Tesla: Inventor of the Modern

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern
by Richard Munson

"With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look-for dizzier heights." - Nikola Tesla, "Address on the Dedication of Niagara Falls", 1897

Main Points:

Mark Twain holding a light bulb,
as Nikola Tesla watches in the back.

• Tesla had 300 patents: electric motor, long distance transmission, robot, remote control, and radio technology. Foresaw vertical lift aircraft, cell phones, AI, etc. 
• Magician: he would admit that electricity was force that even physicists couldn't understand. The ability to transmit power and electricity over long distances. Tesla coil and make lamps glow that were not attached to wires. Both practical in making systems, a visionary in creating things which technology couldn't support, and he was quirky. 
• Nikola Tesla was a clean energy pioneer and remains an inspiration to solar/battery manufacturers. Elon Musk contributed $1 million to revitalize the Tesla Lab in Long Island.
• Leadership on Clean Energy: In 1900 Tesla published an article in the Century which was the nation's largest circulating periodical titled "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy with Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy." 
• Balance the Present and the Future: Tesla was born during a giant lightning storm at the stroke of midnight July 9-10th, 1856. The birth story places him in present and the future. Focusing on current realities and envisioning the unknown. In 1897 he had to figure out how to transport the energy from Niagara Falls twenty-six miles to Buffalo and then another 400 miles to New York City. 
• His initial project was a radio controlled model boat (4ft x 3ft high). He was a shy scientists, but was capable of being a showman. He debuted his design at the Electrical Exposition at Madison Square Garden (two months after the start of the Spanish-American War). He highlighted the boat's capability on a giant pond built in the middle of the exposition. He foresaw Artificial Intelligence and this boat would "not only would follow a course laid out ...but it would be capable of distinguishing between what it ought and what it not ought to do."
• Letters of Library of Congress: His closest friends were the Johnsons (Robert (editor of the Century magazine) and his wife Catherine) who curated a Salon at their townhouse. Mark Twain came to most of these parties and they became good friends. He would come to Tesla's lab and would play with electrical equipment, X-ray each other's hands, etc. When they first met Tesla recalled that when he was 14 years old he was quite sick and his parents had given him some Mark Twain novels, so he told Twain that he had saved his life getting him through that time. Tesla writes, "this great man of laughter broke out into tears." 
• Tesla's relationship between Robert and Catherine was a relaxing moment for the inventor. Tesla was a very intense inventor. He never married, but fell in love with a women named Ana and when he was 23 years old would walk through parks together. He went off to engineering school and would not be able to continue. He believed that inventors were not to be intimate. At the end of his life he admitted that it may be true, but it would make inventors lonely. 
• Where did this inventing spirit come from? He could speak 8 languages, could recite poetry, and had an orthodox Serbian priest father. He was also a little strange- and when he was young he couldn't distinguish between things that were real or fake. He had a curiosity-driven quest for discovery. Tesla believed that "technology transcends the marketplace." He was an individualist, but today most of what we do are in teams. 
• How did he end up? He ended up poor and alone, living his final days in the Hotel New Yorker where he refused to see anyone and not allow the maids from seeing him. The only reason he had any money at the end is because some scientists from the Westinghouse corporation (who bought his patents for the electric motor) who convinced the company that they give him enough of a stipend to survive. He died in a room that was divisible by 3. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral by the church by Columbia University.
• How much do you think someone's success is based on what they believe they can do versus their natural born intelligence? Nikola Tesla's early life was wonderful, but when he was 7 his older brother Dane was killed after being thrown from his horse. Nikola felt that he had no sense of confidence, because his parents felt that anything he did would not be as good as Dane. He never won his father's affection because of this. He went to engineering school, got great grades for 2 years, but when his father found out, he said "oh Dane could have been better." So Nikola Tesla drops out, takes up gambling and billiards, moves to a city 200 miles away, and get arrested for vagrancy. And his father dies a little after out of shock. He was told that he was not the greatness and got beyond this with perseverance. 
• Tesla is a cult figure who appears in movies in an ahistorical fashion. What is your take on this? Tesla is portrayed by David Bowie in the Prestige, but it isn't very accurate. He did believe he could tap into the Earth's electric force by shooting lightning into the center. But it isn't very accurate that they were screwing light bulbs in a field. 
• What did Tesla feel about monetary compensation? Tesla could have been amazingly wealthy and when he sold his electric motor patents to Westinghouse he was rich. He was eating his meals at Del Monicos and living in the best hotel in New York City Waldorf-Astoria. But Westinghouse, because of JP Morgan the banker tried to squeeze him out after the Niagara project, was not in great shape and told Tesla he couldn't afford it. Tesla tells George Westinghouse that he is willing to tear up his contract-- so that the electric motor would be introduced to the world. 
• Tesla's interesting MIT connection: In his later years when he was senile he would have birthday parties for himself and would invite reporters. One of his visions during the birthday parties was a death beam (star wars) that could zap battleships and airplanes out of the air. The FBI hired an MIT physicist and assembled all of his papers together and he was overseen by naval intelligence. There was one that he putted top-secret clearance on since it was close enough to being practical. The MIT professor who did this investigation was John Trump, the member of the National Academy of Engineering and won the NAS's award and is the uncle of President Donald Trump. 
• What brought them from Austria to the US? He had been installing Edison phone systems in Budapest and Paris. He had done such a great job that his supervisors sent him to New York to work with Thomas Edison. They split because Edison refused to provide the promised bonus if Tesla would improve the efficiency of the dynamos/generators. He had worked on this for 3 months and Edison basically mocked him as it was a joke. Tesla did not like and walked out.

Watch Richard Munson's talk at Google on the life and times of Tesla!

Watch the Netflix documentary: "American Experience: Tesla"!