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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from housetof

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Debline and Chok reporting and I'm fair douting. And we

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Speaker 1: recently did an episode on nineteenth century dentist Horace Wells

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Speaker 1: in his battle to receive credit for discovering inhalation anesthesia.

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Speaker 1: And that episode was really fascinating to research, just to

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Speaker 1: find out about the rivalries that were created because of

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Speaker 1: this discovery and the lengths that they would go to

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Speaker 1: to get credit or discredit one another, and all this

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Speaker 1: for a discovery that was supposed to be for the

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Speaker 1: benefit of everyone, something that maybe people shouldn't have fought

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Speaker 1: over quite as much as they did. So it definitely

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Speaker 1: got us interested in exploring some more of those science

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Speaker 1: related rivalries. Yeah, and of course one of the most

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Speaker 1: famous also involved one of our most requested historical figures.

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Speaker 1: I feel like we always say that, but this one

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Speaker 1: really is requested a lot. Is the big time, and

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Speaker 1: that's Nicola Tesla. Tesla's probably most famous for inventing a

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Speaker 1: safe and effective motor that could be used to deliver

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Speaker 1: electricity using alternating current, and that alternating current method is

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Speaker 1: still used today, But he also invented the Tesla coil

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Speaker 1: and induction coil used in radio technology and many other

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Speaker 1: things which we will mention in a bit, But it

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Speaker 1: was that first invention and simply Tesla's devotion to the

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Speaker 1: idea that alternating current was superior to direct current as

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Speaker 1: a means of delivering electricity that sparked a bitter rivalry

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Speaker 1: with a very well known, very accomplished American inventor, Thomas Edison.

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Speaker 1: Of course, so we're going to be exploring Tesla's life,

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Speaker 1: his contributions, his eccentricities, but we're also going to take

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Speaker 1: a closer look at the contentious relationship that he had

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Speaker 1: with Edison and the battle that they fought in the

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Speaker 1: late nineteenth century to electrify the world. There was a

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Speaker 1: lot at stake, so by the time you get to

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Speaker 1: the end of Tesla's story, will really want to know

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Speaker 1: how minds like his got its starts. So that's where

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Speaker 1: we're going to begin. Tussa was born on July nine

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Speaker 1: or ten, sources tend to differ on that, eighteen fifty six,

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Speaker 1: into a family of Serbian origin in a village and

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Speaker 1: a part of Austria, Hungary, that's now Croatia. His dad

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Speaker 1: was an Orthodox priest and his mom was a homemaker

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Speaker 1: who hadn't had much, if any schooling, but she was

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Speaker 1: said to be very smart and really inventive to According

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Speaker 1: to PBS dot Org, Tesla's mom would invent all sorts

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Speaker 1: of gadgets to just help her around the house, including

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Speaker 1: a mechanical egg beater, and apparently Tesla later credited her

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Speaker 1: for his own inventive tendencies. His parents, though, kind of

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Speaker 1: expected their son to follow in his father's footsteps, but

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Speaker 1: he really excelled in math and science from an early age,

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Speaker 1: and it soon became pretty apparent that further academic achievement

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Speaker 1: along those lines was what he was going to try

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Speaker 1: to pursue. And he wasn't just plain old book smart too.

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Speaker 1: We should get into that before we start talking about

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Speaker 1: his his genius. Even when he was very young, he

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Speaker 1: was really inventive and imaginative and even had a bit

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Speaker 1: of a literary side to him. Yeah. According to Mental Floss,

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Speaker 1: Tesla had both conceived of an idea for a water wheel,

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Speaker 1: a machine for converting water to electricity, and read the

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Speaker 1: one hundred volume set of the Complete Voltaire by age five,

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Speaker 1: so pretty impressive. That it is pretty impressive. Not everybody

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Speaker 1: can even read yet at five, So there you go.

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Speaker 1: That's true. He was a little ahead of the curve there.

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Speaker 1: But in eighteen seventy five, Tesla moved to Gratz, Austria

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Speaker 1: to attend the Technical University there and trained to become

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Speaker 1: an engineer. According to an article about Tesla and notable

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Speaker 1: scientists from nineteen hundred to the present, it's while he

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Speaker 1: was there that he first saw a demonstration of the

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Speaker 1: Graham dynamo, a direct current induction motor. And while he

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Speaker 1: saw that demonstration, he noticed something. He saw that sparks

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Speaker 1: flew well it operated, and that's when he got this

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Speaker 1: idea of coming up with a method that would overcome

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Speaker 1: issues with direct current motor. So, after God, there's a

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Speaker 1: bit of lost time in Tesla's biography during which he

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Speaker 1: was ill, and apparently he would just study and study

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Speaker 1: and work on his ideas so hard sometimes that he

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Speaker 1: would make himself physically thick, or at least that's how

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Speaker 1: his his father saw it, anyway, and it really alarmed

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Speaker 1: his parents enough that they tried to get him to

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Speaker 1: switch career path. They just thought this was not going

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Speaker 1: to be healthy for their son. Eventually, though, Tesla said

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Speaker 1: to have moved on to continuous education at the University

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Speaker 1: of Prague, although according to biographer Margaret Cheney and Tesla

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Speaker 1: and Man out of Time, there's no record that he

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Speaker 1: actually went there. He may have just audited classes and

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Speaker 1: or use the libraries there regardless. By January eighteen eighty one,

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Speaker 1: he'd moved to Budapesh where he took a job in

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Speaker 1: the Hungarian government's Central Telegraph Office. In eight two, he

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Speaker 1: moved to Paris to take a position with the Continental

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Speaker 1: Edison Company, where his job was to address technical problems

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Speaker 1: in edison plants in both France and Germany, and according

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Speaker 1: to Encyclopedia Britannica, it's well he was on assignment in

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Speaker 1: Strasbourg in eighteen eighty three that Tesla really began serious

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Speaker 1: work on his first induction motor and came up with

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Speaker 1: a design for that, but he couldn't get a lot

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Speaker 1: of support for or interest in it, so it was

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Speaker 1: time for a big move. At that point, he decided

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Speaker 1: that he would head to America and see if he

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Speaker 1: could garner shake up some interest over there, So he

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Speaker 1: set sail in eighteen eighty four. He was in his

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Speaker 1: late twenties by this point, and he showed up that

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Speaker 1: summer with only four cents in his pocket, as well

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Speaker 1: as a few poems he had written and some calculations

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Speaker 1: for a flying machine that he wanted to create. That

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Speaker 1: really paints a good picture of him, I think, and

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Speaker 1: according to an article in American History by Ronald H. Bailey,

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Speaker 1: Tesla also only had one outfit left by the time

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Speaker 1: he got to the United States. It consisted of a

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Speaker 1: bowler hat, striped trousers and a cutaway coat, and all

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Speaker 1: of the rest of his clothing and his stuff he

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Speaker 1: had brought with him had been stolen on the trip over.

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Speaker 1: He also had a reference from the manager of the

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Speaker 1: Edison Company in Paris with him too. He so he

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Speaker 1: had like a recommendation along with him as well, because

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Speaker 1: he wanted a job with Edison's company in the States.

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Speaker 1: But there was a little more to it than just that.

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Speaker 1: There was a little more of a motive behind him

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Speaker 1: wanting to get work with Edison. Edison, who was thirty

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Speaker 1: seven at this time, was already considered a celebrated inventor.

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Speaker 1: He'd invented the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph and

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Speaker 1: had recently created a system for providing electricity to homes

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Speaker 1: and businesses that people in the New York City area

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Speaker 1: were already benefiting from. Tesla hoped that he could get

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Speaker 1: Edison support for his ideas about alternating current, and that's

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Speaker 1: why he wanted to kind of ring him up, get

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Speaker 1: Edison in his corner. Yeah, So he went to see

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Speaker 1: Edison almost immediately after arriving in New York, and according

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Speaker 1: to Bailey's article, lay Or wrote that he was thrilled

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Speaker 1: to the marrow to meet him. But it was clear

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Speaker 1: from the start that these two guys, although they were

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Speaker 1: both great minds, were complete opposites, even in the way

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Speaker 1: they looked and acted. I mean, Edison was short, pudgy,

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Speaker 1: disheveled and kind of folks see you well. Tesla was

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Speaker 1: more than six ft tall and slender, neatly dressed and formal,

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Speaker 1: very serious looking. But of course, the biggest difference between

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Speaker 1: these two guys was not just how they looked, it

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Speaker 1: was their beliefs about the way electricity should be distributed,

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Speaker 1: direct current or alternating current. So, before we go any

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Speaker 1: further would probably help out to give just a little

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Speaker 1: bit of background on the difference between direct current and

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Speaker 1: alternating current. Just to give you guys a sense of

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Speaker 1: what Edison and Tesla disagreed about. So we're gonna stick

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Speaker 1: to the real, bare bone basics here because this isn't

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Speaker 1: a science podcast. We're not scientists or electricians or engineers,

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Speaker 1: but just to give you something to start with. So,

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Speaker 1: by this point, scientific had already researched electricity for a while,

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Speaker 1: and people knew it was valuable. It was just a

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Speaker 1: matter of how to get it where it needed to go,

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Speaker 1: and Edison believed that direct current was the answer to this.

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Speaker 1: In a direct current, electrons, which are the particles that

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Speaker 1: convey electricity, just travel in one direction, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of Edison's inventions ran off of this type of power.

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Speaker 1: According to an article in American Heritage by Bernard W. Carlson,

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Speaker 1: Edison preferred this method because it was simple and safe,

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Speaker 1: but the downside is that it could only move electricity

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Speaker 1: for short distances. His early power stations could only reach

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Speaker 1: customers within about a miles distance, so Tesla's preferred method.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, alternating current involves electron switching back

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Speaker 1: and forth, so they travel first in one direction and

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Speaker 1: then in the other direction, and they do this many

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Speaker 1: many times per second. So if you see something that's

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Speaker 1: labeled sixty hurts, for instance, that means that the current

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Speaker 1: is changing direction in sixty times per second. So alternating

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Speaker 1: current is more difficult to set up, but Tesla really

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Speaker 1: believed in it because it was capable of distributing electricity

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Speaker 1: across greater distances, and it allowed you to step up

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Speaker 1: or decrease the voltage when you needed to make something

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Speaker 1: like that happen. He also felt, Carlson writes that alternating

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Speaker 1: current would enable people to use electricity for more than

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Speaker 1: just lighting, including running factory machines, street cars, and elevators.

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Speaker 1: So there was a lot of potential potential exactly. Edison

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Speaker 1: wasn't buying it. Though he wasn't buying into this idea.

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Speaker 1: He thought that Tesla's designs for the new induction motor

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Speaker 1: were both impractical and unsafe. According to Bailey's article, Tesla

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Speaker 1: later recalled that Edison said, quote very bluntly, that he

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Speaker 1: was not interested in alternating current. Anyone who dabbled in

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Speaker 1: that field was wasting his time. Still, though at least

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Speaker 1: at first, Edison was impressed by Tesla him himself even

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Speaker 1: if he didn't like his electricity philosophy. He was impressed enough,

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Speaker 1: in fact, that he gave Tesla a job, and so Tesla,

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Speaker 1: with his four cents in his pocket, you know, swallowed

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Speaker 1: his pride, took the job and got to work at

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Speaker 1: Edison's Pearl Street power station. And his job there was

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Speaker 1: to improve the performance of the dynamos, or the generators,

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Speaker 1: and interestingly, the direct current generators actually worked by creating

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Speaker 1: alternating current, at least initially. Then they had converted to

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Speaker 1: the direct current right before it was transmitted by using

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Speaker 1: something called a commutator. This gig only lasted a few

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Speaker 1: months for Tesla, though, and that was for a couple

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Speaker 1: of reasons. First off, the fundamental differences between him and

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Speaker 1: Edison were just too great. He just really felt limited

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Speaker 1: by the position and unsatisfied with what he was doing

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Speaker 1: because he didn't really believe in it. But there was

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Speaker 1: also the situation regarding payment that caused Tesla to call equips.

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Speaker 1: Tesla said Edison promised to pay him fifty thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: if he was successful in enhancing the power stations dynamos,

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Speaker 1: but after Tesla actually delivered on this, Edison said that

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Speaker 1: it was all a joke. According to PBS dot org,

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Speaker 1: the older inventor said something to the effective quote, when

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Speaker 1: you're a full fledged American, you can get an American joke.

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Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, not very nice. But according to Bailey's article,

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Speaker 1: Edison wouldn't even raise tesla salary from eighteen dollars to

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Speaker 1: twenty five dollars a week, so he didn't even get

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Speaker 1: some compensation for not getting the joke right. So Tesla

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Speaker 1: left and struck out on his own, and this time

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Speaker 1: he was determined to do things his own way, but

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Speaker 1: things still didn't go so well at first. He started

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Speaker 1: his own electric company in Raway, New Jersey five but

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Speaker 1: the first real project he worked on after breaking ties

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Speaker 1: with Edison didn't have that much to do with furthering

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Speaker 1: his ideas about alternating current. He kind of got out

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Speaker 1: of the business almost There were some New Jersey businessman

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Speaker 1: who hired him to improve the lighting system in the

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Speaker 1: city of Raleigh, but they wanted him to improve upon

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Speaker 1: an early system known as arc lighting. So Tesla took

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Speaker 1: the job because you know, it was at least some

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Speaker 1: kind of business, and he did create a better type

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Speaker 1: of arc lighting for the city, or a better system

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Speaker 1: of arc lighting, but the investors ended up taking all

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Speaker 1: the money that was earned from the project for themselves,

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Speaker 1: leaving Tesla with nothing, and according to Bailey, again they

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Speaker 1: even cheated the inventor out of the patent that he

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Speaker 1: had gotten for that new, improved arc light he'd created.

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Speaker 1: After that awful experience, Tesla was broke again and he

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Speaker 1: had to resort to working as a common laborer, and

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Speaker 1: to add insult to injury, one of his jobs was

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Speaker 1: digging ditches that would hold the electrical lines of none

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Speaker 1: other than Edison's direct current grid. So we're gonna leave

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Speaker 1: you there for now, with Tesla at a serious low

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Speaker 1: in the ditch. But if you're a huge Tesla fan,

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Speaker 1: don't worry, because in part two his luck does change,

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Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens when Tesla gets some work

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Speaker 1: done on that induction motor of his that he designed

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Speaker 1: so long ago and the current war really starts to

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Speaker 1: heat up. We'll also take a look at Tesla's post

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Speaker 1: current war life, including how he earned the nickname Master

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Speaker 1: of Lightning and why some remember this one studious student

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Speaker 1: as a mad scientist. So plenty in store for a

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Speaker 1: Part two of Tesla, and with that teaser out there.

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Speaker 1: I think we will go back to that other scientists,

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Speaker 1: that other researcher that we mentioned at the beginning of

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Speaker 1: the podcast Horace Wells, and dive into some listener mail.

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Speaker 1: We have one email here from listener Lavan and she says,

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Speaker 1: just listen to the Horace Wells episode while doing my

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Speaker 1: morning walk, and had to let you know that I

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Speaker 1: was in Washington, d C. Last weekend with our Hall

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Speaker 1: County World War two veterans to visit their memorial. One

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Speaker 1: of the side trips was a visit to the Museum

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Speaker 1: of American History. They're on display was the first ether

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Speaker 1: and hailer from six with credit given to William Morton

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Speaker 1: as the inventor of the device. Because my husband isn't anesthetist,

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Speaker 1: I took an interest in the display and snapped a picture.

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Speaker 1: No mention of Horace Wells. Goodness, but the gas layers continued.

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Speaker 1: The gas lars go on and on. We often got

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Speaker 1: another email from Frank and I know we've gotten dental

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Speaker 1: stories from you guys in the past, but this one

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Speaker 1: really applied after that Horace Wells episode, since he was

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Speaker 1: in fact a dentist. So Frank wrote us to say

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Speaker 1: that my parents started seeing dr silver when my older

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Speaker 1: sister was born. He had a brand new office and

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Speaker 1: the latest equipment. When he was still in practice, the

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Speaker 1: local paper ran a story about his fifty years as

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Speaker 1: a dentist. He had served in World War Two after

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Speaker 1: hearing the dental drill. For as long as I could remember,

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Speaker 1: but having good check ups, I had ten cavities and

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Speaker 1: fillings from the time I was about fourteen until I

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Speaker 1: was in college, so from the mid nineteen eighties until

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Speaker 1: early He never asked me if I wanted no beacine.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know I could ask. I thought it was

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Speaker 1: for quote, real pain. My parents never asked me if

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Speaker 1: I had taken any painkillers, and never offered any after

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Speaker 1: the fact. I quote got through by imagining really cold

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Speaker 1: ice cream. This is kind of a very sad email,

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Speaker 1: but funny too. I'm sorry you had to get through

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Speaker 1: through all of that, Frank, but I guess you could

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Speaker 1: really identify to some of the people we were discussing

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Speaker 1: in that podcast. Yeah, on the bright side, you never

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Speaker 1: had to go through that whole numbing sensation. I think

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Speaker 1: that's probably preferable at the end of the day. You're right,

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Speaker 1: you're right, that's not a bright side. But thanks for

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Speaker 1: writing in and sharing your story. If anyone else has

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Speaker 1: any related stories that they would like to share, or

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Speaker 1: maybe just some other recommendations for future podcasts, please write

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Speaker 1: to us History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: also look us up on Facebook and we're on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at Myston History. And if you want to learn a

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Speaker 1: little bit more about the science behind what we're discussing

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Speaker 1: with this TESTLA episode, we do have an article called

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Speaker 1: how electricity works, and you can find that by searching

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Speaker 1: for electricity on our homepage at www dot how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics, is that how stuff Works dot com. M