0:04

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I

0:06

Heart Radios. How Stuff Works. Hey

0:12

there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm

0:14

your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive

0:16

producer with I Heart Radio and I love all

0:18

things tech and um looking

0:21

at the calendar, it looks like it's a Friday.

0:24

That means it's time for another classic episode

0:26

of tech Stuff. This episode we're about

0:28

to listen to originally published

0:31

back in February two thirteen, and

0:33

it's all about Nicola Tesla.

0:36

And I'm sure you guys are at least familiar

0:38

with the name. Tesla has been the featured

0:41

player in many an Internet meme

0:44

over the past several years, and

0:46

there are a lot of stories about him. Some of them are true,

0:48

and some of them are probably

0:50

exaggerated, and some of them might just be completely

0:53

off basse. So I

0:55

wanted to develop a full

0:57

episode about Tesla and talk

0:59

about him his good points, is bad points,

1:01

everything in between, and that's what we're going to listen

1:03

to. So let's sit back and hear

1:06

this classic episode of tech Stuff.

1:08

We are focusing finally, after

1:10

many, many, many people have asked us to

1:13

do a full episode about

1:15

Nicola Tesla. The

1:18

Internet legend the

1:21

the man placed on

1:23

a virtual pedestal on the Internet

1:25

that is gleaming and beauteous and

1:27

will zap you if you ever dare say

1:29

anything against him. He is, he's staring

1:31

at us from the walls of the podcast room right now.

1:33

Yes, he is. Now. The question of whether

1:36

or not he'll be staring at us in our news

1:38

studio it remains to

1:40

be answered. Uh, we'll

1:42

probably end up propping him up on a mic

1:44

stand or something, so he's still judging us

1:46

constantly. But yeah, we want to talk

1:48

about Tesla, kind of talk about his his contributions

1:51

to technology and also maybe

1:54

take a critical look at some

1:57

of the some of the claims

1:59

about slaw and some of the misconceptions

2:02

people have about his contributions.

2:05

Yeah, he's he's a mythological figure, really

2:07

a mythological nerd figure, which is which is fabulous.

2:10

I mean, it's really terrific, and it's it's it's

2:12

understandable why because he

2:14

he by the end of his life, was so downtrodden.

2:16

And there's nothing that people and geeks

2:18

especially love more than than an

2:21

anti hero. Yeah. Here, here's a guy who

2:24

has been beaten down. He's

2:26

he's Uh, seen his fortunes

2:29

dwindle away. He's he's made some bad

2:31

choices. Uh. He has

2:33

all the earmarks of a classic geek.

2:36

Geeks love this underdog kind

2:38

of story. And when you get into things like sort

2:40

of the the demonification

2:44

of other people, Edison in particular,

2:46

Yeah, but even people like JP Morgan

2:48

and Lustinghouse, then it

2:50

seems like the whole world had turned against

2:53

him. And and depending on how you look at his story,

2:55

it can definitely come across that way. But that's

2:58

doing a little bit of a disservice to the entire

3:00

tale. And Uh, the reason

3:02

why I'm talking about in this way is because there

3:05

is what we thought some people referred to as

3:07

the cult of Tesla, right, this

3:09

idea of elevating him beyond

3:12

what his contributions were. Uh,

3:14

there was a cartoon that

3:16

I think a lot of you guys out there saw because

3:18

he posted about it on our Facebook page that

3:21

the Oatmeal did all about Tesla

3:23

and his contributions and

3:26

his rivalry with Edison and kind

3:28

of comparing him favorably against Edison

3:30

in every single category and

3:33

saying that there should be a Tesla museum.

3:35

And so we wanted to talk about what

3:37

Tesla actually did and what he

3:39

did not do, and uh, and

3:42

whether or not he deserves

3:44

all those acohomis yeah. Yeah, And and and just just

3:46

before anyone who is a rabbit

3:49

fan of the oat mal gets honest, because

3:51

I don't I do not want to incite your anger. Uh,

3:53

it's we realize that it's a comic and that

3:56

that although uh,

3:58

many of the statements are factual, the writer

4:00

whose name I'm completely forgetting right now has

4:03

come out and said that, hey, this is a comic.

4:05

I'm I'm a comic artist. And some of

4:07

this was hyper Bowl so perfectly.

4:10

No, I like its hyper Bowl. It's

4:12

way better than that Super One.

4:15

I like the hyper Bowl a lot more. I

4:18

am never gonna let you live that down. And we are not

4:20

real recording it. Let's move on. So yeah.

4:23

Tesla born on July

4:25

tenth, eighteen fifty six, in

4:28

what is now Croatia, now

4:30

eighteen fifty six by the Gregorian calendar.

4:32

If you have looked up at Tesla's

4:35

birth and you saw that it was actually in June

4:37

June, that's because at the time

4:40

they were keeping time with the Julian calendar.

4:42

And it's only when you account

4:45

for that when you match those up that you realize that. Okay,

4:47

well, if you're using a real calendar

4:50

like I do, the one that's on my smartphone,

4:52

and that's the only way I know what day it is. It

4:54

was July t So eighteen fifty

4:56

six July t and born in in Uh

4:59

part of Austria, Hungary

5:01

which is now Croatia UM

5:04

And as a boy, he went

5:06

to what we would think of in the United

5:08

States is elementary school or primary school

5:11

and studied German arithmetic

5:14

and religion because his dad

5:16

was a pastor and his mom's father was a pastor,

5:19

both both in the Orthodox Church. Actually, so

5:21

yeah, so he definitely had a religious

5:23

upbringing and his father really wanted

5:26

him to be a priest by the way, Yes, he did a lot.

5:28

In fact, he was not so thrilled

5:30

about Tesla going into engineering. UM.

5:33

When he was a young boy, Tesla's

5:36

Tesla's older brother named Dane, died

5:39

in a tragic accident. He actually fell off a horse

5:41

and died. There were some stories

5:44

that Tesla or Nicola Tesla

5:46

was playing around and spooked

5:48

the horse that caused Yes,

5:52

so actually I've heard I'm sorry, I meant to I meant to insert this

5:54

earlier. But the very first terrific

5:56

tall tale that I heard about Tesla was that he was born

5:58

on a dark and storm and I to lightning

6:01

right right, He was born on the stroke of midnight

6:03

as lightning crashed in the sky,

6:05

and that one person said he would

6:07

be a boy of storms, and his mother said, no,

6:09

he shall be a man of the light. I

6:12

might be inserting some of my hyper bowl

6:14

in there. Goodness, my gracious.

6:16

So yeah, And as a child they moved

6:19

around quite a bit as his father was

6:21

finding a church to be pastor

6:23

in. And in eighteen seventy,

6:26

so I remember he's born in eighteen fifty six. By eighteen

6:28

seventy he moves in with his aunt

6:30

and starts to attend a school that

6:33

we're a teacher named Martin skul

6:36

Chick, sorry Skolich

6:38

Sokolich. Uh So, Martin

6:40

Sokolich is teaching there, and he's teaching math

6:43

and physics, and Tesla finds

6:46

both the professor and the subject matter

6:48

fascinating, and he becomes really

6:52

focused on math and physics,

6:54

and in fact he's so focused he

6:56

graduates a year early. So

6:59

he was certainly a man of genius.

7:01

He possessed a genius and an

7:03

affinity for physics,

7:05

for math, for engineering that far outstripped

7:08

most of his contemporaries. Oh yeah, definitely.

7:11

But then again, this is also the era where

7:13

we start seeing these technologies

7:16

form and uh, and so it was an exciting

7:18

time if you were interested in physics, because

7:21

this is when we're making lots of big

7:23

discoveries, things that some

7:25

people say are low

7:28

hanging fruit, you know, in retrospect,

7:31

the idea that there were all these discoveries to make. But

7:33

it's hard to see how we're going to advance

7:36

from this point forward because all

7:38

the quote unquote easy things have been

7:40

discovered. Not that any of these things were

7:42

easy, it's just that now you are

7:45

have to become increasingly specialized

7:47

in whatever scientific fields you're in to clearly

7:49

understand it. Sure, but while

7:52

doing this, researcher kind of blew my mind. I actually don't have a

7:54

strong history in in electronic

7:56

background, and and it blew my mind

7:58

that it wasn't until eighteen seventy three that

8:01

that James Clerk Maxwell proved that

8:03

light is is electromagnetic energy.

8:05

Yeah, yes, this is He's he's

8:07

growing up at a time when uh,

8:10

these discoveries are being made, and that would

8:13

impact his own work and

8:15

in fact drive him to achieve great

8:17

things. Also, eighteen seventy

8:19

three, that was the year he contracted cholera. Yeah,

8:23

and it was due to the cholera that he kind of shaped

8:25

the rest of his life. Yeah. Well, yeah, quite

8:28

a few things. Because if you if you've heard about Tesla,

8:30

you know that he uh, he reportedly

8:32

had a bit of obsessive

8:35

compulsive disorder, that he was

8:37

a germophobe, that he was a clean He

8:40

was obsessed with being clean and having

8:42

cleaned things around him. He reported in his

8:44

own biography that he had a severe

8:46

aversion to touching other people's hair. That

8:49

he had to do things if

8:51

if they require repetition, in the repetition

8:53

of threes, and if he did not, then he had

8:55

to stop and restart. Yeah, so

8:58

he may have developed some of the

9:00

peculiarities. At this time. He was

9:02

in bed for about nine months, nearly

9:04

died a few times. So I would

9:07

imagine that was definitely something that would shape you,

9:09

whether or not that. I'm sure

9:11

there were other issues that are beyond

9:13

just getting sick. There were probably

9:16

some things that were psychologically part

9:18

of his being from the point

9:20

where he was born. But we don't know

9:23

to what extent obviously, and um

9:25

and you know what's odd to me, I might as well talk

9:27

about this for right now. So neat

9:30

freak, if you want to put it that way. Germophobe

9:34

doesn't like touching people. Loved

9:37

pigeons, loved them rats

9:39

with wings, that's what they are. Well,

9:43

that that was, that was also towards the end of his life

9:45

that he became obsessed

9:47

with him became incredibly obsessed with pigeons. Yeah,

9:49

it just makes me think of that great scene in the documentary

9:52

The Producers, Boydes Filthy

9:56

Rotten Boydes. I

9:59

appreciate that that your your Yiddish accent

10:01

there is is better than mine. That's excellent. I should

10:04

also point out that that that's the nineteen

10:06

sixty eight version of the documentary

10:08

The Producers, not the musical

10:10

version starring Nathan Lane. Matthew Broderick

10:13

actually has zero mostel Gene Wilder.

10:15

I'm getting off track anyway. Um

10:17

so yeah, so he's he's definitely

10:20

got some interesting personality. Quirks eighteen

10:23

seventy four. He starts

10:25

to move around a little bit, mostly hiding

10:28

out from the army because

10:30

in that part of the world, in Austro

10:32

Austrio, Austro Hungary.

10:34

Look, I can't say that. Uh

10:38

yes we do, thank thank goodness. We don't speak

10:40

into a microphone for a living right. Uh.

10:43

But back in that time, in that part of the world, army

10:47

service was required of all young men. There was

10:49

three years mandatory service. And

10:51

Tesla was not too keen on

10:54

doing that. So he kind of, um, he

10:57

was dodging, that's

10:59

the best way of putting it. Uh. The next year,

11:01

eight five, he starts to attend

11:04

the Austrian Polytechnic School

11:06

and he starts off really strong.

11:09

He's doing really well in his classes.

11:11

He understands the concepts, and

11:13

unlike some other some other visionaries like say Stephen

11:16

Hawking, he was very good in school. Yep, yep.

11:18

Also, you know, not not like Einstein

11:20

or some of the other famous folks who

11:23

seemed to have trouble in class.

11:25

Now that that was true for about a year, and

11:28

then about that second year, things began

11:30

to take a little bit of a dip because he

11:33

began to point out shortcomings

11:36

or what he thought of as shortcomings in his

11:38

professor's understanding of things like

11:40

electrical engineering and saying things

11:42

like, you know, you could build a

11:45

device that does the same thing without

11:47

this one component that you are claiming is

11:49

absolutely necessary for it to work. That

11:52

furthermore puts off gigantic electrical shocks

11:54

that are actually pretty dangerous, like you could

11:56

do it this way. And then, uh, if

11:59

you mouth off your professors often enough,

12:02

you might find yourself in some academic

12:05

trouble. And that's kind of what Tesla did. He

12:07

he began to get disillusioned

12:10

about pursuing studies

12:12

in an academic setting, and after about a

12:14

little over three years, he actually dropped

12:17

out of the polytechnic school.

12:20

So he moved to Slovenia

12:22

in eight to work as a draftsman

12:24

for an engineering firm, but by

12:27

eighteen seventy nine, the next year, some

12:31

some police officials show up and asked

12:33

to see his residents papers, which

12:36

he did not have, so then he

12:38

was escorted back to his family's home because

12:41

he didn't have a residence permit for Slovenia,

12:44

And that same year his father

12:46

passes away, uh and

12:49

Tesla starts

12:51

to a new career as a teacher in

12:54

the same school that he attended as a boy,

12:56

but realizes very quickly,

12:59

that's not not for him. Yeah, he doesn't want to

13:01

do that. Um So Then

13:03

the next year, eighteen eighty, he moved to Prague. He

13:06

tries to attend Carl Ferdinand University,

13:08

but he's unable to understand

13:11

Greek or check, both of which were

13:13

prerequisites to attend as a student,

13:16

so instead he audits classes. Uh.

13:18

And he begins to work for the Budapest Telephone

13:21

Exchange and also the Central Telegraph

13:24

Office. Eighteen eighty by the way, it was the year

13:26

that that Thomas Edison unveiled his electric

13:28

incandescent lamp to the public for the first

13:31

time. Yep, so that's a good thing to

13:33

to keep in mind. There are some big things

13:35

happening at the same time that Tesla's kind

13:37

of you know, he hasn't really made a name for himself

13:39

yet. He's been a very enthusiastic

13:43

student at times of his life, and he is certainly

13:45

interested in electronics

13:48

or really we should say electricity electronics

13:51

too early, but electricity

13:54

and its applications. Um

13:57

So, he does that for a couple of years.

13:59

In eighteen eighty too, he joins the Continental

14:02

Edison Company and

14:04

begins to work on things like dynamos,

14:07

which are well,

14:10

you've heard us talk about dynamos and our episodes

14:12

about electromagnets and motors

14:14

and uh induction in the reverse

14:17

of that, so we I won't go into it. But anyway,

14:19

he starts to work on that. Now this means that he

14:21

becomes an employee,

14:24

although you know, indirectly and

14:26

way down the line of Edison. So

14:30

yeah, he's sitting there working for the

14:33

company of the man who would one day

14:36

become his greatest rival. According

14:38

to me, they

14:41

have dragon ball style fights in the sky.

14:43

Yeah, they also would occasionally

14:45

catch Pokemon, but it was only

14:48

the one that shoots the electricity.

14:51

I don't I don't know which one. Oh, come

14:53

on, it's Pikachu. I was just I was trying

14:55

to bait Lauren to see if I could get it. I

14:58

actually know that you

15:01

win this time vocal bomb. So

15:05

at this time he also gets the idea for the A

15:07

C induction motor, although Asterisk

15:12

not necessarily the first person to think about that. Supposedly

15:15

in a vision, well supposedly

15:17

he had these visions. Supposedly he was

15:19

was very light and audio sensitive, and occasionally,

15:22

upon looking at one object or

15:24

having a certain idea, would would get an extremely

15:27

strong visual perception

15:29

of something that he had already seen, or

15:32

or of nothing,

15:34

nothing imaginary unless

15:36

it was a new invention. But yeah, occasionally

15:38

he would get these flashes that that kind of

15:40

disturbed him a lot, according to his autobiography.

15:42

Yeah, so essentially what would happen is he

15:45

would be walking through a park

15:47

and look at a beautiful scene, and then suddenly

15:50

an idea would form, fully formed

15:52

in his head, like not not something he had been puzzling

15:54

about necessarily, It might just be hey,

15:57

boom, here are all the pieces and the puzzle is

15:59

completely it together. You know, we opened up

16:01

the box and the puzzles there, as

16:03

opposed to you've been trying to fix

16:05

this problem for years, and oh here's the inspiration.

16:08

And so yeah. Supposedly he was walking through the city park

16:10

in Budapest with a friend and saw a beautiful

16:12

sunset and quoted some poetry and

16:15

then had an idea for for the

16:17

induction motor. Yeah, and just drew it

16:19

in the sand and then kept walking. Yeah.

16:21

Whether or not that's true, it's

16:23

hard to say. Because Tesla, as it turns out,

16:25

was something of a showman, a little bit of an unreliable

16:28

narrator. I would say unreliable narrator

16:30

is a very kind way of putting it. The same sort of thing

16:32

is true of all the big

16:34

names at this time, because they were

16:36

the rock stars of that of that

16:38

era. So Edison, same sort of thing. Edison

16:41

was a master at at

16:44

pr you know, beyond beyond

16:46

being the head of a very successful research

16:49

and development firm.

16:51

He was very good at presenting his ideas

16:53

to a public and explaining why they were

16:55

the best ideas, even if they weren't the best

16:58

ideas. Tesla was. He

17:00

was no slouch in that department either. There are a lot of people

17:02

who will paint Tesla as being the the

17:05

dedicated genius who is working

17:07

for the betterment of all mankind but

17:10

doesn't ever look to get gain

17:12

glory in the process.

17:14

That's not entirely accurate. Now, that's that's

17:16

not If you've ever seen any of the photographs that that he

17:18

took around his equipment, I would say that those

17:20

are not the mark of someone who is not a showman. I saw

17:22

this one photograph. He looked just like David Bowie.

17:25

Um might be mixing that up

17:27

with a documentary though, So then

17:30

the the in in uh

17:32

in A ten two. This whole time where he's making

17:35

he's working for Edison. He's got this idea for the A

17:37

C induction motor. He also

17:40

is reportedly not paid some

17:42

money for the work he's doing for Edison Company,

17:44

at least not not all of it. Like there's money

17:46

due to him that's not being paid. And

17:49

this this is partly what

17:51

lays the groundwork for this whole idea

17:54

of the heated rivalry between Edison

17:56

and Tesla. A lot of it is money

17:59

that's withheld from Tesla that was

18:01

promised to him. I mean, and yeah, and this this

18:03

is when he was very he was what twenty six at the time,

18:05

and in Paris, and so he was he was really

18:07

distantly connected from to Edison at the

18:09

time. But apparently

18:12

grudge started, right you use this, If

18:14

you use this and just say like this is indicative

18:16

of how Edison treats people, it

18:19

would apparently become company policy not

18:21

to pay people for their work. That's what that's

18:23

what suggested of this. It also becomes

18:25

you know, a common thread in Tesla's

18:28

life of getting getting cheated

18:31

out of things that were owed him, which makes

18:33

you wonder if it happens so frequently. Why

18:36

is that? Is it all due

18:39

to Was it just that he only worked

18:41

with corrupt individuals and companies, or

18:43

was it that there was something else going on here?

18:45

Besides that part of the story, I

18:48

have no doubt that Tesla was really cheated

18:50

out of many of the things he deserved.

18:53

I'm not sure that he was cheated out of everything

18:56

that is attributed as beingthing

18:58

he deserved. Um,

19:00

but then we'll get into that again. Yeo,

19:04

he makes the big move from Europe

19:06

to America. He

19:09

he had basically no money at the time. From what I

19:11

understand, well, he definitely had no money by the time he got

19:13

there. Um. Yeah, it took a little

19:15

longer for him to get there than he had anticipated.

19:17

According to one timeline I read the

19:20

ship he was on. This is just Tesla's luck,

19:22

right, The ship he was on had

19:25

a mutiny aboard the ship. Oh my goodness.

19:27

I did not read about this, and supposedly

19:30

Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard,

19:33

probably for being a witch. That

19:35

that last part is just me guessing. I

19:38

didn't have any reason. I didn't have. There was no reason

19:40

given as to why Tesla would have been

19:42

thrown overboard, so I'm just inventing

19:45

one. But no, apparently the ship

19:47

he was on had a mutiny aboard it. I

19:49

ended up getting to New York way later

19:52

than when he expected, and, according

19:54

to some reports, had four cents in

19:56

his pocket. Now, also,

19:58

depending upon whom you asked, he either

20:01

immediately went to work for Edison, as

20:03

in got off the boat, filed

20:06

and went into the office, or he started

20:08

the next day. That seems

20:10

to be the two stories. Either way, I think that's

20:12

pretty remarkable. Um and

20:15

uh. And he works for Edison

20:17

and he's helping them with their systems. Uh.

20:20

Supposedly again, he started to suggest

20:22

to Edison that they switched to an alternating

20:25

current model as opposed to direct current, and Ederson

20:27

was very much against that idea. So

20:30

then in eighteen five, Tesla

20:32

forms the Tesla Electric Light Company.

20:35

An investor group actually asks

20:37

him if he will work on an ARC

20:39

lighting system, and he agrees to do it, and

20:42

then is later forced out of his own company when

20:44

nothing to show for it. Was Was that all?

20:46

I mean? Because he started the company because he had

20:48

been he had quit Edison's correct. Yeah,

20:50

Essentially, that same year, he resigns from

20:53

the Edison Company, and some say the

20:56

reason he did that was because, again, here's

20:58

another story of Tesla getting cheated. That

21:00

Edison had promised Tesla a

21:03

princely some fifty thou

21:05

dollars for a particular project, and when

21:08

Tesla completed the project again

21:10

supposedly with flying colors

21:12

and beyond all expectations, Edison

21:14

then said, ha, ha, you don't understand

21:16

American humor. I'm not giving you any money,

21:19

and then Tesla resigns, even though Edison supposedly

21:21

at that point offered an enormous raise

21:23

to keep Tesla there. This

21:26

makes Edison look like the biggest

21:28

jerk on the face of the planet. I mean, I can't imagine

21:30

my boss coming up to me and saying, hey, you know when

21:32

I told you were going to make fifty dollars if

21:34

you did this thing, and then you did that thing, you did it really

21:36

well. Well, you're not gonna get any money. Oh you want to leave,

21:39

I'll raise your salary. That just

21:41

like what kind of crazy person

21:43

does that? Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't sound I

21:45

mean, you know it could I start. I never

21:47

met Edison, didn't did you mean him? You're very old? Uh?

21:51

Tesla then claimed that he spent the next

21:54

year making money by digging ditches. So

21:56

again, a great, great story

21:59

if you're looking at his life in the terms

22:01

of like a tragic tale. You

22:03

know, here you have this genius of super

22:05

genius, the man who will one

22:08

day light up the United States

22:10

with his alternating current power grid,

22:12

making money scraping by by

22:15

digging ditches. Yeah. Again,

22:18

a lot of this comes from Tesla himself, and

22:20

whether or not all of it is true, it

22:22

remains part

22:24

of myth. You know, I

22:27

don't doubt that. I don't doubt there were some bad

22:29

business dealings. I'm sure that was the case,

22:32

and I don't doubt he had some hard times and maybe

22:34

he did make his living for a full

22:36

year being you know, digging ditches and that

22:38

was the only thing he could do. But it sounds

22:41

more, it sounds like melodrama. But

22:44

sometimes like works like that, sometimes that's the Sometimes

22:47

that's the truth. Stranger things. But

22:49

anyway, h then by

22:52

by e eight seven, so you know A six

22:55

digging ditches, we don't need to go into as

22:58

that's it. Well, I mean, meanwhile, in eighteen eighties, actually

23:00

it's interesting Westinghouse Electric had developed

23:02

a transformer for commercial use. Yeah, so

23:05

that's another thing we should mention is that, uh, one

23:08

of the reasons Tesla was really pushing for this alternating

23:10

current thing with Edison is that back

23:12

in Europe, that's what they were using a

23:15

C was, That's that's the route they

23:17

took. They didn't they didn't go down the direct

23:19

current route at all. They went with alternating

23:21

current. And that becomes important when we start

23:23

talking about the myths of of Tesla

23:26

as well. In a little bit, right, Yeah, the the U

23:28

s so embroiled in d C current. The

23:30

name the Brooklyn Dodgers actually comes because

23:32

they were using direct current power lines

23:34

that were kind of haphazardly strung across the city

23:37

and and Brooklyn Nights had to dodge

23:39

these lines so often that their team was thus

23:41

named the Brooklyn Dodging, whereas

23:44

the New York Giants were called that because they

23:46

came from a race of mythical creatures that lived

23:48

up Giant. Okay, now,

23:50

I just wanted to show off that I knew something

23:53

too, but I don't really know anything. After

23:57

the ditch digging has finished, Tesla

23:59

begins to work within Besters again, and he establishes

24:01

a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street in New

24:03

York and then a few

24:05

blocks away from Medicine's. Yeah. Yeah, And

24:08

the next year he starts to talk about a C motors

24:10

and transformers for the American Institute

24:12

of Electrical Engineers now

24:14

known as the Triple E, or as

24:17

I always prefer to call

24:19

them. I that

24:22

once for all you engineers out there. Uh.

24:24

And he also agrees to start selling patents

24:26

to George Westinghouse. So even

24:28

though you know, Lauren, like Lauren was saying,

24:31

in eighteen eighty six, you already had Westinghouse

24:33

working on transformers and alternating current. That

24:36

was before Tesla had even started to work for

24:38

Westinghouse. Uh. That

24:40

that's something to keep in mind as well. So

24:42

eighteen eighty nine he establishes a new

24:44

lab on Grand Street in New York. There's

24:46

a lot of labs. He had a lot of labs

24:49

spread out throughout New York. He also lived in

24:51

hotels mostly, did he

24:53

even then? Yeah, mostly towards the end

24:55

of his life, but yeah, early on he was living in a lot

24:58

of hotels as well. I think he also joked about about

25:00

how is his hours, especially when he was working in Edison's

25:02

lab. We're from like ten in the morning until five

25:04

thirty am the next day, and

25:06

and so that a lot of his sleeping A wasn't

25:08

really sleeping, and B was probably under his desk,

25:11

right right, I can identify with that.

25:13

Uh In he begins to experiment

25:16

with wireless power in florest and neon

25:18

lighting, as well as X rays,

25:20

although at the time he isn't sure exactly what they

25:23

are. He was shadow pictures.

25:25

Yeah, this was before Wilhelm

25:28

Laurentin had really

25:30

established what X rays were and what they could do. So

25:32

Tesla was one of the people who

25:35

was observing the phenomena of

25:37

X rays early early on. Yeah,

25:39

there are a few other people at the time who were working with them,

25:41

but yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, that'll go into

25:44

the myths as well. But then

25:47

he becomes an Americans and also

25:49

I believe patented the Tesla coil. There

25:52

you go an interesting thing in

25:55

his mother passes away. That

25:57

same year, he becomes the vice president of the

26:00

AI Triple E, which

26:02

is even it's a I E. I

26:04

guess that is how I would say that. And

26:06

he becomes famous worldwide for his lectures

26:09

on alternating current So at

26:11

this point he's on the lecture circuit. I mean he's

26:14

he's going from city to city. You

26:16

know, he stopped in places like Chicago

26:19

and New York, London, Paris.

26:22

So he becomes again, like I

26:24

said, like a rock star. He's known for

26:26

these lectures, and it sounds weird

26:28

for us to say that that he's like a rock star.

26:31

But this was an era where

26:33

these these thinkers were

26:35

really pushing the development

26:37

of technology to a point where

26:40

everyone was sure that, you know, okay,

26:42

we're five years away from the incredible

26:44

future. And in many ways they were right.

26:47

It's just that their view of what the incredible future

26:49

would be ended up being a lot different from what it really

26:51

was. But it was an era

26:53

of rapid development, so these guys were considered

26:56

to be the people pushing that

26:58

rapid development is really exciting. Yeah,

27:00

and think things like when the Chicago World Fair was

27:02

that was that? Want

27:05

to say? Yeah? That was that was

27:07

famous because there was a whole Edison Tesla

27:09

story there about who is going to provide

27:12

power? Right, and it was really Edison

27:14

versus H. Westinghouse. Yeah,

27:16

but I mean Westinghouse back by Tesla.

27:18

Sure, sure, yeah. West Westinghouse was using

27:20

technology that Tesla had patented

27:23

and and systems that Tesla worked

27:25

on, but it was not truly

27:28

Tesla versus Edison. That's that's kind of

27:30

how I think. Even in a previous episode

27:32

of Tech Stuff, we sort of talked about it in those

27:35

terms, because that's sort of the romantic

27:37

way of doing it, right as the idea of these

27:39

two geniuses facing off against each

27:41

other and who will win and alternating

27:43

current one out in that one. So it was really Westinghouse

27:46

that one, all right, right, Yeah, The story

27:48

goes that there was a there was a business deal the government

27:50

was looking to contract either either

27:53

Westinghouses Company or Edison's company to power

27:55

the World's Fair and and Westinghouse

27:58

one out because it was cheaper. Yep. Yeah,

28:01

and then and when and yeah, and when they threw when

28:03

President grawf for Cleveland, I think it was through that

28:05

switch and which like a hundred

28:08

hundred thousand bulbs lit

28:10

up all at the same time, and people were like, oh, oh,

28:12

this is a thing trivia for you folks

28:14

out there who don't know your history. Grover Cleveland

28:17

was the only president to serve two non consecutive

28:19

terms as president. He was president,

28:22

then he wasn't president. Then he was president again.

28:25

Yes, he also liked the song Funky called

28:27

Medina eighteen five.

28:31

So then one of the buildings that heused,

28:33

one of Tesla's labs, caught fire in

28:35

eight and his lab burned

28:38

down, and the fire destroyed

28:40

what was estimated to be about fifty

28:42

thousand dollars worth of equipment. And

28:46

and he had no insurance. Yeah, and

28:48

fifty that's it's

28:50

a lot of money today. It was a

28:52

huge amount of money in um

28:56

And and at the time he was experimenting

28:59

with with radios. Yeah, and

29:01

and supposedly, according to him, was ready

29:03

to transmit a signal fifty miles out

29:05

to West Point, New York. Yeah. So that this

29:08

is during if you've listened to the Old Tech

29:10

Stuff episode about who invented the radio, there's

29:12

a lot about Tesla and Marconi. And there there's

29:14

a whole story there too about how Marconi,

29:17

like Tesla, got a patent for for the radio.

29:20

Then Marconi applied for a patent, Then

29:22

the patent office overturned Tesla's patent,

29:25

gave Marconi the patent, and then later

29:27

on overturned it again and gave it back to Tesla.

29:30

And later on is in like the nineteen seventies after

29:32

Tesla was dead long after. Um.

29:34

Yeah, there's a whole story, and

29:36

and there's there's arguments there too, because again,

29:40

the invention of any sort of technology

29:42

requires that you talk about so

29:44

many different people who who contributed

29:46

to the discoveries that led to

29:48

the possibility of something existing that

29:51

it's impossible to actually point at one person

29:53

and say this person invented radio. But

29:55

both Marconi and Tesla were working on it,

29:57

and uh, and there's argument over who

30:01

should have real

30:03

credit there. Uh, but

30:06

go listen to our episode about who invented the radio

30:08

if you want to hear more about that, because I think that that

30:10

that that argument is so long and detailed

30:12

that it's hard to sum up in an episode

30:15

just about Tesla. Yeah. Yeah, though it's yeah, certainly

30:17

another another one of those points that people like

30:19

to bring up in terms of he was so downtrodden.

30:21

Yeah, it's a good another point. Yeah, and

30:23

and that's a more firm one that Yeah, he absolutely

30:26

lost that fight and lost probably a lot of

30:28

money in fame. I think. Uh,

30:30

Marconi won the New Belt Prize

30:33

all kinds of fun. Was not happy about

30:35

that. Excited. Yeah, he

30:38

demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model

30:40

boat, so essentially a an RC boat

30:43

at the Electrical Exposition in Madison

30:45

Square Garden where years later,

30:47

Highlanders would fight it out to determine who

30:49

would win the prize, and Queen

30:52

would sing Princess

30:54

of the Universe in the background. I didn't I didn't really

30:56

like that documentary. WHOA, Okay,

30:59

you know what, We're gonna take a little break here. Let's

31:01

let's take a take a moment to thank our sponsor,

31:11

and now back to our show. Alright,

31:13

getting back into Tesla's life. In

31:17

moves to Colorado to perform some experiments

31:19

with wireless power. And now this is where

31:21

one of the big myths about Tesla

31:24

comes up. This idea that he wanted

31:26

to build this huge tower that would

31:28

tap into the this

31:31

this resonant frequency that exists

31:33

around the world, and that you could transmit

31:35

power wirelessly across miles

31:37

of space. Um.

31:40

He claimed that he had another one of those visions that

31:42

let him understand the geoelectrical

31:44

phenomenon he called terrest real

31:46

stationary waves, an idea about

31:48

tapping into the Earth itself as a conductor.

31:51

Okay, sounds interesting,

31:53

Yeah, and it's not that it's

31:55

not that everything was that he said

31:58

was crazy or it was just to

32:00

be able to actually use this in

32:02

a way that would allow

32:04

you to transmit power reliably safely

32:07

without losing power over

32:09

distance or zapping and killing

32:11

everybody. Uh is something

32:14

we haven't solved yet, And there are a lot of people who say

32:16

that all of his work would have

32:18

proven if if it's still existed.

32:20

Get into more about more destruction

32:23

of his work and where it all when it went to. But

32:25

then if it's still existed, it would prove

32:28

that this sort of thing is possible, and it's only

32:30

the energy companies that are keeping it down because

32:32

they stand to lose so much if this If

32:34

this information got out, I'm

32:37

hesitant to agree to anything like that

32:39

because it suggests that no one but Tesla

32:42

could have ever come up with this, and therefore

32:44

the idea is lost forever.

32:46

When I would argue, we have people who are far

32:50

more informed about electrical engineering

32:52

than Tesla was, even though he was a brilliant man,

32:55

forward thinking, and maybe let's have you

32:57

know, perhaps the people these days are not vision

33:00

nary the way that he was. But yeah, maybe

33:02

maybe that's it. Maybe they just need to take a walk in the

33:04

park and look at the sunset, think

33:06

about some poetry that would help. I guess,

33:09

you know, hey, far be it from me to downplay

33:11

the importance of poetry in the world. I certainly

33:13

think it's important being English lit major.

33:16

Uh. In nineteen o one, well, all

33:18

right, so so he starts to think really about

33:20

wireless power and the phenomena that

33:23

it would be, Like what what

33:25

would go into making this and

33:27

how it would change the world. And he really was thinking

33:29

it was an interesting idea. So in

33:31

nineteen o one, with funding from various

33:34

sources, including people like JP Morgan, he

33:36

starts to build the

33:39

Warden Cliff Tower. And this

33:41

is at a long island sound and

33:43

uh, this is um

33:45

this thing is supposed to be a wireless

33:48

power transmitting station essentially, and

33:50

within nineteen o three starts to test it,

33:52

even though the tower itself is not completed

33:55

at that point. And this this was this

33:57

was a tower that that again reached deep into the

33:59

ground, took d of tap into this

34:01

this terrestrial uh wave

34:04

stationary way. I actually have a really great quote

34:06

from Tesla. If I had made out excellent

34:09

in the system that I've invented, it is necessary

34:11

for the machine to get a grip on the earth. Otherwise it cannot

34:14

shake the earth. It has to have a grip so that

34:16

the whole of this globe can quiver. Yeah,

34:18

if you also remember the story about Tesla

34:21

putting an oscillating motor onto

34:23

a building and then nearly shaking it to its

34:25

foundation, that kind of dates from the same

34:27

sort of concept. And

34:32

the Earth is still here, by the way, So that's kind of a

34:34

spoiler alert to how this story plays out.

34:36

MythBusters actually actually cracked that one

34:38

in the episode back in A two six, I think

34:41

they showed. They showed that it could, like a small

34:44

repetitive motion could cause a

34:46

bridge to start to shake a little

34:49

enough to notice a couple couple hundred feet away,

34:51

right, but not necessarily enough to

34:54

to make it crumble into pieces. Um,

34:57

but anyway, we all earthquake. Warncliffe Tower

34:59

becomes an important part of Tesla's life. He was

35:01

one of these things that he really thought that

35:03

that the terrestrial stationary waves was

35:06

the uh discovery

35:08

of his life. That was the most important out

35:10

of everything that he had worked with with alternating

35:12

current, with transformers, with

35:14

all these other technologies, those paled in comparison

35:17

to this one and so Warncliffe Tower was very

35:19

important to him. Unfortunately,

35:22

Uh, there weren't. He didn't have a

35:24

whole lot to show for it. And

35:26

also he was running up the electric

35:28

bill. Yeah yeah, and Morgan was getting

35:30

pretty sick of it. Meanwhile across the ocean,

35:32

Um, Marconi had signaled the letter as

35:34

across the Atlantic. Then that didn't

35:36

make Tesla happy. And and

35:39

I mean and and you know Marconi was such a such

35:41

a newspaper darling. Yeah he was again

35:43

and yet another person who was very good

35:46

at catering to the media to get a message

35:48

across. So uh, you know, not

35:51

unusual at this time. So

35:53

in nineteen o four, the Colorado Lab is

35:55

torn down due to excessive use of electricity

35:57

and the building materials are sold for scrap to

36:00

pay for the cost couch.

36:02

And in nineteen o six, like you said, JP, Morgan,

36:05

who had been an investor withdraws and Tesla

36:07

has to end up laying off a lot of employees over

36:09

at Warncliff Tower. Uh, We're

36:11

gonna skip ahead a few years because this is essentially

36:13

where he's working on this Warncliff

36:16

Tower experiment, which

36:19

ends up draining a lot of his energy literally

36:22

and resources, and without

36:24

a lot to show for it. Um the next

36:26

day, I have his nineteen eleven when he started working

36:28

with steam turbines and electricity

36:30

production. Uh. He was.

36:33

This was a big development. It was

36:35

very important in the whole uh

36:38

part of generating electricity for a growing

36:40

need in America because at this point you're

36:42

starting to see communities get wired

36:44

for electricity and beyond

36:46

just the narrow band

36:49

in the Northeast that had it, So it

36:51

was important to find different ways of generating it, beyond

36:54

firing from coal plants. She wanted to find

36:56

something that was sustainable even at

36:58

that time, and in ninetelve

37:01

Tesla suffered another setback, although

37:03

not one nearly as large as Lady Astor.

37:06

John Jacob Astor was one of

37:08

Tesla's most wealthy and enthusiastic

37:11

investors, stopped investing

37:14

in Tesla's work because he stopped breathing.

37:18

He was at board a little boat called the

37:20

Titanic. Oh, I've heard of that one. I

37:22

think I saw a documentary about it one. Yeah,

37:24

his heart will go on, but his investment

37:26

payments stopped. Yeah.

37:28

He Um. He went

37:31

down with the boat. He did get Lady Astor

37:33

on a lifeboat, so he made

37:35

sure his wife was safe, and he stayed

37:37

behind to wait for

37:40

his turn to get on a lifeboat, but tragically

37:42

was not able to do that and

37:44

he did die, and with that Tesla

37:47

lost one of his most significant sources

37:49

of investment money. So it

37:52

was another financial setback for Tesla.

37:55

Um. I don't think he could blame that one

37:57

on Edison. No, No, maybe

38:00

Mark Coni, because we're talking about the

38:03

use of radios on the Titanic, But then

38:05

that was more of a personnel thing than

38:08

a technology thing. A nineteen

38:10

fifteen, Tesla and Edison are both

38:13

listed as being uh

38:16

considered for a Nobel Prize

38:19

and that they would be co recipients

38:22

of the Nobel Prize. When

38:24

the Nobel Prizes are announced, the

38:27

prize goes to two people.

38:30

That would be William Henry Bragg and

38:32

his son. Now the

38:34

Nobel Committee admitted that Edison

38:37

and Tesla were under consideration for the Nobel

38:39

Prize, but they did not say any more than that. What

38:42

has come up since then as the

38:44

rumor, which is gospel

38:46

in some corners of the Internet, that the reason why

38:49

Tesla and Edison did not receive

38:51

the Nobel Prize together is because they'd

38:53

rather be caught dead than to share

38:55

a prize with the other man.

38:58

That's a that's a good myth that

39:00

the rivalry was so great that they would both

39:02

refuse a Nobel prize rather

39:04

than have to share it with the other That's pretty

39:06

amazing. And it may be true that

39:09

when I say rumor, I don't mean that it's fake

39:11

or false or a lie. I just mean that

39:13

we don't know for sure. Other

39:16

people probably do, but I don't. Nineteen

39:18

sixteen, Tesla declares bankruptcy.

39:20

He did not pasco or

39:23

collect two hundred dollars y.

39:26

It was just not a good year for him. Uh.

39:28

In nineteen seventeen, he ended

39:30

up proposing what would depending

39:33

upon whom you ask, Okay people, some people

39:35

will say in nineteen seventeen, Tesla predicted

39:38

radar radar. Yeah, that he was

39:40

the guy who came up with radar, but

39:42

the government turned him down.

39:45

The Navy board said that they would

39:47

not invest in such a technology.

39:49

By the way, the person from

39:52

private industry who was on the Navy board,

39:57

well he was from from what I understand about the story,

40:00

Tesla had proposed this, this

40:02

way of finding ships underwater.

40:05

Yeah, that's the problem, right, So the more

40:07

you look into it, the more you realize it's not radar

40:09

he's talking about, not in the sense that we use it today.

40:12

Well, he he was talking about radar, but it was

40:14

not really the best system for finding ships

40:16

underwater. And so therefore when the government

40:19

from the Navy didn't didn't really give him the go ahead,

40:21

it wasn't because radar

40:23

is dumb or the Tesla's demo was because

40:25

it wasn't the right technology for the application.

40:27

What Tesla did not take into account

40:30

was he he wanted to use tightly

40:32

controlled electric beams of energy

40:35

to zap them into the water to

40:37

reflect off the surfaces of submarines, detect

40:40

that those reflections and the information

40:42

would be displayed back in a fluorescent display,

40:44

which sounds great, except for the problem is that

40:46

these beams would attenuate underwater, and

40:49

so you would not get accurate representations

40:51

of what you were looking at. You wouldn't you

40:54

couldn't be sure that you know, you

40:56

could be pointing it directly at a submarine

40:58

and miss it because of this attenuate Asian problem.

41:01

And so it just isn't practical for

41:03

the use that Tesla was suggesting it. And

41:05

uh, and so that shows that Tesla had a misunderstanding

41:08

either of the physics of water

41:11

or the technology itself. Either way, it wasn't

41:13

truly radar. It's not exactly the

41:16

same thing that radar is, and it

41:18

was not being used in the way that radar ultimately

41:21

would be used. So while some people

41:23

claim that he invented radar as

41:26

being a little generous, nineteen,

41:29

we just busted a myth, and I hadn't I apologize

41:31

because I haven't gotten to that section yet. But that's

41:33

okay, that's one less for us to worry about when we get there

41:36

in nineteen thirty four. Actually,

41:38

if if we can, if we can step back, just to short,

41:41

let's please in In nineteen nineteen,

41:43

he published an autobiography called

41:46

My Inventions Uh that

41:48

was published in six parts in the Electrical

41:50

Experiment or magazine. And this is

41:53

important because it is

41:55

one of the main sources of information

41:57

about Tesla's life, which is why you

41:59

have to take everything with a grain of salt, because

42:02

he was a bit of a self promoter. So

42:04

there's not I'm not saying that Tesla

42:06

was lying in his autobiography. What I'm

42:08

saying is you just have to take into consideration the possibility

42:11

that he may have exaggerated some facts,

42:14

not that he was purposefully trying

42:16

to mislead people, but that when

42:18

you become a self promoter, that that can

42:20

happen. Even if you don't mean it to happen,

42:23

it can happen, Which is kind of crazy that you're just you

42:25

know, in your mind, you're like, this is totally how it happened,

42:27

and then anyone else is like, dude,

42:29

I was there, and that totally is not

42:32

how it happened. Um, Jonathan,

42:34

You've never beheaded anyone in the

42:36

cold blood of a fight. On the cold blood

42:39

of a fight, and

42:41

The New York Times published as an article about

42:43

Tesla's death, ray, Yeah

42:46

this was. Tesla said

42:48

that he had come up with an idea that

42:50

would allow governments

42:52

to build a device capable

42:55

of emitting a beam of

42:57

energy that could bring down a fleet of him

43:00

thousand enemy planes at a distance

43:02

of two hundred fifty miles, and

43:04

that his idea was that by outfitting pretty

43:07

much everybody with one of these, you

43:09

would have that mutually assured destruction

43:11

that makes peace possible. He actually

43:13

called it a piece beam from what I understand,

43:15

Yeah, I said that would really end war because

43:18

how could you have war If you can't fly over

43:20

another country without worrying about

43:22

your entire fleet being destroyed, then obviously

43:25

war is off the table. That was kind

43:27

of his his somewhat naive

43:30

plan. And whether or not

43:32

this thing would ever work is

43:34

another interesting question, or

43:36

if there ever was anything beyond just

43:38

this idea that hey, maybe one day I could

43:40

build something that does this. Uh,

43:43

that's another you know, that's another one of those things.

43:45

It's a myth, right. Uh.

43:49

He decided to go feed the pigeons in the park, which

43:51

was a bad decision to make that particular

43:54

day, as as he was crossing

43:56

the street, he was struck by a cab. Then

43:59

to in upon which report you read,

44:02

he flew thirty five to forty ft

44:04

in the air and landed and was perfectly

44:06

unharmed except a little bruised or

44:09

he had broken several ribs. It all depends on which

44:11

person you're asking. Tesla said,

44:13

damn, I'm all right. Other people like dude,

44:15

he was messed up. He

44:18

was crying about his pigeons. It was ugly. He

44:21

he had he had at this point become a little bit destitute.

44:24

Um he due to all of these various

44:26

financial troubles over the years, and and basic

44:28

misspending. I think head, yeah, didn't.

44:31

Yeah, there were a lot of hotels that were

44:33

suing him because he had lived

44:36

inside the hotel for years and years

44:38

and owed them thousands of dollars,

44:40

and then he would relocate to a different hotel, and

44:42

you think, like, why would another hotel even trust

44:45

him? He was Tesla Again, this is

44:47

a rock star guy, and it elevates

44:49

the status of your hotel that he's staying

44:52

there. But you can only have

44:54

Lindsay Lohan in your hotel

44:56

for so long before you're like, seriously, could

44:58

you please stop making holes in

45:00

the growing TVs out the

45:02

window? Guys, I am sitting across from the from

45:04

the person who had just compared Nicola Tesla

45:07

to Lindsay Lohan. I think it's an apt comparison.

45:09

Look, Lindsay Lohan hasn't reached the age

45:11

Tesla was at when he started to really

45:14

uh contribute to humanity. So I

45:16

think we owe her a year or two. I'm just saying

45:18

that if anyone actually figures out Tesla's

45:20

particle beam and aims it at the HW

45:22

office is and just just just just let me know

45:25

I'm perfectly willing to give you Jonathan

45:27

g a syncritis coordinates. Please keep in

45:30

mind that stuff you missed in history class,

45:32

and stuff mom never told you sit really

45:34

near me. So if

45:36

you love those shows, keep

45:38

your beam particle pointed somewhere else. That's

45:41

not cool. We'll be right

45:43

back to talk more about Nicola Tesla,

45:46

an eccentric inventor and

45:49

lover of alternating current in just a

45:51

moment after this quick break. January

46:00

seven three was a bad

46:03

day for Tesla because that's the day he passed

46:05

on. He was eighty six years old.

46:08

Uh and two days later, all

46:10

of his papers and a state

46:12

was seized by the government. Well some

46:15

some stories say that his nephew showed up the

46:17

morning after he passed away, and that his body had already

46:19

been removed, and that the nephew noticed that it seemed

46:21

like some of his papers were missing. Yeah,

46:24

this is where one of those stories pops up. In

46:26

fact, now that we've had Tesla

46:28

shuffle off the mortal and Tesla

46:30

coil, thank you, I've been waiting

46:33

to use that one, we can talk a

46:35

little bit about this this idea. So there are a

46:37

lot of rumors out there. One of the big rumors is that the

46:39

FBI seized

46:41

all of Tesla's papers

46:44

and did so in an effort

46:46

to to use them for

46:48

various nefarious purposes for the

46:50

United States government. Now keep in mind this

46:53

is nte. World

46:55

War two is a thing, and

46:58

so there is a genuine concerned

47:00

that information that has scientific

47:02

significance could fall into the hands

47:05

of other nations and give give

47:09

other other nations a lot

47:11

of advantages over the United States.

47:13

And so it was very important to guard whatever

47:15

advantages you had against that absolutely.

47:18

And also I mean remember that that Tesla was a Serbian

47:20

American um as as such,

47:22

the from

47:24

from from what we can discern, of fact,

47:26

it was actually the Department of Justice Alien

47:28

Property Custodian Office that temporarily

47:30

seized his papers, right, so it was not

47:32

the FBI. It was a Department of Justice and the

47:34

FBI. Still they've got like a like a top

47:37

ten myths on on the internet. Number

47:39

ten. Number ten is is that we

47:41

took Tesla's papers like guys, Like guys,

47:43

we didn't. We did for real, Zo,

47:45

we didn't grab those And actually I looked

47:47

into it and it wouldn't be until

47:50

well, you know, if you read most of the stories. It's

47:52

like the FBI took the papers and they never released them,

47:54

and we want, we demand that these papers be released.

47:57

Guys. It was the Department of Justice number one and

47:59

number two in nineteen fifty two they sent the papers

48:01

to uh to Kasanovich,

48:04

his nephew, and that is that is nine years

48:06

later. Yeah, alright, granted nine

48:08

years. Like we're a talking about time during not just

48:10

the World War two with the Red Scared as well, So

48:13

I mean not that that justifies suppressing

48:16

information. Also, you're talking about the government, So

48:18

it may very well be that there wasn't any intentional

48:22

um slowness on the part of the government.

48:24

That's just the way the government works.

48:28

But I don't know, I honestly don't know. What

48:30

I do know is they did release the estate and

48:32

the papers to Yugoslavia, to to

48:34

his nephew. That they wound up in a in a museum.

48:38

So if you wanted, if you're one of the people

48:40

demanding that there's a Tesla museum, good news

48:42

there is. You just have to go to Europe to

48:44

see it. Also, supposedly after

48:47

World War two was over, copies of his papers were

48:49

sent out to one of the Air Force spaces and

48:52

Project Nick was a thing that

48:55

was heavily funded, and then the papers disappeared,

48:57

never to be seen again. Yeah, their love conspiracy theories

48:59

here, they're there was one one person posted

49:01

on Facebook when I mentioned that we were going to be covering Tesla

49:04

today, So are you going to talk about how they used

49:06

a lot of his work in the developments of stuff in

49:08

Area fifty one? And the answer to that is no, because

49:10

there's no real documentation of that. There's

49:13

actually quite a bit of information about what went

49:15

on at Area fifty one. It's stuff that was top

49:17

secret at the time. But um,

49:20

we'll have to do an episode all about Area fifty one

49:22

sometime in the future, just because it's a fascinating

49:24

topic. But it's all about, you

49:26

know, developing things like stealth technology

49:28

and various kinds of test uh

49:31

prototypes for the Air

49:33

Force or for the army. But

49:35

but nothing like the Tesla death ray,

49:37

at least nothing that shows up in any

49:40

real record. And I would argue that the

49:42

reason why it doesn't show up on a real record is probably because

49:44

it didn't exist. Um that my second choice

49:46

would be it didn't work, and so there was no point

49:48

in more valut. I don't think

49:51

we would still be debating whether or

49:53

not exists if it actually did exist, because

49:55

someone would have come forward by now probably,

49:58

or it would have zapped somebody. Although there there is

50:00

stuff they don't want you to know. Did I did an episode

50:02

a couple of years ago on this even You can go

50:04

check that out on YouTube. That's it,

50:07

oh bolan uh. Then

50:10

also there here's some other myths that Tesla

50:12

invented alternating current. He did not. He

50:15

did not. He alternating

50:17

current was already a thing in Europe

50:19

by the time Tesla was born. It wasn't widespread,

50:22

it wasn't like there was a huge power grid in Europe,

50:24

but there were people working on alternating

50:26

current and even working on things like induction

50:29

motors and transformers at

50:31

that time. And so Tesla

50:34

even studied alternating current when he was

50:36

in school. So it's not something

50:38

that he invented. He did,

50:40

however, take the knowledge

50:42

that was being generated around alternating

50:45

current and applied it and furthered

50:47

it. So it's not it's not that he just copied

50:50

someone else's work. He really did make legitimate

50:52

contributions, I'm sure, and it was it was his

50:55

patents in his his work with Westinghouse

50:57

that led to alternating current, the

51:00

coming the thing that the US uses

51:02

and and the thing that is

51:04

capable of going across long distances. Both of

51:06

those are extremely extremely important. I can't

51:09

downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but

51:11

but you know, he did not invent it. He didn't invent

51:13

it. He's not the reason why it's what's

51:15

being used in Europe. Uh. So

51:18

that's one thing we can kind of put to bed. And

51:20

in fact, the first work

51:22

with alternating current dates back

51:24

to five, which was,

51:27

you know, twenty years before Tesla

51:29

was born. So unless

51:31

he also invented time travel, and

51:34

don't write me and tell me he did, that's

51:37

not that's not the case. Um,

51:39

like I would believe anything after watching The Prestige

51:42

again another documentary, right, Uh.

51:46

Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out,

51:48

was working on UH distribution

51:50

grids designs for a C power

51:52

and transformers before Tesla had even

51:55

started to work for the company. Now,

51:57

granted again, Tesla's patents and the

51:59

information that he was able to provide to Westinghouse

52:01

ended up making those much more robust

52:04

and it made it possible to actually act

52:06

on that. But again, it shows that

52:09

he's not the only one working on this at the time.

52:11

Um. He's also not the guy

52:13

who invented transformers. Those were first being

52:15

used in Budapest in the eighteen seventies.

52:18

Uh, and the very first modern transformer was built

52:20

by William Stanley in eighty five.

52:24

He did not invent the fluorescent lamp. Alexandra

52:27

Beccarell was the first guy

52:30

to to observe fluorescence,

52:32

and he did so in eighteen fifty seven when

52:34

Tesla was one. So

52:36

again, unless Tesla was also observing fluorescence

52:39

at one year old, and maybe he was. I mean he was born in a

52:41

storm after all. Thor was his buddy.

52:44

Um, you can't say that he invented

52:47

that. He did not discover X rays.

52:50

I've as we covered before. Yeah, Ivan

52:52

Poolui, I have no idea

52:54

how to say his last name. I know I just butchered it. But

52:57

but Ivan, my buddy Ivan.

52:59

He he had actually observed the

53:02

phenomena of X rays before Tesla

53:04

had. But just like Tesla, he wasn't

53:06

really sure what it was he was looking at. He thought

53:08

it was interesting, but he wasn't

53:10

really sure about you know, what this

53:13

stuff actually is. It wouldn't be until Wilhelm Ronin

53:16

really looked into it and began to make

53:19

theories and hypotheses and tests some really

53:21

clever things about them. That's that's when we started

53:23

to know that what they were. But other

53:25

other scientists had been observing it,

53:27

they just didn't understand it. Again,

53:30

we talked about the radar thing, and we talked about FBI.

53:33

So those are the big myths. Other

53:35

myths are you know, the whole Testla versus Edison

53:37

thing. Uh, it was really more

53:40

Edison companies versus

53:43

Westinghouse companies and not

53:45

so much a personality thing.

53:47

Well, it does sound like the two of them

53:49

clashed. There are a whole bunch of reports

53:51

about how I mean, right from the get go they didn't

53:53

really like each other, right, um and and it's easy

53:56

to see, you know, they were both very strong personalities,

53:59

um and very big showman and

54:01

it didn't it doesn't sound like either of them

54:03

really liked not that anyone likes it, but

54:05

but to be made a fool of. And

54:08

both of them were in the business of, in fact, trying to make

54:10

a full of the other person. So yeah, there was

54:12

some of that. There was some showmanship, There was some there's

54:14

some and and I mean there was clearly

54:17

some sort of legitimate beef between us and Tesla,

54:19

at least as far as you know, Tesla getting

54:21

the credit that he wanted and Tesla, you know,

54:23

a lot of his fortunes switched

54:27

mainly because he made some really bad business

54:29

deals. He sold

54:32

patents off out a pittance at

54:34

times, because the company would come to him

54:37

and say, you know, there's this massive

54:39

economic downturn coming. We

54:42

need this these patents, but if we

54:44

paid you what they're worth, then

54:46

we're going to go under. And Contessa is like,

54:48

look, I'll cut you a deal. Yeah. They

54:51

were basically kind of like, can we give you a tenth of the fee

54:53

that we're going to promise you and then give you some stock right

54:55

before a terrible economic downturn. And Tesla

54:57

was like, yes, is good, give me

54:59

that, and and and and the famous

55:02

Westinghouse deal where um uh.

55:05

Even even even though a Westinghouse won

55:07

the so called War of the Currents, the

55:09

company was not doing well and and wound

55:11

up after they had built the generator

55:14

at Niagara, I think started

55:16

to go under and there were

55:18

some issues with mostly

55:20

it was just again just just poor

55:23

decisions on Tesla's part um

55:25

test the let him out of the contract just to he

55:28

said said like, oh, no, you don't have to pay me the rest. That's

55:30

fine, you save your company. Yeah,

55:32

which is which is great. I mean, it's lovely, it's a nice it's a

55:34

terrific I mean, but you know, it's it's when you when you end

55:36

up having no friends other than pigeons and owing every

55:38

hotel in New York money. Maybe

55:40

that's why. Yeah, yeah, that could

55:42

that could be one of the factors. Um

55:45

he certainly, And I know that people

55:47

are probably listening to this episode and thinking that I am.

55:49

I think Tesla was a

55:52

worthless lay about that. Nothing could be further

55:54

from the truth. I think he really did make incredible

55:58

contributions to to

56:00

the success of the United States in general

56:02

and to several technologies around the

56:04

world in particular. But it's

56:07

also important not to overstate his

56:09

contributions and to understand,

56:12

especially at the expense of other very important

56:14

inventors and minds and

56:16

works, it's a disservice to everyone else

56:18

who worked on these same things and helped make

56:20

them a possible a reality

56:23

really in our lives, and

56:25

and you know, you've got to also pay

56:27

attention to some of the crazier ideas like the

56:30

death ray, the death raying, Yeah, or being

56:32

able to move the entire earth with putting

56:35

essentially a wire around it and tapping into

56:37

the frequency that it generates,

56:39

which, hey, maybe that is possible, it's just

56:41

not practical, right, Yeah, that's

56:43

and I think that that's a problem with a lot of his latter theories

56:46

is they were not particularly practical.

56:48

Yeah, yeah, so he was also, I mean, there there's

56:50

stories about him having a couple of nervous breakdowns

56:52

at various times in his life. I think that

56:55

he was probably

56:57

not necessarily mentally well for

56:59

a deal of his existence. I agree, I

57:01

agree. I think he probably had quite a few

57:04

uh issues to work through, and

57:07

that I mean, you know, I can, considering how well we treat

57:09

those kind of people today, it is easy to see how

57:11

at the turn of the century he was not particularly

57:14

given the chances that he needed. And

57:16

Ladies and gentlemen, that wraps up our

57:19

conversation are our our classic episode

57:22

of tech stuff about Nicola Tesla,

57:25

And believe it or not, I really admire

57:27

Tesla a lot. I mean, truly

57:29

was a genius a

57:32

true genius and someone who had

57:35

been wronged quite a bit throughout

57:37

his life. But that being said,

57:39

I don't necessarily think everything

57:42

he thought of was absolutely

57:44

brilliant. I don't go quite that far. So

57:47

uh. I hope you guys enjoyed this classic

57:49

episode. If you have any suggestions for

57:51

future topics for tech Stuff, send

57:53

me a message on social media. You can find

57:55

me on Facebook or on Twitter with

57:58

the handled text stuff. HS with you

58:00

and I'll talk to you again really

58:02

soon. Text

58:07

Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How

58:09

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