the cover of
Science Wonder Stories
in October 1929 which showed two people wearing thought-reading helmets.

 

The Chicago Years

Tesla stayed in Chicago until the end of World War I. He worked on his turbines at Pyle National. Again he refused a salary, hoping to make bigger profits from his inventions in the end. But earning nothing from his wireless patents, his only source of income was the Waltham Watch Company who were manufacturing a speedometer he had designed. Advertisements for Waltham speedometers and automobile clocks in
The New York Times
in 1921 read:

Every progressive automobile manufacturer is adding improvements to his car. This is why the first Air-Friction Speedometer in the world, invented by Nikola Tesla, perfected and developed by Waltham during the past few years, has won the unqualified approval of the world's greatest automotive engineers. You will find this exclusive Air-Friction instrument upon such cars as the Cunningham, Lafayette, Leach-Biltwell, Lincoln, Packard, Pierce-Arrow, Renault, Rolls-Royce, Stevens-Duryea, Wills-Sainte Claire and others. It provides instantaneous accuracy with that dependability for which Waltham is famous.

 

The Big Ship

Tesla was still depending on his turbines to make him rich ‘within four months', he told Jack Morgan before he left New York. ‘My big ship is still to come in,' he said, ‘but I have a marvellous opportunity having perfected an invention that will astound the whole world.'

But he had yet to perfect it. The high rotational speed put too much stress on the discs which risked cracking. Various alloys were tried. However, the advantages of his turbine was obvious. ‘Suppose that the steam pressure of the locomotive would vary from say 50 to 200 pounds, no matter how rapidly,' he wrote, ‘this would not have the slightest effect on the performance of the turbine.'

The US Machine Manufacturing Company asked about putting one in an aeroplane. The Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company also made enquiries. He told George Scherff that he was expecting to make $25 million a year from his turbines. All the while the debts kept piling up.

 

Made in Milwaukee

Tesla finally succeeded in getting the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company of Milwaukee interested. They made reciprocating engines, turbines and other heavy machinery. However, he displayed a lack of tactic and diplomacy that ruined the project from the outset. Insisting on entering negotiations with the senior staff, he went directly to the president of the company and, while his engineers were preparing a feasibility report, Tesla contacted the board of directors and sold them the idea before the engineers had had their say.

Three of Tesla's turbines were built. Two had 20 discs that were 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter. Tested with 80 pounds pressure, they developed 200 horsepower at between 10,000 and 12,000 rpm. This had the same output as Tesla's 1911 model with discs half the diameter when operating at 125 pounds pressure and 9,000 rpm. They also built a larger version. Hans Dahlstrand, consulting engineer of the steam turbine department, wrote a report saying:

We also built a 500 kilowatt steam turbine to operate at 3,600 revolutions. The turbine rotor consisted of 15 disks 60 inches [152 cm] in diameter and one-eighth of an inch thick [3 mm]. The discs were placed approximately one-eighth inch apart. The unit was tested by connecting to a generator. The maximum mechanical efficiency obtained on this unit was approximately 38 per cent when operating at steam pressure of approximately 80 pounds absolute and a back pressure of approximately 3 pounds absolute and 100°F [38°C] superheat at the inlet. When the steam pressure was increased above that given the mechanical efficiency dropped, consequently the design of these turbines was of such a nature that in order to obtain maximum efficiency at high pressure, it would have been necessary to have more than one turbine in series.

Dahlstrand reported that difficulties were encountered in the Tesla turbine from vibration, making it necessary to re-enforce the discs, and that this difficulty is common to all turbines. Vibration cracked wheels and wrecked turbines, sometimes within a few hours and sometimes after years of operation. This vibration was caused by taking such terrific amounts of power from relatively light machinery. The Dahlstrand Report identified other problems:

The efficiency of the small turbine units compares with the efficiency obtainable on small impulse turbines running at speeds where they can be directly connected to pumps and other machinery. It is obvious, therefore, that the small unit in order to obtain the same efficiency had to operate at from 10,000 to 12,000 revolutions and it would have been necessary to provide reduction gears between the steam turbine and the driven unit.

Furthermore, the design of the Tesla turbine could not compete as far as manufacturing costs with the smaller type of impulse units. It is also questionable whether the rotor disks, because of light construction and high stress, would have lasted any length of time if operating continuously.

The above remarks apply equally to the large turbine running at 3,600 revolutions. It was found when this unit was dismantled that the discs had distorted to a great extent and the opinion was that these discs would ultimately have failed if the unit had been operated for any length of time.

The gas turbine was never constructed for the reason that the company was unable to obtain sufficient engineering information from Mr Tesla indicating even an approximate design that he had in mind.

 

Terminating the Turbine

Tesla seems to have walked out at this stage. Later Tesla was asked why he stopped working with Allis-Chalmers. He said: ‘They would not build the turbines as I wished.' But he would not elaborate. Allis-Chalmers went on to manufacture a different type of gas turbine that was in production for years.

A number of engineers had tried to explain the failure of Tesla's turbine. One expert said that, while being a fine concept and an excellent machine, it was not that much better than other designs. Another said that not enough money had been spent on research and development. Metallurgy was in its infancy and the instrumentation for measuring its performance had not been developed, nor had the magnetic bearing it would have needed to run efficiently. However, manufacturers have made pumps using Tesla's principles and others have experimented with making the discs using advanced materials such as carbon fibre, titanium-impregnated plastic and Kevlar.