lessons from the book wizard

Overview

In Wizard (1996), Marc Seifer chronicles Nikola Tesla’s controversial and complex life, his most remarkable experiences and findings, and the key individuals that influenced him. He also studies the problems Tesla faced with other scientists stealing his works and infringing his patents.

Tesla remains one of the most notable figures in the history of physics and futurism, and one of the leading inspirations for scientists and physicists. His accurate predictions of a wireless future startle the world and scientists today more than ever.

Early Life and Education

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 during a summer storm in the mountains of Smiljan, Croatia. His Serbian family lived in Lika, a river valley. The century during which he was born witnessed the rise of Napoleon who, in 1809, freed Croatia from Austro-Hungarian rule and installed the French occupation.

Tesla had a background of diverse cultures, influences, and rituals. He was the descendant of a rural community who had been originally named Draganic. By the mid-eighteenth century, they had migrated to Croatia, where the Tesla name emerged.

Tesla got his sense of humor from his father. His mother, Djouka, was a courageous woman who learned Serbian poems and Bible passages by heart though she never had any education. Tesla was mostly raised by his older sisters who later married priests. He decided to become a professor and studied math at the Polytechnic School in Graz. He sank his teeth into whatever he planned to do or study, exhibiting great passion. He would study up to twenty hours a day. Later on, Tesla changed his major to engineering and studied many languages. He also entirely memorized works of Descartes, Goethe, Herbert Spencer, and Shakespeare.

During this time, between 1875 and 1882, Tesla also worked on the project of a mechanical flying machine. Tesla understood that his academic education and math skills had granted him an engineering advantage over Thomas Edison’s trial-and-error method. Edison was also a creator, not only a better technician than everyone else. His most remarkable invention was a talking machine: the phonograph that shook the world.

Tesla emigrated to the US in 1884 for a job at the Edison Machine Works, where he was able to scrutinize the master at work. It also enabled him to prepare for the incorporation of his own company. Additionally, it allowed him to realize that Edison was mortal and prone to commit errors and that he, Tesla, had far more developed plans. He thus gained a new kind of confidence.

Tesla then decided to establish a lighting and manufacturing company in New Jersey with B.A. Vail and Robert Lane, two businessmen he had met.

Dedication

George Westinghouse invented air brakes for trains. He was not only a railroad guy. He was descended from the noble Russian von Wistinghousen family and his father was an inventor, too. Westinghouse was a Navy engineer in the Civil War, which gave him vision and experience. He realized that the future revolved around electricity. Tesla became a consultant for Westinghouse, and the two met in Pittsburgh in July 1888 to finalize the sale of his patents. In 1889 Tesla went to New York to establish another laboratory, where he began working on high-frequency apparatus, wireless transmission, and theories related to electromagnetic radiation and light.

Tesla sought to duplicate the discoveries of German academic Heinrich Hertz who had recently issued results of his wave propagation experiments. He then went to Paris for the Universal Exposition and the revelation of the Eiffel Tower. Tesla left Paris in summer 1889 and went back to his new laboratory, which occupied the fourth floor in a building of six stories. Then, his best friend Anthony Szegeti died. Tesla felt isolated. Getting used to the American lifestyle was hard for him, too.

Tesla became part of the nouveau riche. He was the star of his family, and he started sending money to his mother and cousins. In 1891, he gave a lecture at Columbia College. Shortly after that, two engineers, Michael von Dolivo-Dobrowolsky and Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown, startled the engineering community by successfully transmitting 190 horsepower from a waterfall to the International Electrical Exposition in Frankfurt. The engineers benefitted from Tesla’s explanations at the lecture to generate a power strong enough to light a massive advertising sign that had a thousand incandescent lamps.

Tesla was motivated to complete as many patents as possible due to the fast development of the electromagnetic radiation field, made possible by the discoveries of Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, and in particular Hertz. Thus, Tesla exerted himself to unfold his inventions as quickly as he could, depriving himself of sleep and focusing his will on his objective. At this time, he had the idea of the wireless transmission of electrical power and could not stand the idea of someone else creating it before him.

The New Edison

Tesla suffered greatly after his mother’s death in April 1892. He then started his first experiments with Hertzian frequencies and a transmitter connected to a water main. He also started learning about harmonics and standing waves. He was attempting to figure out how to transmit power wirelessly and design a machine that would transfer power through the ground or pipes. Tesla’s concept of longitudinal waves in the ether seemed to be a direct outgrowth of Ernst Mach’s research.

After Tesla gained US citizenship, he decided to finally challenge Edison. He started one of his most provocative experiments and studied Edison’s carbon filament lamp. He took two identical bulbs, one of them filled with air and the other consisting of a vacuum, and linked them to a “current vibrating about one million times a second.” Tesla showed that the lamp containing ordinary air did not light but the one filled with vacuum glowed brightly, demonstrating the importance of thin gas heating the conductor. Tesla proved that in incandescent lighting, the high resistance filament, invented by Edison, did not constitute the essential element of illumination.

Tesla was regarded as one of the most prominent discoverers of his age, even as the New Edison. He realized he was wearing himself out, but he could not cease working. His experiments meant so much to him and fascinated him so much that he was unable to pause even to eat. When he tried to sleep, he would constantly think about them.

In 1892, Tesla suggested that electricity could be transferred through long distances by inventing the Tesla system. His invention was tested in the US for the first time in 1893 and was approved in 1895. Tesla’s career took off in 1894 when he was profiled in The New York Times and other renowned publications. The Nikola Tesla Company was founded the next year with the aid of Tesla’s backers.

Tesla utilized the oscillator to produce energy for over fifty incandescent bulbs and vacuum tubes in front of a large group of physicians and engineers from the American Electro-Therapeutic Association in his laboratory in October 1894. He realized he could construct vacuum tubes that would respond only when a precise combination of two or more circuits was activated, by examining Spencer’s theories on resultant forces and nerve conduction.

Tesla and Wireless Transmission

Before embarking on the challenge of sending signals to other planets, Tesla had to master wireless effects over great distances on earth. One of his objectives was to transfer signals from his laboratory to receptive equipment aboard a riverboat on the Hudson River. However, on March 13, 1895, Tesla’s laboratory caught fire. The entire floor fell down and equipment collapsed.

The most extreme use of Tesla’s principle of electric wave propagation was the potential of summoning Martians. The same concept could be applied to spread news to all corners of the globe. Every city could be part of a massive circuit. A message sent from New York could be instantly delivered to England, Africa, and Australia.

Tesla also began experimenting with the therapeutic capabilities of his oscillators, as word spread about their restorative properties. These high-frequency “vitality boosters” would produce a universal healing agent which, when administered, would allow the body to get rid of all diseases. Tesla considered electricity the best of all physicians, claiming that after his laboratory was burned, nothing but frequent daily infusions of electricity saved him from succumbing to melancholia.

Wilhelm Roentgen’s astonishing discovery of a strange, unknown energy he called X- rays shook the scientific world in 1896. In Europe, static machines and Ruhmkorff induction coils were used to generate meager X-rays. However, Tesla proposed instead to use a high-frequency disruptive coil attached to a bulb with two electrodes, a cathode inside the vacuum for creating the “cathode streams,” and an anode placed far from the bulb to limit the potential reduction.

In July 1896, Tesla went to Niagara Falls to observe the hydroelectric power station. A year later, on September 2, 1897, Tesla submitted his first patent for wireless connection. The business and engineering intelligentsia embraced him with great enthusiasm, for he transformed the course of mankind in meticulous and well-studied ways.

The Woods and the War

Tesla became friends with John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club. Muir was a disheveled naturalist who spent most of his time in the woods. Yet, he was also eager for civilization. Tesla, on the other hand, was always a well-clad metropolitan who spent his whole life in the city but was eager for the mountains. Furthermore, because Tesla’s inventions aimed to use renewable energy and reduce the harm inflicted on natural resources, he and Muir shared a common purpose.

One of Tesla’s most fervent supporters was Lee De Forest, a Yale student who had studied his works. He admired him greatly and aspired to work at his laboratory in New York, but Tesla made a bad decision by refusing to hire him, for De Forest soon became a pioneer in the wireless communication field.

In 1896, Tesla was granted eight patents for his wireless system. They mainly involved different kinds of oscillators that generated high frequency and high potential electromagnetic currents. His first application was in the radio transmission field in 1897, and his second in remote control in 1898. One of Tesla’s most original, creative, and complex inventions was a remote-controlled robotic boat that he called a telautomaton. It was revealed in May 1898 at the Electrical Exposition in Madison Square Garden in the midst of the Spanish-American War. This single innovation not only established all the basic concepts of what became known as the radio, it also served as the foundation for subsequent inventions such as the wireless phone, vehicle radio, television, and garage-door opener.

The Spanish-American War continued through most of 1898 and Tesla constantly attempted to present his telautomaton to be used as a naval weapon. He had offered his wireless transmitters to help in the organization of ship and trip movements, but the secretary of the Navy turned Tesla down lest he cause a disaster. He tried hard to guarantee that disaster was very unlikely, but he could not get the secretary to accept his offer.

The Colorado Lab

On May 18, 1899, Tesla arrived in Colorado Springs to build a new laboratory that would be located at the gateway to the Rocky Mountains. The site would be perfect for monitoring wireless energy emanating from his transmitter and for analyzing electrical storms, which were very frequent in the region. Before arriving, though, Tesla stopped in Chicago to exhibit his telautomaton to the local electrical society. Tesla believed that sending electrical energy through natural media would enable humans to cause wonderful alterations and transformations to the planet. Tesla additionally tried to meticulously monitor the electrical activity of the earth and confirm that it possessed a certain geomagnetic pulse and harmonics off that pulse. He also attempted to increase the sensitivity of his receivers by amplifying the impact of minor disturbances.

Tesla traveled to Colorado partly for the sake of privacy. His transmitting oscillators and overall design had already been pirated and he would soon be embroiled in a number of priority fights. Looking at the Colorado project from a technical standpoint, he was in uncharted territory and needed to explore in order to develop a feasible method for wirelessly transmitting light, information, and electricity. On January 7, 1900, Tesla departed from Colorado Springs with the intention of returning. He appointed watchmen to take care of the laboratory buy left without giving the watchmen definite promises for future payments.

With his finances depleted, he also fled without paying the local electricity provider. He tried to grab the attention of submarine designer John Holland in telautomatics and attempted to design dirigible wireless torpedoes or tiny airships that would be controlled from the ground.

Wardenclyffe Tower

J.P. Morgan was a renowned American financier. In 1901, Tesla was facing financial difficulties. He met with Morgan, but he couldn’t handle his demands regarding the design for a transmission tower. Morgan was quite opinionated. Although fair-minded, he was excessively stubborn sometimes. Tesla then tried to negotiate with the American Bridge Company for help. By December that same year, Tesla knew that Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, had used Tesla’s own discoveries, oscillators, and designs. Years later, Tesla declared that Marconi had used his systems the whole time and received recognition in his place for revealing that wireless communication across the Atlantic Ocean was impossible due to a water wall that the rays could not pass through.

In Colorado, Tesla had written a book about his experiments. He did the same to document his activities at Wardenclyffe, the wireless transmission tower he had started building. Through the metal sphere on the top of the tower, Tesla would transmit different frequencies to calculate the voltage, wavelength, and velocity of energy, and study nodal points. By September 1902, the tower had attained its full 180-feet height. The project exhausted Tesla’s funds. He gave up the idea of getting in contact with small-time investors and focused his efforts on two separate things: increasing the manufacture of the oscillators and obtaining tycoon backers. After having been short on money, Tesla received money from his relatives and hired some workers again. Yet, operations were almost nonexistent and the rest of his crew were angry about not receiving payment. Tesla believed his workers should be patient and understand that he was being generous in times of financial hardship.

Tesla’s worldview included a philosophy based on Goethe’s writings. In fact, Tesla’s favorite poem was Goethe’s Faust , which he learned by heart and to which he often referred. It was Faust the poem that he repeated in Budapest when he unveiled the rotating magnetic field secret.

Tesla’s Rivals

In May 1907, Tesla was appointed as a member of the New York Academy of Science. In order to raise capital, he took out a number of mortgages. In the spring of 1904, he got $5,000 from Thomas G. Sherman and in the winter of 1906, he got $3,500 from Edmund Stallo. However, these funds had long been exhausted. Tesla’s rivals had caught up and, in some cases, had surpassed and replaced him. Airplanes and zeppelins were flying, and the forces opposing illuminants without filaments grew more entrenched. In January 1908, the French put a broadcast station on top of the Eiffel Tower in order to transmit messages to Morocco. Additionally, Lee De Forest had started to gain recognition in the United States and was soon contracting with the government and millionaires for the construction of “radio-telephones.” He positioned them on the roofs of the highest buildings in Manhattan. In 1907, he had aired the voice of Enrico Caruso who was performing at the Metropolitan Opera House. De Forest had also mastered a way to increase the speed of Morse code transmissions. He was able to direct telegrams at an astounding rate of six hundred words a minute.

Tesla was working on a disputable project for electrifying classrooms with high-frequency currents, for W.M. Maxwell, manager of public schools in New York. Maxwell was aiming to improve the health and intelligence of students, following the steps of a Stockholm experiment that supposedly proved students learning in such an environment scored higher on tests and displayed better growth.

Death and Legacy

On November 6, 1915, The New York Times predicted on its front page that Tesla and Edison would both win the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year. However, neither one of them won. Tesla then labeled himself a discoverer and Edison an inventor. According to him, putting the two together under one category would definitely annihilate all sense of value in their accomplishments.

Tesla’s lifework was his World Telegraphy Center. It was his Holy Grail. However, the project was destroyed in 1917. The federal government ordered its demolition with dynamite after suspecting that German spies were using it. A year earlier, when Tesla’s project was at its weakest, he had established an alliance with one of his most fervent supporters, Hugo Gernsback, editor of Electrical Experimenter .

The 1920 presidential election was the first to be aired live on radio to a nationwide audience. Four years earlier, Lee De Forest had declared the wrong winner to a smaller audience. By 1928, national broadcasts had linked all the states. Tesla stated that he did not care about listening to the radio, for he thought it was too distracting.

For the rest of Tesla’s life, he would talk cryptically about a variety of innovative creations, including a machine for exploiting cosmic rays, a way to transmit mechanical energy, a particle beam weapon, a machine for communicating with other planets, and the Wardenclyffe. Journalists and researchers had a hard time differentiating the inventions because they all involved the transmission of energy to far places.

In his late years, Tesla was leading a dual life: one as the creator of the electrical power system and inventor of the wireless, and another as the wizard scientist whose ultimate inventions would rule over the earth and other planets too. In 1935, Tesla designed an electrified display and offered it to Paramount Pictures. His themes continued to pervade the public mind.

Tesla predicted a world in which eugenics would become internationally established. He supported the concept of sterilizing the unfit and purposefully directing the mating impulse. He gave up meat. He believed that in the future, cheap and healthy food would be extracted from milk, honey, and wheat. Eventually, his diet mainly consisted of warm milk and bread. In 1942, he was gravely ill, and he suffered from palpitations and fainting fits. On January 8, 1943, he died.

After his death, the FBI, the Office of Alien Property, and factions of the War Department claimed that they wanted to safeguard Tesla’s papers on secret weaponry. The agencies protected his material and a century later, it had yet to be published. In 1976, a statue of Tesla was designed by sculptor Franco Krsinic and placed at Niagara Falls, as a gift from the Yugoslavian people. An identical one was placed in the square of Gospić, Croatia, where Tesla had grown up.

Author’s Style

Marc Seifer’s writing style is quite formal. In Wizard , he sticks to a strict chronology, making it easy to comprehend Tesla’s life and achievements in a systematic way. He includes drawings and figures explaining Tesla’s theories and analyses. There are portraits of Tesla and Edison, in addition to photos of the Wardenclyffe. At the start of every chapter, Seifer quotes Tesla’s letters, notebooks, and New York Times passages.

Author’s Perspective

Marc Seifer is an American author who has published several biographies of Nikola Tesla. Wizard was highly recommended by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Seifer is globally recognized as an expert in graphology and on Tesla, who was the subject of his doctoral thesis, which Seifer completed at Saybrook Institute.