January 31, 2020 • 58 mins
Who was Nikola Tesla, really? What did he invent? What are some of the popular misconceptions about Tesla and his work? Join Jonathan and Lauren as they explore Nikola Tesla: the man, the myths and the truth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
um looking at the calendar, it looks like it's a Friday.
That means it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff.
(00:27):
This episode we're about to listen to originally published back
in February two thirteen, and it's all about Nicola Tesla.
And I'm sure you guys are at least familiar with
the name. Tesla has been the featured player in many
an Internet meme over the past several years, and there
are a lot of stories about him. Some of them
(00:47):
are true, and some of them are probably exaggerated, and
some of them might just be completely off basse. So
I wanted to develop a full episode about Tesla and
talk about him his good points, is bad points, everything
in between, and that's what we're going to listen to.
So let's sit back and hear this classic episode of
tech Stuff. We are focusing finally, after many, many, many
(01:11):
people have asked us to do a full episode about
Nicola Tesla. The Internet legend the the man placed on
a virtual pedestal on the Internet that is gleaming and
beauteous and will zap you if you ever dare say
anything against him. He is, he's staring at us from
(01:32):
the walls of the podcast room right now. Yes, he is. Now.
The question of whether or not he'll be staring at
us in our news studio it remains to be answered. Uh,
we'll probably end up propping him up on a mic
stand or something, so he's still judging us constantly. But yeah,
we want to talk about Tesla, kind of talk about
his his contributions to technology and also maybe take a
(01:55):
critical look at some of the some of the claims
about slaw and some of the misconceptions people have about
his contributions. Yeah, he's he's a mythological figure, really a
mythological nerd figure, which is which is fabulous. I mean,
it's really terrific, and it's it's it's understandable why because
he he by the end of his life, was so downtrodden.
(02:16):
And there's nothing that people and geeks especially love more
than than an anti hero. Yeah. Here, here's a guy
who has been beaten down. He's he's Uh, seen his
fortunes dwindle away. He's he's made some bad choices. Uh.
He has all the earmarks of a classic geek. Geeks
(02:36):
love this underdog kind of story. And when you get
into things like sort of the the demonification of other people,
Edison in particular, Yeah, but even people like JP Morgan
and Lustinghouse, then it seems like the whole world had
turned against him. And and depending on how you look
at his story, it can definitely come across that way.
(02:57):
But that's doing a little bit of a disservice to
the entire tale. And Uh, the reason why I'm talking
about in this way is because there is what we
thought some people referred to as the cult of Tesla, right,
this idea of elevating him beyond what his contributions were. Uh,
there was a cartoon that I think a lot of
(03:17):
you guys out there saw because he posted about it
on our Facebook page that the Oatmeal did all about
Tesla and his contributions and his rivalry with Edison and
kind of comparing him favorably against Edison in every single
category and saying that there should be a Tesla museum.
And so we wanted to talk about what Tesla actually
(03:38):
did and what he did not do, and uh, and
whether or not he deserves all those acohomis yeah. Yeah,
And and and just just before anyone who is a rabbit
fan of the oat mal gets honest, because I don't
I do not want to incite your anger. Uh, it's
we realize that it's a comic and that that although uh,
(03:58):
many of the statements are factual, the writer whose name
I'm completely forgetting right now has come out and said that, hey,
this is a comic. I'm I'm a comic artist. And
some of this was hyper Bowl so perfectly. No, I
like its hyper Bowl. It's way better than that Super One.
I like the hyper Bowl a lot more. I am
never gonna let you live that down. And we are
(04:20):
not real recording it. Let's move on. So yeah. Tesla
born on July tenth, eighteen fifty six, in what is
now Croatia, now eighteen fifty six by the Gregorian calendar.
If you have looked up at Tesla's birth and you
saw that it was actually in June June, that's because
at the time they were keeping time with the Julian calendar.
(04:42):
And it's only when you account for that when you
match those up that you realize that. Okay, well, if
you're using a real calendar like I do, the one
that's on my smartphone, and that's the only way I
know what day it is. It was July t So
eighteen fifty six July t and born in in Uh
part of Austria, Hungary which is now Croatia UM And
(05:04):
as a boy, he went to what we would think
of in the United States is elementary school or primary
school and studied German arithmetic and religion because his dad
was a pastor and his mom's father was a pastor,
both both in the Orthodox Church. Actually, so yeah, so
he definitely had a religious upbringing and his father really
(05:25):
wanted him to be a priest by the way, Yes,
he did a lot. In fact, he was not so
thrilled about Tesla going into engineering. UM. When he was
a young boy, Tesla's Tesla's older brother named Dane, died
in a tragic accident. He actually fell off a horse
and died. There were some stories that Tesla or Nicola
Tesla was playing around and spooked the horse that caused Yes,
(05:52):
so actually I've heard I'm sorry, I meant to I
meant to insert this earlier. But the very first terrific
tall tale that I heard about Tesla was that he
was born on a dark and storm and I to
lightning right right, He was born on the stroke of
midnight as lightning crashed in the sky, and that one
person said he would be a boy of storms, and
his mother said, no, he shall be a man of
the light. I might be inserting some of my hyper
(06:14):
bowl in there. Goodness, my gracious. So yeah, And as
a child they moved around quite a bit as his
father was finding a church to be pastor in. And
in eighteen seventy, so I remember he's born in eighteen
fifty six. By eighteen seventy he moves in with his
aunt and starts to attend a school that we're a
(06:34):
teacher named Martin skul Chick, sorry Skolich Sokolich. Uh So,
Martin Sokolich is teaching there, and he's teaching math and physics,
and Tesla finds both the professor and the subject matter fascinating,
and he becomes really focused on math and physics, and
(06:54):
in fact he's so focused he graduates a year early.
So he was certainly a man of genius. He possessed
a genius and an affinity for physics, for math, for
engineering that far outstripped most of his contemporaries. Oh yeah, definitely.
But then again, this is also the era where we
start seeing these technologies form and uh, and so it
(07:18):
was an exciting time if you were interested in physics,
because this is when we're making lots of big discoveries,
things that some people say are low hanging fruit, you know,
in retrospect, the idea that there were all these discoveries
to make. But it's hard to see how we're going
to advance from this point forward because all the quote
(07:39):
unquote easy things have been discovered. Not that any of
these things were easy, it's just that now you are
have to become increasingly specialized in whatever scientific fields you're
in to clearly understand it. Sure, but while doing this,
researcher kind of blew my mind. I actually don't have
a strong history in in electronic background, and and it
blew my mind that it wasn't until eighteen seventy three
(08:00):
that that James Clerk Maxwell proved that light is is
electromagnetic energy. Yeah, yes, this is He's he's growing up
at a time when uh, these discoveries are being made,
and that would impact his own work and in fact
drive him to achieve great things. Also, eighteen seventy three,
that was the year he contracted cholera. Yeah, and it
(08:23):
was due to the cholera that he kind of shaped
the rest of his life. Yeah. Well, yeah, quite a
few things. Because if you if you've heard about Tesla,
you know that he uh, he reportedly had a bit
of obsessive compulsive disorder, that he was a germophobe, that
he was a clean He was obsessed with being clean
and having cleaned things around him. He reported in his
(08:44):
own biography that he had a severe aversion to touching
other people's hair. That he had to do things if
if they require repetition, in the repetition of threes, and
if he did not, then he had to stop and restart. Yeah,
so he may have developed some of the peculiarities. At
this time. He was in bed for about nine months,
nearly died a few times. So I would imagine that
(09:07):
was definitely something that would shape you, whether or not that.
I'm sure there were other issues that are beyond just
getting sick. There were probably some things that were psychologically
part of his being from the point where he was born.
But we don't know to what extent obviously, and um
and you know what's odd to me, I might as
well talk about this for right now. So neat freak,
(09:31):
if you want to put it that way. Germophobe doesn't
like touching people. Loved pigeons, loved them rats with wings,
that's what they are. Well, that that was, that was
also towards the end of his life that he became
obsessed with him became incredibly obsessed with pigeons. Yeah, it
just makes me think of that great scene in the
(09:51):
documentary The Producers, Boydes Filthy Rotten Boydes. I appreciate that
that your your Yiddish accent there is is better than mine.
That's excellent. I should also point out that that that's
the nineteen sixty eight version of the documentary The Producers,
not the musical version starring Nathan Lane. Matthew Broderick actually
(10:13):
has zero mostel Gene Wilder. I'm getting off track anyway.
Um so yeah, so he's he's definitely got some interesting personality.
Quirks eighteen seventy four. He starts to move around a
little bit, mostly hiding out from the army because in
that part of the world, in Austro Austrio, Austro Hungary. Look,
(10:35):
I can't say that. Uh yes we do, thank thank goodness.
We don't speak into a microphone for a living right. Uh.
But back in that time, in that part of the world,
army service was required of all young men. There was
three years mandatory service. And Tesla was not too keen
on doing that. So he kind of, um, he was dodging,
(10:59):
that's the best way of putting it. Uh. The next year,
eight five, he starts to attend the Austrian Polytechnic School
and he starts off really strong. He's doing really well
in his classes. He understands the concepts, and unlike some
other some other visionaries like say Stephen Hawking, he was
very good in school. Yep, yep. Also, you know, not
not like Einstein or some of the other famous folks
(11:22):
who seemed to have trouble in class. Now that that
was true for about a year, and then about that
second year, things began to take a little bit of
a dip because he began to point out shortcomings or
what he thought of as shortcomings in his professor's understanding
of things like electrical engineering and saying things like, you know,
(11:43):
you could build a device that does the same thing
without this one component that you are claiming is absolutely
necessary for it to work. That furthermore puts off gigantic
electrical shocks that are actually pretty dangerous, like you could
do it this way. And then, uh, if you mouth
off your professors often enough, you might find yourself in
some academic trouble. And that's kind of what Tesla did.
(12:07):
He he began to get disillusioned about pursuing studies in
an academic setting, and after about a little over three years,
he actually dropped out of the polytechnic school. So he
moved to Slovenia in eight to work as a draftsman
for an engineering firm, but by eighteen seventy nine, the
(12:28):
next year, some some police officials show up and asked
to see his residents papers, which he did not have,
so then he was escorted back to his family's home
because he didn't have a residence permit for Slovenia, And
that same year his father passes away, uh and Tesla
(12:51):
starts to a new career as a teacher in the
same school that he attended as a boy, but realizes
very quickly, that's not not for him. Yeah, he doesn't
want to do that. Um So Then the next year,
eighteen eighty, he moved to Prague. He tries to attend
Carl Ferdinand University, but he's unable to understand Greek or check,
(13:12):
both of which were prerequisites to attend as a student,
so instead he audits classes. Uh. And he begins to
work for the Budapest Telephone Exchange and also the Central
Telegraph Office. Eighteen eighty by the way, it was the
year that that Thomas Edison unveiled his electric incandescent lamp
to the public for the first time. Yep, so that's
a good thing to to keep in mind. There are
(13:34):
some big things happening at the same time that Tesla's
kind of you know, he hasn't really made a name
for himself yet. He's been a very enthusiastic student at
times of his life, and he is certainly interested in
electronics or really we should say electricity electronics too early,
but electricity and its applications. Um So, he does that
(13:58):
for a couple of years. In eighteen eighty too, he
joins the Continental Edison Company and begins to work on
things like dynamos, which are well, you've heard us talk
about dynamos and our episodes about electromagnets and motors and
uh induction in the reverse of that, so we I
won't go into it. But anyway, he starts to work
(14:20):
on that. Now this means that he becomes an employee,
although you know, indirectly and way down the line of Edison.
So yeah, he's sitting there working for the company of
the man who would one day become his greatest rival.
According to me, they have dragon ball style fights in
(14:43):
the sky. Yeah, they also would occasionally catch Pokemon, but
it was only the one that shoots the electricity. I
don't I don't know which one. Oh, come on, it's Pikachu.
I was just I was trying to bait Lauren to
see if I could get it. I actually know that
you win this time vocal bomb. So at this time
(15:06):
he also gets the idea for the A C induction motor,
although Asterisk not necessarily the first person to think about that.
Supposedly in a vision, well supposedly he had these visions.
Supposedly he was was very light and audio sensitive, and occasionally,
upon looking at one object or having a certain idea,
would would get an extremely strong visual perception of something
(15:30):
that he had already seen, or or of nothing, nothing
imaginary unless it was a new invention. But yeah, occasionally
he would get these flashes that that kind of disturbed
him a lot, according to his autobiography. Yeah, so essentially
what would happen is he would be walking through a
park and look at a beautiful scene, and then suddenly
an idea would form, fully formed in his head, like
(15:53):
not not something he had been puzzling about necessarily, It
might just be hey, boom, here are all the pieces
and the puzzle is completely it together. You know, we
opened up the box and the puzzles there, as opposed
to you've been trying to fix this problem for years,
and oh here's the inspiration. And so yeah. Supposedly he
was walking through the city park in Budapest with a
friend and saw a beautiful sunset and quoted some poetry
(16:14):
and then had an idea for for the induction motor. Yeah,
and just drew it in the sand and then kept walking. Yeah.
Whether or not that's true, it's hard to say. Because Tesla,
as it turns out, was something of a showman, a
little bit of an unreliable narrator. I would say unreliable
narrator is a very kind way of putting it. The
same sort of thing is true of all the big
names at this time, because they were the rock stars
(16:38):
of that of that era. So Edison, same sort of thing.
Edison was a master at at pr you know, beyond
beyond being the head of a very successful research and
development firm. He was very good at presenting his ideas
to a public and explaining why they were the best ideas,
even if they weren't the best ideas. Tesla was. He
(17:00):
was no slouch in that department either. There are a
lot of people who will paint Tesla as being the
the dedicated genius who is working for the betterment of
all mankind but doesn't ever look to get gain glory
in the process. That's not entirely accurate. Now, that's that's
not If you've ever seen any of the photographs that
that he took around his equipment, I would say that
(17:20):
those are not the mark of someone who is not
a showman. I saw this one photograph. He looked just
like David Bowie. Um might be mixing that up with
a documentary though, So then the the in in uh
in A ten two. This whole time where he's making
he's working for Edison. He's got this idea for the
A C induction motor. He also is reportedly not paid
(17:41):
some money for the work he's doing for Edison Company,
at least not not all of it. Like there's money
due to him that's not being paid. And this this
is partly what lays the groundwork for this whole idea
of the heated rivalry between Edison and Tesla. A lot
of it is money that's withheld from Tesla that was
promised to him. I mean, and yeah, and this this
(18:03):
is when he was very he was what twenty six
at the time, and in Paris, and so he was
he was really distantly connected from to Edison at the time.
But apparently grudge started, right you use this, If you
use this and just say like this is indicative of
how Edison treats people, it would apparently become company policy
not to pay people for their work. That's what that's
(18:23):
what suggested of this. It also becomes you know, a
common thread in Tesla's life of getting getting cheated out
of things that were owed him, which makes you wonder
if it happens so frequently. Why is that? Is it
all due to Was it just that he only worked
with corrupt individuals and companies, or was it that there
(18:44):
was something else going on here? Besides that part of
the story, I have no doubt that Tesla was really
cheated out of many of the things he deserved. I'm
not sure that he was cheated out of everything that
is attributed as beingthing he deserved. Um, but then we'll
get into that again. Yeo, he makes the big move
(19:05):
from Europe to America. He he had basically no money
at the time. From what I understand, well, he definitely
had no money by the time he got there. Um. Yeah,
it took a little longer for him to get there
than he had anticipated. According to one timeline I read
the ship he was on. This is just Tesla's luck, right,
The ship he was on had a mutiny aboard the ship.
(19:26):
Oh my goodness. I did not read about this, and
supposedly Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard, probably for being
a witch. That that last part is just me guessing.
I didn't have any reason. I didn't have. There was
no reason given as to why Tesla would have been
thrown overboard, so I'm just inventing one. But no, apparently
the ship he was on had a mutiny aboard it.
(19:49):
I ended up getting to New York way later than
when he expected, and, according to some reports, had four
cents in his pocket. Now, also, depending upon whom you asked,
he either immediately went to work for Edison, as in
got off the boat, filed and went into the office,
or he started the next day. That seems to be
(20:11):
the two stories. Either way, I think that's pretty remarkable.
Um and uh. And he works for Edison and he's
helping them with their systems. Uh. Supposedly again, he started
to suggest to Edison that they switched to an alternating
current model as opposed to direct current, and Ederson was
very much against that idea. So then in eighteen five,
(20:32):
Tesla forms the Tesla Electric Light Company. An investor group
actually asks him if he will work on an ARC
lighting system, and he agrees to do it, and then
is later forced out of his own company when nothing
to show for it. Was Was that all? I mean?
Because he started the company because he had been he
had quit Edison's correct. Yeah, Essentially, that same year, he
resigns from the Edison Company, and some say the reason
(20:56):
he did that was because, again, here's another story of
Tesla getting cheated. That Edison had promised Tesla a princely
some fifty thou dollars for a particular project, and when
Tesla completed the project again supposedly with flying colors and
beyond all expectations, Edison then said, ha, ha, you don't
understand American humor. I'm not giving you any money, and
(21:19):
then Tesla resigns, even though Edison supposedly at that point
offered an enormous raise to keep Tesla there. This makes
Edison look like the biggest jerk on the face of
the planet. I mean, I can't imagine my boss coming
up to me and saying, hey, you know when I
told you were going to make fifty dollars if you
did this thing, and then you did that thing, you
did it really well. Well, you're not gonna get any money.
Oh you want to leave, I'll raise your salary. That
(21:41):
just like what kind of crazy person does that? Yeah,
it doesn't it doesn't sound I mean, you know it
could I start. I never met Edison, didn't did you
mean him? You're very old? Uh? Tesla then claimed that
he spent the next year making money by digging ditches.
So again, a great, great story if you're looking at
his life in the terms of like a tragic tale.
(22:03):
You know, here you have this genius of super genius,
the man who will one day light up the United
States with his alternating current power grid, making money scraping
by by digging ditches. Yeah. Again, a lot of this
comes from Tesla himself, and whether or not all of
it is true, it remains part of myth. You know,
(22:27):
I don't doubt that. I don't doubt there were some
bad business dealings. I'm sure that was the case, and
I don't doubt he had some hard times and maybe
he did make his living for a full year being
you know, digging ditches and that was the only thing
he could do. But it sounds more, it sounds like melodrama.
But sometimes like works like that, sometimes that's the Sometimes
that's the truth. Stranger things. But anyway, h then by
(22:52):
by e eight seven, so you know A six digging ditches,
we don't need to go into as that's it. Well,
I mean, meanwhile, in eighteen eighties, actually it's interesting Westinghouse
Electric had developed a transformer for commercial use. Yeah, so
that's another thing we should mention is that, uh, one
of the reasons Tesla was really pushing for this alternating
current thing with Edison is that back in Europe, that's
(23:14):
what they were using a C was, That's that's the
route they took. They didn't they didn't go down the
direct current route at all. They went with alternating current.
And that becomes important when we start talking about the
myths of of Tesla as well. In a little bit, right, Yeah,
the the U s so embroiled in d C current.
The name the Brooklyn Dodgers actually comes because they were
using direct current power lines that were kind of haphazardly
(23:36):
strung across the city and and Brooklyn Nights had to
dodge these lines so often that their team was thus
named the Brooklyn Dodging, whereas the New York Giants were
called that because they came from a race of mythical
creatures that lived up Giant. Okay, now, I just wanted
to show off that I knew something too, but I
don't really know anything. After the ditch digging has finished,
(23:58):
Tesla begins to work within Besters again, and he establishes
a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street in New York
and then a few blocks away from Medicine's. Yeah. Yeah,
And the next year he starts to talk about a
C motors and transformers for the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers now known as the Triple E, or as I
always prefer to call them. I that once for all
(24:22):
you engineers out there. Uh. And he also agrees to
start selling patents to George Westinghouse. So even though you know, Lauren,
like Lauren was saying, in eighteen eighty six, you already
had Westinghouse working on transformers and alternating current. That was
before Tesla had even started to work for Westinghouse. Uh.
That that's something to keep in mind as well. So
eighteen eighty nine he establishes a new lab on Grand
(24:45):
Street in New York. There's a lot of labs. He
had a lot of labs spread out throughout New York.
He also lived in hotels mostly, did he even then? Yeah,
mostly towards the end of his life, but yeah, early
on he was living in a lot of hotels as well.
I think he also joked about about how is his hours,
especially when he was working in Edison's lab. We're from
like ten in the morning until five thirty am the
next day, and and so that a lot of his
(25:07):
sleeping A wasn't really sleeping, and B was probably under
his desk, right right, I can identify with that. Uh
In he begins to experiment with wireless power in florest
and neon lighting, as well as X rays, although at
the time he isn't sure exactly what they are. He
was shadow pictures. Yeah, this was before Wilhelm Laurentin had
(25:29):
really established what X rays were and what they could do.
So Tesla was one of the people who was observing
the phenomena of X rays early early on. Yeah, there
are a few other people at the time who were
working with them, but yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, that'll
go into the myths as well. But then he becomes
an Americans and also I believe patented the Tesla coil.
(25:51):
There you go an interesting thing in his mother passes away.
That same year, he becomes the vice president of the
AI Triple E, which is even it's a I E.
I guess that is how I would say that. And
he becomes famous worldwide for his lectures on alternating current
So at this point he's on the lecture circuit. I
(26:13):
mean he's he's going from city to city. You know,
he stopped in places like Chicago and New York, London, Paris.
So he becomes again, like I said, like a rock star.
He's known for these lectures, and it sounds weird for
us to say that that he's like a rock star.
But this was an era where these these thinkers were
(26:35):
really pushing the development of technology to a point where
everyone was sure that, you know, okay, we're five years
away from the incredible future. And in many ways they
were right. It's just that their view of what the
incredible future would be ended up being a lot different
from what it really was. But it was an era
of rapid development, so these guys were considered to be
(26:57):
the people pushing that rapid development is really exciting. Yeah,
and think things like when the Chicago World Fair was
that was that? Want to say? Yeah? That was that
was famous because there was a whole Edison Tesla story
there about who is going to provide power? Right, and
it was really Edison versus H. Westinghouse. Yeah, but I
(27:17):
mean Westinghouse back by Tesla. Sure, sure, yeah. West Westinghouse
was using technology that Tesla had patented and and systems
that Tesla worked on, but it was not truly Tesla
versus Edison. That's that's kind of how I think. Even
in a previous episode of Tech Stuff, we sort of
talked about it in those terms, because that's sort of
the romantic way of doing it, right as the idea
(27:39):
of these two geniuses facing off against each other and
who will win and alternating current one out in that one.
So it was really Westinghouse that one, all right, right, Yeah,
The story goes that there was a there was a
business deal the government was looking to contract either either
Westinghouses Company or Edison's company to power the World's Fair
and and Westinghouse one out because it was cheaper. Yep. Yeah,
(28:01):
and then and when and yeah, and when they threw
when President grawf for Cleveland, I think it was through
that switch and which like a hundred hundred thousand bulbs
lit up all at the same time, and people were like, oh, oh,
this is a thing trivia for you folks out there
who don't know your history. Grover Cleveland was the only
president to serve two non consecutive terms as president. He
(28:21):
was president, then he wasn't president. Then he was president again. Yes,
he also liked the song Funky called Medina eighteen five.
So then one of the buildings that heused, one of
Tesla's labs, caught fire in eight and his lab burned down,
and the fire destroyed what was estimated to be about
(28:42):
fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment. And and he had
no insurance. Yeah, and fifty that's it's a lot of
money today. It was a huge amount of money in
um And and at the time he was experimenting with
with radios. Yeah, and and supposedly, according to him, was
(29:03):
ready to transmit a signal fifty miles out to West Point,
New York. Yeah. So that this is during if you've
listened to the Old Tech Stuff episode about who invented
the radio, there's a lot about Tesla and Marconi. And
there there's a whole story there too about how Marconi,
like Tesla, got a patent for for the radio. Then
Marconi applied for a patent, Then the patent office overturned
(29:24):
Tesla's patent, gave Marconi the patent, and then later on
overturned it again and gave it back to Tesla. And
later on is in like the nineteen seventies after Tesla
was dead long after. Um. Yeah, there's a whole story,
and and there's there's arguments there too, because again, the
invention of any sort of technology requires that you talk
about so many different people who who contributed to the
(29:47):
discoveries that led to the possibility of something existing that
it's impossible to actually point at one person and say
this person invented radio. But both Marconi and Tesla were
working on it, and uh, and there's argument over who
should have real credit there. Uh, but go listen to
our episode about who invented the radio if you want
(30:08):
to hear more about that, because I think that that
that that argument is so long and detailed that it's
hard to sum up in an episode just about Tesla. Yeah. Yeah,
though it's yeah, certainly another another one of those points
that people like to bring up in terms of he
was so downtrodden. Yeah, it's a good another point. Yeah,
and and that's a more firm one that Yeah, he
absolutely lost that fight and lost probably a lot of
(30:28):
money in fame. I think. Uh, Marconi won the New
Belt Prize all kinds of fun. Was not happy about that. Excited. Yeah,
he demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model boat, so essentially a
an RC boat at the Electrical Exposition in Madison Square
Garden where years later, Highlanders would fight it out to
(30:49):
determine who would win the prize, and Queen would sing
Princess of the Universe in the background. I didn't I
didn't really like that documentary. WHOA, Okay, you know what,
We're gonna take a little break here. Let's let's take
a take a moment to thank our sponsor, and now
(31:11):
back to our show. Alright, getting back into Tesla's life.
In moves to Colorado to perform some experiments with wireless power.
And now this is where one of the big myths
about Tesla comes up. This idea that he wanted to
build this huge tower that would tap into the this
this resonant frequency that exists around the world, and that
(31:34):
you could transmit power wirelessly across miles of space. Um.
He claimed that he had another one of those visions
that let him understand the geoelectrical phenomenon he called terrest
real stationary waves, an idea about tapping into the Earth
itself as a conductor. Okay, sounds interesting, Yeah, and it's
(31:54):
not that it's not that everything was that he said
was crazy or it was just to be able to
actually use this in a way that would allow you
to transmit power reliably safely without losing power over distance
or zapping and killing everybody. Uh is something we haven't
solved yet, And there are a lot of people who
(32:15):
say that all of his work would have proven if
if it's still existed. Get into more about more destruction
of his work and where it all when it went to.
But then if it's still existed, it would prove that
this sort of thing is possible, and it's only the
energy companies that are keeping it down because they stand
to lose so much if this If this information got out,
(32:36):
I'm hesitant to agree to anything like that because it
suggests that no one but Tesla could have ever come
up with this, and therefore the idea is lost forever.
When I would argue, we have people who are far
more informed about electrical engineering than Tesla was, even though
he was a brilliant man, forward thinking, and maybe let's
(32:56):
have you know, perhaps the people these days are not
vision nary the way that he was. But yeah, maybe
maybe that's it. Maybe they just need to take a
walk in the park and look at the sunset, think
about some poetry that would help. I guess, you know, hey,
far be it from me to downplay the importance of
poetry in the world. I certainly think it's important being
English lit major. Uh. In nineteen o one, well, all right,
(33:19):
so so he starts to think really about wireless power
and the phenomena that it would be, Like what what
would go into making this and how it would change
the world. And he really was thinking it was an
interesting idea. So in nineteen o one, with funding from
various sources, including people like JP Morgan, he starts to
build the Warden Cliff Tower. And this is at a
(33:42):
long island sound and uh, this is um this thing
is supposed to be a wireless power transmitting station essentially,
and within nineteen o three starts to test it, even
though the tower itself is not completed at that point.
And this this was this was a tower that that
again reached deep into the ground, took d of tap
into this this terrestrial uh wave stationary way. I actually
(34:05):
have a really great quote from Tesla. If I had
made out excellent in the system that I've invented, it
is necessary for the machine to get a grip on
the earth. Otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has
to have a grip so that the whole of this
globe can quiver. Yeah, if you also remember the story
about Tesla putting an oscillating motor onto a building and
then nearly shaking it to its foundation, that kind of
(34:27):
dates from the same sort of concept. And the Earth
is still here, by the way, So that's kind of
a spoiler alert to how this story plays out. MythBusters
actually actually cracked that one in the episode back in
A two six, I think they showed. They showed that
it could, like a small repetitive motion could cause a
bridge to start to shake a little enough to notice
(34:49):
a couple couple hundred feet away, right, but not necessarily
enough to to make it crumble into pieces. Um, but anyway,
we all earthquake. Warncliffe Tower becomes an important part of
Tesla's life. He was one of these things that he
really thought that that the terrestrial stationary waves was the
uh discovery of his life. That was the most important
(35:10):
out of everything that he had worked with with alternating current,
with transformers, with all these other technologies, those paled in
comparison to this one and so Warncliffe Tower was very
important to him. Unfortunately, Uh, there weren't. He didn't have
a whole lot to show for it. And also he
was running up the electric bill. Yeah yeah, and Morgan
was getting pretty sick of it. Meanwhile across the ocean, Um,
(35:33):
Marconi had signaled the letter as across the Atlantic. Then
that didn't make Tesla happy. And and I mean and
and you know Marconi was such a such a newspaper darling.
Yeah he was again and yet another person who was
very good at catering to the media to get a
message across. So uh, you know, not unusual at this time.
(35:53):
So in nineteen o four, the Colorado Lab is torn
down due to excessive use of electricity and the building
materials are sold for scrap to pay for the cost couch.
And in nineteen o six, like you said, JP, Morgan,
who had been an investor withdraws and Tesla has to
end up laying off a lot of employees over at
Warncliff Tower. Uh, We're gonna skip ahead a few years
because this is essentially where he's working on this Warncliff
(36:16):
Tower experiment, which ends up draining a lot of his
energy literally and resources, and without a lot to show
for it. Um the next day, I have his nineteen
eleven when he started working with steam turbines and electricity production. Uh.
He was. This was a big development. It was very
important in the whole uh part of generating electricity for
(36:39):
a growing need in America because at this point you're
starting to see communities get wired for electricity and beyond
just the narrow band in the Northeast that had it,
So it was important to find different ways of generating it,
beyond firing from coal plants. She wanted to find something
that was sustainable even at that time, and in ninetelve
(37:01):
Tesla suffered another setback, although not one nearly as large
as Lady Astor. John Jacob Astor was one of Tesla's
most wealthy and enthusiastic investors, stopped investing in Tesla's work
because he stopped breathing. He was at board a little
boat called the Titanic. Oh, I've heard of that one.
(37:22):
I think I saw a documentary about it one. Yeah,
his heart will go on, but his investment payments stopped. Yeah.
He Um. He went down with the boat. He did
get Lady Astor on a lifeboat, so he made sure
his wife was safe, and he stayed behind to wait
for his turn to get on a lifeboat, but tragically
(37:42):
was not able to do that and he did die,
and with that Tesla lost one of his most significant
sources of investment money. So it was another financial setback
for Tesla. Um. I don't think he could blame that
one on Edison. No, No, maybe Mark Coni, because we're
talking about the use of radios on the Titanic, But
(38:05):
then that was more of a personnel thing than a
technology thing. A nineteen fifteen, Tesla and Edison are both
listed as being uh considered for a Nobel Prize and
that they would be co recipients of the Nobel Prize.
When the Nobel Prizes are announced, the prize goes to
(38:28):
two people. That would be William Henry Bragg and his son.
Now the Nobel Committee admitted that Edison and Tesla were
under consideration for the Nobel Prize, but they did not
say any more than that. What has come up since
then as the rumor, which is gospel in some corners
of the Internet, that the reason why Tesla and Edison
(38:49):
did not receive the Nobel Prize together is because they'd
rather be caught dead than to share a prize with
the other man. That's a that's a good myth that
the rivalry was so great that they would both refuse
a Nobel prize rather than have to share it with
the other That's pretty amazing. And it may be true
that when I say rumor, I don't mean that it's
(39:11):
fake or false or a lie. I just mean that
we don't know for sure. Other people probably do, but
I don't. Nineteen sixteen, Tesla declares bankruptcy. He did not
pasco or collect two hundred dollars y. It was just
not a good year for him. Uh. In nineteen seventeen,
he ended up proposing what would depending upon whom you ask,
(39:34):
Okay people, some people will say in nineteen seventeen, Tesla
predicted radar radar. Yeah, that he was the guy who
came up with radar, but the government turned him down.
The Navy board said that they would not invest in
such a technology. By the way, the person from private
industry who was on the Navy board, well he was
(39:58):
from from what I understand about the story, Tesla had
proposed this, this way of finding ships underwater. Yeah, that's
the problem, right, So the more you look into it,
the more you realize it's not radar he's talking about,
not in the sense that we use it today. Well,
he he was talking about radar, but it was not
really the best system for finding ships underwater. And so
therefore when the government from the Navy didn't didn't really
(40:20):
give him the go ahead, it wasn't because radar is
dumb or the Tesla's demo was because it wasn't the
right technology for the application. What Tesla did not take
into account was he he wanted to use tightly controlled
electric beams of energy to zap them into the water
to reflect off the surfaces of submarines, detect that those
(40:40):
reflections and the information would be displayed back in a
fluorescent display, which sounds great, except for the problem is
that these beams would attenuate underwater, and so you would
not get accurate representations of what you were looking at.
You wouldn't you couldn't be sure that you know, you
could be pointing it directly at a submarine and miss
it because of this attenuate Asian problem. And so it
(41:02):
just isn't practical for the use that Tesla was suggesting it.
And uh, and so that shows that Tesla had a
misunderstanding either of the physics of water or the technology itself.
Either way, it wasn't truly radar. It's not exactly the
same thing that radar is, and it was not being
used in the way that radar ultimately would be used.
(41:22):
So while some people claim that he invented radar as
being a little generous, nineteen, we just busted a myth,
and I hadn't I apologize because I haven't gotten to
that section yet. But that's okay, that's one less for
us to worry about when we get there in nineteen
thirty four. Actually, if if we can, if we can
step back, just to short, let's please in In nineteen nineteen,
(41:43):
he published an autobiography called My Inventions Uh that was
published in six parts in the Electrical Experiment or magazine.
And this is important because it is one of the
main sources of information about Tesla's life, which is why
you have to take everything with a grain of salt,
because he was a bit of a self promoter. So
(42:04):
there's not I'm not saying that Tesla was lying in
his autobiography. What I'm saying is you just have to
take into consideration the possibility that he may have exaggerated
some facts, not that he was purposefully trying to mislead people,
but that when you become a self promoter, that that
can happen. Even if you don't mean it to happen,
it can happen, Which is kind of crazy that you're
(42:24):
just you know, in your mind, you're like, this is
totally how it happened, and then anyone else is like, dude,
I was there, and that totally is not how it happened. Um, Jonathan,
You've never beheaded anyone in the cold blood of a fight.
On the cold blood of a fight, and The New
York Times published as an article about Tesla's death, ray,
(42:46):
Yeah this was. Tesla said that he had come up
with an idea that would allow governments to build a
device capable of emitting a beam of energy that could
bring down a fleet of him thousand enemy planes at
a distance of two hundred fifty miles, and that his
idea was that by outfitting pretty much everybody with one
(43:08):
of these, you would have that mutually assured destruction that
makes peace possible. He actually called it a piece beam
from what I understand, Yeah, I said that would really
end war because how could you have war If you
can't fly over another country without worrying about your entire
fleet being destroyed, then obviously war is off the table.
That was kind of his his somewhat naive plan. And
(43:31):
whether or not this thing would ever work is another
interesting question, or if there ever was anything beyond just
this idea that hey, maybe one day I could build
something that does this. Uh, that's another you know, that's
another one of those things. It's a myth, right. Uh.
He decided to go feed the pigeons in the park,
which was a bad decision to make that particular day,
(43:55):
as as he was crossing the street, he was struck
by a cab. Then to in upon which report you read,
he flew thirty five to forty ft in the air
and landed and was perfectly unharmed except a little bruised
or he had broken several ribs. It all depends on
which person you're asking. Tesla said, damn, I'm all right.
Other people like dude, he was messed up. He was
(44:18):
crying about his pigeons. It was ugly. He he had
he had at this point become a little bit destitute.
Um he due to all of these various financial troubles
over the years, and and basic misspending. I think head, yeah, didn't. Yeah,
there were a lot of hotels that were suing him
because he had lived inside the hotel for years and
years and owed them thousands of dollars, and then he
(44:40):
would relocate to a different hotel, and you think, like,
why would another hotel even trust him? He was Tesla Again,
this is a rock star guy, and it elevates the
status of your hotel that he's staying there. But you
can only have Lindsay Lohan in your hotel for so
long before you're like, seriously, could you please stop making
holes in the growing TVs out the window? Guys, I
(45:03):
am sitting across from the from the person who had
just compared Nicola Tesla to Lindsay Lohan. I think it's
an apt comparison. Look, Lindsay Lohan hasn't reached the age
Tesla was at when he started to really uh contribute
to humanity. So I think we owe her a year
or two. I'm just saying that if anyone actually figures
out Tesla's particle beam and aims it at the HW
office is and just just just just let me know
(45:25):
I'm perfectly willing to give you Jonathan g a syncritis coordinates.
Please keep in mind that stuff you missed in history class,
and stuff mom never told you sit really near me.
So if you love those shows, keep your beam particle
pointed somewhere else. That's not cool. We'll be right back
to talk more about Nicola Tesla, an eccentric inventor and
(45:49):
lover of alternating current in just a moment after this
quick break. January seven three was a bad day for
Tesla because that's the day he passed on. He was
eighty six years old. Uh and two days later, all
(46:10):
of his papers and a state was seized by the government.
Well some some stories say that his nephew showed up
the morning after he passed away, and that his body
had already been removed, and that the nephew noticed that
it seemed like some of his papers were missing. Yeah,
this is where one of those stories pops up. In fact,
now that we've had Tesla shuffle off the mortal and
Tesla coil, thank you, I've been waiting to use that one,
(46:34):
we can talk a little bit about this this idea.
So there are a lot of rumors out there. One
of the big rumors is that the FBI seized all
of Tesla's papers and did so in an effort to
to use them for various nefarious purposes for the United
States government. Now keep in mind this is nte. World
(46:55):
War two is a thing, and so there is a
genuine concerned that information that has scientific significance could fall
into the hands of other nations and give give other
other nations a lot of advantages over the United States.
And so it was very important to guard whatever advantages
(47:16):
you had against that absolutely. And also I mean remember
that that Tesla was a Serbian American um as as such,
the from from from what we can discern, of fact,
it was actually the Department of Justice Alien Property Custodian
Office that temporarily seized his papers, right, so it was
not the FBI. It was a Department of Justice and
the FBI. Still they've got like a like a top
(47:37):
ten myths on on the internet. Number ten. Number ten
is is that we took Tesla's papers like guys, Like guys,
we didn't. We did for real, Zo, we didn't grab
those And actually I looked into it and it wouldn't
be until well, you know, if you read most of
the stories. It's like the FBI took the papers and
they never released them, and we want, we demand that
these papers be released. Guys. It was the Department of
(47:58):
Justice number one and number two in nineteen fifty two
they sent the papers to uh to Kasanovich, his nephew,
and that is that is nine years later. Yeah, alright,
granted nine years. Like we're a talking about time during
not just the World War two with the Red Scared
as well, So I mean not that that justifies suppressing information. Also,
you're talking about the government, So it may very well
(48:19):
be that there wasn't any intentional um slowness on the
part of the government. That's just the way the government works.
But I don't know, I honestly don't know. What I
do know is they did release the estate and the
papers to Yugoslavia, to to his nephew. That they wound
up in a in a museum. So if you wanted,
if you're one of the people demanding that there's a
(48:41):
Tesla museum, good news there is. You just have to
go to Europe to see it. Also, supposedly after World
War two was over, copies of his papers were sent
out to one of the Air Force spaces and Project
Nick was a thing that was heavily funded, and then
the papers disappeared, never to be seen again. Yeah, their
love conspiracy theories here, they're there was one one person
(49:01):
posted on Facebook when I mentioned that we were going
to be covering Tesla today, So are you going to
talk about how they used a lot of his work
in the developments of stuff in Area fifty one? And
the answer to that is no, because there's no real
documentation of that. There's actually quite a bit of information
about what went on at Area fifty one. It's stuff
that was top secret at the time. But um, we'll
have to do an episode all about Area fifty one
(49:22):
sometime in the future, just because it's a fascinating topic.
But it's all about, you know, developing things like stealth
technology and various kinds of test uh prototypes for the
Air Force or for the army. But but nothing like
the Tesla death ray, at least nothing that shows up
in any real record. And I would argue that the
reason why it doesn't show up on a real record
(49:43):
is probably because it didn't exist. Um that my second
choice would be it didn't work, and so there was
no point in more valut. I don't think we would
still be debating whether or not exists if it actually
did exist, because someone would have come forward by now probably,
or it would have zapped somebody. Although there there is
stuff they don't want you to know. Did I did
an episode a couple of years ago on this even
(50:04):
You can go check that out on YouTube. That's it,
oh bolan uh. Then also there here's some other myths
that Tesla invented alternating current. He did not. He did not.
He alternating current was already a thing in Europe by
the time Tesla was born. It wasn't widespread, it wasn't
like there was a huge power grid in Europe, but
(50:25):
there were people working on alternating current and even working
on things like induction motors and transformers at that time.
And so Tesla even studied alternating current when he was
in school. So it's not something that he invented. He did, however,
take the knowledge that was being generated around alternating current
(50:45):
and applied it and furthered it. So it's not it's
not that he just copied someone else's work. He really
did make legitimate contributions, I'm sure, and it was it
was his patents in his his work with Westinghouse that
led to alternating current, the coming the thing that the
US uses and and the thing that is capable of
going across long distances. Both of those are extremely extremely important.
(51:08):
I can't downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but but
you know, he did not invent it. He didn't invent it.
He's not the reason why it's what's being used in Europe. Uh.
So that's one thing we can kind of put to bed.
And in fact, the first work with alternating current dates
back to five, which was, you know, twenty years before
(51:28):
Tesla was born. So unless he also invented time travel,
and don't write me and tell me he did, that's
not that's not the case. Um, like I would believe
anything after watching The Prestige again another documentary, right, Uh.
Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out, was working
(51:48):
on UH distribution grids designs for a C power and
transformers before Tesla had even started to work for the company. Now,
granted again, Tesla's patents and the information that he was
able to provide to Westinghouse ended up making those much
more robust and it made it possible to actually act
on that. But again, it shows that he's not the
(52:09):
only one working on this at the time. Um. He's
also not the guy who invented transformers. Those were first
being used in Budapest in the eighteen seventies. Uh, and
the very first modern transformer was built by William Stanley
in eighty five. He did not invent the fluorescent lamp.
Alexandra Beccarell was the first guy to to observe fluorescence,
(52:32):
and he did so in eighteen fifty seven when Tesla
was one. So again, unless Tesla was also observing fluorescence
at one year old, and maybe he was. I mean
he was born in a storm after all. Thor was
his buddy. Um, you can't say that he invented that.
He did not discover X rays. I've as we covered before. Yeah,
Ivan Poolui, I have no idea how to say his
(52:55):
last name. I know I just butchered it. But but Ivan,
my buddy Ivan. He he had actually observed the phenomena
of X rays before Tesla had. But just like Tesla,
he wasn't really sure what it was he was looking at.
He thought it was interesting, but he wasn't really sure
about you know, what this stuff actually is. It wouldn't
be until Wilhelm Ronin really looked into it and began
(53:17):
to make theories and hypotheses and tests some really clever
things about them. That's that's when we started to know
that what they were. But other other scientists had been
observing it, they just didn't understand it. Again, we talked
about the radar thing, and we talked about FBI. So
those are the big myths. Other myths are you know,
the whole Testla versus Edison thing. Uh, it was really
(53:39):
more Edison companies versus Westinghouse companies and not so much
a personality thing. Well, it does sound like the two
of them clashed. There are a whole bunch of reports
about how I mean, right from the get go they
didn't really like each other, right, um and and it's
easy to see, you know, they were both very strong personalities,
um and very big showman and it didn't it doesn't
(54:02):
sound like either of them really liked not that anyone
likes it, but but to be made a fool of.
And both of them were in the business of, in fact,
trying to make a full of the other person. So yeah,
there was some of that. There was some showmanship, There
was some there's some and and I mean there was
clearly some sort of legitimate beef between us and Tesla,
at least as far as you know, Tesla getting the
credit that he wanted and Tesla, you know, a lot
(54:24):
of his fortunes switched mainly because he made some really
bad business deals. He sold patents off out a pittance
at times, because the company would come to him and say,
you know, there's this massive economic downturn coming. We need
this these patents, but if we paid you what they're worth,
(54:46):
then we're going to go under. And Contessa is like, look,
I'll cut you a deal. Yeah. They were basically kind
of like, can we give you a tenth of the
fee that we're going to promise you and then give
you some stock right before a terrible economic downturn. And
Tesla was like, yes, is good, give me that, and
and and and the famous Westinghouse deal where um uh.
Even even even though a Westinghouse won the so called
(55:08):
War of the Currents, the company was not doing well
and and wound up after they had built the generator
at Niagara, I think started to go under and there
were some issues with mostly it was just again just
just poor decisions on Tesla's part um test the let
him out of the contract just to he said said like, oh, no,
(55:28):
you don't have to pay me the rest. That's fine,
you save your company. Yeah, which is which is great.
I mean, it's lovely, it's a nice it's a terrific
I mean, but you know, it's it's when you when
you end up having no friends other than pigeons and
owing every hotel in New York money. Maybe that's why. Yeah, yeah,
that could that could be one of the factors. Um
he certainly, And I know that people are probably listening
to this episode and thinking that I am. I think
(55:50):
Tesla was a worthless lay about that. Nothing could be
further from the truth. I think he really did make
incredible contributions to to the success of the United States
in general and to several technologies around the world in particular.
But it's also important not to overstate his contributions and
(56:10):
to understand, especially at the expense of other very important
inventors and minds and works, it's a disservice to everyone
else who worked on these same things and helped make
them a possible a reality really in our lives, and
and you know, you've got to also pay attention to
some of the crazier ideas like the death ray, the
death raying, Yeah, or being able to move the entire
(56:33):
earth with putting essentially a wire around it and tapping
into the frequency that it generates, which, hey, maybe that
is possible, it's just not practical, right, Yeah, that's and
I think that that's a problem with a lot of
his latter theories is they were not particularly practical. Yeah, yeah,
so he was also, I mean, there there's stories about
him having a couple of nervous breakdowns at various times
in his life. I think that he was probably not
(56:57):
necessarily mentally well for a deal of his existence. I agree,
I agree. I think he probably had quite a few
uh issues to work through, and that I mean, you know,
I can, considering how well we treat those kind of
people today, it is easy to see how at the
turn of the century he was not particularly given the
chances that he needed. And Ladies and gentlemen, that wraps
(57:18):
up our conversation are our our classic episode of tech
stuff about Nicola Tesla, And believe it or not, I
really admire Tesla a lot. I mean, truly was a
genius a true genius and someone who had been wronged
quite a bit throughout his life. But that being said,
(57:39):
I don't necessarily think everything he thought of was absolutely brilliant.
I don't go quite that far. So uh. I hope
you guys enjoyed this classic episode. If you have any
suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, send me a
message on social media. You can find me on Facebook
or on Twitter with the handled text stuff. HS with
(58:00):
you and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios.
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heart Radio and I love all things tech and
um looking at the calendar, it looks like it's a Friday.
That means it's time for another classic episode of tech Stuff.
(00:27):
This episode we're about to listen to originally published back
in February two thirteen, and it's all about Nicola Tesla.
And I'm sure you guys are at least familiar with
the name. Tesla has been the featured player in many
an Internet meme over the past several years, and there
are a lot of stories about him. Some of them
(00:47):
are true, and some of them are probably exaggerated, and
some of them might just be completely off basse. So
I wanted to develop a full episode about Tesla and
talk about him his good points, is bad points, everything
in between, and that's what we're going to listen to.
So let's sit back and hear this classic episode of
tech Stuff. We are focusing finally, after many, many, many
(01:11):
people have asked us to do a full episode about
Nicola Tesla. The Internet legend the the man placed on
a virtual pedestal on the Internet that is gleaming and
beauteous and will zap you if you ever dare say
anything against him. He is, he's staring at us from
(01:32):
the walls of the podcast room right now. Yes, he is. Now.
The question of whether or not he'll be staring at
us in our news studio it remains to be answered. Uh,
we'll probably end up propping him up on a mic
stand or something, so he's still judging us constantly. But yeah,
we want to talk about Tesla, kind of talk about
his his contributions to technology and also maybe take a
(01:55):
critical look at some of the some of the claims
about slaw and some of the misconceptions people have about
his contributions. Yeah, he's he's a mythological figure, really a
mythological nerd figure, which is which is fabulous. I mean,
it's really terrific, and it's it's it's understandable why because
he he by the end of his life, was so downtrodden.
(02:16):
And there's nothing that people and geeks especially love more
than than an anti hero. Yeah. Here, here's a guy
who has been beaten down. He's he's Uh, seen his
fortunes dwindle away. He's he's made some bad choices. Uh.
He has all the earmarks of a classic geek. Geeks
(02:36):
love this underdog kind of story. And when you get
into things like sort of the the demonification of other people,
Edison in particular, Yeah, but even people like JP Morgan
and Lustinghouse, then it seems like the whole world had
turned against him. And and depending on how you look
at his story, it can definitely come across that way.
(02:57):
But that's doing a little bit of a disservice to
the entire tale. And Uh, the reason why I'm talking
about in this way is because there is what we
thought some people referred to as the cult of Tesla, right,
this idea of elevating him beyond what his contributions were. Uh,
there was a cartoon that I think a lot of
(03:17):
you guys out there saw because he posted about it
on our Facebook page that the Oatmeal did all about
Tesla and his contributions and his rivalry with Edison and
kind of comparing him favorably against Edison in every single
category and saying that there should be a Tesla museum.
And so we wanted to talk about what Tesla actually
(03:38):
did and what he did not do, and uh, and
whether or not he deserves all those acohomis yeah. Yeah,
And and and just just before anyone who is a rabbit
fan of the oat mal gets honest, because I don't
I do not want to incite your anger. Uh, it's
we realize that it's a comic and that that although uh,
(03:58):
many of the statements are factual, the writer whose name
I'm completely forgetting right now has come out and said that, hey,
this is a comic. I'm I'm a comic artist. And
some of this was hyper Bowl so perfectly. No, I
like its hyper Bowl. It's way better than that Super One.
I like the hyper Bowl a lot more. I am
never gonna let you live that down. And we are
(04:20):
not real recording it. Let's move on. So yeah. Tesla
born on July tenth, eighteen fifty six, in what is
now Croatia, now eighteen fifty six by the Gregorian calendar.
If you have looked up at Tesla's birth and you
saw that it was actually in June June, that's because
at the time they were keeping time with the Julian calendar.
(04:42):
And it's only when you account for that when you
match those up that you realize that. Okay, well, if
you're using a real calendar like I do, the one
that's on my smartphone, and that's the only way I
know what day it is. It was July t So
eighteen fifty six July t and born in in Uh
part of Austria, Hungary which is now Croatia UM And
(05:04):
as a boy, he went to what we would think
of in the United States is elementary school or primary
school and studied German arithmetic and religion because his dad
was a pastor and his mom's father was a pastor,
both both in the Orthodox Church. Actually, so yeah, so
he definitely had a religious upbringing and his father really
(05:25):
wanted him to be a priest by the way, Yes,
he did a lot. In fact, he was not so
thrilled about Tesla going into engineering. UM. When he was
a young boy, Tesla's Tesla's older brother named Dane, died
in a tragic accident. He actually fell off a horse
and died. There were some stories that Tesla or Nicola
Tesla was playing around and spooked the horse that caused Yes,
(05:52):
so actually I've heard I'm sorry, I meant to I
meant to insert this earlier. But the very first terrific
tall tale that I heard about Tesla was that he
was born on a dark and storm and I to
lightning right right, He was born on the stroke of
midnight as lightning crashed in the sky, and that one
person said he would be a boy of storms, and
his mother said, no, he shall be a man of
the light. I might be inserting some of my hyper
(06:14):
bowl in there. Goodness, my gracious. So yeah, And as
a child they moved around quite a bit as his
father was finding a church to be pastor in. And
in eighteen seventy, so I remember he's born in eighteen
fifty six. By eighteen seventy he moves in with his
aunt and starts to attend a school that we're a
(06:34):
teacher named Martin skul Chick, sorry Skolich Sokolich. Uh So,
Martin Sokolich is teaching there, and he's teaching math and physics,
and Tesla finds both the professor and the subject matter fascinating,
and he becomes really focused on math and physics, and
(06:54):
in fact he's so focused he graduates a year early.
So he was certainly a man of genius. He possessed
a genius and an affinity for physics, for math, for
engineering that far outstripped most of his contemporaries. Oh yeah, definitely.
But then again, this is also the era where we
start seeing these technologies form and uh, and so it
(07:18):
was an exciting time if you were interested in physics,
because this is when we're making lots of big discoveries,
things that some people say are low hanging fruit, you know,
in retrospect, the idea that there were all these discoveries
to make. But it's hard to see how we're going
to advance from this point forward because all the quote
(07:39):
unquote easy things have been discovered. Not that any of
these things were easy, it's just that now you are
have to become increasingly specialized in whatever scientific fields you're
in to clearly understand it. Sure, but while doing this,
researcher kind of blew my mind. I actually don't have
a strong history in in electronic background, and and it
blew my mind that it wasn't until eighteen seventy three
(08:00):
that that James Clerk Maxwell proved that light is is
electromagnetic energy. Yeah, yes, this is He's he's growing up
at a time when uh, these discoveries are being made,
and that would impact his own work and in fact
drive him to achieve great things. Also, eighteen seventy three,
that was the year he contracted cholera. Yeah, and it
(08:23):
was due to the cholera that he kind of shaped
the rest of his life. Yeah. Well, yeah, quite a
few things. Because if you if you've heard about Tesla,
you know that he uh, he reportedly had a bit
of obsessive compulsive disorder, that he was a germophobe, that
he was a clean He was obsessed with being clean
and having cleaned things around him. He reported in his
(08:44):
own biography that he had a severe aversion to touching
other people's hair. That he had to do things if
if they require repetition, in the repetition of threes, and
if he did not, then he had to stop and restart. Yeah,
so he may have developed some of the peculiarities. At
this time. He was in bed for about nine months,
nearly died a few times. So I would imagine that
(09:07):
was definitely something that would shape you, whether or not that.
I'm sure there were other issues that are beyond just
getting sick. There were probably some things that were psychologically
part of his being from the point where he was born.
But we don't know to what extent obviously, and um
and you know what's odd to me, I might as
well talk about this for right now. So neat freak,
(09:31):
if you want to put it that way. Germophobe doesn't
like touching people. Loved pigeons, loved them rats with wings,
that's what they are. Well, that that was, that was
also towards the end of his life that he became
obsessed with him became incredibly obsessed with pigeons. Yeah, it
just makes me think of that great scene in the
(09:51):
documentary The Producers, Boydes Filthy Rotten Boydes. I appreciate that
that your your Yiddish accent there is is better than mine.
That's excellent. I should also point out that that that's
the nineteen sixty eight version of the documentary The Producers,
not the musical version starring Nathan Lane. Matthew Broderick actually
(10:13):
has zero mostel Gene Wilder. I'm getting off track anyway.
Um so yeah, so he's he's definitely got some interesting personality.
Quirks eighteen seventy four. He starts to move around a
little bit, mostly hiding out from the army because in
that part of the world, in Austro Austrio, Austro Hungary. Look,
(10:35):
I can't say that. Uh yes we do, thank thank goodness.
We don't speak into a microphone for a living right. Uh.
But back in that time, in that part of the world,
army service was required of all young men. There was
three years mandatory service. And Tesla was not too keen
on doing that. So he kind of, um, he was dodging,
(10:59):
that's the best way of putting it. Uh. The next year,
eight five, he starts to attend the Austrian Polytechnic School
and he starts off really strong. He's doing really well
in his classes. He understands the concepts, and unlike some
other some other visionaries like say Stephen Hawking, he was
very good in school. Yep, yep. Also, you know, not
not like Einstein or some of the other famous folks
(11:22):
who seemed to have trouble in class. Now that that
was true for about a year, and then about that
second year, things began to take a little bit of
a dip because he began to point out shortcomings or
what he thought of as shortcomings in his professor's understanding
of things like electrical engineering and saying things like, you know,
(11:43):
you could build a device that does the same thing
without this one component that you are claiming is absolutely
necessary for it to work. That furthermore puts off gigantic
electrical shocks that are actually pretty dangerous, like you could
do it this way. And then, uh, if you mouth
off your professors often enough, you might find yourself in
some academic trouble. And that's kind of what Tesla did.
(12:07):
He he began to get disillusioned about pursuing studies in
an academic setting, and after about a little over three years,
he actually dropped out of the polytechnic school. So he
moved to Slovenia in eight to work as a draftsman
for an engineering firm, but by eighteen seventy nine, the
(12:28):
next year, some some police officials show up and asked
to see his residents papers, which he did not have,
so then he was escorted back to his family's home
because he didn't have a residence permit for Slovenia, And
that same year his father passes away, uh and Tesla
(12:51):
starts to a new career as a teacher in the
same school that he attended as a boy, but realizes
very quickly, that's not not for him. Yeah, he doesn't
want to do that. Um So Then the next year,
eighteen eighty, he moved to Prague. He tries to attend
Carl Ferdinand University, but he's unable to understand Greek or check,
(13:12):
both of which were prerequisites to attend as a student,
so instead he audits classes. Uh. And he begins to
work for the Budapest Telephone Exchange and also the Central
Telegraph Office. Eighteen eighty by the way, it was the
year that that Thomas Edison unveiled his electric incandescent lamp
to the public for the first time. Yep, so that's
a good thing to to keep in mind. There are
(13:34):
some big things happening at the same time that Tesla's
kind of you know, he hasn't really made a name
for himself yet. He's been a very enthusiastic student at
times of his life, and he is certainly interested in
electronics or really we should say electricity electronics too early,
but electricity and its applications. Um So, he does that
(13:58):
for a couple of years. In eighteen eighty too, he
joins the Continental Edison Company and begins to work on
things like dynamos, which are well, you've heard us talk
about dynamos and our episodes about electromagnets and motors and
uh induction in the reverse of that, so we I
won't go into it. But anyway, he starts to work
(14:20):
on that. Now this means that he becomes an employee,
although you know, indirectly and way down the line of Edison.
So yeah, he's sitting there working for the company of
the man who would one day become his greatest rival.
According to me, they have dragon ball style fights in
(14:43):
the sky. Yeah, they also would occasionally catch Pokemon, but
it was only the one that shoots the electricity. I
don't I don't know which one. Oh, come on, it's Pikachu.
I was just I was trying to bait Lauren to
see if I could get it. I actually know that
you win this time vocal bomb. So at this time
(15:06):
he also gets the idea for the A C induction motor,
although Asterisk not necessarily the first person to think about that.
Supposedly in a vision, well supposedly he had these visions.
Supposedly he was was very light and audio sensitive, and occasionally,
upon looking at one object or having a certain idea,
would would get an extremely strong visual perception of something
(15:30):
that he had already seen, or or of nothing, nothing
imaginary unless it was a new invention. But yeah, occasionally
he would get these flashes that that kind of disturbed
him a lot, according to his autobiography. Yeah, so essentially
what would happen is he would be walking through a
park and look at a beautiful scene, and then suddenly
an idea would form, fully formed in his head, like
(15:53):
not not something he had been puzzling about necessarily, It
might just be hey, boom, here are all the pieces
and the puzzle is completely it together. You know, we
opened up the box and the puzzles there, as opposed
to you've been trying to fix this problem for years,
and oh here's the inspiration. And so yeah. Supposedly he
was walking through the city park in Budapest with a
friend and saw a beautiful sunset and quoted some poetry
(16:14):
and then had an idea for for the induction motor. Yeah,
and just drew it in the sand and then kept walking. Yeah.
Whether or not that's true, it's hard to say. Because Tesla,
as it turns out, was something of a showman, a
little bit of an unreliable narrator. I would say unreliable
narrator is a very kind way of putting it. The
same sort of thing is true of all the big
names at this time, because they were the rock stars
(16:38):
of that of that era. So Edison, same sort of thing.
Edison was a master at at pr you know, beyond
beyond being the head of a very successful research and
development firm. He was very good at presenting his ideas
to a public and explaining why they were the best ideas,
even if they weren't the best ideas. Tesla was. He
(17:00):
was no slouch in that department either. There are a
lot of people who will paint Tesla as being the
the dedicated genius who is working for the betterment of
all mankind but doesn't ever look to get gain glory
in the process. That's not entirely accurate. Now, that's that's
not If you've ever seen any of the photographs that
that he took around his equipment, I would say that
(17:20):
those are not the mark of someone who is not
a showman. I saw this one photograph. He looked just
like David Bowie. Um might be mixing that up with
a documentary though, So then the the in in uh
in A ten two. This whole time where he's making
he's working for Edison. He's got this idea for the
A C induction motor. He also is reportedly not paid
(17:41):
some money for the work he's doing for Edison Company,
at least not not all of it. Like there's money
due to him that's not being paid. And this this
is partly what lays the groundwork for this whole idea
of the heated rivalry between Edison and Tesla. A lot
of it is money that's withheld from Tesla that was
promised to him. I mean, and yeah, and this this
(18:03):
is when he was very he was what twenty six
at the time, and in Paris, and so he was
he was really distantly connected from to Edison at the time.
But apparently grudge started, right you use this, If you
use this and just say like this is indicative of
how Edison treats people, it would apparently become company policy
not to pay people for their work. That's what that's
(18:23):
what suggested of this. It also becomes you know, a
common thread in Tesla's life of getting getting cheated out
of things that were owed him, which makes you wonder
if it happens so frequently. Why is that? Is it
all due to Was it just that he only worked
with corrupt individuals and companies, or was it that there
(18:44):
was something else going on here? Besides that part of
the story, I have no doubt that Tesla was really
cheated out of many of the things he deserved. I'm
not sure that he was cheated out of everything that
is attributed as beingthing he deserved. Um, but then we'll
get into that again. Yeo, he makes the big move
(19:05):
from Europe to America. He he had basically no money
at the time. From what I understand, well, he definitely
had no money by the time he got there. Um. Yeah,
it took a little longer for him to get there
than he had anticipated. According to one timeline I read
the ship he was on. This is just Tesla's luck, right,
The ship he was on had a mutiny aboard the ship.
(19:26):
Oh my goodness. I did not read about this, and
supposedly Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard, probably for being
a witch. That that last part is just me guessing.
I didn't have any reason. I didn't have. There was
no reason given as to why Tesla would have been
thrown overboard, so I'm just inventing one. But no, apparently
the ship he was on had a mutiny aboard it.
(19:49):
I ended up getting to New York way later than
when he expected, and, according to some reports, had four
cents in his pocket. Now, also, depending upon whom you asked,
he either immediately went to work for Edison, as in
got off the boat, filed and went into the office,
or he started the next day. That seems to be
(20:11):
the two stories. Either way, I think that's pretty remarkable.
Um and uh. And he works for Edison and he's
helping them with their systems. Uh. Supposedly again, he started
to suggest to Edison that they switched to an alternating
current model as opposed to direct current, and Ederson was
very much against that idea. So then in eighteen five,
(20:32):
Tesla forms the Tesla Electric Light Company. An investor group
actually asks him if he will work on an ARC
lighting system, and he agrees to do it, and then
is later forced out of his own company when nothing
to show for it. Was Was that all? I mean?
Because he started the company because he had been he
had quit Edison's correct. Yeah, Essentially, that same year, he
resigns from the Edison Company, and some say the reason
(20:56):
he did that was because, again, here's another story of
Tesla getting cheated. That Edison had promised Tesla a princely
some fifty thou dollars for a particular project, and when
Tesla completed the project again supposedly with flying colors and
beyond all expectations, Edison then said, ha, ha, you don't
understand American humor. I'm not giving you any money, and
(21:19):
then Tesla resigns, even though Edison supposedly at that point
offered an enormous raise to keep Tesla there. This makes
Edison look like the biggest jerk on the face of
the planet. I mean, I can't imagine my boss coming
up to me and saying, hey, you know when I
told you were going to make fifty dollars if you
did this thing, and then you did that thing, you
did it really well. Well, you're not gonna get any money.
Oh you want to leave, I'll raise your salary. That
(21:41):
just like what kind of crazy person does that? Yeah,
it doesn't it doesn't sound I mean, you know it
could I start. I never met Edison, didn't did you
mean him? You're very old? Uh? Tesla then claimed that
he spent the next year making money by digging ditches.
So again, a great, great story if you're looking at
his life in the terms of like a tragic tale.
(22:03):
You know, here you have this genius of super genius,
the man who will one day light up the United
States with his alternating current power grid, making money scraping
by by digging ditches. Yeah. Again, a lot of this
comes from Tesla himself, and whether or not all of
it is true, it remains part of myth. You know,
(22:27):
I don't doubt that. I don't doubt there were some
bad business dealings. I'm sure that was the case, and
I don't doubt he had some hard times and maybe
he did make his living for a full year being
you know, digging ditches and that was the only thing
he could do. But it sounds more, it sounds like melodrama.
But sometimes like works like that, sometimes that's the Sometimes
that's the truth. Stranger things. But anyway, h then by
(22:52):
by e eight seven, so you know A six digging ditches,
we don't need to go into as that's it. Well,
I mean, meanwhile, in eighteen eighties, actually it's interesting Westinghouse
Electric had developed a transformer for commercial use. Yeah, so
that's another thing we should mention is that, uh, one
of the reasons Tesla was really pushing for this alternating
current thing with Edison is that back in Europe, that's
(23:14):
what they were using a C was, That's that's the
route they took. They didn't they didn't go down the
direct current route at all. They went with alternating current.
And that becomes important when we start talking about the
myths of of Tesla as well. In a little bit, right, Yeah,
the the U s so embroiled in d C current.
The name the Brooklyn Dodgers actually comes because they were
using direct current power lines that were kind of haphazardly
(23:36):
strung across the city and and Brooklyn Nights had to
dodge these lines so often that their team was thus
named the Brooklyn Dodging, whereas the New York Giants were
called that because they came from a race of mythical
creatures that lived up Giant. Okay, now, I just wanted
to show off that I knew something too, but I
don't really know anything. After the ditch digging has finished,
(23:58):
Tesla begins to work within Besters again, and he establishes
a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street in New York
and then a few blocks away from Medicine's. Yeah. Yeah,
And the next year he starts to talk about a
C motors and transformers for the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers now known as the Triple E, or as I
always prefer to call them. I that once for all
(24:22):
you engineers out there. Uh. And he also agrees to
start selling patents to George Westinghouse. So even though you know, Lauren,
like Lauren was saying, in eighteen eighty six, you already
had Westinghouse working on transformers and alternating current. That was
before Tesla had even started to work for Westinghouse. Uh.
That that's something to keep in mind as well. So
eighteen eighty nine he establishes a new lab on Grand
(24:45):
Street in New York. There's a lot of labs. He
had a lot of labs spread out throughout New York.
He also lived in hotels mostly, did he even then? Yeah,
mostly towards the end of his life, but yeah, early
on he was living in a lot of hotels as well.
I think he also joked about about how is his hours,
especially when he was working in Edison's lab. We're from
like ten in the morning until five thirty am the
next day, and and so that a lot of his
(25:07):
sleeping A wasn't really sleeping, and B was probably under
his desk, right right, I can identify with that. Uh
In he begins to experiment with wireless power in florest
and neon lighting, as well as X rays, although at
the time he isn't sure exactly what they are. He
was shadow pictures. Yeah, this was before Wilhelm Laurentin had
(25:29):
really established what X rays were and what they could do.
So Tesla was one of the people who was observing
the phenomena of X rays early early on. Yeah, there
are a few other people at the time who were
working with them, but yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, that'll
go into the myths as well. But then he becomes
an Americans and also I believe patented the Tesla coil.
(25:51):
There you go an interesting thing in his mother passes away.
That same year, he becomes the vice president of the
AI Triple E, which is even it's a I E.
I guess that is how I would say that. And
he becomes famous worldwide for his lectures on alternating current
So at this point he's on the lecture circuit. I
(26:13):
mean he's he's going from city to city. You know,
he stopped in places like Chicago and New York, London, Paris.
So he becomes again, like I said, like a rock star.
He's known for these lectures, and it sounds weird for
us to say that that he's like a rock star.
But this was an era where these these thinkers were
(26:35):
really pushing the development of technology to a point where
everyone was sure that, you know, okay, we're five years
away from the incredible future. And in many ways they
were right. It's just that their view of what the
incredible future would be ended up being a lot different
from what it really was. But it was an era
of rapid development, so these guys were considered to be
(26:57):
the people pushing that rapid development is really exciting. Yeah,
and think things like when the Chicago World Fair was
that was that? Want to say? Yeah? That was that
was famous because there was a whole Edison Tesla story
there about who is going to provide power? Right, and
it was really Edison versus H. Westinghouse. Yeah, but I
(27:17):
mean Westinghouse back by Tesla. Sure, sure, yeah. West Westinghouse
was using technology that Tesla had patented and and systems
that Tesla worked on, but it was not truly Tesla
versus Edison. That's that's kind of how I think. Even
in a previous episode of Tech Stuff, we sort of
talked about it in those terms, because that's sort of
the romantic way of doing it, right as the idea
(27:39):
of these two geniuses facing off against each other and
who will win and alternating current one out in that one.
So it was really Westinghouse that one, all right, right, Yeah,
The story goes that there was a there was a
business deal the government was looking to contract either either
Westinghouses Company or Edison's company to power the World's Fair
and and Westinghouse one out because it was cheaper. Yep. Yeah,
(28:01):
and then and when and yeah, and when they threw
when President grawf for Cleveland, I think it was through
that switch and which like a hundred hundred thousand bulbs
lit up all at the same time, and people were like, oh, oh,
this is a thing trivia for you folks out there
who don't know your history. Grover Cleveland was the only
president to serve two non consecutive terms as president. He
(28:21):
was president, then he wasn't president. Then he was president again. Yes,
he also liked the song Funky called Medina eighteen five.
So then one of the buildings that heused, one of
Tesla's labs, caught fire in eight and his lab burned down,
and the fire destroyed what was estimated to be about
(28:42):
fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment. And and he had
no insurance. Yeah, and fifty that's it's a lot of
money today. It was a huge amount of money in
um And and at the time he was experimenting with
with radios. Yeah, and and supposedly, according to him, was
(29:03):
ready to transmit a signal fifty miles out to West Point,
New York. Yeah. So that this is during if you've
listened to the Old Tech Stuff episode about who invented
the radio, there's a lot about Tesla and Marconi. And
there there's a whole story there too about how Marconi,
like Tesla, got a patent for for the radio. Then
Marconi applied for a patent, Then the patent office overturned
(29:24):
Tesla's patent, gave Marconi the patent, and then later on
overturned it again and gave it back to Tesla. And
later on is in like the nineteen seventies after Tesla
was dead long after. Um. Yeah, there's a whole story,
and and there's there's arguments there too, because again, the
invention of any sort of technology requires that you talk
about so many different people who who contributed to the
(29:47):
discoveries that led to the possibility of something existing that
it's impossible to actually point at one person and say
this person invented radio. But both Marconi and Tesla were
working on it, and uh, and there's argument over who
should have real credit there. Uh, but go listen to
our episode about who invented the radio if you want
(30:08):
to hear more about that, because I think that that
that that argument is so long and detailed that it's
hard to sum up in an episode just about Tesla. Yeah. Yeah,
though it's yeah, certainly another another one of those points
that people like to bring up in terms of he
was so downtrodden. Yeah, it's a good another point. Yeah,
and and that's a more firm one that Yeah, he
absolutely lost that fight and lost probably a lot of
(30:28):
money in fame. I think. Uh, Marconi won the New
Belt Prize all kinds of fun. Was not happy about that. Excited. Yeah,
he demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model boat, so essentially a
an RC boat at the Electrical Exposition in Madison Square
Garden where years later, Highlanders would fight it out to
(30:49):
determine who would win the prize, and Queen would sing
Princess of the Universe in the background. I didn't I
didn't really like that documentary. WHOA, Okay, you know what,
We're gonna take a little break here. Let's let's take
a take a moment to thank our sponsor, and now
(31:11):
back to our show. Alright, getting back into Tesla's life.
In moves to Colorado to perform some experiments with wireless power.
And now this is where one of the big myths
about Tesla comes up. This idea that he wanted to
build this huge tower that would tap into the this
this resonant frequency that exists around the world, and that
(31:34):
you could transmit power wirelessly across miles of space. Um.
He claimed that he had another one of those visions
that let him understand the geoelectrical phenomenon he called terrest
real stationary waves, an idea about tapping into the Earth
itself as a conductor. Okay, sounds interesting, Yeah, and it's
(31:54):
not that it's not that everything was that he said
was crazy or it was just to be able to
actually use this in a way that would allow you
to transmit power reliably safely without losing power over distance
or zapping and killing everybody. Uh is something we haven't
solved yet, And there are a lot of people who
(32:15):
say that all of his work would have proven if
if it's still existed. Get into more about more destruction
of his work and where it all when it went to.
But then if it's still existed, it would prove that
this sort of thing is possible, and it's only the
energy companies that are keeping it down because they stand
to lose so much if this If this information got out,
(32:36):
I'm hesitant to agree to anything like that because it
suggests that no one but Tesla could have ever come
up with this, and therefore the idea is lost forever.
When I would argue, we have people who are far
more informed about electrical engineering than Tesla was, even though
he was a brilliant man, forward thinking, and maybe let's
(32:56):
have you know, perhaps the people these days are not
vision nary the way that he was. But yeah, maybe
maybe that's it. Maybe they just need to take a
walk in the park and look at the sunset, think
about some poetry that would help. I guess, you know, hey,
far be it from me to downplay the importance of
poetry in the world. I certainly think it's important being
English lit major. Uh. In nineteen o one, well, all right,
(33:19):
so so he starts to think really about wireless power
and the phenomena that it would be, Like what what
would go into making this and how it would change
the world. And he really was thinking it was an
interesting idea. So in nineteen o one, with funding from
various sources, including people like JP Morgan, he starts to
build the Warden Cliff Tower. And this is at a
(33:42):
long island sound and uh, this is um this thing
is supposed to be a wireless power transmitting station essentially,
and within nineteen o three starts to test it, even
though the tower itself is not completed at that point.
And this this was this was a tower that that
again reached deep into the ground, took d of tap
into this this terrestrial uh wave stationary way. I actually
(34:05):
have a really great quote from Tesla. If I had
made out excellent in the system that I've invented, it
is necessary for the machine to get a grip on
the earth. Otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has
to have a grip so that the whole of this
globe can quiver. Yeah, if you also remember the story
about Tesla putting an oscillating motor onto a building and
then nearly shaking it to its foundation, that kind of
(34:27):
dates from the same sort of concept. And the Earth
is still here, by the way, So that's kind of
a spoiler alert to how this story plays out. MythBusters
actually actually cracked that one in the episode back in
A two six, I think they showed. They showed that
it could, like a small repetitive motion could cause a
bridge to start to shake a little enough to notice
(34:49):
a couple couple hundred feet away, right, but not necessarily
enough to to make it crumble into pieces. Um, but anyway,
we all earthquake. Warncliffe Tower becomes an important part of
Tesla's life. He was one of these things that he
really thought that that the terrestrial stationary waves was the
uh discovery of his life. That was the most important
(35:10):
out of everything that he had worked with with alternating current,
with transformers, with all these other technologies, those paled in
comparison to this one and so Warncliffe Tower was very
important to him. Unfortunately, Uh, there weren't. He didn't have
a whole lot to show for it. And also he
was running up the electric bill. Yeah yeah, and Morgan
was getting pretty sick of it. Meanwhile across the ocean, Um,
(35:33):
Marconi had signaled the letter as across the Atlantic. Then
that didn't make Tesla happy. And and I mean and
and you know Marconi was such a such a newspaper darling.
Yeah he was again and yet another person who was
very good at catering to the media to get a
message across. So uh, you know, not unusual at this time.
(35:53):
So in nineteen o four, the Colorado Lab is torn
down due to excessive use of electricity and the building
materials are sold for scrap to pay for the cost couch.
And in nineteen o six, like you said, JP, Morgan,
who had been an investor withdraws and Tesla has to
end up laying off a lot of employees over at
Warncliff Tower. Uh, We're gonna skip ahead a few years
because this is essentially where he's working on this Warncliff
(36:16):
Tower experiment, which ends up draining a lot of his
energy literally and resources, and without a lot to show
for it. Um the next day, I have his nineteen
eleven when he started working with steam turbines and electricity production. Uh.
He was. This was a big development. It was very
important in the whole uh part of generating electricity for
(36:39):
a growing need in America because at this point you're
starting to see communities get wired for electricity and beyond
just the narrow band in the Northeast that had it,
So it was important to find different ways of generating it,
beyond firing from coal plants. She wanted to find something
that was sustainable even at that time, and in ninetelve
(37:01):
Tesla suffered another setback, although not one nearly as large
as Lady Astor. John Jacob Astor was one of Tesla's
most wealthy and enthusiastic investors, stopped investing in Tesla's work
because he stopped breathing. He was at board a little
boat called the Titanic. Oh, I've heard of that one.
(37:22):
I think I saw a documentary about it one. Yeah,
his heart will go on, but his investment payments stopped. Yeah.
He Um. He went down with the boat. He did
get Lady Astor on a lifeboat, so he made sure
his wife was safe, and he stayed behind to wait
for his turn to get on a lifeboat, but tragically
(37:42):
was not able to do that and he did die,
and with that Tesla lost one of his most significant
sources of investment money. So it was another financial setback
for Tesla. Um. I don't think he could blame that
one on Edison. No, No, maybe Mark Coni, because we're
talking about the use of radios on the Titanic, But
(38:05):
then that was more of a personnel thing than a
technology thing. A nineteen fifteen, Tesla and Edison are both
listed as being uh considered for a Nobel Prize and
that they would be co recipients of the Nobel Prize.
When the Nobel Prizes are announced, the prize goes to
(38:28):
two people. That would be William Henry Bragg and his son.
Now the Nobel Committee admitted that Edison and Tesla were
under consideration for the Nobel Prize, but they did not
say any more than that. What has come up since
then as the rumor, which is gospel in some corners
of the Internet, that the reason why Tesla and Edison
(38:49):
did not receive the Nobel Prize together is because they'd
rather be caught dead than to share a prize with
the other man. That's a that's a good myth that
the rivalry was so great that they would both refuse
a Nobel prize rather than have to share it with
the other That's pretty amazing. And it may be true
that when I say rumor, I don't mean that it's
(39:11):
fake or false or a lie. I just mean that
we don't know for sure. Other people probably do, but
I don't. Nineteen sixteen, Tesla declares bankruptcy. He did not
pasco or collect two hundred dollars y. It was just
not a good year for him. Uh. In nineteen seventeen,
he ended up proposing what would depending upon whom you ask,
(39:34):
Okay people, some people will say in nineteen seventeen, Tesla
predicted radar radar. Yeah, that he was the guy who
came up with radar, but the government turned him down.
The Navy board said that they would not invest in
such a technology. By the way, the person from private
industry who was on the Navy board, well he was
(39:58):
from from what I understand about the story, Tesla had
proposed this, this way of finding ships underwater. Yeah, that's
the problem, right, So the more you look into it,
the more you realize it's not radar he's talking about,
not in the sense that we use it today. Well,
he he was talking about radar, but it was not
really the best system for finding ships underwater. And so
therefore when the government from the Navy didn't didn't really
(40:20):
give him the go ahead, it wasn't because radar is
dumb or the Tesla's demo was because it wasn't the
right technology for the application. What Tesla did not take
into account was he he wanted to use tightly controlled
electric beams of energy to zap them into the water
to reflect off the surfaces of submarines, detect that those
(40:40):
reflections and the information would be displayed back in a
fluorescent display, which sounds great, except for the problem is
that these beams would attenuate underwater, and so you would
not get accurate representations of what you were looking at.
You wouldn't you couldn't be sure that you know, you
could be pointing it directly at a submarine and miss
it because of this attenuate Asian problem. And so it
(41:02):
just isn't practical for the use that Tesla was suggesting it.
And uh, and so that shows that Tesla had a
misunderstanding either of the physics of water or the technology itself.
Either way, it wasn't truly radar. It's not exactly the
same thing that radar is, and it was not being
used in the way that radar ultimately would be used.
(41:22):
So while some people claim that he invented radar as
being a little generous, nineteen, we just busted a myth,
and I hadn't I apologize because I haven't gotten to
that section yet. But that's okay, that's one less for
us to worry about when we get there in nineteen
thirty four. Actually, if if we can, if we can
step back, just to short, let's please in In nineteen nineteen,
(41:43):
he published an autobiography called My Inventions Uh that was
published in six parts in the Electrical Experiment or magazine.
And this is important because it is one of the
main sources of information about Tesla's life, which is why
you have to take everything with a grain of salt,
because he was a bit of a self promoter. So
(42:04):
there's not I'm not saying that Tesla was lying in
his autobiography. What I'm saying is you just have to
take into consideration the possibility that he may have exaggerated
some facts, not that he was purposefully trying to mislead people,
but that when you become a self promoter, that that
can happen. Even if you don't mean it to happen,
it can happen, Which is kind of crazy that you're
(42:24):
just you know, in your mind, you're like, this is
totally how it happened, and then anyone else is like, dude,
I was there, and that totally is not how it happened. Um, Jonathan,
You've never beheaded anyone in the cold blood of a fight.
On the cold blood of a fight, and The New
York Times published as an article about Tesla's death, ray,
(42:46):
Yeah this was. Tesla said that he had come up
with an idea that would allow governments to build a
device capable of emitting a beam of energy that could
bring down a fleet of him thousand enemy planes at
a distance of two hundred fifty miles, and that his
idea was that by outfitting pretty much everybody with one
(43:08):
of these, you would have that mutually assured destruction that
makes peace possible. He actually called it a piece beam
from what I understand, Yeah, I said that would really
end war because how could you have war If you
can't fly over another country without worrying about your entire
fleet being destroyed, then obviously war is off the table.
That was kind of his his somewhat naive plan. And
(43:31):
whether or not this thing would ever work is another
interesting question, or if there ever was anything beyond just
this idea that hey, maybe one day I could build
something that does this. Uh, that's another you know, that's
another one of those things. It's a myth, right. Uh.
He decided to go feed the pigeons in the park,
which was a bad decision to make that particular day,
(43:55):
as as he was crossing the street, he was struck
by a cab. Then to in upon which report you read,
he flew thirty five to forty ft in the air
and landed and was perfectly unharmed except a little bruised
or he had broken several ribs. It all depends on
which person you're asking. Tesla said, damn, I'm all right.
Other people like dude, he was messed up. He was
(44:18):
crying about his pigeons. It was ugly. He he had
he had at this point become a little bit destitute.
Um he due to all of these various financial troubles
over the years, and and basic misspending. I think head, yeah, didn't. Yeah,
there were a lot of hotels that were suing him
because he had lived inside the hotel for years and
years and owed them thousands of dollars, and then he
(44:40):
would relocate to a different hotel, and you think, like,
why would another hotel even trust him? He was Tesla Again,
this is a rock star guy, and it elevates the
status of your hotel that he's staying there. But you
can only have Lindsay Lohan in your hotel for so
long before you're like, seriously, could you please stop making
holes in the growing TVs out the window? Guys, I
(45:03):
am sitting across from the from the person who had
just compared Nicola Tesla to Lindsay Lohan. I think it's
an apt comparison. Look, Lindsay Lohan hasn't reached the age
Tesla was at when he started to really uh contribute
to humanity. So I think we owe her a year
or two. I'm just saying that if anyone actually figures
out Tesla's particle beam and aims it at the HW
office is and just just just just let me know
(45:25):
I'm perfectly willing to give you Jonathan g a syncritis coordinates.
Please keep in mind that stuff you missed in history class,
and stuff mom never told you sit really near me.
So if you love those shows, keep your beam particle
pointed somewhere else. That's not cool. We'll be right back
to talk more about Nicola Tesla, an eccentric inventor and
(45:49):
lover of alternating current in just a moment after this
quick break. January seven three was a bad day for
Tesla because that's the day he passed on. He was
eighty six years old. Uh and two days later, all
(46:10):
of his papers and a state was seized by the government.
Well some some stories say that his nephew showed up
the morning after he passed away, and that his body
had already been removed, and that the nephew noticed that
it seemed like some of his papers were missing. Yeah,
this is where one of those stories pops up. In fact,
now that we've had Tesla shuffle off the mortal and
Tesla coil, thank you, I've been waiting to use that one,
(46:34):
we can talk a little bit about this this idea.
So there are a lot of rumors out there. One
of the big rumors is that the FBI seized all
of Tesla's papers and did so in an effort to
to use them for various nefarious purposes for the United
States government. Now keep in mind this is nte. World
(46:55):
War two is a thing, and so there is a
genuine concerned that information that has scientific significance could fall
into the hands of other nations and give give other
other nations a lot of advantages over the United States.
And so it was very important to guard whatever advantages
(47:16):
you had against that absolutely. And also I mean remember
that that Tesla was a Serbian American um as as such,
the from from from what we can discern, of fact,
it was actually the Department of Justice Alien Property Custodian
Office that temporarily seized his papers, right, so it was
not the FBI. It was a Department of Justice and
the FBI. Still they've got like a like a top
(47:37):
ten myths on on the internet. Number ten. Number ten
is is that we took Tesla's papers like guys, Like guys,
we didn't. We did for real, Zo, we didn't grab
those And actually I looked into it and it wouldn't
be until well, you know, if you read most of
the stories. It's like the FBI took the papers and
they never released them, and we want, we demand that
these papers be released. Guys. It was the Department of
(47:58):
Justice number one and number two in nineteen fifty two
they sent the papers to uh to Kasanovich, his nephew,
and that is that is nine years later. Yeah, alright,
granted nine years. Like we're a talking about time during
not just the World War two with the Red Scared
as well, So I mean not that that justifies suppressing information. Also,
you're talking about the government, So it may very well
(48:19):
be that there wasn't any intentional um slowness on the
part of the government. That's just the way the government works.
But I don't know, I honestly don't know. What I
do know is they did release the estate and the
papers to Yugoslavia, to to his nephew. That they wound
up in a in a museum. So if you wanted,
if you're one of the people demanding that there's a
(48:41):
Tesla museum, good news there is. You just have to
go to Europe to see it. Also, supposedly after World
War two was over, copies of his papers were sent
out to one of the Air Force spaces and Project
Nick was a thing that was heavily funded, and then
the papers disappeared, never to be seen again. Yeah, their
love conspiracy theories here, they're there was one one person
(49:01):
posted on Facebook when I mentioned that we were going
to be covering Tesla today, So are you going to
talk about how they used a lot of his work
in the developments of stuff in Area fifty one? And
the answer to that is no, because there's no real
documentation of that. There's actually quite a bit of information
about what went on at Area fifty one. It's stuff
that was top secret at the time. But um, we'll
have to do an episode all about Area fifty one
(49:22):
sometime in the future, just because it's a fascinating topic.
But it's all about, you know, developing things like stealth
technology and various kinds of test uh prototypes for the
Air Force or for the army. But but nothing like
the Tesla death ray, at least nothing that shows up
in any real record. And I would argue that the
reason why it doesn't show up on a real record
(49:43):
is probably because it didn't exist. Um that my second
choice would be it didn't work, and so there was
no point in more valut. I don't think we would
still be debating whether or not exists if it actually
did exist, because someone would have come forward by now probably,
or it would have zapped somebody. Although there there is
stuff they don't want you to know. Did I did
an episode a couple of years ago on this even
(50:04):
You can go check that out on YouTube. That's it,
oh bolan uh. Then also there here's some other myths
that Tesla invented alternating current. He did not. He did not.
He alternating current was already a thing in Europe by
the time Tesla was born. It wasn't widespread, it wasn't
like there was a huge power grid in Europe, but
(50:25):
there were people working on alternating current and even working
on things like induction motors and transformers at that time.
And so Tesla even studied alternating current when he was
in school. So it's not something that he invented. He did, however,
take the knowledge that was being generated around alternating current
(50:45):
and applied it and furthered it. So it's not it's
not that he just copied someone else's work. He really
did make legitimate contributions, I'm sure, and it was it
was his patents in his his work with Westinghouse that
led to alternating current, the coming the thing that the
US uses and and the thing that is capable of
going across long distances. Both of those are extremely extremely important.
(51:08):
I can't downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but but
you know, he did not invent it. He didn't invent it.
He's not the reason why it's what's being used in Europe. Uh.
So that's one thing we can kind of put to bed.
And in fact, the first work with alternating current dates
back to five, which was, you know, twenty years before
(51:28):
Tesla was born. So unless he also invented time travel,
and don't write me and tell me he did, that's
not that's not the case. Um, like I would believe
anything after watching The Prestige again another documentary, right, Uh.
Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out, was working
(51:48):
on UH distribution grids designs for a C power and
transformers before Tesla had even started to work for the company. Now,
granted again, Tesla's patents and the information that he was
able to provide to Westinghouse ended up making those much
more robust and it made it possible to actually act
on that. But again, it shows that he's not the
(52:09):
only one working on this at the time. Um. He's
also not the guy who invented transformers. Those were first
being used in Budapest in the eighteen seventies. Uh, and
the very first modern transformer was built by William Stanley
in eighty five. He did not invent the fluorescent lamp.
Alexandra Beccarell was the first guy to to observe fluorescence,
(52:32):
and he did so in eighteen fifty seven when Tesla
was one. So again, unless Tesla was also observing fluorescence
at one year old, and maybe he was. I mean
he was born in a storm after all. Thor was
his buddy. Um, you can't say that he invented that.
He did not discover X rays. I've as we covered before. Yeah,
Ivan Poolui, I have no idea how to say his
(52:55):
last name. I know I just butchered it. But but Ivan,
my buddy Ivan. He he had actually observed the phenomena
of X rays before Tesla had. But just like Tesla,
he wasn't really sure what it was he was looking at.
He thought it was interesting, but he wasn't really sure
about you know, what this stuff actually is. It wouldn't
be until Wilhelm Ronin really looked into it and began
(53:17):
to make theories and hypotheses and tests some really clever
things about them. That's that's when we started to know
that what they were. But other other scientists had been
observing it, they just didn't understand it. Again, we talked
about the radar thing, and we talked about FBI. So
those are the big myths. Other myths are you know,
the whole Testla versus Edison thing. Uh, it was really
(53:39):
more Edison companies versus Westinghouse companies and not so much
a personality thing. Well, it does sound like the two
of them clashed. There are a whole bunch of reports
about how I mean, right from the get go they
didn't really like each other, right, um and and it's
easy to see, you know, they were both very strong personalities,
um and very big showman and it didn't it doesn't
(54:02):
sound like either of them really liked not that anyone
likes it, but but to be made a fool of.
And both of them were in the business of, in fact,
trying to make a full of the other person. So yeah,
there was some of that. There was some showmanship, There
was some there's some and and I mean there was
clearly some sort of legitimate beef between us and Tesla,
at least as far as you know, Tesla getting the
credit that he wanted and Tesla, you know, a lot
(54:24):
of his fortunes switched mainly because he made some really
bad business deals. He sold patents off out a pittance
at times, because the company would come to him and say,
you know, there's this massive economic downturn coming. We need
this these patents, but if we paid you what they're worth,
(54:46):
then we're going to go under. And Contessa is like, look,
I'll cut you a deal. Yeah. They were basically kind
of like, can we give you a tenth of the
fee that we're going to promise you and then give
you some stock right before a terrible economic downturn. And
Tesla was like, yes, is good, give me that, and
and and and the famous Westinghouse deal where um uh.
Even even even though a Westinghouse won the so called
(55:08):
War of the Currents, the company was not doing well
and and wound up after they had built the generator
at Niagara, I think started to go under and there
were some issues with mostly it was just again just
just poor decisions on Tesla's part um test the let
him out of the contract just to he said said like, oh, no,
(55:28):
you don't have to pay me the rest. That's fine,
you save your company. Yeah, which is which is great.
I mean, it's lovely, it's a nice it's a terrific
I mean, but you know, it's it's when you when
you end up having no friends other than pigeons and
owing every hotel in New York money. Maybe that's why. Yeah, yeah,
that could that could be one of the factors. Um
he certainly, And I know that people are probably listening
to this episode and thinking that I am. I think
(55:50):
Tesla was a worthless lay about that. Nothing could be
further from the truth. I think he really did make
incredible contributions to to the success of the United States
in general and to several technologies around the world in particular.
But it's also important not to overstate his contributions and
(56:10):
to understand, especially at the expense of other very important
inventors and minds and works, it's a disservice to everyone
else who worked on these same things and helped make
them a possible a reality really in our lives, and
and you know, you've got to also pay attention to
some of the crazier ideas like the death ray, the
death raying, Yeah, or being able to move the entire
(56:33):
earth with putting essentially a wire around it and tapping
into the frequency that it generates, which, hey, maybe that
is possible, it's just not practical, right, Yeah, that's and
I think that that's a problem with a lot of
his latter theories is they were not particularly practical. Yeah, yeah,
so he was also, I mean, there there's stories about
him having a couple of nervous breakdowns at various times
in his life. I think that he was probably not
(56:57):
necessarily mentally well for a deal of his existence. I agree,
I agree. I think he probably had quite a few
uh issues to work through, and that I mean, you know,
I can, considering how well we treat those kind of
people today, it is easy to see how at the
turn of the century he was not particularly given the
chances that he needed. And Ladies and gentlemen, that wraps
(57:18):
up our conversation are our our classic episode of tech
stuff about Nicola Tesla, And believe it or not, I
really admire Tesla a lot. I mean, truly was a
genius a true genius and someone who had been wronged
quite a bit throughout his life. But that being said,
(57:39):
I don't necessarily think everything he thought of was absolutely brilliant.
I don't go quite that far. So uh. I hope
you guys enjoyed this classic episode. If you have any
suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, send me a
message on social media. You can find me on Facebook
or on Twitter with the handled text stuff. HS with
(58:00):
you and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
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