Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (6 page)

In Ferraris’s published treatise on his independent discovery of a rotating magnetic field, he wrote, “This principle cannot be of any commercial importance as a motor.” After learning of Tesla’s work, Ferraris stated, “Tesla developed it much further than [I]…did.”
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Bradley filed for a patent for an AC polyphase device on May 8, 1887 (no. 390,439) after nine Tesla AC patents had been granted. Haselwander, in the same year, utilized slip rings in place of commutators on DC Thomson-Houston equipment and also designed two- and three-phase windings on DC armatures.
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The question of priority concerning Tesla’s invention was discussed by Silvanus P. Thompson, a physics professor in London, in his 1897 comprehensive text on AC motors. Thompson (no relationship to Elihu Thomson), considered at the time to be “perhaps the best known writer on electrical subjects now living,” said that Tesla’s work separated itself clearly from predecessors and contemporaries in his “discovery of a new method of electrical transmission of
power
[emphasis added].”
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A question that remains unanswered was whether or not Tesla knew of Baily’s work. It is quite possible that he had read Baily’s paper, although no one at the time, including Baily, comprehended the importance of the research or understood how to turn it into a practical invention.
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Tesla stated in the early 1890s, “I am aware that it is not new to produce the rotations of a motor by intermittently changing the poles of one of its elements…In such cases, however, I imply true alternating currents; and my invention consists in the discovery of the mode or method of utilizing such currents.”
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A few years later, in a well-publicized case involving patent priorities on what came to be known as the “Tesla Alternating Current Polyphase System,” Judge Townsend of the U.S. Circuit Court of Connecticut noted that before Tesla’s invention and lecture to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1888, there had been no AC motors; furthermore, no one attending the lecture recognized any priorities. Whereas Baily had dealt with “impractical abstractions, Tesla had created a workable product which initiated a revolution in the art.”
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The Tesla patents were also sustained against individual cases involving Charles Bradley, Mons. Cabanellas and Dumesnil, William Stanley, and Elihu Thomson.
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In citing a previous case on a similar issue, Judge Townsend responded to what today is called the “doctrine of obviousness”:

The apparent simplicity of a new device often leads an inexperienced person to think that it would have occurred to anyone familiar with the subject, but the decisive answer is that with dozens and perhaps hundreds of others laboring in the same
field, it had never occurred to anyone before [
Potta v. Creager,
155 U.S. 597]…Baily and the others [e.g., Bradley, Ferraris, Stanley] did not discover the Tesla invention; they were discussing electric light machines with commutators…Eminent electricians united in the view that by reason of reversals of direction and rapidity of alternations, an alternating current motor was impracticable, and the future belonged to the commutated continuous current…

It remained for the genius of Tesla to…transform the toy of Arago into an engine of power.
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The discovery of how to effectively harness the rotating magnetic field was really only a fraction of Tesla’s creation. Before his invention, electricity could be pumped approximately one mile, and then only for illuminating dwellings. After Tesla, electrical
power
could be transmitted hundreds of miles, and then not only for lighting but for running household appliances and industrial machines in factories. Tesla’s creation was a leap ahead in a rapidly advancing technological revolution.

O, he’s a great talker, and, say, he’s a great eater too. I remember the first time I saw him. We were doing some experimenting in a little place outside Paris, and one day a long, lanky lad came in and said he wanted a job. We put him to work thinking he would soon tire of his new occupation for we were putting in 20-24 hours a day, then, but he stuck right to it and after things eased up one of my men said to him: “Well, Tesla, you’ve worked pretty hard, now I’m going to take you into Paris and give you a splendid supper.” So he took him to the most expensive cafe in Paris—a place where they broil an extra thick steak between two thin steaks. Tesla stowed away one of those big fellows without any trouble and my man said to him: “Anything else, my boy? I’m standing treat.” “Well, if you don’t mind, sir,” said my apprentice, “I’ll try another steak.” After he left me he went into other lines and has accomplished quite a little.

T
HOMAS
E
DISON
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T
aking the advice of Ferenc Puskas, Tesla left Budapest for Paris in April 1882 delighted with the chance to meet the Edison people from America and ready to build his motor and to find investors. Concurrently, he was getting paid for the experience. Paris in the 1880s was a center of modern fashion: men in their cutaway coats and silk top hats, women with braided hair, in long frilled dresses with bustles, and wealthy tourists ready to take back the latest fineries to their respective nations. Tesla was met by Ferenc’s brother Tivadar Puskas, a hard driver but also a man known to talk in “air balloons.”
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Tesla, whose head could also soar into the clouds, had met a powerful ally. Mindful of the need for secrecy, they discussed strategies for approaching Charles Batchelor,
manager of the newly formed Compagnie Continental Edison, with Tesla’s new motor as the young inventor was introduced to operations.

Formerly a resident of Manchester, England, Batchelor, a “master mechanic,” had been sent to America a decade earlier to present innovative threadmaking machinery recently created by his employers, the Coates Thread Company.
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There he met Edison and shortly became his most trusted associate. Batchelor worked on the first phonographs and on perfecting the filament for the lightbulb. He also ran operations in New Jersey and then in Europe, owning a 10 percent share of Edison’s many worldwide companies.
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An open-minded individual, Batchelor was approachable, although also rather busy.

Anthony Szigeti probably emigrated from Budapest at the same time as Tesla, since both were hired by Puskas and “were together almost constantly in Paris.” Szigeti wrote, “Tesla [was very]…much excited over the ideas which he then had of operating motors. He talked with me many times about them and told me his plan…[of] constructing and operating motors…[and] dispensing with the commutator.”
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Having just purchased a large factory at Ivry-sur-Seine, for the construction of generators and manufacture of lightbulbs, Batchelor, as Edison’s closest partner, was planning on erecting central lighting stations throughout Europe. He also had plans in England, where the Crystal Palace Exposition was then displaying Edison’s new incandescent lamp.
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Batchelor would need good men to run the concerns and wrote Edison frequently as to the expertise of the various workers. He was particularly impressed with Puskas, who had successfully run the Edison lighting exhibit at the Paris Exposition of 1881. “Puskas…[is the only worker] having any idea of ‘push,’” he wrote, “and I think that you should insist on him [becoming a partner].”
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Within six months Edison Continental would be producing lamps superior to those from America;
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the company would erect central stations in most of the major cities of Europe for indoor lighting and also administer the large outdoor arc lamps which were being used to illuminate the urban streets. Tesla, who was working at Ivry-sur-Seine, would be trained with the other workers to travel out and help run these facilities. “I never can forget the deep impression that magic city produced on my mind. For several days after my arrival I roamed thru
[sic]
the streets in utter bewilderment of the new spectacle. The attractions were many and irresistible, but, alas, the income was spent as soon as received. When Mr. Puskas asked me how I was getting along…I [replied] ‘the last twenty-nine days of the month are the toughest!’”
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In the mornings, before work, Tesla would arise at 5:00 A.M. to swim twenty-seven laps at a bathhouse on the Seine, and in the evenings he would play billiards with the workers and discuss his new AC invention.
“One of them, Mr. D. Cunningham, foreman of the Mechanical Department, offered to form a stock company. The proposal seemed to me comical in the extreme. I did not have the faintest conception of what that meant except that it was the American way of doing things.”
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T. C. Martin writes: “In fact, but for the solicitations of a few friends in commercial circles who urged him to form a company to exploit the invention, Mr. Tesla, then a youth of little worldly experience, would have sought an immediate opportunity to publish his ideas, believing them to be [a]…radical advance in electrical theory as well as destined to have a profound influence on all dynamo electric machinery.”
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In his spare time, and as was his custom, Tesla wrote out the specifications and mathematics of his AC invention in a notebook
¹²
and worked on alternative designs for his flying machine. He probably sought out financial backers, for he received an invitation to go on a shooting expedition from a “prominent French manufacturer.”
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Perhaps the inventor had not totally recovered from the strange illness he had almost succumbed to in Budapest, for after this outing he suffered the “sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as [though] a small sun was located in it and I [passed] the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head.” Writing this passage almost forty years later, Tesla claimed that “these luminous phenomena still manifest themselves from time to time, as when a new idea opening up possibilities strikes me.”
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In the summer he worked on the lighting at the opera house in Paris or went to Bavaria to help in the wiring of a theater; and in the autumn he may have helped in the laying of underground cables for the new central station going up in Paris or traveled to Berlin to install incandescent lighting at the cafes.
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At the end of the year Tesla “submitted to one of the administrators of the Company, Mr. Rau, a plan for improving their dynamos, and was given an opportunity.” Louis Rau, who was director of the Compagnie Continental Edison in rue Montchanien and had “his beautiful home lit with the Edison system,”
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allowed Tesla to implement his modernization plan. Shortly thereafter the young inventor’s automatic regulators were completed and accepted gratefully.
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Tesla was probably hoping to be compensated for his new contributions, but he was sent to work in Strasbourg before financial compensation was awarded.

In January 1883, Batchelor shipped twelve hundred lamps to the Strasbourg plant, located at the railroad station.
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And within three months Tesla arrived to oversee the operations. There he would stay for the next twelve months.

Batchelor had been urging Edison to test the generators coming from America for at least “two or three days with a [full] load,” as fires from faulty armatures and poor insulation were becoming too common. The
powerhouse at Strasbourg, in particular, had been subject to this type of problem.
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Since “all our plants are differently constructed,”
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it would take well-trained and creative engineers to run things smoothly. Batchelor demonstrated confidence in Tesla’s abilities by sending him to Strasbourg; however, he seems not to have mentioned Tesla in his correspondence with Edison. In any event, Tesla’s account of the situation in Strasbourg corroborates Batchelor’s: “The wiring was defective and on the occasion of the opening ceremonies a large part of a wall was blown out thru
[sic]
a short-circuit right in the presence of old Emperor William I. The German Government refused to take the plant and the French Company was facing a serious loss. On account of my knowledge of the German language and past experience, I was entrusted with the difficult task of straightening out matters.”
²¹

Having anticipated a long stay in the region, Tesla had brought with him from Paris materials for his first AC motor. As soon as he was able, Tesla constructed the motor in secret in a closet “in a mechanical shop opposite the railroad station”;
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however, summer would arrive before this first machine was in operation. Anthony Szigeti, his assistant, forged an iron disk, which Tesla “mounted on a needle,” having surrounded it, in part, with a coil.
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“Finally,” Tesla wrote, “[I] had the satisfaction of seeing rotation effected by alternating currents of different phase, and without sliding contacts or commutator, as I had conceived a year before. It was an exquisite pleasure, but not to compare with the delirium of joy following the first revelation.”
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Tesla presented his new creation to his friend, Mr. Bauzin, the mayor of the town, who tried his best to interest wealthy investors; “but to my mortification…[there was] no response.” Upon his return to Paris, he sought promised compensation for achieving a difficult success in Strasbourg. Approaching his employers, “after several days of…circulus vicious, it dawned on me that my reward was a castle in Spain…Mr. Batchelor [pressed] me to go to America with a view of redesigning the Edison machines; I determined to try my fortunes in the land of Golden Promise.”
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John O’Neill, Tesla’s first major biographer, has suggested that Batchelor wrote a note of introduction to Edison which read, “I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man.”
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Evidence for the veracity of this oft-repeated tale is lacking. Batchelor, for instance, had been back in America for at least three months prior to Tesla’s arrival;
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thus, he would not have had to write a letter. Furthermore, there is evidence that Edison had already met Tesla in Paris during a littleknown sojourn he took to look over his European operations at that time.
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O’Neill also refers to Batchelor incorrectly as Edison’s “former assistant”
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when Batchelor was probably Edison’s closest lifelong colleague. Edison
does, however, substantiate that “Tesla worked for me in New York. He was brought over from Paris by Batchelor, my assistant,”
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but there is no reference to Batchelor’s appreciation of Tesla’s genius. On October 28, 1883, fully a year
after
Tesla began working for Edison Continental, while he was stationed in Strasbourg, Batchelor singled out “the names of…two [or three] I can mention as capable as far as their work shows: Mr. Stout—an inspector; Mr. Vissiere—my assistant; Mr. Geoffrey—whose plants are always spoken well of…There are others capable, but I think these are the best.”
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Certainly, had Tesla impressed Batchelor as O’Neill contends, he should have been listed in this letter or in numerous other letters to Edison that I have reviewed.

Before Tesla left for America, he spent time with a scientist who was studying microscopic organisms found in common drinking water. Combined with the scare he had with his bout with cholera a few years earlier, Tesla acquired a phobia which led him to shun unpurified water, scour his plates and utensils before eating, and refrain from frequenting unsavory restaurants. He would later write, “If you would watch only for a few minutes the horrible creatures, hairy and ugly beyond anything you can conceive, tearing each other up with the juices diffusing throughout the water—you would never again drink a drop of unboiled or unsterilized water.”
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In the spring of 1884, with funds for the journey supplied by Uncles Petar and Pajo,
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Tesla packed his gear and caught the next boat for America. Although his ticket and money and some of his luggage were stolen, the young man was not deterred. “Resolve, helped by dexterity, won out in the nick of time…[and] I managed to embark for New York with the remnants of my belongings, some poems and articles I had written, and a package of calculations relating to solutions of an unsolvable integral and to my flying machine.”
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The voyage appears not to have been a happy one; a “mutiny” of sorts occurred on board, and Tesla was nearly knocked overboard.
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In 1808, Sir Humphry Davy created artificial illuminescence by running an electric current across a small gap between two carbon rods. This simple device evolved into the arc lamp, used in English lighthouses in the 1860s and displayed at the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876 by Moses Farmer. By 1877 numerous investigators were exploring the possibility of placing the incandescent effect within glassed enclosures because they would be much safer this way for marketing to households, and a race developed between such inventors as Charles Brush, Thomas Edison, Moses Farmer, St. George Lane-Fox, Hiram Maxim, William Sawyer, and Joseph Swan.

“I saw the thing had not gone so far but that I had a chance,” Edison said.
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And so he challenged William Wallace, Farmer’s partner, to a race as
to who would be the first man to create an efficient electric light. Boasting that he would soon light up New York City with 500,000 incandescent lamps, Edison and his business manager, Grosvenor Lowery, were able to secure large amounts of capital from such investors as Henry Villard, owner of the first trans-American railroad, and financier J. Pierpont Morgan.

In November 1878, after three years of research, a hard-drinking telegrapher by the name of William Sawyer and his lawyer-partner Albion Man, applied for a patent for an incandescent lamp with carbon rods (filaments) and filled with nitrogen. They proclaimed that they had beaten Edison. Joseph Swan, another competitor, removed the nitrogen and kept the carbon filament but created a
low
-resistance lamp. Realizing that the amount of power required to send electricity a few hundred feet was prodigious using the low-resistance design, Edison created, in September 1878, a
high
-resistance vacuum lamp that utilized considerably less power. Together with a revolutionary wiring called a feeder line,
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his success was further augmented by a new Sprengel pump, which William Crookes had been recommending for the creation of vacuums in glass-enclosed tubes. It would be another six months—April 22, 1879—before he would file for a patent, but his new design would lower power requirements and thereby cut copper costs one hundredfold.
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