Nikola Tesla

⁠A Short History of Ancient Rome⁠ - the debut book from the Noiser Network is out now! Discover the epic rise and fall of Rome like never before. Pick up your copy now at your local bookstore or visit ⁠⁠noiser.com/books⁠⁠ to learn more. Nikola Tesla, the visionary inventor, helped shape the modern world. Hailing from what is now Croatia, he arrived in America with just four cents in his pocket and a head full of inventions. Within a few short years, he revolutionised the burgeoning industry of electricity. As well as induction motors that run our appliances and factories to this day, Telsa also invented robots and remote control, developed foundation technology for radio, and dreamed up plans for cell phones, the Internet, death ray weapons, and electric cars. He was also a charismatic showman who drew crowds but couldn’t bear to touch people. A workaholic who made vast sums and lost them. But what drew this young man from central Europe to physics? What was his path from would-be priest to trailblazing inventor? And as a key figure in the engineering revolution that brought electricity into almost every aspect of modern life, why has he been largely overlooked by history? This is a Short History Of Nikola Tesla. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Richard Munson, author of Tesla: Inventor of the Modern Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact Check: Sean Coleman Get every episode of Short History Of… a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:02Speaker 02

  It is a spring night in 1891 in New York City.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  A young engineer, notebook clutched in his hand, hurries along 49th Street to join the back of an excited queue.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Though it's a university event, and most of those waiting are scientists dressed in somber black, there's an almost circus-like atmosphere.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  The engineer has heard rumors that tonight, they could witness man-made lightning.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  At last, the doors open, and the crowd files into the auditorium.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  The young engineer slips into a seat as close to the front as he can manage. Eventually, the lights dim, and a hush descends as a professor from Columbia College steps forward to introduce the evening speaker.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  When Nikola Tesla, the night's star lecturer, approaches the stage, the young man sits up a little straighter. At 6'3", with a neat moustache and his sharply angular face framed by thick, wavy hair, the inventor towers over his host.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  A known germaphobe, Tesla declines a handshake, offering instead a polite bow. With an accent that belies his Central European background, Tesla starts to talk about his work on electricity. But as the lecture goes on, and he starts drawing a few diagrams and formulate on a large blackboard, some members of the audience begin to fidget. This isn't the show they've been expecting.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Sensing their impatience, Tesla turns to his props. An assortment of tubes and bulbs, arranged on a long wooden table at the front of the stage between two large zinc plates, suspended from the ceiling.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Throwing a switch connected to a motor and alternator in the wings, Tesla cranks up the current's frequency until an electric arc surges across the stage, creating purplish sparks.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  As he increases the oscillations, the sound becomes smoother and higher pitched. The soaring streams turn a radiant white, and the young engineer gasps. This is the man-made lightning the audience has waited for.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  With the chemical scent of ozone filling the air, Tesla now waves gas-filled tubes between the electrified zinc sheets. The tubes begin to glow like luminous swords.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Though the engineer understands that this phenomenon can be explained by the electrostatic field created by the plates, even to his eyes, it looks like an act of sheer magic.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Yet, from the back, there is a whistle, a shout of criticism.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Everywhere he goes, Tesla attracts them, his doubters and rivals in what's being called "The War of the Currents", men who would rather mock than marvel. On the stage, though, the inventor is unperturbed. As he raises his hands again, sparks leap from his fingertips, lighting the air with their white-blue crackle.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  To the engineer, he looks like nothing so much as a wizard, or a visitor from the future. But not everyone is ready for the future.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Nikola Tesla was a visionary inventor whose ideas helped shape the modern world. Hailing from what is now Croatia, he arrived in America with just four cents in his pocket and a head full of inventions.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Within a few short years, he revolutionized the burgeoning industry of electricity. As well as induction motors that run our appliances and factories to this day, Tesla also invented robots and remote control, developed foundation technology for radio and dreamed up plans for cellphones, the internet, death ray weapons and electric cars. He was also a charismatic showman who drew crowds but couldn't bear to touch people, a workaholic who made vast sums and lost them.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  But what drew this young man from Central Europe to physics? What was his path from would-be priest to trail-blazing inventor? And as a key figure in the engineering revolution that brought electricity into almost every aspect of modern life, why has he been largely overlooked by history?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of Nikola Tesla.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Nikola Tesla is born at the stroke of midnight between July 9th and 10th, 1856, apparently in the midst of a violent thunderstorm in the village of Smiljan, modern-day Croatia.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Identifying as Serbian and practicing Orthodox Christianity, the Tesla family are different from most of their Roman Catholic neighbors. Nikola's parents are Milutin, a priest, and Džuka, his indefatigable wife.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Richard Munson is the author of Tesla: Inventor of the Modern.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Tesla's father was an Orthodox priest that served a small congregation in what is now Croatia. And Nikola considered his father to be this great philosopher and poet who could memorize lengthy stories and do math in his head. And although his father transferred those skills to Nikola, he also ignored the young man's interest in engineering and inventing and always dismissed his talents. Tesla attributes his inventiveness and his industriousness to his mother, actually, because she would get up early and work late. She designed creative objects like a mechanical egg beater. She devised intricate designs for clothes and fabrics.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Of the five children, Dane, Tesla's older brother, is his parents' favorite. A gifted child, he is expected to follow his father into the clergy. Nikola, the second youngest, is clever but less praised. A sweet, solitary child, he adores the family's cat, Matčak, and enjoys riding his father's Arabian stallion.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  But when he is just seven, he witnesses a tragedy: when the horse bolts and throws Dane from his back.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  And Dane died that night from his injuries. And so here you have young Nikola, seven years old. He witnessed this accident, and then he was woken up in the middle of the night and forced to come into Dane's bedroom and kiss his dead brother goodbye. You would have thought that the parents would have embraced their remaining son, but they, particularly the father, increasingly idolized the dead boy's talents and consistently projected accomplishments that would have happened if Dane was still alive. And so Nikola felt that he could not compete with this ideal, and he would later write "I grew up with little confidence in myself."

• 8:46Speaker 02

  The grief still raw, the family moved to the town of Gospić, where Nikola attends a new school.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  There, he discovers he loves to tinker with objects, a hobby that sometimes gets him into trouble. He takes apart his grandfather's clocks, but can't always reassemble them correctly. Equally unpopular among his family is his invention of a pop gun, which is confiscated when he smashes his mother's window.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  More promising, however, are his early encounters with electricity.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Nikola's first introduction to static electricity was when he rubbed the back of his beloved cat and felt the static electric charges that came from then and there was a faint halo around the animal. And Nikola was hooked, and he spent all that he could in his time to find books that tried to explain what was then known about this mysterious phenomenon.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  "Is nature a giant cat? And if so, who strokes its back?", he asks.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Encouraged by his teachers, he experiments with batteries and induction coils. But alongside his obvious intelligence, he displays certain quirks. His dislikes are strong and specific: touching other people's hair, the sight of a peach or a pearl, and earrings on women. He counts his steps on walks, ensuring they are always divisible by 3, and beginning again if they're not.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  The child born in a violent thunderstorm also has episodes of seeing things with strobing intensity, or flashes of light, and claims his sight and hearing are exceptional.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  At 14, after he recovers from a serious illness, he is sent by his father to a boarding school to prepare for his future in the seminary. With an exceptional flair for mathematics and physics, he completes his four-year curriculum in just three. But then, in 1873, he falls ill again, this time with cholera.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  For nine months, he was stuck in bed, seriously sick, to the point that his parents actually ordered a coffin. So even though he had a high fever, he was bedridden, he moaned rather cleverly to his father that he could recover if, in fact, he got to go to engineering school, rather than be forced to go to divinity school. And his father, of course, didn't want to lose his remaining son, so he eventually agreed.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  He recovers. But before he leaves, he's expected to complete military service in the Austro-Hungarian Army. To avoid the draft, he runs away into the hills of Croatia, where he spends his days hiking and reading.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Having given the army the slip, he heads for Johannine Polytechnische School in Graz, Austria, where he has won a scholarship. But his brush with cholera has a lasting effect, leaving him with a phobia of germs and avoiding contact with other people for the rest of his life.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  At Graz, Tesla studies obsessively, mastering science, languages, and the classics. But it's the lectures on electricity that truly ignite his imagination.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  In 1875, the electrical industry is still in its infancy, lighting just a few streets and laboratories.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Most systems run on direct current, but a few engineers are beginning to experiment with alternating current, which promises to be more powerful.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  The key difference, as you would expect, direct current flows in one continuous direction, while alternating current oscillates, sometimes 50 to 60 times per second. So AC, or alternating current, its great advantage is that allows long-distance transmission. So, for example, DC, at the time Edison's system, could travel only about a couple of blocks.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Tesla lehrt über den Grammgenerator, der ein Gerät namens Kommutator verwendet, um alternierende Strom in direkten Strom zu transformieren. Er plant ein Bier in seinem Gedächtnis. Was wäre, wenn das alternierende Strom selbst genutzt würde? Das würde den Kommutator völlig wegnehmen?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Während er das Thema weiter betrachtet, erweitert er seine weiteren Studien, übertragen fast zwei Mal die erforderlichen Prüfungen. Aber sein Vater erweist seine Vertrauen weiterhin. Und bald wird er Lektüre mit Spielzeug, Karten und Billarden und ein befürchtender Gewinnhaber ersetzen. Und dann verschwindet Tesla einfach.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Nach einer unerfolgreichen Suche hat sein Familien und Freunde den Schlimmsten geglaubt, bis er von einem alten Schullehrer in einer Stadt von fast 200 Kilometer entfernt in der modernen Slowenien entdeckt wird. Dort arbeitet er in einem Shop während des Tages und gewinnt jede Nacht in dem "Haus der Freunde" - Pub. Bis sein Vater ihn aufsucht und ihm vertraut, seine Bildung fortzuführen. Tesla refuse es, aber nach langem wird er als Völkern verhaftet und deportiert. Ein paar Wochen später stirbt sein herzzerstörteres Vater sehr ernsthaft und stirbt um 60 Jahre alt.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Aber die Mutter von Tesla hat eine bessere Kenntnis von der Art, mit seinem weiblichen Sohn zu reagieren, als sein Mann. Mit ihm eine Rolle von Geld zu geben, sagt sie ihm, dass es besser wird, wenn er es allmählich gewinnt.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Die Strategie, etwas von selbst gewinnendes Gewinnen, ist ein Wachstum für Tesla, der ihm erzwingt, zu gewinnen und zur Kirche zu gehen. Dort wird er näher zu einer schönen Frau namens Anna. Aber seine Entscheidung, zu studieren, dieses Mal in Prag, bedeutet, dass sein potenzielles Geschick verlängert wird. Obwohl er und Anna für die restliche Zeit in Kontakt bleiben.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  En Prag, skippe lectures in favor of considering designs for an electric motor, a growing obsession.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Then he hears that Thomas Edison, the American inventor famous for perfecting the electric light bulb, is collaborating with his Hungarian partners to build a telephone exchange in Budapest.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Thomas Edison, who was nine years older than Tesla and was famed around the world. He was the wizard who brought us incandescent light bulbs and a whole bunch of other practical devices. The two inventors, they just differed dramatically. I mean, even in appearance, Edison came off as frumpy, he spat tobacco, he had this midwestern drawl, you could hardly understand him. Tesla, in the meantime, was speaking eight different languages, he dressed as though he was going to the opera.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  In January 1882, he moves to Budapest. But with the telephone project not yet operational, he takes a low-paying job climbing telegraph poles to repair equipment.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Struggling to fund his inventions, he suffers a nervous breakdown and only recovers with the help of a friend before returning to work on his commutator-less motor.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  The key early challenge was to make this mysterious power of electricity do work, to have some motor turn fans or wheels or other equipment. But it was a difficult challenge because to make electricity, you basically have these undulating electrical rhythms that result from a rotating magnetic field. And so it's hard to capture that oscillation and make a motor actually spin continuously and do the work that you would like.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  It's during a walk with a friend in February 1882 that Tesla experiences his eureka moment.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  He picked up a stick and drew his design in the pebbled walkway. So technically, what he did was that he used two circuits rather than one and that he eliminated the commutator. But what he provided was suddenly this form of electricity. We could control it and make it work and do things to improve our lives.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  In his moment of inspiration, Tesla envisions a motor that could harness the undulating rhythms of the more powerful alternating current. In electrical terms, it's nothing short of reinventing the wheel.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  It will take many years to see this game-changing idea come to fruition. In the meantime, Tesla still needs to make a living. The Prague Telephone Exchange is now up and running, and Tesla is appointed chief electrician, but he's soon promoted within the company to a role in Paris.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Here, he gains extensive hands-on experience in electrical engineering and also gets the chance to showcase his deep understanding of physics. Soon, his talent is recognized, and he is set to work designing and building improved versions of generating dynamos and motors.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  The inventor enjoys a good life, living in Paris's Latin Quarter. He swims at a bathhouse on the Seine, performing 27 laps each day, the number, as always, divisible by 3. In the evenings, he walks the gaslit avenues and enjoys the new electrical lighting at the Paris Opera, an innovation he himself helped to install.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Then, at the suggestion of one of his bosses, Tesla decides to try his fortunes in America, working for Edison directly.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  His European representatives recognized that this Tesla, this young man, had all these amazing talents, and so they sent him to New York to work with Edison directly. And perhaps also the greatest reference letter I've ever read, it was noted that "I know two great men, and you, Mr. Edison, are one of them, and the other is this young man." And so he clearly got the job.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  With this letter of recommendation, Tesla sets sail for America and a new life, working with his hero.

• 19:12Speaker 04

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• 20:11Speaker 02

  After a treacherous journey in which he loses his tickets, money, and some personal items, Tesler arrives in New York City in early June 1884 with just four cents to his name.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  The city he encounters is a bustling hub of industry, immigration, and ambition. The Brooklyn Bridge opened just a year ago, and the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty is still under construction, with the statue itself still being built in France. Downtown, Edison's newly-built electricity plant hums with activity.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  On his second day in the United States, the 28-year-old Serb meets Edison in person for the first time. But dressed immaculately, in his bowler hat and white gloves, Tesler could not be more different from his more pragmatic hero.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  They had different inventing styles. Edison filled up a table with all sorts of gadgets and did by trial and error to see what would best work. Nikola did everything in his head. He was cerebral. He did all of his experiments upstairs, if you will. But more importantly, they differed because they had different perceptions of how electricity should be generated and distributed. Edison favored direct current and Tesla wanted alternating current.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  At first, despite their differences, the immigrant impresses Edison, who tasks him with fixing the lighting on the SS Oregon, currently the world's fastest passenger liner. Tesla stays up all night on the job and bumps into his employer on the way home at 5 o'clock in the morning. Edison praises him as a damn good man.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  He continues to work tirelessly, trying to convince his employer of the advantages of alternating current. Edison is immovable on this matter, but that doesn't stop him taking advantage of his young employee.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Edison treated Tesla really poorly. As an example, he promised a bonus if Nikola would fix several key machines. And so Tesla spent six months, working evenings and weekends, and after that, tripled the output of Edison's generators. But in a cruel slight to this immigrant, Edison basically said that the monetary offer had been made in jest and that if you, Nikola Tesla, ever become a full-fledged American, you'll appreciate an American joke. Well, Tesla, of course, found nothing funny about this.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Feeling cheated and disillusioned, Tesla resigns, picks up his bowler hat, and walks away from Edison's employment.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  After resigning from Edison's company, Tesla falls on hard times. For a brief period, he finds backing from a businessman in New Jersey, but the venture soon collapses. Penniless once again, he approaches a crew digging ditches for underground telephone and telegraph lines. At first, the foreman laughs at his good clothes and soft hands, but never afraid of hard work, Tesla proves himself an asset.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Yet even now, ideas are sparking in his mind. He completes a patent for a thermomagnetic motor, and although the machine never proves profitable, his foreman is impressed. He introduces Tesla to Alfred Brown, a manager at the communications company Western Union.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Brown, in turn, introduces him to Charles F. Peck, a patent lawyer and investor. The two men partner with him to form the Tesla Electric Company, providing the inventor with an annual salary of about $3,000, roughly equivalent to $78,000 today.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  For the first time, Tesla has the tools and the time to pursue his ideas.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  After a couple of false starts, he returns to the idea of an AC motor he first imagined years earlier in Budapest. He begins work on prototypes, and by the autumn of 1887, he is ready to start securing patents for his invention.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  His design uses a special kind of electricity called polyphase current, which creates a spinning magnetic field to make the motor turn. By doing away with the commutator, which causes sparks and wears out over time, this motor is safer, more reliable, and much easier to maintain. He is granted seven patents covering his AC motor and other polyphase inventions. But Tesla is still relatively unknown, so Peck and Brown get started on PR, inviting two leading trade journalists to his impressive laboratory.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Then, in May 1888, Tesla introduces his invention in a high-profile lecture at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  When the lecture is reprinted in the major engineering journals, it catches the attention of George Westinghouse.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  About a decade older than Tesla, Westinghouse is a solid, barrel-chested man, standing at six feet tall with mutton chops and a bushy moustache. A successful inventor in his own right, he has developed a keen interest in electricity, and particularly, in alternating current.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  George Westinghouse had gained fame and a bit of fortune because he had invented air brakes for train cars. And he had long been interested in alternating current, believing that it was far more efficient and also that it promised amazing profits if, in fact, he was able to make it work. But to make it work, he needed a motor. And so, Westinghouse offered Nikola what was considered a very high price for his AC motor patent.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  In mid-July 1888, Westinghouse signs an agreement to buy around 20 of Tesla's poly-phase patents in exchange for stock worth millions today.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  He also invites Tesla to work with him in Pittsburgh to build a practical AC power system, paying him $2,000 a month, almost $70,000 a month in modern money.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Though it's a life-changing deal, once motors are in production in Pittsburgh, he steps away, preferring freedom over even the most supportive boss.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Back in New York, he checks himself into Astor House, the city's first luxury hotel, and immerses himself in his laboratory work. During the next four years, he will go on to receive no fewer than 45 US patents.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  But it's around now that Tesla's work with Westinghouse on AC pits him against Thomas Edison. It's a conflict that becomes known as "The War of the Currents", which rages for years. At first, Westinghouse is friendly, inviting Edison to Pittsburgh to tour his facilities. But his invitation is rudely rebuffed.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  The stakes were high in the late 19th century since electricity seemed to hold such great potential. And the assumption was that one system, either AC or DC, would eventually dominate. And at the early portion, Edison clearly had the lead. He had financing from the rich banker JP Morgan. He had an existing infrastructure of DC power generators virtually across the United States and in a few in other countries. But the wizard of Menlo Park, Edison, he wanted to ensure his success and he went to war. And he began with an 84-page diatribe against alternating current. And his strategy was to portray AC as dangerous, something you should never allow in your homes or your businesses.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  He had this one line, which I thought was just cruel. He said, "Don't let your house be Westinghoused."

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Some of Edison's tactics are quite literally shocking. He dispatches an associate to orchestrate a public display in which wires are placed on the head of a supposedly vicious dog. Direct current does nothing to the black retriever, but high voltage alternating current kills it immediately.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  And then he subsequently electrocuted cats, calves, horses, I mean, you name it. He even convinced the New York legislature to have AC be used for capital punishment. But the electrocution of a convicted murderer proved so gruesome that even Edison had to back down. It was just horrid. And all these reporters acknowledged, you know, that Edison had just gone overboard. And one biographer later referred to him as having become the stubborn reactionary old man of the electrical industry.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Tesla takes a different approach. In the pages of the journal Electrical Engineer, he argues for alternating current, explaining how it can transmit power across vast distances. He also begins giving remarkable public lectures, the most famous of which amazes the attendees with artificial lightning arcing between zinc plates.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  And the audience just went nuts. You know, here was just this amazing, beautiful performance that in comparison to the gruesomeness of what Edison was doing, Tesla was in fact entertaining and giving people a sense of what the possibilities of electricity were.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yet despite his rising fame, Tesla makes a decision to sacrifice his lucrative contract. When Westinghouse's company struggles under mounting debts, Tesla gives up the royalties deal, securing the future of alternating current, but leaving himself financially vulnerable in the years to come.

• 30:25Speaker 04

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• 30:54Speaker 01

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• 31:24Speaker 02

  In the early 1890s, Nikola Tesla stands at the height of his fame, celebrated for his groundbreaking work with AC. In particular, the Tesla coil.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  These are technical terms. He used resonance between two electromagnetic coils to cancel out resistance. Resistance is where you lose power along the line. And he generated high voltage electricity that produced these powerful, visible electric arcs like lightning. And he thought that this powerful invention would transmit electrical power wirelessly over long distances, as well as possibly transmit data, including telephone and radio signals, without wires. So it was a device that ended up providing very high voltage electricity.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  The following year, he travels to Europe to establish his work and inventions on the continent. Unlike his previous cramped and uncomfortable journey over the Atlantic, Tesla returns in a first-class cabin. His lectures on alternating current thrill audiences in London and Paris. But the trip ends in tragedy, when news reaches him that his mother's fallen gravely ill.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Rushing to her bedside in Gospić, he arrives just in time to see his mother before she dies. Her death strikes him deeply. But when he finally returns to his work and life in America, it is with renewed intensity, as if driven by her memory. Flushed with cash from selling licenses to British and French manufacturers, Tesla checks into the smart 11-story Gerlach Hotel on 27th Street.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  The war of the currents is still raging, but in 1893, Tesla helps to create a defining moment in the history of electrical power, after Westinghouse Electric wins the contract to light the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  This world fair, on the city's lakefront, celebrates the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival on the continent, albeit a year late.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  When President Grover Cleveland pushes an ivory and gold button to open the event, the 700-acre fairground bursts into light. The writer L. Frank Baum later says the site inspired the creation of his fictional Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz. For six months, the fair glows with hundreds of thousands of incandescent lamps powered by Tesla's poly-phase AC system.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  They also had escalators and elevator railroads, electric gondolas, and it was an electricity extravaganza. It was called the White City on Chicago's lakefront, but it was a chance not only for the United States to show off its prowess in electricity, but it had a variety of other inventions. And it was the first time that an elevator was revealed, first time we looked at what a zipper was. But after the fair had proved that alternating current was the way to go, and it had just powered all of these electrical devices as well as light bulbs, orders for new electric systems, they switched to 80% for Tesla's AC system, and Edison was basically losing the war after that.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  The event marks a decisive victory for Westinghouse and Tesla, convincing the public at last that AC power is safe, reliable, and ready to electrify the modern world. In the midst of this triumph, Westinghouse Electric wins the contract to harness the power of Niagara Falls. Tesla's AC equipment will convert the energy of the waterfall into electricity and deliver it to Buffalo 20 miles away, a breakthrough in long-distance power transmission.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  The project is seen by many to officially mark the shift from the mechanical era to the age of electricity, and cements Tesla as one of the world's greatest inventors. By 1895, as the project nears completion, investors begin forming the Nikola Tesla Company to develop his inventions further.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  His work finds its way into every aspect of his life. Even when he's socializing, talk will turn to his passions, with nights out often ending up back at the lab.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  His best friends were probably the Johnsons. Robert was the editor of the Century magazine, which at the time was the largest circulation magazine in the United States. And Catherine, his wife, who operated their intellectual salon in a neighborhood in Manhattan. And Mark Twain, the writer, was a frequent guest at these dinners and often would visit Tesla's laboratory afterwards. And here you have the two of these brilliant writer and inventor. They acted like giddy teenagers. They were shooting artificial lightning across the room. They were taking X-rays of each other's feet and hands. They were dancing about with glowing bulbs and lightsabers that were not connected to any wires.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Tesla's laboratory is a wonder of modern science. Filled with humming motors, vacuum tubes, a generator so powerful it's dubbed his "earthquake machine", and notes for future devices that promise to transmit energy without wires. But with much of his life's work concentrated in one place, when tragedy strikes, it strikes hard.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  It's 2:30 in the morning in New York City on March 13, 1895.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  The streets around South 5th Avenue are quiet, except for the distant rattle of carriage wheels.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Inside a warehouse, a night watchman dusts his rounds of the floor used by a steam fitting supplier.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  The storeroom, which sits below Nikola Tesla's laboratory, reeks of oil. But if you spend enough time in the building, you become accustomed to the stench. Bored, the night watchman lights a cigarette as his footsteps echo around the empty industrial building. He takes a slow drag, then another, the smoke curling upwards in the dim light. When the butt burns low, he flicks it away, but fails to notice that it lands among oil-soaked rags.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  For a moment, nothing happens. Then, there's a faint hiss, a thread of smoke.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  The night watchman turns and realizes his error. Panicking, he rushes to fill a pail, but by the time he's returned, the blaze has spread, and the water barely affects it.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  After a few desperate attempts, he can no longer see what he's doing. Coughing through the thick smoke, he stumbles towards the door and out into the cold night air.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Mounted on a cast iron post just outside the building is a red fire alarm box. Wrenching it open, he pulls the lever hard.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  After several minutes, the first engines thunder up the street, but by then the fire is already roaring out of control.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Out on the pavement, the night watchman watches wretchedly as the upper floors of the building glow red through the windows. Nikola Tesla's laboratory, which once crackled with light and hummed with motors, is now an inferno. Glass panes shatter outwards with the heat.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Even as the firemen drag hoses into the street, the roof gives way with a crash, and the building's six floors begin to collapse into each other like a house of cards.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Reporters and bystanders gather outside, watching helplessly as smoke billows into the night sky. The night watchman can only stare, unable to drag himself from the scene.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Tesla himself arrives too late. When he sees what has happened, the look on his face is one of utter devastation.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  The great scientist stands in the cold street until all that is left of the building is two tottering brick walls and a yawning black cavity between them.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  When a journalist approaches, notebook in hand, Tesla barely looks up.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  "I am in too much grief to talk," he tells him quietly. "What can I say? Everything is gone."

• 40:22Speaker 02

  After the fire, Tesla descends into a period of deep depression, which he attempts to treat through electrotherapy. Then, from an unlikely source, comes compassion. His former rival, Edison, offers him temporary use of his laboratory. Within weeks, Tesla is back at work, ordering new instruments. But the fire has set him back. His work on wireless communication stalls, and across the Atlantic, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi pips him to the post, claiming the invention of the radio. The same happens with X-rays. Wilhelm Rundgren announces his discovery in December 1895.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Tesla may have taken an X-ray of Mark Twain's hand, but he failed to recognize its importance, and others overtake him. Returning to concentrate on wireless transmissions, he also explores a new field he refers to as tele-automatics, which today we'd call robotics. His initial project is a radio-controlled model boat, around four feet in length and three feet high. Ever the showman, Tesla prepares for the boat's first public appearance in May 1898 at the huge Moorish-style Madison Square Garden, where an indoor pond has been specially constructed.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  He invited inventors and journalists and others to this audience, and he regaled them for about an hour with having this boat go around the pool, forward and backwards, and flip its lights on. And everybody was just amazed, because they had never seen remote control. Everything had to be attached to wires. And suddenly, here was something moving around by itself, it seemed. And so, he had regaled everybody, and then suddenly he says, "Does anybody want to ask a question of the vessel?" And everybody goes, "Nah, you can't ask the vessel a question." But probably some math nerd came up and said, "All right, what's the cube root of 64?" And Tesla, because he had a hidden remote control unit behind him,

• 42:30Speaker 03

  flicked the switches in a way that caused the lights of the model boat to flick on four times. And even Tesla said the crowd went nuts.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  In the spring of 1899, Tesla leaves New York behind and journeys west to Colorado Springs, near the edge of the Rocky Mountains. For this new project, he has secured a $100,000 investment from John Jacob Astor IV, one of the richest men in the world, to develop a new lighting system.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  However, unbeknownst to his investor, Tesla redirects these funds to conduct high-voltage, high-frequency electricity experiments that earn his lab the nickname of "The Lightning Factory."

• 43:15Speaker 02

  There, an advanced version of his Tesla coil generates artificial lightning bolts stretching 135 feet, accompanied by thunder heard 15 miles away.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Having effectively charged the Earth itself with electricity, the engineer also claims he is able to light 200 lamps without wires 26 miles away, simply by screwing them into the ground.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  It's quite noble, actually. I mean, he thought that he could, through this coil and the high-voltage electricity, revolutionize power distribution and provide a free and globally accessible energy source, so everybody in the world would have free electricity, because Nikola Tesla thought that his high-voltage transmission would provide that to them. So he did demonstrate that he had this high-voltage transmission, that wireless power could be sensed short distances in light light bulbs about a half a mile away that were stuck in the ground. And that in itself was pretty cool. But he thought that he could do this on a global scale, and it just was unfeasible. Tesla mistakenly thought that the Earth itself could serve as a giant conductor, in other

• 44:24Speaker 03

  words, it could allow electricity to flow through it. Yet he slowly discovered that electromagnetic waves, they dissipate rather rapidly, and that the globe does not function as he had hoped as a conductor. He was right on so many things in his inventing, but on this one, he got it wrong.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Increasingly, Tesla faces mockery from his peers for his grandiose ideas. This ridicule intensifies when during his wireless communication experiments in Colorado, he claims to have received messages from another planet. In early 1900, now in his mid-40s, he returns to New York with grander ambitions than ever, and moves into his investors' hotel, the Waldorf Astoria, on subsidized terms. And with the backing of another financier, J.P. Morgan, he begins building a laboratory and transmission tower at Warden Cliff on Long Island.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  But when it becomes apparent that the core of his plan is to build not just a center for wireless communication, but a way of generating free wireless power across the globe, his "profit-driven investor" loses interest. Funds dry up, and Tesla returns to New York City.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  In the years that follow this crushing defeat, he turns to new ideas such as bladeless turbines, advanced electrical generators, and propulsion systems far ahead of their time.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  He also predicts technologies that will later define the modern world: the Internet, wireless communication, and even wearable devices such as smartwatches.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yet without financial backing, most of these ideas never come to fruition.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  One by one, his investors withdraw support or pass away. John Jacob Astor IV goes down with a Titanic in 1912. J.P. Morgan dies the following year, followed in short order by George Westinghouse. In 1915, newspapers report that Tesla and Edison are to share the Nobel Prize in Physics, but the announcement proves false.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Edison wisely remains silent, while the increasingly eccentric Tesla complains volubly to a New York Times reporter about the slight. Two years later, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers awards Tesla the Edison Medal. It is an honor that the inventor initially rejects, feeling that the award, named after his sometime nemesis, is too little, too late.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Eventually, however, he is persuaded to attend the white tie ceremony at the Engineers Club in New York.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  It is the night of May the 18th, 1917.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Bernard A. Berndt, the Westinghouse engineer who championed Tesla for the Edison Medal, scans the white tie gala at the Engineers Club on West 40th Street.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Soon, he spots Tesla across the room. The inventor is with his friends, Robert and Catherine Johnson, a distinguished couple in their 40s.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  The genius himself is immaculate in his white tie, looking alert and engaged. Relieved that there is no obvious trace of the erratic behavior that's been worrying him, Berndt turns back to his glass of champagne and small-talk.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Around 20 minutes later, Berndt checks his pocket watch. It's time to move the crowd across the street for the presentation of the medal. But when he glances back at the group around the Johnsons, he discovers Tesla is gone. He makes a careful lap of the room, but fails to locate him. He waves to the head waiter, who checks the restroom and returns shaking his head.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Drumming his fingers, Berndt glances towards the door, then out of the window. He suddenly remembers Bryant Park nearby, where Tesla regularly takes walks. Perhaps the inventor has gone for a quick breath of fresh air before the ceremony.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Boyded by the thought, Berndt slips out of the room and makes his way outside.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Out in the park, it doesn't take long to find the inventor. But what Berndt sees stops him in his tracks.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Tall and dapper, Tesla is standing under a tree, covered from head to toe in pigeons. Birds perch on his long, outstretched arms. Some have settled on his shoulders, his head, and a few circle at his feet. Beren has never seen anything like it. But when Tesla sees him approach, he just smiles, as if nothing untoward is happening. With the ceremony starting any minute, there's no time for discussion, nor realistically any point. Instead, the patient engineer sighs and claps his hands to disperse the birds, before herding Tesla back inside.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Despite Tesla's peculiar behaviour that night, he manages to reach the stage to accept the Edison Medal. His speech is gracious and insightful, yet also is tinged with fantasy, in its boasts of what he calls his untold wealth.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Later that same year, 1922, Tesla is asked to leave the Waldorf, his home for the past two decades, for unpaid bills that surpass $400,000 in today's money. The hotel St Regis evicts him for the same reason seven years later, also complaining of the pigeons that crowd his room and cover his window sills with excrement. The birds increasingly become his closest friends. Tesla spends more than $2,000 constructing a device to help one injured pigeon, and becomes fixated with another, caring for it, in his words, "as a man loves a woman."

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Isolation closes in further when his old friends the Johnsons move to Italy. But Beren, the Westinghouse engineer who helped secure him the Edison Medal, steps in to help. He persuades Westinghouse's company to offer Tesla a consulting contract which will cover his lodgings at the hotel New Yorker. There, the inventor lives in Suite 3327, a number as always divisible by 3.

• 51:28Speaker 04

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• 51:57Speaker 01

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• 52:27Speaker 02

  In his later years, Tesla shares a cordial relationship with Edison, but is also befriended by a science writer called Kenneth Sweets, almost 50 years his junior. As well as dining and going to the movies together, they take long walks and feed Tesla's beloved pigeons. But they also spend many hours in his hotel suite discussing inventions and ideas, and Tesla's vision of a future with cellphones and electric cars.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  The aging inventor is a gift to reporters in search of sensational stories, but a headache for editors unsure how seriously to take him. His talk of communicating with other planets and building a death ray capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes from 250 miles away draws a mixture of fascination and scorn.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  In his final years, he becomes increasingly reclusive. Until one snowy January evening in 1943, Nikola Tesla dies in his suite at the age of 86. Not long afterwards, agents from the US government arrived to seize his papers and equipment. With the world now at war, they want to be certain whether his research into weapons could benefit the military. Newspapers, meanwhile, mark the passing of a brilliant, misunderstood inventor.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Tesla obtained more than 300 patents, and he's credited with inventing, obviously, the electric motor, long-distance transmission, power transmission, radio, robots, remote control, all of which serve as the very foundation of our modern economy. The American Institute of Electrical Engineers said, "Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, and our towns would be dark."

• 54:16Speaker 03

  In one movie, one of the characters about Tesla asked, "What did Tesla invent?" And the other guy responds, "Oh, the 20th century."

• 54:25Speaker 03

  But I mean, even long after his death, Tesla was, you know, continued to inspire great minds. He had visions for cell phones, radar, laser weapons, artificial intelligence. The list sort of goes on.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Over time, the so-called mad genius, once mocked by editors, becomes celebrated as a visionary. His name was given to the unit of magnetic flux density, and later to a company that makes electric cars and sends rockets into the sky.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Brilliant, eccentric, and unstoppable, Nikola Tesla changed not just how we use electricity, but how we imagine the world and the future.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  At some point in his later life, to be honest, he was losing it. But I reject the notions that that deflates his image and his reputation because, my goodness, his batting average was remarkable. He had so many more successes than he had disappointments that we have to applaud him as one of the great inventors of all time.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  Next time on Short History of... we'll bring you a short history of the Maori.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  Those people who left Hawaii, East Polynesia, and made their way to Aotearoa, New Zealand, that was the end of the greatest migration of humans in the world. So we know that people, you know, came out of Africa, and the last place to be settled by people were the ancestors of the Maori.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  That's next time.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  If you can't wait a week until the next episode, you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colours or flavours, great tasting hydration no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  When you shop Kroger delivery, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door. From delicious produce to everyday essentials, enjoy the convenience of delivery and the trusted selection you've come to know from Kroger. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. Right now, enjoy free delivery on orders of $50 or more with your digital coupon. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone.