2009-06-15

Nikola Tesla continued....

A fierce, often underhanded competition raged for years between the General Electric Co. (a creature of Morgan) and Westinghouse. GE's strategy, when mere engineering would not avail, was to invent ghastly tales of AC hazards and misadventures. In 1890 the company went so far as to license, through an agent, the Westinghouse system in order to power a death contraption which they called an "electric chair." Sing Sing Prison, in upstate New York, was persuaded to use it, with the gratifying results for GE that the press for a while played headlines in which prisoners were "Westinghoused."

When the publicity battles were over, and the superiority of AC systems apparent, Westinghouse was kept constantly in the courts, defending the patents–which the company did with ferocity. For Tesla, now an eminence in the field, success brought little in the way of wealth. With consultant and contract work he lived comfortably enough and kept his lab busy; he sometimes wrote that genuine millions could not elude him for long.

Through the 1890s he absorbed himself (and his redoubtable chief assistant, George Scherff) in work with x–rays, with high–frequency, high–voltage phenomena, and with radio. By 1899 he had built in Colorado Springs an isolated laboratory in which he could unleash power at unheard–of levels. His "magnifying transmitter," which included a 52–foot Tesla coil, reached 12 Mv in the secondary-the arcs thrown from its antenna mast sounded a man–made thunder for miles around. As satisfying as were such spectacles for their creator, and tantalizing to his searching mind, any possible commercial value in energy at this scale lay far, far over the horizon.

A 1902 venture, with J. P. Morgan, to construct a transatlantic radio installation (at Wardenclyffe, Long Island) was abandoned by 1906. Troubled from the outset by thinness of financing, the facility never became fully operational.

Now entering his fifties, Tesla received honors with regularity (including the Edison Medal) and stipends or fees enough to make ends meet, but clearly a decline had set in. Patent filings were fewer, lectures more seldom, his eccentricities more noticeable. Still, he seemed always able to find working capital, putting together the Tesla Ozone Co. in 1910 and later the Tesla Propulsion Co. (to produce his new and patented turbine).

His notes, letters, and patent filings bespeak a genius at work through his seventies, but a genius whose time is increasingly given over to feeding the pigeons of Manhattan, and to nursing the sick ones in his hotel room. When he died, January 7, 1943, in a world at war, the FBI showed up within hours to open his safe–though Tesla had become an American citizen in 1891, his many boxes and crates were put under seal and unaccountably turned over to the OAP (Office of Alien Property). Many were released in 1952 to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, some have not resurfaced. His is a legacy of brilliance and enigma.

Remarkable by any standard, Tesla's 111 patents illuminate only his most purposive, practical work. As he often lamented, there just wasn't enough time to tame the racing of ideas in his head; so much had to be left incomplete. Some of the projects–for achieving ultra-high vacuum, a rocket engine design, experiments in directed beams and solar power–simply don't fit into the early twentieth century. His musings on ball lightning (he proposed an onion like gaseous sphere of many charged layers) accord well with the most recent and satisfactory computer models. Frequently he was content to publish his findings without regard to priority or patentability: he introduced in this way the therapeutic method now called diathermy.

But the patent record is, as always, incontrovertible and precise. All inventors who wish to eat regularly must sooner or later become acquainted with the ordeals of the patent process. It will be useful to sketch the essentials of filing, using, and defending these peculiar grants.

To begin, a U.S. patent can be filed only by the inventor. Other nations, at different times in history, have allowed patents to whomever appeared first, treating the act of filing much like staking out a gold claim.

<<Prev [Page] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

[15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] Next>>

Nikola Tesla Videos

This web site is funded almost entirely by the author.

If you wish to offer a donation to help offset the costs, your support will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR TEMPLE

USE CODE: WOR685