Tesla: The Man, The Myths, The Truth

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

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Get in touch with technologies with tex Stuff from how
Stuff what Com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to an
electrifying episode tech Stuff. You're sure to get a charge
out of that's right. I'm Jonathan Strickland, one of the
two hosts, and I'm Lauren Vocal on the other house,
and I and Jonathan I think that we should really

(00:23):
ground ourselves here. Oh that's very good. I'm glad you're
staying up with current events. Do you really want to
go down this road line at all? Grab my decision.
You don't like puns? No, I don't. Chris Palette instilled
in me a love of puns that runs deep. Anyway,
you may have already guessed we're gonna be talking a
little bit about electricity in this episode, and that's because

(00:44):
we are focusing finally, after many, many, many people have
asked us to do a full episode about Nicola Tesla,
the Internet legend, the man placed on a virtual had
us still on the Internet, that is gleaming and beauteous
and will zap you if you ever dare say anything

(01:05):
against him. He's he's staring at us from the walls
of the podcast room right now. Yes he is. Yes,
judging us. Now, the question of whether or not he'll
be staring at us in our news studio 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

(01:29):
also maybe take a critical look at some of the
some of the claims about Tesla and some of the
misconceptions people have about his contributions. 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,

(01:51):
was so downtrodden. 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 love this underdog kind of story. And

(02:14):
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 Mustinghouse. 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. But that's doing a little

(02:35):
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 you guys out
there saw because he posted about it on our Facebook

(02:56):
page that The Oatmeal did all about Tesla and his
his um 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 did
and what he did not do, and uh, and whether

(03:18):
or not he deserves all those acoms. Yeah. Yeah, And
and just just before anyone who is a rabid fan
of the oat Mail 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
many of the statements are factual. The writer whose name
I'm completely forgetting right now, has come out and said that, hey,

(03:40):
this is a comic. I'm I'm a comic artist. And
some of this was hyper Bowl, sob no, I like
it's 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
not re recording it. Let's move on. So yeah, Tesla
born on July tenth, eighteen fifty six, in what is

(04:04):
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.
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

(04:27):
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
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

(04:52):
was a pastor and his mom's father was a pastor,
both both in the Orthodox Church. Actually, so yeah, so
he he definitely had a religious upbring uh and his
father really 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

(05:15):
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,
so actually I've heard I'm sorry, I meant to I
meant to insert this earlier. But but the very first
terrific tall tale that I heard about Tesla was that
he was born on a dark and stormy night to lightning.

(05:37):
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 bowl in there, goodness,
my gracious. So yeah, and as a child they moved
around quite a bit as his father was finding a

(05:58):
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 teacher named Martin skul Chick,
sorry Skolich, Sokolich. Uh So, Martin so Coolich is teaching there,
and he's teaching math and physics, and Tesla finds both

(06:22):
the professor and the subject matter fascinating, and he becomes
really focused on math and physics. And 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

(06:43):
outstripped most of his contemporaries. Yeah, definitely, But then again,
this is also the era where we start seeing these
technologies form and uh and so it was an exciting
time if you were interested in physics, because this is
when we're making lots of big discovered reas, things that
some people say are um low hanging fruit, you know,

(07:06):
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
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 field you're
in to clearly understand it. But while doing this, researcher

(07:28):
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 that
that James Clerk Maxwell proved that light 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

(07:49):
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 was due to the cholera that he kind
of shaped the rest of his life. Yeah, well, yeah,
quite a few things. Yeah, 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

(08:13):
a germophobe, that he was a clean he was obsessed
with being clean and having cleaned things around him. He
reported in his 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 he may have

(08:35):
developed some of these peculiarities. At this time. He was
in bed for about nine months, nearly died a few times.
So I would imagine that 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

(08:56):
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, 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,

(09:19):
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 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

(09:40):
also point out that that that's the nineteen sixty eight
version of the documentary The Producer is not the musical
version starring Nathan Lane. Matthew Broderick actually has zero mostell
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,

(10:02):
mostly hiding out from the army because in that part
of the world, in Austro Austrio, Austro Hungary. Look, 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,

(10:22):
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
a little bit he was dodging, that's the best way
of putting it. The next year he starts to attend
the Austrian Polytechnic School and he starts off really strong.

(10:45):
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 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

(11:07):
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, 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. It furthermore, puts

(11:28):
off gigantic electrical shocks that are actually pretty dangerous, like
you could do it this way and then uh, if
you mouth off to your professors often enough, you might
find yourself in some academic trouble. And that's kind of
what Tesla did. He he began to get disillusioned about
pursuing studies in an academic setting, and after about a

(11:50):
little over three years, he actually dropped out of the
polytechnic school. So he moved to Slovenia in to work
as a draftsman for an engineering firm. But by eighteen
seventy nine, the next year, some some police officials show
up and asked to see his residents papers, which he

(12:12):
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
ah and Tesla starts to a new career as a
teacher in the same school that he attended as a boy,

(12:32):
but realizes very quickly that's not for him. Yeah, he
doesn't want to do that. Um. So then the next year,
eighteen eight, he moved to Prague. He tries to attend
Carl Ferdinand University, but he's unable to understand Greek or check,
both of which were prerequisites to attend as a student,
so instead he audits classes uh, and he begins to

(12:55):
work for the Budapest Telephone Exchange and also the Central
Telegram 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
some big things happening at the same time that Tesla's
kind of uh, you know, he hasn't really made a
name for himself yet. He's been a very uh enthusiastic

(13:19):
student at times of his life, and he is certainly
interested in electronics or really we should say electricity from
electronics electronics too early, but electricity and its applications. Um.
So he does that for a couple of years. In
eighteen eighty two, he joins the Continental Edison Company and

(13:40):
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 on that. Now this means that he
becomes an employee, although you know, indirectly and way down

(14:03):
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 my nemesis, they have
dragon Ball style fights in the sky. Yeah, they also
would occasionally catch Pokemon, but it was only the one

(14:25):
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. Dang, you win this time, vogel Baum.
So at this time, he also gets the idea for
the a C induction motor, although Asterisk not necessarily the

(14:49):
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 of something that he had
already seen, or or of nothing nothing imaginary unless it

(15:12):
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 not not something he
had been puzzling about necessarily. It might just be hey, boom,

(15:34):
here are all the pieces and the puzzle is completely
put 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 and then had an idea
for for the induction motor. Yeah, and just drew it

(15:55):
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 of
that of that era. So Edison, same sort of thing.

(16:16):
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
was no slouch in that department either. There are a

(16:38):
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
those are not the mark of someone who is not
a showman. I saw this one photograph. He looked just

(17:00):
like David Bowie. Um. I might be mixing that up
with a documentary though, So then the the in in
uh in a T 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 some money for the work he's doing for Edison Company,

(17:20):
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 and this this is
when he was very he was what twenty six at

(17:41):
the time, and and in Paris, and so he was
he was really distantly connected from to Edison at the time,
but apparently started right you use this, If you use
this and just say like this is indicative of how
Edison treats people. Uh, it would apparently become company policy
not to pay people for their work. That's what That's
what's jested of this. It also becomes you know, a

(18:02):
common thread in Tesla's life of getting getting cheated out
of things that were owed him, which makes you wonder,
if it happened 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
was something else going on here besides that part of

(18:23):
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 being something he deserved. Um, but then
we'll get into that again. Four, he makes the big
move from Europe to America. He he had basically no

(18:45):
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
ships and supposedly Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard, probably

(19:10):
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 shippy was on had a mutiny aboard it.
He ended up getting to New York way later than
when he expected, and according to some reports, had four

(19:32):
cents in his pocket. Now Also, depending upon whom you ask,
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
the two stories. Either way, I think that's pretty remarkable.
Um and uh. And he works for Edison and he's

(19:54):
helping them with their systems. Uh. Supposedly again, he started
to suggest Edison that they which to an alternating current
model as opposed to direct current, and Ederson was very
much against that idea. So then in eighteen eighty five,
Tesla forms the Tesla Electric Light Company. An investor group
actually asks him if he will work on an arc

(20:15):
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 it 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
he did that was because again here's another story of
Tesla getting cheated. That Edison had promised Tesla a princely

(20:40):
sum of fifty thousand dollars for a particular project, and
when Tesla completed the project against 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 then Tesla resigns, even though Edison supposedly at that
point offered an enormous raise to keep Tesla there. This

(21:02):
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 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 just like what kind of crazy person does that? Yeah,
it doesn't it doesn't sound I mean, you know it could.

(21:22):
I never met Edison, didn't Did you meet him? You're
very old, yuh. 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, you know, here you
have this genius, incredible, super genius, the man who will

(21:43):
one day light up the United States with his alternating
current power grid, making money scraping by by digging ditches. Yeah. Um, 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, I don't doubt that. I don't

(22:04):
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 works like that. Sometimes
that's sometimes that's the truth stranger things. But anyway, then

(22:27):
by by e eighties seven, so you know, eighteen eighty six,
digging ditches, we don't need to go into that's it. Well,
I mean, meanwhile, in eighteen eighties six, 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

(22:49):
that's 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

(23:12):
strung across the city, and and Brooklyn Knights had to
dodge these lines so often that their team was thus
named the Brooklyn Dodge, 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,

(23:34):
Tesla begins to work with investors again, and he establishes
a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street in New York
and then just 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 I Triple E, or as I
always prefer to call them. I ye that once for

(23:58):
all 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 Westingham. Uh.
That that's something to keep in mind as well. So
eighteen eighty nine he establishes a new lab on Grand

(24:21):
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

(24:43):
sleeping A wasn't really sleeping, and B was probably under
his desk, right right, I can identify with that. Uh.
In ninety 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 shadow pictures. Yeah, this was before Wilhelm Laurentin had

(25:05):
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 American citizen. Also I believe patented the Tesla coil.

(25:27):
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 mean,

(25:49):
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 a 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

(26:10):
thinkers were 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

(26:32):
to be the people pushing that rapid development is really
exciting and think things like when the Chicago World Fair
was that was that? Oh? Yeah? That was that was
famous because there was the whole Edison Tesla story there
about who is going to provide power? Right, and it
was really Edison versus h Westinghouse. Yeah but I mean

(26:53):
Westinghouse backed 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

(27:13):
way of doing it, right, is the idea of these
two geniuses facing off against each other and who will
win and alternating current one out in that one. So
it's really Westinghouse that one, al 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. Yeah, and

(27:37):
then and when and yeah, and when they threw when
President Grover 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

(27:57):
was president, then he wasn't president, and he was in again. Yes,
he also liked the song Funky Cold Medina eighteen nine five.
So then one of the buildings that housed one of
Tesla's labs caught fire in eighteen and his lab burned
down and the fire destroyed what was estimated to be

(28:18):
about fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment and information, and
he had no insurance. Yeah, and fifty thous that's it's
a lot of money today, it was a huge amount
of money in eight um. And and at the time
he was experimenting with with radio signal. Yeah, and and supposedly,

(28:38):
according to him, was 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 and Tesla's patent gave Marconi

(29:02):
the patent, and then later on overturned it again and
gave it back to Tesla. Later on is in the nineties,
after Tesla was dead. Um. Yeah, there's that 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

(29:23):
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

(29:44):
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, and
and that's a more firm one that Yeah, he absolutely
lost that fight and lost probably a lot of money

(30:04):
in fame. I think, Uh Marconi won the New Belt Prize. Yeah,
All was not happy about that excited. Uh. In he
demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model boat, so essentially a an
r C boat at the Electrical Exposition in Madison Square Garden,
where years later, Highlanders would fight it out to determine

(30:25):
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 back
to our show. Alright, getting back into Tesla's life. In
eight he moves to Colorado to perform some experiments with

(30:48):
wireless power. And 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 you could transmit power wirelessly across miles of space. Um.

(31:09):
He claimed that he had another one of those visions
that let him understand the geoelectrical phenomenon he called terrestrial
stationary waves, an idea about tapping into the Earth itself
as a conductor. Okay, sounds interesting. Yeah, And it's not that, uh,
it's not that everything was that he said was crazy
or it was just that to be able to actually

(31:30):
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 say that
all of his work would have proven if if it
still existed. We'll get into more about more destruction of

(31:52):
his work and where it all went went to. But
then if it still existed, it would prove that this
sort of thing is possible. And it's only the energy
company that are keeping it down because they stand to
lose so much if this If this information got out,
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.

(32:15):
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. And lets you know, perhaps
the people these days are not a visionary 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

(32:36):
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, 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

(32:57):
he really was thinking it was an interesting idea. So
a nineteen o one, with funding from various sources, including
people like JP Morgan, he starts to build the Warden
Cliff Tower. This is at a long island sound and uh,
this is um this thing is supposed to be a
wireless power transmitting station essentially, and with the nineteen o

(33:20):
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 to kind of tap into this this terrestrial
uh wave stationary wave. Actually 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

(33:40):
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 dates from the same sort
of concept. Um, the Earth is still here, by the way,

(34:02):
So that's kind of a spoiler alert to how this
story plays out. Midbuster's actually actually cracked that one and
the episode back in A two six things 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 a couple of couple dred feet away, right,
but not necessarily enough to to make it crumble into pieces. Um,

(34:26):
but anyway, we all earthquake Warrncliff Tower becomes an important
part of Tesla's life. He it 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 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

(34:47):
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 Marconi had signaled the letter asked across
the Atlantic, and that didn't make Tesla happy. And and

(35:07):
I mean and and you know Marconi was just 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. 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

(35:28):
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 Tower experiment, which ends up
draining a lot of his energy literally and resources and

(35:52):
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 a growing need in
America because at this point you're starting to see communities

(36:12):
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 nineteen twelve, Tesla's suffered
another setback, although not one nearly as large as Lady Astor.

(36:35):
John Jacob Astar, who was one of Tesla's most wealthy
and enthusiastic investors, stopped investing in Tesla's work because he
stopped breathing. He was aboard a little boat called the Titanic. Oh,
I've heard of that one. I think I saw a
documentary about it once. Yeah, his heart will go on,
but his investment payments stopped. Yeah, he um. He went

(36:59):
down on 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 was not able
to do that and he did die. And with that,
Tesla lost one of his most significant sources of investment money.

(37:20):
So it was another financial setback for Tesla. Um. I
don't think he could blame that one on Edison. Maybe
Mark Coney because we're talking about the use of radios
on the Titanic, But 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

(37:46):
a Nobel Prize and that they would be co recipients
of the Nobel Prize. When the Nobel Prizes are announced,
the prize goes to 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,

(38:08):
but they did not say any more than that. What
has come up since then as the rumor that which
is gospel in some corners of the Internet, that the
reason why Tesla and Edison 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
good myth. Yeah, that the rivalry was so great that

(38:30):
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 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. It

(38:55):
was just not a good year for him. Uh. In
nineteen seventeen he ended up proposed using what would Depending
upon whom you ask, 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

(39:16):
would not invest in such a technology. By the way,
the person from private industry who was on the Navy board,
well he was from from what I understand about the story,
U Tesla had proposed this, this way of finding ships underwater. Yeah,
that's the problem. Right. So the more you look into it,

(39:36):
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 give
him the go ahead. It wasn't because radar is dumb
or the Tesla's down. It was because it wasn't the
right technology for the application. What Tesla did not take

(39:57):
into account was he he wanted to use us tightly
controlled electric beams of energy to zap them into the
water to reflect off the surfaces of submarines, detect that
those 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

(40:18):
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 attenuation problem. And so it 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.

(40:41):
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.
So while some people claimed that he invented radar, that's
being a little generous. Nineteenth 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

(41:03):
us to worry about when we get there. UH in
nineteen thirty four, actually, if we can, if we can
step back, just to short, let's please in In nineteen nineteen,
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

(41:24):
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
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,

(41:46):
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
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.

(42:07):
In the cold blood of a fight, and The New
York Times publish as an article about Tesla's death ray beam,
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

(42:27):
bring down a fleet of ten thousand enemy planes at
a distance of two hundred fifty miles, and that his
idea was that by outfitting pretty much everybody with one
of these, you would have that mutually assured destruction that
makes peace possible, all right. 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

(42:47):
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 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

(43:09):
build something that does this. Uh, that's another you know,
it's another one of those things. It's a myth, right seven. Uh.
He decided to go feed the pigeons in the park,
which was a bad decision to make that particular day.
As as he was crossing the street, he was struck
by a cab. Then, depending upon which report you read,

(43:31):
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
crying about his pigeons. It was ugly. He he had
he had at this point become a little bit destitute. Um.

(43:53):
He due to all of these various financial troubles over
the years and and basic misspending. I think head I 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
would relocate to a different hotel and you think, like,
why would another hotel even trust him? He was Tesla Again,

(44:15):
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 laws throwing TVs out the window? Guys,
I am sitting across from the from the person who
had just compared Nicola Tesla to Lindsay Lohan. I think

(44:37):
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 parkle beam and aims at at the
HW offices and just just just just let me know,
I am perfectly willing to give you Jonathan's g A
syncretis coordinates. Please keep in mind that stuff you missed

(45:00):
in history class and stuff mom never told you sit
really near me. So if you love those shows, keep
your being particle pointed somewhere else. That's not cool. Uh.
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 of his

(45:22):
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. Uh,

(45:46):
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 arious nefarious purposes for the United
States government. Now keep in mind, this is World War

(46:07):
two is a thing, and so there is a genuine
concern 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 you

(46:27):
had against that absolutely. And also I mean remember that
that Tesla was a Serbian American 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 ten

(46:48):
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 it for real, Zo, we didn't
grab those and actually I looked into it and it
wouldn't be until 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

(47:10):
Justice number one and number two. In nineteen fifty two
they sent the papers to uh to Kasanovitch, his nephew,
and that is that is nine years later, Yeah, alright,
granted nine years Like we're also talking about time during
not just the World War Two, with the Red Scare
as well, So so I mean not that that justifies
suppressing information. Also, you're talking about the government, so it

(47:30):
may very well 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

(47:51):
demanding that there's a Tesla museum, good news there is.
You just have to go to Europe to see it. Also,
supposedly after World War two was there were copies of
his papers um were sent out to one of the
Air Force spaces and Project Nick was a thing that
was heavily funded, and then the papers have disappeared, never
to be seen again. Yeah, there a love of conspiracy
theories here there. There was one one person posted on

(48:13):
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 sometime in the future,

(48:34):
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 is probably because it

(48:55):
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, or I would have zapped somebody.
Although there there is stuffinitely don't want you to know.
Did I did an episode a couple of years ago
on this, You can go check that out on YouTube.

(49:16):
That's true. 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 there were people working on alternating current and even

(49:38):
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
and applied it and furthered it. So it's not it's

(50:00):
not that he just copied someone else's work. He really
did make legitimate contributions. Oh sure, And it was it
was his patents in his his work with Westinghouse that
led to alternating current becoming the thing that the US
uses and and the thing that is capable of going
across long distances, And both of those are extremely extremely important.

(50:20):
We can't downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but but
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

(50:40):
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. Yeah again another documentary right. Uh.
Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out, was working

(51:00):
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 Westingholse 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

(51:20):
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,

(51:44):
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 or X rays. Uh, as we
covered before. Yeah, Ivan Pului, I have no idea how

(52:06):
to say his 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

(52:28):
into it and began to make theories and hypotheses and
test 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 Tesla versus Edison thing. Uh, it was really

(52:51):
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

(53:13):
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 was 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

(53:35):
of his fortunes switched, mainly because he made some really
bad business deals. He sold patents off at a pittance
at times because the company would come to him and say, uh,
you know, there's this massive economic downturn coming. We need
this these patents, but if we paid you what they're worth,

(53:57):
then we're going to go under. And Tesla's I'll cut
you 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 and
the famous Westinghouse deal where um uh, even even even
though a Westinghouse won the so called War of the Currents,

(54:21):
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 Testa let him out of the contract,
just said said like, oh no, you don't have to
pay me the rest. That's fine. You save your company. Yeah,

(54:43):
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's certainly and
I know that people are probably listening to the episode
and thinking that I'm I think Tesla was a worthless

(55:04):
lay about that. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I think he really did make incredible contributions to UH,
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 to understand,
especially at the expense of other very important inventors and

(55:27):
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 Earth with putting
essentially a wire around it and tapping into the frequency

(55:50):
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 necessarily mentally well

(56:10):
for a great 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, can
considering how well we treat those kinds 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. Oh no, man, Lindsey Lohan, she's not treated
that well. You know, I'm just saying in our next

(56:34):
episode about Lindsay Lohan. Yeah, I'm just glad TMZ didn't
exist back when Tesla was at Oh my goodness, that
is Yes, that is the best thing on the planet. Yeah,
all right, so we're gonna we're gonna wrap this up.
So anyway, that's our episode about Tesla. We really do
think he was a remarkable person. It's just important to
really turn a critical eye and make sure that you
don't elevate someone beyond their what their actual contributions were.

(56:57):
I think, Um, but I'm sure a lot of you
have things you want to say to me now, So
if you would like to say something to me, pray,
do it in a way that is civil, uh, and
and send it to me. Our address is tech stuff
at Discovery dot com or let's know on Facebook or Twitter,

(57:17):
also be civil, but in shorter form. Our handle at
both of those locations is text stuff H. S. W
and Lauren and I will talk to you again really soon.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com