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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house

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

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Speaker 1: to bling the Druk reboarding and I'm fared out, and

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Speaker 1: we're picking back up here again with our discussion of

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Speaker 1: one of our most requested subjects, Nicola Tesla, an engineer

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Speaker 1: and an inventor. Tesla's perhaps best known for creating a

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Speaker 1: system for delivering electricity using alternating current, a method that

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Speaker 1: is still used today. And we talked a little bit

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Speaker 1: about the difference between alternating current and direct current and

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Speaker 1: their advantages and disadvantages in part one of this podcast.

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Speaker 1: And Tesla's preferred alternating current was capable of distributing electricity

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Speaker 1: across greater distances than direct current, and he believed that

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Speaker 1: it had the potential to be used for more than

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Speaker 1: just lighting. But he had some trouble getting support, both

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Speaker 1: financial and otherwise for his ideas, at least at first. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so in the last episode we talked about how

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Speaker 1: he came to America, how he approached Edison, armed with

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Speaker 1: a recommendation letter from his old boss, Charles Bachelor. The

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Speaker 1: letter just said, quote, my dear Edison, I know two

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Speaker 1: great men, and you are one of them. The other

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Speaker 1: is this young man. It's a pretty great recommendation. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Even though Edison, who was a firm believer that direct

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Speaker 1: current was not the way to go, shot Tesla down

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Speaker 1: on his alternating current ideas on that front, he must

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Speaker 1: have agreed with Bachelor's assessment to some degree because he

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Speaker 1: did hire Tesla to work for his power company when

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Speaker 1: we left off with the story, though Tesla had quit

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Speaker 1: working for Edison after just a few months because of

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Speaker 1: their personal differences and a little disagreement over money. Tesla

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Speaker 1: wanted to strike out on his own at this point

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Speaker 1: and develop his own ideas, but when we saw him last,

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Speaker 1: his first attempt to do so hadn't worked out so well,

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Speaker 1: and he was stuck doing manual labor to survive. So

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Speaker 1: Tesla may have been down in the dumps, but he

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Speaker 1: stuck fast to his ideas about alternating current and kept

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Speaker 1: on trying to get financial backing to make them a reality,

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Speaker 1: And in eighteen eighty seven he did manage to attract

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Speaker 1: the attention of two investors, Alfred Brown of the Western

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Speaker 1: Union Company and Charles Peck, who was an attorney. But

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Speaker 1: according to that American Heritage article by Bernard Carlson that

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Speaker 1: we mentioned in the Laugh podcast. All Tesla had to

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Speaker 1: show them initially was this really crude version of the

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Speaker 1: motor he had designed back when he was in Europe,

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Speaker 1: and it was basically a shoe polished him that would

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Speaker 1: spin around in a big donut shaped coil. So Brown impact,

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Speaker 1: they come and look at this creation of of Tesla's

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Speaker 1: and they were kind of skeptical of the whole thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So to make believers of them, Tesla devised a little

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Speaker 1: electrical spectacle which was based on an old legend about

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Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus. So, as the story goes, Columbus scott Queen

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Speaker 1: Isabella to finance his journey by challenging members of her

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Speaker 1: court to balance an egg on one end, And of

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Speaker 1: course several people tried and they couldn't do it. So

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Speaker 1: then Columbus up and he made the egg stand up

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Speaker 1: by gently cracking the shell on one end. Queen Isabella

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Speaker 1: was so impressed by his resourceful solution that she gave

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Speaker 1: him the funds that he needed. So Tesla asked Brown

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Speaker 1: and Peck, who knew of this legend, He said, if

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Speaker 1: I can make an egg stand on end without cracking

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Speaker 1: the shell will you support these experiments again? According to

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Speaker 1: Carlson's article, Peck basically said, yeah, we might. We might

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Speaker 1: help you to some extent. We might help you a

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Speaker 1: little bit if that were to happen. So Tesla came

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Speaker 1: back with a copper plated egg and his donut coil

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Speaker 1: attached to the underside of a wooden table. When Tesla

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Speaker 1: applied alternating current to that coil, the egg not only

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Speaker 1: stood on end, but it started spinning. Then it flipped

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Speaker 1: up and started rotating on its axis. I mean it

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Speaker 1: looks like a magic trick. So better than a shoe

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Speaker 1: polished tin. Right, much better than a shoe polished tin.

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Speaker 1: And Brown and Peck were so impressed that they agreed

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Speaker 1: to back his work. So with their help, Tesla was

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Speaker 1: able to set up a laboratory in Lower Manhattan and

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Speaker 1: perf all the components of his alternating current system, and

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Speaker 1: that same year he built the prototype for his polyphase

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Speaker 1: induction motor. And the problem with alternating current systems before

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Speaker 1: this had been that there wasn't really a workable motor

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Speaker 1: that alternating current could power. So Tesla's motor solved that

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Speaker 1: issue at least and then again with the help of

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Speaker 1: Peck and Brown. In late he was able to secure

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Speaker 1: seven more patents for a complete alternating current system based

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Speaker 1: on this induction motor, including patents for generators, transformers, transmission lines,

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Speaker 1: and lighting. So he had the whole set. Finally, there

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Speaker 1: was still that little detail of getting these breakthrough ideas

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Speaker 1: introduced commercially though. I mean, you have the technology, great,

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Speaker 1: you have the patents, that's great, but how are you

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Speaker 1: going to actually make money off of it? So that

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Speaker 1: process started to take off the next year after Tesla

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Speaker 1: demonstrated his alternating current motor at the meeting of the

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Speaker 1: American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and that demonstration caught the

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Speaker 1: eye of George Westinghouse. Westinghouse's company, which was based in Pittsburgh,

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Speaker 1: had successfully developed some safety components for rail transportation, including

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Speaker 1: the air brake, and by eight eight or so, he'd

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Speaker 1: become interested in getting in on the electricity transmission game.

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Speaker 1: According to the article by Ronald Bailey in American History,

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Speaker 1: which we referenced in the last podcast, Westinghouse had already

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Speaker 1: set up a limited alternating current system, but it was

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Speaker 1: confined to downtown Buffalo, New York, and he was attracted

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Speaker 1: to that potential of Tesla system to distribute power over

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Speaker 1: longer distances, so Westinghouse made a move. He offered to

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Speaker 1: buy Tesla's patents, and again Pack and Brown helped Tesla

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Speaker 1: negotiate this deal, and the deal is slightly different depending

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Speaker 1: on what stores you look at, but it basically amounted

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Speaker 1: to Westinghouse paying about sixty thousand to seventy thousand dollars

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Speaker 1: and anywhere from five thousand to twenty thousand dollars if

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Speaker 1: that was paid in cash. He also agreed to pay

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Speaker 1: Tesla two dollars and fifty cents in royalties for each

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Speaker 1: horsepower of developed electrical capacity, so according to Bailey's article,

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Speaker 1: Westinghouse also agreed to a minimum of thirty thousand in

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Speaker 1: royalties to be paid over the next three years, and

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Speaker 1: according to PBS dot Org, Tesla got one hundred fifty

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Speaker 1: years of Westinghouse stock in the deal, so there was

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Speaker 1: a lot covering um. I don't know depending on how

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Speaker 1: successful the implementation of the ideas was how much Tesla

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Speaker 1: would benefit from that. When the deal was done, Tesla

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Speaker 1: went off to work as a Westinghouse consultant and helped

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Speaker 1: develop the Alternating Current system for commercial use. So not

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Speaker 1: only did he get some money out of the deal

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Speaker 1: and potential for more money, but he also got to

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Speaker 1: still work with his invention Westinghouse engineers, though just as

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Speaker 1: an aside, a little side note here, they didn't really

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Speaker 1: love working with Tesla though. He didn't make real blueprints.

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Speaker 1: He just had these sketches that he made in a

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Speaker 1: tiny notebook and they were really hard to follow. And

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Speaker 1: Tesla himself said, well, I can just give you the

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Speaker 1: measurements and they will be exactly what you need to

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Speaker 1: build this. But as you might imagine, these engineers, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean interestingly, also, Tesla had always said that he

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Speaker 1: just created this induction motor from like as he had

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Speaker 1: envisioned it in Europe before he came to America, is

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Speaker 1: exactly how he built it. Like, he didn't develop it.

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Speaker 1: You might imagine this going through like many revisions and

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Speaker 1: many changes, but a prototype or something, yes, exactly. But

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Speaker 1: he said that he just made it as soon as

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Speaker 1: he saw it in his mind. He knew that that

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Speaker 1: was like composers who say that they just heard it

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Speaker 1: in their head and wrote it down exactly. He claimed

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Speaker 1: that exactly as he saw it is how he built it,

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Speaker 1: and it was meant to work. But these engineers they

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Speaker 1: also disagreed with Tesla over what the motors frequency should be,

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Speaker 1: but Tesla one out with the sixty cycles per second,

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Speaker 1: so Tesla had the final day in that regard. But

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Speaker 1: this was where the full on current war really started

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Speaker 1: to take off, and it was a battle between Westinghouses

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Speaker 1: alternating current and Edison's direct current. And what was really

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Speaker 1: at stake here was whose system was going to become

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Speaker 1: the standard and fuel the development of electricity in the future. Edison, though,

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Speaker 1: of course, had a bit of an edge going in

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Speaker 1: since he already had about one power stations in operation

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Speaker 1: compared to Westinghouses stations. But as we've mentioned a few times,

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Speaker 1: Testla's alternating current system showed more promise for carrying electricity

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Speaker 1: over long distances, whereas Edison's direct current had a range

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Speaker 1: of only about a mile, so it seems like it

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Speaker 1: was going to have more limited applications. Also, alternating current

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Speaker 1: was a lot cheaper because direct current required the use

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Speaker 1: of these expensive copper wires, and alternating current systems used

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Speaker 1: copper as well, but only about a third of the

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Speaker 1: amount that direct current used, So it looked like Westinghouse

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Speaker 1: and alternating current might provide some serious competition for Edison,

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Speaker 1: and Edison stepped up his game at that point by

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Speaker 1: starting a propaganda campaign against alternating current. He focused in

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Speaker 1: this campaign on his own belief that alternating current was unsafe,

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Speaker 1: so he started to spread around the idea that alternating

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Speaker 1: current and its high voltages could actually kill you. The

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Speaker 1: most direct current could do, he said, was just give

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Speaker 1: you a little shock. Edison even hired a professor named

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Speaker 1: Harold Brown to go around and lecture on the dangerous

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Speaker 1: of alternating current, and these talks included things like public

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Speaker 1: electrocution of animals, including dogs, cats, horses, and cows. Edison

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Speaker 1: even had an elephant named Topsy electrocuted once to prove

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Speaker 1: his point. We've had a tragic run for elephant from

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Speaker 1: the podcast between This and P. T. Barnum. But Edison

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Speaker 1: made his biggest point August when Brown helped New York's

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Speaker 1: Auburn State Prison perform the first execution by electric chair.

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Speaker 1: And according to PBS, Brown had obtained Westinghouse technolog the

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Speaker 1: illegally to build the chair. I mean, you can imagine

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Speaker 1: Westinghouse would not have wanted his work associated with that.

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Speaker 1: Um the man who was executed was the convicted murderer

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Speaker 1: William Kemmler. His death was described as quote an awful spectacle,

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Speaker 1: worse than hanging, and thereafter electrocution was known as Westinghouse

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Speaker 1: being though really bad pr for alternating current Yeah. Despite

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Speaker 1: these negative associations, though, team Westinghouse and Tesla started to

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Speaker 1: come up with some winds. They were picked to illuminate

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Speaker 1: the Chicago World's Fair, for example, which was also of

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Speaker 1: course known as the Columbian Exposition, something we discussed a

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Speaker 1: little in the H. H. Holmes podcast indeed, and if

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Speaker 1: you pick up Eric Larson's book Devil in the White City,

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Speaker 1: you'll learn a little bit more about kind of some

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Speaker 1: of the things we're about to talk about. But this

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Speaker 1: was the first all electric World's Fair in history, and

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Speaker 1: Westinghouse has bid ended up winning out here just because

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Speaker 1: it was so much cheaper. It was about half as

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Speaker 1: much as the competition shan And in Bailey's article he

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Speaker 1: talks about how the fair became this grand showcase for

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Speaker 1: alternating currents and electricity in general, so it turned out

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Speaker 1: to be a really good win for them, and Testla

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Speaker 1: system lit up something like one and eighty thousand bulbs

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Speaker 1: and it was used to power a lot of exhibits,

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Speaker 1: and there was even a great Hall of Electricity where

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Speaker 1: his system was displayed, and Tesla was even on display

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Speaker 1: to some degree. He did a demonstration in which he

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Speaker 1: sent two hundred thousand volts through his body while wearing

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Speaker 1: cork sold shoes for protection. So don't get too worried.

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Speaker 1: But he sent these volts through his body to prove

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Speaker 1: basically that alternating current was indeed safe. And I can

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Speaker 1: see how that would be more compelling combined with the

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Speaker 1: glowing white city too, then seeing an elephant electrocuted or

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Speaker 1: somebody put in an electric chair, somebody surviving this and

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Speaker 1: demonstrating it really is okay if it's handled properly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you're willing to do it on yourself, then you

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Speaker 1: must have some faith in it. But after the fair,

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Speaker 1: according to p. B Quote, of all the electrical devices

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Speaker 1: ordered in the United States were for alternating current. And this,

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Speaker 1: of course that the stage for another big win in

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Speaker 1: the current War, which was a contract with the Niagara

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Speaker 1: Falls Commission and mcmission wanted the Westinghouse Company to use

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Speaker 1: alternating current to harness the power of the falls to

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Speaker 1: generate electricity and This was the realization of a long

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Speaker 1: time dream for Tesla. As we mentioned in part one,

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Speaker 1: he had started dreaming about converting the power of water

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Speaker 1: to electricity when he was only about five years old,

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Speaker 1: and he had specifically thought about Niagara Falls at some point.

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Speaker 1: And it did take several years to get the project completed,

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Speaker 1: which was a situation that made investors pretty nervous. But

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Speaker 1: on the night of November they flipped a switch and

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Speaker 1: by midnight the Niagara systems were providing power to the

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Speaker 1: city of Buffalo, which was twenty six miles away. The

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Speaker 1: Buffalo Enquirer wrote, quote, it was the journey of God's

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Speaker 1: own lightning to the employee of man. In a few years,

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Speaker 1: there were ten enormous generators at Niagara Falls, and according

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Speaker 1: to Bailey's article, of all the electricity in the United

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Speaker 1: States came from there, including all the power that lit

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Speaker 1: up in New York City and Broadway and all of that.

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Speaker 1: And even the Edison systems converted to alternating currents after that.

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Speaker 1: So with that about face on Edison's part, it seemed

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Speaker 1: that Tesla and Westinghouse had won the war of the currents.

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Speaker 1: But the inventor had made some significant sacrifices along the

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Speaker 1: way too, though, and during the financial panic of the

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Speaker 1: eight nineties, Westinghouse and Edison's company were both in trouble,

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Speaker 1: and on top of this, seeing the money making potential

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Speaker 1: of hydroelectric power, some Wall Street forces like JP Morgan

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Speaker 1: he's been popping up in podcast lately, tried to take

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Speaker 1: over Westinghouse. So Westinghouse the Man asked Tesla to release

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Speaker 1: him from the initial contract that gave Tesla those generous royalties,

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Speaker 1: and heflin generously agreed to give up future royalties and

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Speaker 1: supposedly even tore up the contract. Um. He might wonder,

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Speaker 1: considering the problems he had had making money off of

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Speaker 1: his work earlier, why he would do that, But according

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Speaker 1: to PBS, he was very grateful to this one man

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Speaker 1: who had believed in his invention, and this was his

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Speaker 1: way of showing how grateful he was. He also just

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Speaker 1: probably wanted them to keep going. I would imagine instead

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Speaker 1: of going under, let's save the Westinghouse Electric Company while

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Speaker 1: Edison's own company was taken over by General Electric. Tesla, though,

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Speaker 1: had trouble with finances for pretty much the rest of

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Speaker 1: his life, so it could have used the royalty. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's sort of a poignant thinking about those royalties gone

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Speaker 1: away and and how much money he could have made

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Speaker 1: down the line. But it wasn't for lack of trying though.

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Speaker 1: Tesla did keep on experimenting, and he was convinced that

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Speaker 1: there were more amazing inventions on the horizon, And so

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Speaker 1: we want to talk about some of the other things

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Speaker 1: that he did even while the so called current war

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Speaker 1: was going on. Of course, we can't cover everything. There

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Speaker 1: are just so many inventions and patents to to cover,

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Speaker 1: and so many ideas to cover that you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: didn't get patents or didn't um immediately inspire inventions. But

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Speaker 1: we're just going to go over a few of those.

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Speaker 1: He had invented what we now know as the Tesla

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Speaker 1: coil in eighteen nine, and this basically allowed him to

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Speaker 1: take the ordinary sixty cycle per second household current and

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Speaker 1: kind of kick it up a few notches into the

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of cycles per second, so maybe more

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Speaker 1: than a few notches. So this let him experiment with

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Speaker 1: high frequency electricity, which was a big interest of his

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Speaker 1: for a while, and that in turn allowed him to

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Speaker 1: create the first neot lights and the first fluorescent lights,

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Speaker 1: and He also took the first X ray photographs, another

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Speaker 1: obsession of his which really stuck with him to the

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Speaker 1: end with the wireless transmission of energy, and he discovered

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Speaker 1: in the early eighteen nineties that he could use his

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Speaker 1: Tesla coils to send and receive radio signals, but a

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Speaker 1: lab fire in eighteen destroyed his work before he could

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Speaker 1: truly test this, and that was just the little bit

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Speaker 1: of delay that really messed him up here. Yes, Tesla

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Speaker 1: did end up filing for radio patents in eighteen ninety seven,

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Speaker 1: but by this time he had a competitor across the pond,

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Speaker 1: Guielmo Marconi. Marconi had been granted a wireless communication patent

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Speaker 1: in England in eighteen ninety six, and he tried to

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Speaker 1: file for a patent in American nineteen hundred, but it

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Speaker 1: was turned down at that point because of Tesla's existing patent.

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Speaker 1: But in late nineteen o one, Marconi became the first

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Speaker 1: to transmit and receive signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Tesla

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Speaker 1: to take that turn pretty well. Um Otis Pond, who

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Speaker 1: is an engineer working for Tesla at the time, said

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Speaker 1: to him a quote, looks as if Marconi got the

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Speaker 1: jump on you. To which Tesla replied, quote, Marconi is

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Speaker 1: a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen

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Speaker 1: of my patents. No one could accuse him of lack

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Speaker 1: of confidence. But he was singing a different tune in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o four, when inexplicably the U. S. Patent Office

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Speaker 1: changed its mind and gave Marconi the patent for inventing

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Speaker 1: the radio. Marconi also ended up winning the Nobel Prize

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Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine, and Tesla was really unhappy about this.

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Speaker 1: I mean he was angry, but he didn't have the cash.

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Speaker 1: You get involved in a patent infringement case. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to he wanted to sue, but then he was like,

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Speaker 1: I don't really have the ability to carry this out.

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Speaker 1: Tesla continued to experiment with the wireless transmission of energy,

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Speaker 1: and in eight he made a demonstration of the world's

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Speaker 1: first radio controlled vessel at an electrical exhibition in Madison

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Speaker 1: Square Garden. It was basically a toy boat that was

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Speaker 1: manipulated by remote control. Yeah, and as a side note here,

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Speaker 1: many people think of this as the birth of robotics.

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Speaker 1: Tesla hoped that it would eventually lighten the workload of humans.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it was a toy boat for now, but

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Speaker 1: it could be something more in the future. So in

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Speaker 1: the late eighteen nineties, Tesla also began to experiment with

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Speaker 1: the transmission of elect iCal power without wires, and in

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Speaker 1: order to conduct these experiments, he went out to Colorado

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Speaker 1: Springs for a while and set up a laud there

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Speaker 1: and he created man made lightning to test his ideas

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Speaker 1: while he was there. The first experiment was successful in

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Speaker 1: a way, but also fairly disastrous. He did create man

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Speaker 1: made lightning, but it burned out the dynamo at the

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Speaker 1: El Paso Electric Company and the entire city lost power,

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Speaker 1: and Tesla was made to pay for the damage of

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Speaker 1: causing this outage. Yeah, the the head of the power

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Speaker 1: station wasn't very happy with him at that point. But

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Speaker 1: it was in Colorado that Tesla also noticed a signal

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Speaker 1: being picked up on his transmitter that he later said

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Speaker 1: was a signal from outer space, or he believed it

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Speaker 1: to be a signal from outer space. According to PBS

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Speaker 1: dot org, it's quite possible that he was the first

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Speaker 1: to actually detect radio signals from space. But people just

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Speaker 1: dismissed this. They just thought that he was crazy suggesting

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Speaker 1: these things. But ultimately this time in Colorado. It's it's

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Speaker 1: really interesting. It could probably be you know, a separate

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Speaker 1: episode or a blog post or something, but it's a

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Speaker 1: very shrouded in mystery. A lot of people still really

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Speaker 1: don't have a handle on exactly everything he was working

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Speaker 1: on there. It just reminds me a lot of his

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Speaker 1: role in that movie The Prestige, where um, I think

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Speaker 1: he might have been in Colorado at the time that

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Speaker 1: maybe it's been a long time since I've seen that,

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Speaker 1: but with just sort of the experiments that we're going

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Speaker 1: on there, and uh, the mystery surrounding that as well,

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Speaker 1: so we could go on and on. Like I said

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Speaker 1: about testless ideas and patents and inventions, he continued to

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Speaker 1: come up with ambitious concepts for pretty much the rest

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Speaker 1: of his life, though not much that really inspired immediate

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Speaker 1: practical applications. During his lifetime, he experimented with a new

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Speaker 1: type of turbine engine, for example, and at age seventy eight,

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Speaker 1: he announced that he was working on a death ray

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Speaker 1: that could send a concentrated beam of particles through the

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Speaker 1: air and bring down up to ten thousand enemy planes,

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Speaker 1: and this was intended by him to help prevent war,

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Speaker 1: which he really hated. I think that could be the

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Speaker 1: title of an article in his later career, to toy

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Speaker 1: Boats to Death rays Tesla's later life. So his ideas

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Speaker 1: definitely had taken on a kind of mad scientist type

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Speaker 1: edge as he aged, especially, but Tesla was really known

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Speaker 1: almost as much for his eccentricities as he was for

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Speaker 1: his inventions as the years went on, and he did

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Speaker 1: have friends. He have friends like Mark Twain, for instance,

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Speaker 1: but he never married, even though he was linked to

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Speaker 1: several heiresses at various times, and he said quote, I

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Speaker 1: did not believe an inventor should marry, because he has

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Speaker 1: so intense a nature, with so much of it of

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Speaker 1: wild passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman

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Speaker 1: he might love, he would give everything and so take

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Speaker 1: everything from his chosen field. So he was really in

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Speaker 1: love with his work, I guess, is what he was

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Speaker 1: trying to say in part there. But according to Bailey,

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Speaker 1: he had a lot of phobias that probably prevented him

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Speaker 1: from having a relationship as well. So it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: that he wanted to give all of his intention and

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Speaker 1: focus to his work. There were some personal issues that

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Speaker 1: he had that maybe kept him from connecting with people.

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Speaker 1: For example, one of his phobias was throughout his lifetime

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Speaker 1: he sort of was a germaphobe, but he also didn't

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Speaker 1: like to touch people's hair. Specifically, he didn't like the

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Speaker 1: site of smooth round surfaces, which gave him an aversion

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Speaker 1: to women's earrings. He couldn't stand to see peaches the fruit.

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Speaker 1: He also had quote strange numerical fixation, so, for example,

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Speaker 1: the number of his hotel room always had to be

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Speaker 1: divisible by three, And strangely enough, Tesla did end up

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Speaker 1: living in a hotel, the Hotel New Yorker at the

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Speaker 1: end of his life, and he didn't have that much

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Speaker 1: money at that point, and by then some of his

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Speaker 1: closest companions where pigeons who were hanging out around the hotel.

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Speaker 1: He would actually take thick birds to his room and

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Speaker 1: nurse them back to help. He even had the hotel

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Speaker 1: make a special mixture of food for them, and he

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Speaker 1: clearly became very attached to these pets. So in one

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Speaker 1: of Tesla's favorite pigeons died, he told a newspaper writer,

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Speaker 1: John O'Neil, quote, I loved that pigeon. Yes, I loved

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Speaker 1: her as a man loved the woman. When that pigeon died,

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Speaker 1: something went out of my life. Up to that time,

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Speaker 1: I knew his certainty that I would complete my work.

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Speaker 1: But when that something went out of my life, I

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Speaker 1: knew my life's work was finished. Tesla died January seventh,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. He'd gotten his last patent in nine

404
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy two, and it was for

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Speaker 1: a quote apparatus for aerial transportation, which is said to

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Speaker 1: have inspired today as a vertical short take off and

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Speaker 1: landing plane, but he never had the money to actually

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Speaker 1: build a prototype of this. He never won the Nobel Prize,

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Speaker 1: though there were rumors that he and Edison might share

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Speaker 1: it in nineteen fifteen, which he was kind of unhappy about.

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Speaker 1: They didn't neither of them really wanted to share it

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Speaker 1: with each other, considering their relationship. But Tesla did ironically

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Speaker 1: win the Edison Medal in nineteen seventeen, which was the

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Speaker 1: highest honor of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. According

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Speaker 1: to Encyclopedia Britannica. He almost didn't accept this award though,

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Speaker 1: because of the name, because of the Edison association. He

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Speaker 1: said this would basically be something that was honoring to

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Speaker 1: not honoring me. So he sat outside where the awards

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Speaker 1: ceremony was being held, feeding the pigeons for a little

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Speaker 1: while and had to be convinced to come inside, which

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Speaker 1: he finally did come inside and accept the award. Who

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Speaker 1: really won the war between Tesla and Edison? You know,

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Speaker 1: you have Tefla winning the Edison Award, but it's called

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Speaker 1: the Edison Award. I mean that really illustrates that point.

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Speaker 1: And people still debate who went out in the end.

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Speaker 1: Some say Tefla because we still use the AH system today.

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Speaker 1: I mean that system clearly one. Others, though, say Edison

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Speaker 1: because he did have more patents, he made more money,

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Speaker 1: and let's face it, he just became more famous. Tesla

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Speaker 1: has a lot of people who are clearly very devoted

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Speaker 1: to his memory. We can tell that by the number

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Speaker 1: of people who have suggested him. But I would say

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00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison is probably still the more famous name. Yeah, definitely.

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00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: I think more school students learn about Edison growing up

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00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:14,800
Speaker 1: than Tesla in their classroom, even though Tesla is the

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00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: one in our recording studio. That is true, he's on

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00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: our wall. Interesting side note here too, In just a

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00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:26,760
Speaker 1: few months after Tesla's death, the U s. Supreme Court

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00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 1: upheld Tesla's radio patent over Marconi's. According to PBS dot org,

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00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,399
Speaker 1: the court had a selfish reason for doing this, though.

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00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:37,560
Speaker 1: The Marconi Company was suing the US government for use

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00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 1: of its patents in World War One, and so to

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00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:42,640
Speaker 1: just kind of make that problem go away, they restored

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00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 1: the priority of Tesla's patent over Marconi's. So a slight

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00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,200
Speaker 1: win for Tesla in the end, regardless of the reasons.

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00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: But um, still kind of a sad end to a

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00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:59,760
Speaker 1: very interesting and inventive Yeah. So there's so much more

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00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: that we could say about Tesla, but we really did

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00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:04,400
Speaker 1: want to focus on the current war here again. UM,

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00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:09,199
Speaker 1: if anyone has any favorite Testlas stories or inventions or

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00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 1: patents that we didn't mention that you want to share

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00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:14,280
Speaker 1: with us and and maybe the other listeners of stuff

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00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:16,240
Speaker 1: you missed in history class, you can feel free to

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00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:20,000
Speaker 1: write to us. We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com,

455
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:21,919
Speaker 1: and you can also look us up on Facebook and

456
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 1: we're on Twitter at mist in History. Before we find

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00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: off that, we wanted to include a little real male

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00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 1: listener mail that we got. Um, some of you might

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00:25:28,840 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: remember We've been getting postcards from Hillary from her European

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00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:37,040
Speaker 1: adventures and actually went from Monticello to from a stop

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00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 1: in the States. But um she sent she must be

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00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: in Germany right now, because she sent us several several

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00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: postcards from their Munich and Baden Baden. And um, I

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00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: love this postcard of the market in uh Munich. It

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00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:54,120
Speaker 1: just looks so good. It's got like jams and fresh vegetables,

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00:25:54,280 --> 00:25:57,720
Speaker 1: and it makes me feel like going out and enjoying

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00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 1: our local bounty this weekend or some thing. Maybe I'll

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00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: stop by. Yeah, tis the season to seat them. Well,

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00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 1: thank you Hillary for sending us those. And like I said,

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00:26:06,200 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: if you want to, I already gave you. Guys all

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00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:11,959
Speaker 1: learn contact info, but know how to reach you, know

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00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 1: how to reach us. If you have some cool postcards

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00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:15,560
Speaker 1: like that, we love to get them, and we do

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00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: decorate our cubes with them and look longing with sometimes

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00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: put them on our social media accounts. You say you

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00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:25,399
Speaker 1: guys can see them. Very true, So definitely send us

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00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:27,159
Speaker 1: those if you have them. Also, if you want to

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00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about some of the ideas

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00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: we talked about in today's podcast, we have an article

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00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: called how did Nicola, Tesla change the way we use

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00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: energy on our website, and you can look that up

482
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,200
Speaker 1: by visiting our homepage at www dot how stuff works

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00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:47,440
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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00:26:47,680 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 1: is it how stuff works dot com. The Doo Do