TechStuff Classic: Tesla- The Man, The Myths, The Truth

And I'm sure you guys are at least familiar with the name. Tesla has been the featured player in many an Internet meme over the past several years, and there are a lot of stories about him. Some of them are true, and some of them are probably exaggerated, and some of them might just be completely off basse. So I wanted to develop a full episode about Tesla and talk about him his good points, is bad points, everything in between, and that's what we're going to listen to.

So let's sit back and hear this classic episode of tech Stuff. We are focusing finally, after many, many, many people have asked us to do a full episode about Nicola Tesla. The Internet legend the the man placed on a virtual pedestal on the Internet that is gleaming and beauteous and will zap you if you ever dare say anything against him. He is, he's staring at us from the walls of the podcast room right now. Yes, he is. Now. The question of whether or not he'll be staring at

us in our news studio it 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 also maybe take a critical look at some of the some of the claims about slaw and some of the misconceptions people have about his contributions. Yeah, 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, 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 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 Lustinghouse, 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 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 page that the Oatmeal did all about Tesla and his 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 or not he deserves all those acohomis yeah. Yeah, And and and just just before anyone who is a rabbit fan of the oat mal 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, this is a comic. I'm I'm a comic artist. And some of this was hyper Bowl so perfectly. No, I

like its 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 real recording it. Let's move on. So yeah. Tesla born on July tenth, eighteen fifty six, in what is 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 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 was a pastor and his mom's father was a pastor,

both both in the Orthodox Church. Actually, so yeah, so he definitely had a religious upbringing 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 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 the very first terrific tall tale that I heard about Tesla was that he was born on a dark and storm and I to lightning 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 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 Sokolich is teaching there, and he's teaching math and physics, and Tesla finds both 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 outstripped most of his contemporaries. Oh 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 discoveries, things that some people say are low hanging fruit, you know, 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 fields you're in to clearly understand it. Sure, but while doing this, researcher 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 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 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. 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 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 may have developed some of the 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 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, 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 also point out that that that's the nineteen sixty eight version of the documentary The Producers, not the musical version starring Nathan Lane. Matthew Broderick actually has zero mostel 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, 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, 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 dodging,

that's the best way of putting it. Uh. The next year, eight five, he starts to attend the Austrian Polytechnic School and he starts off really strong. 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 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. That furthermore puts off gigantic electrical shocks that are actually pretty dangerous, like you could do it this way. And then, uh, if you mouth off 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 little over three years,

he actually dropped out of the polytechnic school. So he moved to Slovenia in eight 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 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, uh and Tesla starts to a new career as a teacher in the

same school that he attended as a boy, but realizes very quickly, that's not not for him. Yeah, he doesn't want to do that. Um So Then the next year, eighteen eighty, 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 work for the Budapest Telephone Exchange and also the Central

Telegraph 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 you know, he hasn't really made a name

for himself yet. He's been a very enthusiastic student at times of his life, and he is certainly interested in electronics or really we should say electricity electronics too early, but electricity and its applications. Um So, he does that

for a couple of years. In eighteen eighty too, he joins the Continental Edison Company and 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 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 me, they have dragon ball style fights in the sky. Yeah, they also would occasionally catch Pokemon, but it was only the one 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

you win this time vocal bomb. So at this time he also gets the idea for the A C induction motor, although Asterisk not necessarily the 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 something that he had already seen, or or of nothing, nothing

imaginary unless it 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, here are all the pieces

and the puzzle is completely it 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 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. 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 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 like David Bowie. Um might be mixing that up with a documentary though, So then the the in in uh in A ten 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, 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 yeah, and this this is when he was very he was what twenty six at the time, and in Paris, and so he was he was really distantly connected from to Edison at the time. But apparently grudge started, right you use this, If you use this and just say like this is indicative of how Edison treats people, it would apparently become company policy not to pay people for their work. That's what that's

what suggested of this. It also becomes you know, a common thread in Tesla's life of getting getting cheated out of things that were owed him, which makes you wonder if it happens 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 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 beingthing he deserved. Um, but then we'll get into that again. Yeo, he makes the big move from Europe to America. He he had basically no 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 ship. Oh my goodness. I did not read about this, and supposedly Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard, probably 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 ship he was on had a mutiny aboard it.

I ended up getting to New York way later than when he expected, and, according to some reports, had four cents in his pocket. Now, also, depending upon whom you asked, 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

helping them with their systems. Uh. Supposedly again, he started to suggest to Edison that they switched to an alternating current model as opposed to direct current, and Ederson was very much against that idea. So then in eighteen five, Tesla forms the Tesla Electric Light Company. An investor group actually asks him if he will work on an ARC 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 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 some fifty thou dollars for a particular project, and when Tesla completed the project again 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 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 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 I start. I never met Edison, didn't did you mean him? You're very old? Uh? 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 of super genius, the man who will one day light up the United States with his alternating current power grid, making money scraping by by digging ditches. Yeah. 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 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 like works like that, sometimes that's the Sometimes that's the truth. Stranger things. But anyway, h then by by e eight seven, so you know A six digging ditches,

we don't need to go into as that's it. Well, I mean, meanwhile, in eighteen eighties, 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, 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 strung across the city and and Brooklyn Nights had to dodge these lines so often that their team was thus named the Brooklyn Dodging, 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, Tesla begins to work within Besters again, and he establishes a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street in New York and then 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 Triple E, or as I always prefer to call them. I that once for 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 Westinghouse. Uh. That that's something to keep in mind as well. So eighteen eighty nine he establishes a new lab on Grand 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 sleeping A wasn't really sleeping, and B was probably under

his desk, right right, I can identify with that. Uh In 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 was shadow pictures. Yeah, this was before Wilhelm Laurentin had 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 Americans and also I believe patented the Tesla coil. 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 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 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 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 to be

the people pushing that rapid development is really exciting. Yeah, and think things like when the Chicago World Fair was that was that? Want to say? Yeah? That was that was famous because there was a 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 Westinghouse back 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 way of doing it, right as 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 was really Westinghouse that one, all 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. Yep. Yeah, and then and when and yeah, and when they threw when President grawf for 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

was president, then he wasn't president. Then he was president again. Yes, he also liked the song Funky called Medina eighteen five. So then one of the buildings that heused, one of Tesla's labs, caught fire in eight and his lab burned down, and the fire destroyed what was estimated to be about fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment. And and he had no insurance. Yeah, and fifty that's it's a lot of money today. It was a huge amount of money in um And and at the time he was experimenting with

with radios. Yeah, and and supposedly, 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 Tesla's patent, gave Marconi the patent, and then later on overturned it again and gave it back to Tesla. And later on is in like the nineteen seventies after Tesla

was dead long after. Um. Yeah, there's a 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 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 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. Yeah, and and that's a more firm one that Yeah, he absolutely lost that fight and lost probably a lot of money in fame. I think. Uh, Marconi won the New

Belt Prize all kinds of fun. Was not happy about that. Excited. Yeah, he demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model boat, so essentially a an RC boat at the Electrical Exposition in Madison Square Garden where years later, Highlanders would fight it out to determine 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 moves to Colorado to perform some experiments with wireless power. And now 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. He claimed that he had another one of those visions that let him understand the geoelectrical phenomenon he called terrest real stationary waves, an idea about tapping into the Earth

itself as a conductor. Okay, sounds interesting, Yeah, and it's not that it's not that everything was that he said was crazy or it was just to be able to actually 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's still existed. Get into more about more destruction of his work and where it all when it went to. But then if it's still existed, it would prove that this sort of thing is possible, and it's only the energy companies 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.

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, forward thinking, and maybe let's have you know, perhaps the people these days are not vision nary 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 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 he really was thinking it was an interesting idea. So in nineteen o one, with funding from various sources, including people like JP Morgan, he starts to

build the Warden Cliff Tower. And 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 within nineteen o 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, took d of tap into this this terrestrial uh wave stationary way. I 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 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. And the Earth is still here, by the way, So that's kind of a spoiler alert to how this story plays out. MythBusters actually actually cracked that one in the episode back in A two six, I think 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 couple hundred feet away, right, but not necessarily enough to to make it crumble into pieces. Um, but anyway,

we all earthquake. Warncliffe Tower becomes an important part of Tesla's life. He 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 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 as across the Atlantic. Then that didn't make Tesla happy. And and I mean and and you know Marconi was 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 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 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 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 ninetelve Tesla suffered another setback, although not one nearly as large as Lady Astor. John Jacob Astor was one of Tesla's most wealthy and enthusiastic investors, stopped investing in Tesla's work because he stopped breathing. He was at board a little boat called the Titanic. Oh, I've heard of that one. I think I saw a documentary about it one. Yeah,

his heart will go on, but his investment payments stopped. Yeah. He Um. He went down 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. So it was another financial setback for Tesla. Um. I don't think he could blame that

one on Edison. No, No, maybe Mark Coni, 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 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, but they did not say any more than that. What has come up since then as the rumor, 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 that's a good myth that the rivalry was so great that 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 y. It was just

not a good year for him. Uh. In nineteen seventeen, he ended up proposing 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 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, Tesla had

proposed this, this way of finding ships underwater. Yeah, that's the problem, right, So the more you look into it, 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 demo was because it wasn't the

right technology for the application. What Tesla did not take into account was he he wanted to use 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 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 attenuate Asian 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. 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 claim that he invented radar as being a little generous, nineteen, 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 us to worry about when we get there in nineteen

thirty four. Actually, if 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 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, 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. On the cold blood of a fight, and The New York Times published as an article about Tesla's death, ray,

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 bring down a fleet of him 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. 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 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 build

something that does this. Uh, that's another you know, that's another one of those things. It's a myth, right. 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 to in upon which report you read, 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 he due to all of these various financial troubles

over the years, and and basic misspending. I think head, yeah, 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, 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 growing 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 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 particle beam and aims it at the HW office is and just just just just let me know I'm perfectly willing to give you Jonathan g a syncritis coordinates. Please keep in mind that stuff you missed in history class, and stuff mom never told you sit really near me. So if you love those shows, keep your beam particle

pointed somewhere else. That's not cool. We'll be right back to talk more about Nicola Tesla, an eccentric inventor and lover of alternating current in just a moment after this quick break. 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 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, 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 various nefarious purposes for the United States government. Now keep in mind this is nte. World War two is a thing, and so there is a genuine concerned 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 had against that absolutely. And also I mean remember that that Tesla was a Serbian American um 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 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 for real, Zo, we didn't grab those And actually I looked into it and it wouldn't be until well, 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 Justice number one and number two in nineteen fifty two they sent the papers to uh to Kasanovich, his nephew, and that is that is nine years later. Yeah, alright, granted nine years. Like we're a talking about time during not just the World War two with the Red Scared

as well, So I mean not that that justifies suppressing information. Also, you're talking about the government, So it 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 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 over, copies of his papers were sent out to one of the Air Force spaces and Project Nick was a thing that was heavily funded, and then

the papers disappeared, never to be seen again. Yeah, their love conspiracy theories here, they're there was one one person posted on 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, 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 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 probably, or it would have zapped somebody. Although there there is stuff they don't want you to know. Did I did an episode a couple of years ago on this even You can go check that out on YouTube. That's it,

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 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 not that he just copied someone else's work. He really did make legitimate contributions, I'm sure, and it was it was his patents in his his work with Westinghouse that led to alternating current, the coming the thing that the US uses and and the thing that is capable of

going across long distances. Both of those are extremely extremely important. I can't downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but but you know, 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

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 again another documentary, right, Uh. Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out, was working 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 Westinghouse 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 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, 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 X rays. I've as we covered before. Yeah, Ivan Poolui, I have no idea how 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 into it and began to make theories and hypotheses and tests some really clever 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 Testla versus Edison thing. Uh, it was really 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 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's 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 of his fortunes switched mainly because he made some really bad business deals. He sold patents off out a pittance at times, because the company would come to him and say,

you know, there's this massive economic downturn coming. We need this these patents, but if we paid you what they're worth, then we're going to go under. And Contessa is like, look, I'll cut you a 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 the famous Westinghouse deal where um uh.

Even even even though a Westinghouse won the so called War of the Currents, 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 test the let him out of the contract just to he said said like, oh, no, you don't have to pay me the rest. That's fine, you save your company. Yeah, 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 certainly, And I know that people are probably listening to this episode and thinking that I am. I think Tesla was a worthless lay about that. Nothing could be

further from the truth. I think he really did make incredible contributions to 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 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 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 for a 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, I can, considering how well we treat those kind 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. And Ladies and gentlemen, that wraps up our conversation are our our classic episode of tech stuff about Nicola Tesla, And believe it or not, I

really admire Tesla a lot. I mean, truly was a genius a true genius and someone who had been wronged quite a bit throughout his life. But that being said, I don't necessarily think everything he thought of was absolutely brilliant. I don't go quite that far. So uh. I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode. If you have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, send me a message on social media. You can find me on Facebook or on Twitter with the handled text stuff. HS with

you and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.