From: Das GOAT
To:
Subject: [CTRL] (1) Tesla [repost]
Date: Friday, April 23, 1999 2:30 AM
-Caveat Lector-
First in a series of excerpts from:
"Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla --
Biography of A Genius," by Marc J. Seifer,
1996, Birch Lane Press, Carol Publishing Group
ISBN 1-55972-329-7
Seifer's biography of Tesla, making use of documents not
available to previous biographers, manages to debunk the Tesla
"myth" (regarding, for example, his reputed "spirituality" and
his public "celibacy") and to expose Tesla's unsavory political
leanings (citing FBI files), yet without sacrificing the respect
justly due the inventor's extraordinary accomplishments.
(Along with learning more about his proposed "free energy"
system, the reader will here discover that Tesla, a pioneer in
Robotics, was also the father of Artificial Intelligence.)
Seifer manages to reveal a great deal more about Tesla's
relationships with Thomas Edison, famous capitalists like J. P.
Morgan, and less familiar figures active during the turn of the
century, when a virtual explosion of new technologies resulted in
centralization of all financial power in the hands of just a few
"titans of industry," owners of the entire US economy.
(Here we will see the Morgan-Astor and Rockefeller-Harriman
factions at work, learn their attitudes toward new technology,
and smell corruption at the roots of all our modern industries.)
This book offers quite an enlightening portrait of "the
spirit of the times," one similar to our own in many ways ...
_____________________________________________________
PART I
... In 1880, Tesla left for Bohemia (now in the Czech
Republic) ... Tesla enrolled in the University of Prague, one of
the foremost institutions in Europe ...
Just two years after Tesla's stay, Harvard psychologist
William James would come to visit, to meet with [its rector,
Ernst] Mach and Mach's archrival, Carl Stumpf ... Stumpf was a
student of the controversial ex-priest Franz Brentano (who also
influenced Sigmund Freud) and Tesla's philosophy teacher.
Stumpf opposed a number of key psychophysicists, including
the famed Wilhelm Wundt, but at the same time he helped shape the
thinking of a number of key students, such as phenomonologist
Edmund Husserl and Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler.
With Stumpf, Tesla studied Scotish philosopher David Hume.
A persuasive advocate of Hume's "radical skepticism," Stumpf
argued ... that the human mind was born a blank slate, a "tabula
rasa" ... Through the sense organs, Tesla learned, the brain
mechanically recorded incoming data. The mind, according to
Hume, was nothing more than a simple compilation of cause-and-
effect sensations ... The will and "even the soul [were] reduced
by Hume to impressions and associations of impressions." Tesla
also studied the theories of Descartes, who envisioned animals,
including man, as simply "automata incapable of actions other
than those characteristic of a machine."
This line of thinking would dominate Tesla's worldview and
served as the template for a mechanistic paradigm that would lead
the inventor to discover his most original creations ...
--p. 18-19
Tesla emphasized that his concept [of alternating current,
AC, using rotating magnetic fields] involved new principles
rather than refinements of preexisting work ...
[But] was Tesla the first to conceive of a rotating magnetic
field? The answer is no.
The first workable rotating magnetic field similar to
Tesla's 1882 revelation was conceived three years before him by
Walter Baily, who demonstrated the principle before the Physical
Society of London on June 28, 1879 ...
Two years later, at the Paris Exposition of 1881, came the
work of Marcel Deprez, who calculated "that a rotating magnetic
field could be produced ... by energizing electromagnets with two
out-of-step AC currents."
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 ...
--pp. 24-25
With the backing of Wall Street moguls, Edison began to
illuminate the private homes of the wealthy in New York City.
The first was that of J. P. Morgan ... The year was 1881.
Tesla's ship dropped anchor in New York in late spring of
1884 ... He proceeded cautiously to Edison's new laboratory ...
[Edison's British partner, Charles] Batchelor probably met Tesla
and introduced him to the inventor ...
Tesla realized that his academic training and mathematical
skills had given him a great engineering advantage over Edison's
plodding strategy of trial and error. Tesla said: "... I was
almost a sorry witness ... knowing that just a little theory and
calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor ..."
Tesla was completely unsuccessful in describing his new AC
invention to Edison and had to settle for Batchelor's suggestion
that he redesign the prevailing DC machinery instead ...
[Entrepreneur Harry] Livor boasted of an agreement with
Edison and Batchelor resulting in a company capitalized at
$10,000 ... Impressed, Tesla asked for advice [on] how to obtain
a raise from his present modest salary of $18 per week to a more
lucrative $25.
"Livor gladly undertook ... to intercede with Batchelor [on
Tesla's behalf]... but greatly to his surprise was met with an
abrupt refusal."
"No," replied Batchelor, "the woods are full of men like
[Tesla]; I can get any number of them I want for $18 a week."
It was well within Edison's nature to make "expensive if
indefinite promises of rewards as a way of getting the men to
work for low wages."
According to Tesla, "The manager had promised me $50,000 on
completion of [the round-the-clock task of redesigning Edison's
DC machinery], but when I demanded payment, he merely laughed."
"You're still [so European]," Edison [explained]. "When you
become a full-fledged American, you'll come to appreciate the
American [sense of humor]."
Deeply hurt, Tesla left the [Edison] company and set out on
his own.
--pp. 32-39
Although Tesla felt cheated when he departed from the Edison
Nachine Works in the early months of 1885, it had enabled him ...
to organize his own company ...
The inventor met with B. A. Vail and Robert Lane, two
businessmen from New Jersey. With ambiguous assurances that they
were also interested in the AC motor, Tesla agreed to form a
lighting and manufacturing company ... Unfortunately, neither
Vail nor Lane cared about Tesla's other creation. To them, an AC
motor was a seemingly useless invention ...
To his shock, Tesla was forced out of his own concern and
handed "the hardest blow I ever received."
"With no other possession than a beautifully engraved
certificate of stock of hypothetical value," the inventor was
bankrupted. Betrayed by men he trusted, [Tesla] was forced to
work as a ditchdigger ...
Tesla's crisis abated in the spring. He was introduced to
Alfred S. Brown, a prominent engineer who worked for Western
Union Telegraph Company, who himself held a number of patents on
arc lights ... Well aware of the limitations of the prevailing DC
apparatus, he became immediately impressed with the "merits' of
Tesla's AC inventions and thereupon contacted Charles F. Peck, "a
distinguished lawyer" [who] "knew of the failures in the
industrial exploitation of alternating currents ..."
Together, the three men formed a new electric company in
Tesla's name.
Peck, who [did business with] a banker with connections to
J. P. Morgan, provided the bulk of the capital; Brown provided
technical expertise and [arranged for] the laboratory. In
return, Tesla agreed to split his patents on a fifty-fifty basis
... Their first patent was filed on April 30, 1887.
Finally, Tesla had arrived. He would begin an unprecedented
excursion into the field of invention, a flow of intense activity
which would continue unabated for fifteen years ... driven by his
wish to maintain priority in a variety of areas and realizing
that new technologies could influence the course of history ...
--pp. 40-43
Although [capitalist] George Westinghouse had made his
fortune with the invention of air brakes for trains, he was not
just a railroad man. He was a descendant of the aristocratic
Russian family, Von Wistinghousen ...
Westinghouse wrote, "If the Tesla patents are broad enough
to control the alternating motor business, then the Westinghouse
Electric Company cannot afford to have others own the patent."
Concerning royalties, he wrote, "If it is the only method
for operating a motor by the alternating current, and if it is
applicable to streetcar work, we can [simply pass on to] users of
the apparatus whatever [costs we owe] the inventors."
In late July 1888, Tesla took a train to Pittsburgh to meet
with Westinghouse and finalize the sale of his patents.
Westinghouse had QUADRUPLED the sales of his electric
company [in ONE YEAR] -- from $800,00 in 1887 to over $3 million
in 1888 -- even though he was in the midst of expensive legal and
propaganda battles with Edison.
Westinghouse offered Tesla $5000 in cash for a sixty-day
option, $10,000 at the end of the option if they elected to
purchase the patents ... $2.50 per watt in royalties, and two
hundred shares of stock in the Westinghouse Company ...
[In the end] Tesla probably received about $100,000 total,
paid to him in installments [spread across 11 years].
To fathom the depth of hostility that existed within the
Westinghouse camp against Tesla, one need only read Lewis B.
Stillwell's chapter on the history of alternating current [in a
book] widely distributed by the [Westinghouse] corporation and
reissued in 1985: "Tesla came to Pittsburgh to develop his motor.
He made vain attempts ..." The word "brilliant" is used to
describe an accidental discovery that a spring would react to
alternating currents, whereas NO adjective [at all] is used to
describe [Tesla], the inventor of an entire power system!
Tesla [wrote]: "My system was based on the use of low
frequency currents, but the Westinghouse experts had adopted 133
cycles ... My efforts had to be concentrated on adapting the
motor to THEIR conditions."
--pp. 50-55
In December 1888, Edison's propaganda battle against [Tesla
and] Westinghouse peaked ...
Edison allowed H. P. Brown [who was not an Edison employee]
to come to his Menlo Park laboratory in order to electrocute
various animals with AC. Brown, an electrical engineer, had
become upset over the many accidental deaths of his colleagues.
He had collected a list of over 80 casualties, and although many
died because of DC, Brown decided that AC was the real culprit.
Within two years, Brown began to manufacture electric chairs
for various prisons [and] also planned to get paid to be the
executioner ... Ostensibly because the Westinghouse motors could
produce the more deadly frequency, Brown surreptitiously
purchased some working models in order to continue his gruesome
experiments [torturing and electrocuting animals].
Naturally, Westinghouse was upset over the devastating
publicity. He and Tesla faced the possibility that the new AC
polyphase system might never succeed in competition with existing
AC and DC technologies ... Public opinion continued to run
against the "dangerous" Westinghouse current.
Edison saw [this as an opportunity] to capitalize on his
campaign against the new Tesla technology ... While Edison did
not author the [high-frequency AC] electric-chair ideas, he did
everything he could to help the cause ...
Mass hysteria threatened to overpower attempts to institute
the new Tesla AC invention ...
Tesla realized that eventually [Westinghouse] would have to
come around to lower frequencies if they wanted to use his
creation, but, to his shock, "in 1890, the induction motor work
was abandoned."
Westinghouse let it be known that his backers would not
continue throwing tens of thousands of dollars away on 'futile
research.' It seemed folly to [abandon] all prevailing equipment
to satisfy the untried requirements of this new technology.
Furthermore, they were against the idea of paying [Tesla]
royalties should the motor eventually prove PROFITABLE ...
In a quandary, Tesla negotiated ... Westinghouse knew that
he had to curtail all work on the motor at this time to satisfy
the tide of hostility that was rising against Tesla. [But] he
also knew that the invention was too important ...
No one knows for sure exactly what happened, but it appears
that Westinghouse made a tacit committment to Tesla that he would
get the company to resume work on the motor if Tesla [waived] the
royalty clause in his contract ....
After nearly two years of inactivity, the Westinghouse
people resumed their efforts to make the Tesla motor practicable.
In 1891, Benjamin Lamme, an easygoing youngster, began to
reexamine Tesla's patents ... Lamme approached his overseers with
a plan to resume work on the motor. What happened ... is that
behind the scenes, [the senior engineers] realized that here was
their opportunity to finally make use of the motor without giving
any more credit to Tesla. They would simply let it be known that
a "new and brilliant engineer" [Lamme] working at the company had
"discovered" the efficiency of lower frequencies ... Having
rediscovered what Tesla had been suggesting all along, Lamme now
made it seem as though he were the originator of the idea.
Uneducated readers, left with incomplete source materials,
were forced to conclude that when it comes to the AC polyphase
system, it was "that versatile genius B. G. Lamme [who was the]
pillar of the Westinghouse company" who made it possible ...
Tesla left Pittsburgh in the autumn of 1889 to return to New
York and start his second laboratory ...
--pp. 55-61
The new Tesla AC was here to stay. In Deptford [England],
for instance, in [1889], an engineer by the name of Ferranti
installed probably the first-ever working single-phase generating
station. With a Tesla system, he was able to transmit 11,000
volts seven miles away to London.
Although a truly epoch making achievement, this plant, for
some unknown reason, received virtually no publicity.
[For] there was another motor invention called the 'hydro-
pneumatic pulsating vacuo engine,' which was [getting much more
attention]. Nobody could replicate the intricacies of its
machinery and nobody but the inventor, John Ernst Worrell Keely,
knew how it worked. Keely had gotten the idea for the motor
after reading the treatise "Harmonies of Tones and Colours,
Developed by Evolution,' by Charles Darwin's niece Mrs F. J.
Hughes, which discussed the structure of the ether and various
theoretical harmonic laws of the universe. Hailed as a virtual
perpetual-motion machine, the Keely motor never ceased to
intoxicate the public ...
"In the opinion of Madame Blavatsky, [Keely] has discovered
Vril, the mysterious force of the universe to which Lord [Bulwer]
Lytton drew attention in his 'The Coming Race.'"
Rivaling snake-oil salesmen in the ability to "humbug" the
public, Keely, a former circus sleight-of-hand performer, had
formed a company in 1874, capitalized with $100,000 in stock in
order to sell his motor, and had been successfully doing so for
nearly fifteen years, until 1889, when his work was questioned.
By 1895, John Jacob Astor had become an investor.
"Public Opinion" wrote that, "Keely's chief accomplishment
was a ready use of jargon of scientific and unscientific terms.
He talked about 'triune currents of polar flow of force,' the
'reflex action of gravity,' 'chords of mass,' 'sympathetic
outreaches of distance,' 'depolar etheric waves' and a lot of
other things which didn't mean anything, but [he] never told why
his motor moted ..."
This mountebank inventor headlined the New York dailies with
his newest creations -- and the accompanying cry of FRAUD ...
Like Tesla, who discovered and harnessed a purported alternating-
current perpetual-motion machine, Keely billed his own invention
as the "greatest scientific discovery of the century."
Unfortunately for Tesla, he too, like Keely, was gaining a
reputation for making outlandish claims ... To the uninformed, or
to people who listened only to the opposition, he was little
different from Keely, and so he suffered guilt by association.
And as with Keely, Bulwer-Lytton's electrical-like energy
called "Vril power" had [become associated with] Tesla by this
time, via a letter from a lady in 1890, who "dreamed that if I
{Tesla] would read 'The Coming Race' by Bulwer, I would discover
great things which would advance [my work considerably]."
Tesla would not pursue his mystical treatise for a decade
... although the inventions discussed in [Bulwer-Lytton's] story
bore great similarities to some of Tesla's later creations.
[So,] one wonders whether Tesla had actually read the book
at the time or knew of its contents.
--pp. 62-65
=[continued in Part 2]=
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