Tesla

Man Out of Time

Margaret Cheney

• Editorial: Touchstone
• Año: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781451674866
• Categoría: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Categoría: Biografías de ciencia y tecnología

In this "informative and delightful" ( American Scientist ) biography, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of Nikola Tesla, one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. In Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney explores the brilliant and prescient mind of one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors. Called a madman by his enemies, a genius by others, and an enigma by nearly everyone, Nikola Tesla was, without a doubt, a trailblazing inventor who created astonishing, sometimes world-transforming devices that were virtually without theoretical precedent. Tesla not only discovered the rotating magnetic field -- the basis of most alternating-current machinery -- but also introduced us to the fundamentals of robotics, computers, and missile science. Almost supernaturally gifted, unfailingly flamboyant and neurotic, Tesla was troubled by an array of compulsions and phobias and was fond of extravagant, visionary experimentations. He was also a popular man-about-town, admired by men as diverse as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by scores of society beauties.
From Tesla's childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s, Cheney paints a compelling human portrait and chronicles a lifetime of discoveries that radically altered -- and continue to alter -- the world in which we live. Tesla: Man Out of Time is an in-depth look at the seminal accomplishments of a scientific wizard and a thoughtful examination of the obsessions and eccentricities of the man behind the science.

1. MODERN PROMETHEUS

Promptly at eight o’clock a patrician figure in his thirties was shown to his regular table in the Palm Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Tall and slender, elegantly attired, he was the cynosure of all eyes, though most diners, mindful of the celebrated inventor’s need for privacy, pretended not to stare.

Eighteen clean linen napkins were stacked as usual at his place. Nikola Tesla could no more have said why he favored numbers divisible by three than why he had a morbid fear of germs or, for that matter, why he was beset by any of the multitude of other strange obsessions that plagued his life.

Abstractedly he began to polish the already sparkling silver and crystal, taking up and discarding one square of linen after another until a small starched mountain had risen on the serving table. Then, as each dish arrived, he compulsively calculated its cubic contents before lifting a bite to his lips. Otherwise there could be no joy in eating.

Those who came to the Palm Room for the express purpose of observing the inventor might have noted that he did not order his meal from the menu. As usual, it had been specially prepared beforehand according to his telephoned instructions and now was being served at his request not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself.¹

While Tesla picked at his food, William K. Vanderbilt paused to chide the young Serb for not making better use of the Vanderbilt box at the opera. And shortly after he left, a scholarly-looking man in a Van Dyke beard and small rimless glasses came to Tesla’s table and greeted him with particular affection. Robert Underwood Johnson, in addition to being a magazine editor and poet, was a socially ambitious and well-connected bon vivant.

Grinning, Johnson bent down and whispered in Tesla’s ear the latest rumor circulating among the “400”: a demure schoolgirl named Anne Morgan, it seemed, had a crush on the inventor and was pestering her papa, J. Pierpont, for an introduction.

Tesla smiled in his modest way and inquired after Johnson’s wife, Katharine.

“Kate has asked me to bring you to lunch on Saturday,” said Johnson.

They discussed for a moment another guest of whom Tesla was fond—but only in a platonic way—a charming young pianist named Marguerite Merington. Assured that she too had been asked, he accepted the invitation.

The editor went his way, and Tesla returned his attention to the cubic contents of his dessert course. He had barely completed his calculations when a messenger appeared at his table and handed him a note. He recognized at once the bold scrawl of his friend Mark Twain.

“If you do not have more exciting plans for the evening,” wrote the humorist, “perhaps you will join me at the Players’ Club.”²

Tesla scribbled a hasty reply: “Alas, I must work. But if you will join me in my laboratory at midnight, I think I can promise you some good entertainment.”

It was, as usual, precisely ten o’clock when Tesla rose from his table and vanished into the erratically lighted streets of Manhattan.

Strolling back toward his laboratory, he turned into a small park and whistled softly. From high in the walls of a nearby building came a rustling of wings. Soon a familiar white shape fluttered to rest on his shoulder. Tesla took a bag of grain from his pocket, fed the pigeon from his hand, then wafted her into the night, and blew her a kiss.

Now he considered his next move. If he continued on around the block, he would feel compelled to circle it three times. With a sigh, he turned and walked toward his laboratory at 33–35 South Fifth Avenue (now West Broadway), near Bleecker Street.

Entering the familiar loft building in the darkness, he closed a master switch. Tube lighting on the walls sprang into brilliance, illuminating a shadowy cavern filled with weirdly shaped machinery. The strange thing about this tube lighting was that it had no connections to the loops of electrical wiring around the ceiling. Indeed, it had no connections at all, drawing all its energy from an ambient force field. He could pick up an unattached light and move it freely to any part of the workshop.

In a corner an odd contraption began to vibrate silently. Tesla’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction. Here under a kind of platform, the tiniest of oscillators was at work. Only he knew its awesome power.

Thoughtfully he glanced through a window to the black shapes of tenements below. His hardworking immigrant neighbors appeared safely asleep. The police had warned him of complaints about the blue lightning flaring from his windows and electricity snapping through the streets after dark.

He shrugged and turned to his work, making a series of microscopic adjustments to a machine. Deep in concentration, he was unaware of the passage of time until he heard a pounding on the door at street level.

Tesla hurried down to greet an English journalist, Chauncey McGovern of Pearson’s Magazine.

“I’m so pleased you could come, Mr. McGovern.”

“I felt I owed it to my readers, sir. Everyone in London is talking about the New Wizard of the West—and they don’t mean Mr. Edison.”

“Well, come along up. Let’s see if I can justify my reputation.”

As they turned to the stairs there came a ring of laughter from the street entrance and a voice that Tesla recognized.

“Ah, that’s Mark.”

He opened the door again to welcome Twain and the actor Joseph Jefferson. Both had come directly from the Players’ Club. Twain’s eyes sparkled in anticipation.

“Let’s have the show, Tesla. You know what I always say.”

“No, what do you say, Mark?” the inventor asked with a smile.

“What I always say, and mind you they’ll be quoting me into the hereafter, is that thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”

“Then we’ll get a storm of work done tonight, my friend. Come along.”

•  •  •

“Not to stagger on being shown through the laboratory of Nikola Tesla,” McGovern would later recall, “requires the possession of an uncommonly sturdy mind . . . .

“Fancy yourself seated in a large, well-lighted room, with mountains of curious-looking machinery on all sides. A tall, thin young man walks up to you, and by merely snapping his fingers creates instantaneously a ball of leaping red flame, and holds it calmly in his hands. As you gaze you are surprised to see it does not burn his fingers. He lets it fall upon his clothing, on his hair, into your lap, and, finally, puts the ball of flame into a wooden box. You are amazed to see that nowhere does the flame leave the slightest trace, and you rub your eyes to make sure you are not asleep.”³

If McGovern was baffled by Tesla’s fireball, he was at least not alone. None of his contemporaries could explain how Tesla produced this oft-repeated effect, and no one can explain it today.

The odd flame having been extinguished as mysteriously as it appeared, Tesla switched off the lights, and the room became black as a cave.

“Now, my friends, I will make for you some daylight.”

Suddenly, the whole laboratory was flooded with strange, beautiful light. McGovern, Twain, and Jefferson cast their eyes around the room, but they could find no trace of the source of the illumination. McGovern wondered vaguely if this eerie effect might somehow be connected with a demonstration Tesla had reportedly given in Paris in which he had produced illumination between two large plates set at each side of a stage, yet with no source of light apparent.^I

But the light show was merely a warm-up for the inventor’s guests. Lines of tension on Tesla’s face betrayed the seriousness with which he himself regarded the next experiment.

A small animal was brought from a cage, tied to a platform, and quickly electrocuted. The indicator registered one thousand volts. The body was removed. Then Tesla, with one hand in his pocket, leaped lightly upon the same platform. The voltage indicator began slowly climbing. At last two million volts of electricity were pouring “through” the frame of the tall young man, who did not move a muscle. His silhouette was now sharply defined with a halo of electricity formed by myriad tongues of flame darting out from every part of his body.

Seeing the shock on McGovern’s face, he extended one hand to the English interviewer, who described the strange sensation: “You twist it about in the same fashion as you have seen people do who hold the handles of a strong electric battery. The young man is literally a human electric ‘live wire.’ ”

The inventor leaped down from the platform, turned off the current, and relaxed the tension of his audience by tossing off the performance as no more than a trick. “Pshaw! These are only a few playthings. None of these amount to anything. They are of no value to the great world of science. But come over here, and I will show you something that will make a big revolution in every hospital and home as soon as I am able to get the thing into working form.”

He led his guests to the corner where a strange platform was mounted on rubber padding. When he flipped a switch, it began to vibrate rapidly and silently.

Twain stepped forward, eager. “Let me try it, Tesla. Please.”

“No, no. It needs work.”

“Please.”

Tesla chuckled. “All right, Mark, but don’t stay on too long. Come off when I give you the word.” He called to an attendant to throw the switch.

Twain, in his usual white suit and black string tie, found himself humming and vibrating on the platform like a gigantic bumblebee. He was delighted. He whooped and waved his arms. The others watched in amusement.

After a time the inventor said, “All right, Mark. You’ve had enough. Come down now.”

“Not by a jugful,” said the humorist. “I am enjoying this.”

“But seriously, you had better come down,” insisted Tesla. “Believe me, it is best that you do so.”

Twain only laughed. “You couldn’t get me off this with a derrick.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when his expression froze. He lurched stiffly toward the edge of the platform, frantically waving at Tesla to stop it.

“Quick, Tesla. Where is it?”

The inventor helped him down with a smile and propelled him in the direction of the rest room. The laxative effect of the vibrator was well known to him and his assistants.⁴

None of his guests had volunteered to undergo the experiment in which Tesla stood on the high-voltage platform; they never did. But now they clamored for an explanation of why he had not been electrocuted.

As long as the frequencies were high, he said, alternating currents of great voltages flowed largely on the outer surface of the skin without injury. But it was no stunt for amateurs, he warned. Milliamperes penetrating nerve tissue could be fatal, while amperes distributed over the skin could be tolerated for short periods. Very low currents flowing beneath the skin, whether alternating current or direct current, could kill.

It was dawn when Tesla finally said good-night to his guests. But the lights burned on in his laboratory for another hour before he locked the doors and walked to his hotel for a brief period of rest.

---

I. To this day no one has duplicated this demonstration.

2. A GAMBLING MAN

Nikola Tesla was born at precisely midnight between July 9 and 10, 1856, in the village of Smiljan, province of Lika, Croatia, between Yugoslavia’s Velebit Mountains and the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. The tiny house in which he was born stood next to the Serbian Orthodox Church presided over by his father, the Reverend Milutin Tesla, who sometimes wrote articles under the nom-de-plume “Man of Justice.”

No country in Eastern Europe had greater ethnic and religious diversity than Yugoslavia. Within Croatia the Serbian Teslas were part of a racial and religious minority. The province then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs to whose heavy-handed rule the people adapted as best they could.

Ethnic traditions are often most tenaciously observed by transplanted minorities and the Teslas were no exception. They placed great store on Serbian martial songs, poetry, dancing, and storytelling, as well as on weaving and the celebration of saints’ days.

Although illiteracy was more common than not in that time and place, it was of a rare mind-expanding kind, for the people both admired and cultivated prodigious feats of memory.

In the Croatia of Tesla’s childhood, choices of career were more or less limited to farming, the Army, or the Church. The families of Milutin Tesla and his wife D-uka Mandić, who came originally from western Serbia, had for generations sent their sons to serve Church or Army and their daughters to marry ministers or officers.

Milutin had originally been sent to Army officers’ school, but he had rebelled and left to join the ministry. This he saw as the only career for his sons, Dane (or Daniel) and Nikola. As for their sisters, Milka, Angelina, and Marica, the Reverend Tesla hoped that God in His wisdom and mercy would provide them with clerical husbands like himself.

The life of a Yugoslav woman was grueling, for she was expected not only to do the heavy work of the farm but also to raise the children and care for the home and family. Tesla always said that he inherited his photographic memory and his inventive genius from his mother, and deplored that she had not lived in a country and at a time when women’s abilities were fairly rewarded. She had been the eldest daughter in a family of seven children, forced to take over ...