INTRO Think about the last time your home experienced a power outage. Did you find yourself walking into a dark room and flipping on the light switch? Logically you know that the power is out, but you’ve become so accustomed to having electric lighting available to you that you reach for the switch out of force of habit. Most people listening to us right now might find it difficult to explain or even to understand how electricity works, but we have certainly become very dependent on it for use in our daily lives. In fact, when the power goes out our lives come nearly to a dead stop.
That is really true. And thinking about the large scope of human history, the harnessing of electric power is a relatively recent development. The late 1800s have been coined as The Gilded Age. It was also a frenzied age of discovery. Inventors like Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, and Giovanni Marconi were rapidly opening new frontiers of technology. But perhaps the most influential of these electrical pioneers were the two gentlemen that we are discussing today; Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Though similar in many ways they took different approaches to their work and even famously butted heads a time or two. Join us now as we take a deep dive into the lives and work of these two brilliant men.
EARLY LIFE
Thomas Edison certainly had some interesting grandparents. During the American Revolution they remained loyal to England. This made them very unpopular with their New Jersey neighbors and so they relocated to Canada. During the War of 1812 they fought against the American side. Then in the 1830s Edison’s father, Sam Edison Jr., became involved in an unsuccessful insurrection against the provisional government in Ontario. The fallout from this unfortunate event forced Sam to relocate to Milam, Ohio along with his wife Nancy.
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milam, Ohio on February 11, 1847. He was the youngest of Sam and Nancy’s seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Al as he was called by his family was generally in poor health during childhood. An early bout with scarlet fever as well as numerous ear infections caused him to have hearing difficulties throughout his childhood and his adult life.
When he was seven, the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan where his father worked in the lumber business. Nancy Edison had been a schoolteacher before her marriage to Sam Jr. When the family moved to Port Huron, young Al was enrolled in school. However, his hearing problems made rote learning difficult. He was also easily distracted, which won him no favors from his strict teachers. After only twelve weeks his mother pulled him out of school and commenced teaching him at home. Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint."
Edison loved reading and became well versed on a wide range of topics. He developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life. He was especially fascinated by mechanical devices and also by chemical experiments.
In 1859 at age 12 Edison convinced his parents to let him take a job selling newspapers and candy to passengers of the Grand Trunk Railroad which ran from Port Huron to Detroit. One day he noticed that fresh news items were continuously being teletyped to the station office each day. “Why sell yesterday’s news when I can create my own paper containing up to the minute news!” he reasoned to himself. Thus, he got permission to utilize an empty freight car to set up a small press and publish The Grand Trunk Herald. Passengers loved this paper with its up-to-date news. According to biography.com, this was the first of what would become a long string of entrepreneurial ventures where Edison saw a need and capitalized on the opportunity.
Edison used this same rail car to set up an impromptu chemistry lab. Chemical experiments on a moving train? What could go wrong? Well, unfortunately, something did go wrong, and the rail car caught on fire. As a result, Edison was kicked off the train and forced to sell his papers at various train stations. A rumor persists that a conductor boxed him in the ears due to the fire, which further damaged his hearing, but Edison denied that ever happened.
Nevertheless, his hearing had nearly completely disappeared by the time he was fifteen. He later stated that his lack of hearing was not a problem for him, in fact he said that it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. However, it did likely make social interactions more difficult. He tended to be shy and solitary in his dealings with others.
When he was fifteen, Edison happened to see the three-year-old child of a station telegraph operator playing on the railroad tracks. Suddenly a boxcar became untethered and began rolling toward the child. Acting quickly, Edison dashed forward, swooped up the child, and cleared him off to the side just before the boxcar reached him. The boy’s father, James McKenzie, was so grateful that he taught Edison how to operate the telegraph as a reward.
Nikola Tesla was born July 9 or 10, 1856 in Smiljan (smeel yan) in the Austro - Hungarian Empire in what is now Croatia. His father Milutin (mee lu ten) Tesla was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. His mother, Duka (I couldn’t locate any pronunciation) was highly intelligent even though she had no formal education. Her father had also been a priest. The family’s ethnic origins were Serbian. Nikola later stated that his mother had a knack for operating and repairing home craft tools and mechanical appliances. He credited much of his creativity and intellect to her.
As Nikola grew, he demonstrated a remarkable imagination and was very creative. He was extraordinarily observant, could memorize entire books, would store mathematical tables in his brain and spout poetry all at the same time. Learning new languages was simple for Nikola which was handy growing up on the multilingual Balkan Peninsula. Nikola was the fourth of five children. He had three sisters and an older brother who died in a horse-riding incident when Nikola was just five. He entered primary school in Smiljan (Smeel yan) where he studied German, Math, and Religion.
After his father took a position in the town of Karlovac which is close to Zagreb, Nikola attended high school at Karlovac Higher Real (Re-al) Gymnasium. Classes in this school were held in German which posed no problem for Nikola. He performed well in high school, and he could memorize information so completely that one of his teachers accused him of cheating.
After completing high school in 1873, Nikola entered the Polytechnic Institute at Graz, (Grots) Austria to study engineering. He quickly established himself as a star student. One day his physics professor brought in a fascinating new device called a dynamo which could be operated as a generator or an electric motor. Tesla was fascinated and he immediately calculated in his mind how the device could be improved. He found himself in an ongoing debate with the professor over perceived design flaws in the direct-current (DC) motors that were being demonstrated in class. In his mind he conceived the concept of what would become Alternating Current or AC.
Tesla would spend the next six years obsessing about the idea of rotating electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternating current that could and should work. The thoughts obsessed him to the point that he was unable to focus on his schoolwork. He had always been able to get by on minimal sleep, but now his sleeping and working patterns were becoming alarmingly bizarre. The university contacted Tesla’s father with concerns about his health. Nikola convinced his father that he had everything under control, and then he immediately went out and gambled all of his tuition money away. He suffered a nervous breakdown, dropped out of school, and returned home. Then he contracted cholera which kept him bedridden for several months and nearly killed him.
After he recovered, the Austro-Hungarian Army came calling on him for service, but Tesla fled into the mountainous wilderness in the interior of the Balkans. He spent several months hiking, exploring, and hunting in the mountains. He said that this contact with nature made him stronger both physically and mentally. He spent hours reading numerous books and later reported that Mark Twain’s writings helped him to miraculously recover from his earlier illness.
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COMING OF AGE
In 1862 at the age of 15 Edison was employed as a telegraph operator, or telegrapher, in Port Huron, Michigan. During the next five years he continued working in this capacity, occasionally moving to other locations to fill in for other operators who had gone to participate in the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely and continued studying and experimenting with telegraph technology and becoming more familiar with electrical science.
In 1866 Edison took a position in Louisville, Kentucky working for the Associated Press. His job on the night shift allowed him to devote more time to his reading and experiments. At the urging of a friend, he relocated to Boston in 1868 where he went to work for Western Union. At the time. Boston was a major center of science and culture. Edison thrived in this environment. It was here that he received his first patent.
One day he was sitting in the state capital building watching the legislators voting on various bills. He decided that he could devise a faster way of counting votes. Thus, he developed and received a patent for an Electrographic Vote Recorder and Register. Though the legislators were impressed with his invention, they didn’t like it for practical use. The quick tabulation eliminated the opportunity for last minute arm twisting to get a fellow member to change their vote. Edison vowed never again to devote time to inventing something that no one wanted. It was, though, the first of his 1,093 earned patents.
The following year, 1869, Edison moved from Boston to New York City. He had a friend there who worked for the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. Edison actually stayed in an unused room at this company’s headquarters. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to manage and improve the printer machines. This led to his second patent, an improved stock ticker called the Universal Stock Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers' transactions. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company was so impressed, they paid him $40,000 for the rights to the patent. That would be the equivalent of about $940,000 in 2024 dollars. With this windfall he quit his job as a telegrapher and devoted his full time to his inventions.
In 1881 Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary where he became the chief electrician for the Budapest Telephone Exchange. In this position he made significant improvements to the telephone equipment. He also used his free time to play around with his alternating current concept. One day while he was walking through a park with a friend, Tesla had a sudden vision. He took a stick and drew in the dirt a motor using the principle of rotating magnetic fields created by two or more alternating currents. It would still be a couple of years before he had the resources to build one, but when he did, it was based on the same design that he received in this vision.
Now, we are not going to get too technical here, but for a quick and simple explanation about AC versus DC we turn to a website called matsusada.com. With direct current or DC the voltage always flows in one direction. In contrast, with alternating current the voltage periodically changes from positive to negative and then back again. Thus, the direction of the current also changes. AC goes both ways so to speak.
EARLY WORK
Edison formed a partnership with a man named Franklin Pope. The Pope, Edison Company billed itself as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. In 1870 they set up a small manufacturing plant in Newark, New Jersey where they employed several machinists. They developed and received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. Often these products were for Western Union, but sometimes they were for Western Union’s competitors. The invention of a quadruplex telegraph, capable of transmitting two signals in two different directions on the same wire which Edison was supposedly developing for Western Union was purchased by the railroad magnate Jay Gould for $100,000. Western Union sued and ultimately won after years of litigation.
In 1871 Edison married Mary Stillwell who was one of his employees. Though he loved her, the marriage was difficult due to his devotion to his work and also to her frequent illnesses. Nevertheless, their first child, a daughter named Marian was born in 1873 followed by a son, Thomas Jr. who was born in 1876. Edison nicknamed the two Dot and Dash as a nod back to his days as a telegrapher. A third child named William came in 1878.
In 1876 Edison opened a new lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey. This site became known as the Invention Factory as several inventions were developed there. At any given time, it was common for numerous inventions to be in the works at Menlo Park. Edison liked to work long hours and he expected much from his employees.
In that same year, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone. While the new invention was terrific, it had its limitations. Using his knowledge of telegraphy, Edison developed a transmitter that greatly improved Bell’s invention. The transmitter made it possible for voices to be heard at a higher volume and with greater clarity over standard phone lines. It was Edison that suggested that “Hello” be spoken when answering the telephone.
In December of 1877 Edison utilized what he had learned from his experiments with the telephone and the telegraph to invent the phonograph. It occurred to him that sound could be recorded as indentations on a rapidly moving piece of paper or other material. He developed a machine with a cylinder covered in tin foil. As the cylinder revolved a needle would make indentions as he spoke through what he called a diaphragm. To his amazement, the machine played his phrase back to him. And what was this first phrase? Well, you can locate this recording on YouTube and we are going to play it for you now.
OK this was not the original recording, that one has been lost, but rather this was a recreation that Edison made a couple of years later. He created the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company in 1878 to sell the new device, but sales were sluggish at best for the first decade. One of the selling points was the potential to record the final words of a dying loved one. By 1889 Edison found that using wax cylinders was more durable than those covered in tin foil. This innovation made the phonograph more sellable.
Here's an interesting side note. In that year 1889 an Edison employee named Theo Wangeman took one of the new devices with him on a tour of Europe. During this trip he recorded various musical performances as well as the voices of many historical figures. One of these was the voice of German Field Marshal Helmut von Moltke. Von Moltke was born in 1800 which is technically in the 18th century. In his recordings he complimented Edison. “This newest invention of Mr. Edison is indeed astonishing. The phonograph makes it possible for a man who has already been long in the grave once again to raise his voice and greet the present.” Von Moltke is believed to be the only person born in the 18th century whose voice was recorded. Though he is speaking in German, you can listen to it on YouTube in a video called The Oldest Voices We Can Still Hear. We will include a link to it in our show notes.
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ELECTRIC LIGHT
You may have been taught that Thomas Alva Edison was the inventor of the light bulb, but this is not quite true. In 1840 Warren De La Rue, a British inventor, created the first arc lamp as they were originally called. However, his bulbs were unreliable and expensive. Other researchers including Joseph Wilson Swan, Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans had worked to perfect electric light bulbs or tubes using a vacuum but were unsuccessful in their attempts.
Oddly enough, a solar eclipse in July of 1878 played a role in the development of Edison’s light bulb. A group of scientists contracted with Edison to create a highly sensitive instrument that could be used to measure minute temperature changes in heat emitted from the Sun’s corona during the solar eclipse. Edison called this instrument a microtasimeter which utilized carbon fiber for the sensitive measurements. While visiting with the scientists during the eclipse, the topic of incandescent light was discussed.
Edison announced boldly to the group that he would devise a safe, mild, and inexpensive light that would replace gaslight. All he needed was some investors who were willing to get in on the ground floor of this exciting venture. His reputation as a knowledgeable inventor was growing, and his call for investors got the attention of J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family who together put up $30,000 for research and development.
Edison hired an intelligent young assistant named Francis Upton who had just earned a master’s degree in science from Princeton University. Together they set about perfecting the way to create a vacuum or a sealed space where the current could glow safely. Once this was accomplished the next task was to find a material that could maintain this glow without burning up. The first substance that worked was a platinum thread, however the expense of platinum made its use prohibitive. Numerous attempts were made with other materials. One of his famous quotes about these attempts goes like this. “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Another Edison quote is, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” He also coined the term “Bugs” to indicate problems within an invention that needed to be worked out.
Finally, Edison remembered the success of the carbon thread that was used in the Eclipse scientific instruments. In mid-October of 1878 the first test of a carbon thread inside the vacuum was attempted. The thread glowed brightly for thirteen and a half hours. By December of that same year perfections of the carbon filament were sufficient to throw a New Year’s Eve open house at the Menlo Park laboratory. The entire lab had been illuminated by dozens of the new light bulbs. The press went wild with enthusiasm, and Edison’s investors were thrilled, and the Edison Electric Light Company was formed.
Immediately Edison began working on a large-scale system to provide electricity to a large area. Edison predicted, “We are going to make electric lights so inexpensive that only rich people will have candles.” The electrical current in the power system was generated by steam engines. Edison himself supervised the laying of the mains and installation of the world’s first permanent, commercial central power system in lower Manhattan, which became operative in September 1882. By the end of that year some 400 lights were lit, then by the end of the following year, 1883, 513 customers were switching on over 10,000 lamps. The world had entered the lighted era and Edison was regarded as a great inventor. The success of his electric light brought Edison to new heights of fame and wealth, as electricity spread around the world. Edison's various electric companies continued to grow. In 1889 they were brought together to form Edison General Electric known simply as General Electric today.
TESLA GOES TO WORK FOR EDISON
In 1882, Tesla moved from Budapest to Paris and went to work at the newly constructed Continental Edison Company which was busily stringing wires and bulbs to further enhance the City of Light with Edison’s new invention. While working here, Tesla gained a great deal of practical experience in electrical engineering. And, in his spare time and using spare parts Tesla finally built his first induction motor using alternating currents.
Ready for a new adventure, in 1884 Tesla boarded a ship for New York. Charles Bachelor, his supervisor at the Paris power plant gave him a reference letter to help him secure a position with the Edison Company in New York. Part of the reference letter read, “My Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!” Edison hired him.
Tesla began working in the Edison Machine Shop located in Manhatton’s lower East side. This shop employed over 200 machinists, engineers, and laborers who were working out the process of electrifying the whole city. Beyond their initial meeting it is thought that Tesla and Edison only met a couple of times. One of those times, according to Tesla, after staying up all night repairing the damaged dynamos on the ocean liner SS Oregon, he ran into Bachelor and Edison, who made a quip about their "Parisian" being out all night. After Tesla told them he had been up all night fixing the Oregon, Edison commented to Bachelor that "this is a damned good man.”
Tesla only worked for Edison for about six months. What caused their breakup may have just been a misunderstanding, but Tesla believed that Edison had cheated him out of a bonus. At one point Tesla overheard Edison quip, “I’d give $50,000 if someone could make these motors work better.” Believing the statement to be true, Tesla set out to do just that. Within a couple of months, Tesla informed Edison that he had made significant improvements to the motors in question. Edison replied, “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke.” Tesla didn’t appreciate it, and promptly walked out the door.
THE GREAT CURRENT WAR
As noted earlier, Edison’s wife Mary was often ill. On Aug. 9, 1884 she died of what was likely a brain tumor. Edison remarried to Mina Miller in February of 1886. He actually proposed to Mina by tapping Morse Code onto the palm of her hand. Unlike his first wife, Mina was lively and involved in many community groups, social functions, and charities, as well as trying to improve her husband's often careless personal habits. Bathing was not high on his priority list.
In 1887 Edison built an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, N.J. He also purchased a nearby estate called Glenmont where he and Mina lived for the rest of their lives. The new West Orange facility consisted of five large buildings. The large size of the plant not only allowed Edison to work on any sort of project, but also allowed him to work on as many as ten or twenty projects at once. While the plant was the primary research facility for the Edison Lighting Companies, it was also where he perfected the phonograph and developed a new motion picture camera.
For a while after leaving the Edison Company the only job Tesla could find was digging ditches. But ideas about motors and magnetic fields continued to brew in his mind. He needed to find a way to demonstrate the superiority of AC current motors. Tesla devised a machine to illustrate the concept: an electromagnetic motor that generates the force needed to spin a brass egg and stand it upright. Tesla names the device the “Egg of Columbus” after the famous story in which Christopher Columbus challenged the Spanish court and investors to stand an egg upright. When they failed, Columbus took an egg and crushed the bottom flat, so it would remain upright. Tesla incorporates this logic in his Egg of Columbus and uses it to present his concept of alternating current electricity to investors.
It wasn’t long before word got out that Tesla’s AC motor was worth investing in, and the Western Union Company put Tesla to work in a lab not far from Edison’s plant. With the encouragement and financial backing of Western Union, Tesla was finally able to construct the AC motors that he had dreamed about. “The motors I built there,” Tesla said, “were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision.” The motors worked splendidly, and Tesla was granted a U.S. patent for the AC motor.
One of Edison’s biggest rivals, George Westinghouse, recognized that Tesla’s designs might be just what he was looking for to gain an edge on Edison. In 1888 he hired Tesla and paid him $60,000 in stocks, cash, and royalties for the rights to his patent. This ignited the Battle of the Currents as Westinghouse promoted AC as a better means of conveying electricity than Edison’s DC system.
To help show the superiority and safety of the Alternating Current system Tesla would give demonstrations and lectures around the country where he would allow electric current to flow through his body to light a lamp. (Don’t try this at home.) In 1893 Westinghouse used Tesla’s AC system to illuminate the Chicago World’s Fair. This success led to winning the contract to harness hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls to provide electricity for Buffalo, NY. These successes along with years of litigation convinced Edison that the AC system was superior for electrifying cities.
OTHER INVENTIONS
You may have heard that Thomas Edison invented motion pictures, but that also is not quite true. In 1888 a Frenchman name Louis Augustin Le Prince used a single lens camera and paper strip film to shoot what is believed to be the very first moving film. The images were of some of his friends moving about in a garden in Leeds, England. You can watch this short film on YouTube. Le Prince is credited with being the father of cinematography. However, before Le Prince could embark on a planned publicity tour of England and the U.S. he disappeared. He had returned to France to visit his brother and had purchased a train ticket from Paris to Dijon, but never arrived. A number of conspiracy theories surfaced surrounding his disappearance, including one that involved Thomas Edison, but the mystery has never been solved.
Though Le Prince is noted as the first to achieve a motion picture, he was only one of many who were working on the idea. Back in West Orange, N.J. Edison studied the works of other inventors. In 1889 he announced that “I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." By 1891 he applied for a patent for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope which was a peephole viewer.
But Le Prince’s family challenged Edison’s claim to have been the first inventor of motion pictures. Le Prince himself had planned on applying for a U.S. patent before his disappearance. His wife and grown son brought Le Prince’s cameras as evidence at the trial. After months of court wrangling, a ruling was made in favor of the La Prince family, but Edison then re applied for a patent asserting that his camera uses celluloid film rather than paper strips. Edison subsequently received his patent. Le Prince’s widow was the driving force behind the theory that Edison had arranged for her husband to disappear.
In 1893 Edison constructed the world’s first movie studio at the West Orange plant. It was called the Black Maria which was a nickname for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled. By 1894 short films were produced using a variety of acts from the day. Like the electric light and phonograph before it, Edison developed a complete system, including everything needed to both film and show motion pictures. Soon Kinetoscope parlors with peephole viewers were opening in New York and in major cities all over the U.S. The popularity of moving pictures drew many competitors and by the end of the century the first movie theaters were opening.
The money he made from selling his patent to Westinghouse gave Tesla the resources and time to devote to other projects of his interest. In the summer of 1889 Tesla traveled back to Europe to visit the Paris World’s Fair. This is the same fair that the Eifel Tower was built for. At this event Tesla learned of the work of Heinrich Hertz who experimented with electromagnetic radiation or radio waves. After returning to the U.S. Tesla began experimenting with the ideas he had learned from Hertz. In this work Tesla developed a powerful type of wire coil that was capable of generating high voltages and frequencies and also made it possible to send and receive radio signals. Today we know these as Tesla Coils, and they are still used in radios and televisions and in other communications devices.
In 1898 Tesla wowed the public by demonstrating a remote-controlled boat at Madison Square Garden. He called this a tele-automatic control, and it utilized the Tesla Coil. The following year he relocated his lab to Colorado Springs. In another demonstration he lit 200 lamps from 25 miles away without a wire connection. While in Colorado Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery—terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He theorized that this meant that the Earth itself could be utilized to conduct long distance wireless connections.
With this idea fresh in his head, Tesla convinced a group of investors including J.P. Morgan to fund $150,000 for a giant communications tower. According to Tesla, once the tower was completed, “it will be possible for a businessman in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant.” Tesla’s vision for wireless communication indicates that he was far ahead of his time.
A site on Long Island was selected for his tower and construction began in 1901. However, the money dried up before the tower was completed. In that same year, 1901, the Italian inventor Marconi made the first successful wireless transmission from England to Newfoundland. The investment money went to Marconi. Tesla complained that Marconi had utilized some of his patents, but the courts ultimately ruled otherwise. It was a humiliating defeat for Tesla.
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OTHER ENDEAVORS
In the 1890s Edison became involved in the mining industry. He applied for and received a patent for a magnetic ore separator which could extract iron from unusable low-grade ores. Though this did not prove to be very profitable, it did help him to procure sources of necessary minerals that would be used in the alkaline storage batteries which were used to power early phonographs. Most homes did not have electricity in the 1890s. By the beginning of World War I in 1914, Edison was supplying batteries for the U.S Navy submarines. He was also experimenting with battery powered cars and had even formed a company for manufacturing them. In 1912 Henry Ford asked Edison to design a battery for the self-starter which would be used on the Model T. This led to a mutually profitable relationship between the two men.
Edison was a visionary concerning solar power. “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
We mentioned earlier that when Tesla was a young man he spent a great amount of time reading and was especially fond of Mark Twain. Imagine how amazing it would be not just to meet a person you have long admired, but to actually become tight friends with them. Well, that is the true case between Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain. Now I always think of Mark Twain living in Missouri, but throughout his life he lived a number of places including New York City just a block away from Tesla. Twain was a frequent visitor to Tesla’s lab. He was fascinated by all of the amazing creations the inventor was working on. One day Twain was watching Tesla work on a series of rotating pistons which were connected to a platform. “It’s an earthquake machine,” explained Tesla. He thought it might be useful in studying the strength of structures in earthquake prone areas. Twain was impressed, but then he mentioned that he had been suffering from digestive problems. It appears that the great writer was constipated. Tesla reasoned that the vibrations from the earthquake machine might help shake things up a bit and he invited Twain to stand on the platform. Tesla then flipped on the switch and the vibrations ensued. In less than two minutes Twain jumped from the platform and ran to the toilet.
LATER YEARS AND DEATH
Edison was active in business throughout his old age and even right up until his death. Though AC became the preferred means of electrifying cities, there was one area in which Direct Current remained supreme: electric powered streetcars. These early 1900s means of public transportation were powered by an overhead connection which ran throughout urban areas and utilized a DC system for power. Edison’s company was involved in the development of a streetcar system in suburban New Jersey. Despite his frail condition, Edison was at the throttle of the first electric train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken in September 1930, driving the train the first mile. This streetcar system remained in use until 1984. A plaque commemorating Edison's inaugural ride can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, which is presently operated by NJ Transit.
Edison died at the age of 84 on October 18, 1931. His wife, Mina, announced the death to the world by turning off all of the lights in their home Glenmont. The following night, cities all around the world briefly shut off lights in honor of Edison. In Japan a sect of Shinto believers worship Thomas Edison as the God of Electricity.
Tesla never fully recovered from the loss of wireless communications patents to Marconi. He had to sell the property where his incomplete tower stood in order to pay off debts. He began a pattern of living in hotels in New York, racking up charges, and then moving on to the next hotel leaving the charges unpaid.
He also developed an obsessive relationship with pigeons. At first, he would walk to the park each day to feed them, then he began feeding them from his hotel window. “I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.” One day this pigeon showed up with a broken wing and leg. Tesla spent over $2,000 caring for this bird including building a special harness to keep her comfortable while she healed.
Throughout his life, Tesla allowed himself only a few close friends including Mark Twain. Though popular with women, Tesla never married. He measured 6’2” and maintained his weight at less than 150 lbs. He was an elegant stylish figure and was also described as having light eyes, very big hands, and remarkably big thumbs. He became obsessed with cleanliness and fixated on the number three; he began shaking hands with people and washing his hands—all done in sets of three. He had to have 18 napkins on his table during meals and would count his steps whenever he walked anywhere. He claimed to have an abnormal sensitivity to sounds, as well as an acute sense of sight, and he later wrote that he had, “a violent aversion against the earrings of women.” Today he might have been categorized as a high functioning autistic.
Tesla’s unpaid bills combined with complaints about the pigeon mess caused him to be evicted by the St. Regis Hotel in 1923, the Hotel Pennsylvania in 1930, and the Governor Clinton Hotel in 1934. Word of his financial troubles reached the decision makers at Westinghouse who then helped him to secure a room at the Hotel New Yorker in 1934. The Westinghouse Corporation paid for his room and board at the New Yorker and a monthly stipend of $125 for the rest of his life.
In 1931 on his 75th birthday a party and press conference was held between Tesla and members of the media. At this first party Tesla received congratulations from Albert Einstein as well as other prominent scientists and political figures. He was also featured on the cover of Time Magazine. The caption read, “All the world’s his power house.” The birthday party press conference was so popular with the press and with Tesla that it was repeated every year.
Members of the press found Tesla to be engaging and they loved hearing the details of his past inventions. But they also began to be somewhat amused and baffled by some new devices that he claimed to be working on. In 1932 he said that he had developed a motor that ran on cosmic rays. In 1933 he claimed that he had developed a way to photograph the retina to record thought. Then in 1934 he told reporters that he had developed a death ray for national defense. There is no evidence that Tesla actually invented any of these items, but diagrams of some of them were found in his notes. By 1937 he was claiming that he had received messages from other planets.
One night in the fall of 1937 Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker after midnight to walk to the nearby cathedral and park in order to feed the pigeons. He was struck by a taxi cab and thrown hard to the ground. His back was badly wrenched and he had three broken ribs. He refused medical help, but he never fully recovered. He died in his room at the Hotel New Yorker on January 7, 1943 at the age of 86.
Five days later New York mayor La Guardia led some 2,000 mourners in a state funeral in Tesla’s honor. The following day a religious service was held at the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in New York. Tesla’s body was cremated and years later his ashes and all of his personal effects including his designs and notebooks were sent to Yugoslavia. Today they are on display at the Nikolas Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
Throughout his life Tesla was granted at least 278 patents. (He claimed to have over 300, but that cannot be verified.) Though he never had the business sense that Edison and Westinghouse possessed his brilliant contributions to the world of science lives on today. The device you are listening to us on was likely charged with an Alternating Current power supply. Tesla’s notes and drawings are still inspiring engineers and inventors today.
Information for this episode was obtained from biography.com, nps.gov, Britannica.com, Library of Congress loc.gov, americanhistory.si.edu, edisonmuckers.org, smithsonianmag.com, racingnelliebly.com, teslasciencecenter.org, YouTube, and Wikipedia. A detailed list of our sources is located in the transcript of this episode on our website RemnantStew.com. There’s a link to it in the show notes.
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Phil here reminding you to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages @RemnantStewPodcast. Drop us an email at StayCurious@RemnantStew.com just to say hi or to let us know about any topics you would like to hear us cover in an upcoming episode.
Remnant Stew is part of Rook & Raven Ventures and is created by me, Leah Lamp. Steve Meeker researches and writes each episode that we then host together. Our audio producer is Phillip Sinquefield. The Oddity Du Jour is brought to you by Sam Lamp. Theme music is by Kevin MacLeod with voiceover by Morgan Hughes. Special thanks goes out to Judy Meeker. For a complete list of sources for this episode please see this episode’s transcript, there’s a link in the show notes.
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Until next time remember to choose to be kind…AND ALWAYS STAY CURIOUS!
--SOURCES ----------------------
https://www.biography.com/inventors/thomas-edison
https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/historyculture/edison-biography.htm
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Edison/Menlo-Park
https://www.edisonmuckers.org/fun-facts-about-tom/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-nikola-tesla-and-his-tower-11074324/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
https://racingnelliebly.com/weirdscience/did-nikola-tesla-cure-mark-twains-constipation/
https://teslasciencecenter.org/pivotalmoments/egg-of-columbus-2/
