Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with text Stuff from dot Com.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to text Stuff. Today we're going
Speaker 1: to listen to a classic episode of tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: recording this just before Labor Day weekend, and on Labor
Speaker 1: Day weekend here in Atlanta, we have dragon Con. Now,
Speaker 1: by the time you listen to this, dragon Con will
Speaker 1: already be over and will know the outcome of something
Speaker 1: of enormous proportions. I'm talking about a major debate, the
Speaker 1: Tesla versus Edison debate. Nicey, that's gonna go on at
Speaker 1: dragon Con, and I have been picked to represent Nicola
Speaker 1: Tesla in that debate. Now, fortunately, Lauren and I recorded
Speaker 1: an episode back in two thousand and thirteen about Nicola Tesla,
Speaker 1: and we also talked about the truth versus the myth
Speaker 1: of his life. So let's listen to that right now.
Speaker 1: We are focusing finally, after many, many, many people have
Speaker 1: asked us to do a full episode about Nicola Tesla,
Speaker 1: the Internet legend, the the man placed on a virtual
Speaker 1: pedestal on the Internet that is gleaming and beauteous and
Speaker 1: will zap you if you ever dare say anything against him.
Speaker 1: He's staring at us from the walls of the podcast
Speaker 1: room right now. Yes he is. Yes. Now, the question
Speaker 1: of whether or not he'll be staring at us in
Speaker 1: our news studio remains to be answered. Uh, we'll probably
Speaker 1: end up propping him up on a mic stand or something,
Speaker 1: so he's still judging us constantly. But yeah, we want
Speaker 1: to talk about Tesla, kind of talk about his his
Speaker 1: contributions to technology and also maybe take a critical look
Speaker 1: at some of the some of the claims about Tesla
Speaker 1: and some of the misconceptions people have about his contributions
Speaker 1: because he's he's a mythological figure, really a mythological nerd figure,
Speaker 1: which is which is fabulous. I mean, it's really terrific,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's understandable why because he he by
Speaker 1: the end of his life, was so downtrodden. And there's
Speaker 1: nothing that people and geeks especially love more than than
Speaker 1: an anti hero. Yeah. Here, here's a guy who has
Speaker 1: been beaten down. He's he's uh seen his fortunes dwindle away.
Speaker 1: He's he's made some bad choices. Uh, he has all
Speaker 1: the earmarks of a classic geek. Geeks love this underdog
Speaker 1: kind of story. And and when you get into things
Speaker 1: like sort of the the demonification of other people, Edison
Speaker 1: in particular, Yeah, but even people like JP Morgan and Lustinghouse.
Speaker 1: Then it seems like the whole world had turned against him.
Speaker 1: And and depending on how you look at his story,
Speaker 1: it can definitely come across that way. But that's doing
Speaker 1: a little bit of a disservice to the entire tale.
Speaker 1: And Uh, the reason why I'm talking about in this
Speaker 1: way because there is what we thought some people referred
Speaker 1: to as the cult of Tesla, right, this idea of
Speaker 1: elevating him beyond what his contributions were. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: a cartoon that I think a lot of you guys
Speaker 1: out there saw because you posted about it on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page that The Oatmeal did all about Tesla and
Speaker 1: his contributions and his rivalry with Edison and kind of
Speaker 1: comparing him favorably against Edison in every single category and
Speaker 1: saying that there should be a Tesla museum. And so
Speaker 1: we want to talk about what Tesla actually did and
Speaker 1: what he did not do, and uh, and whether or
Speaker 1: not he deserves all those acoomis yeah. Yeah. And and and
Speaker 1: just just before anyone who is a rabid fan of
Speaker 1: the Oatmeal gets honest, because I don't. I do not
Speaker 1: want to incite your anger. Uh, it's we realize that
Speaker 1: it's a comic and that that although uh many of
Speaker 1: the statements are factual, the writer whose name I'm completely
Speaker 1: forgetting right now, has come out and said that, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a comic. I'm I'm a comic artist. And
Speaker 1: some of this was hyper Bowl. So yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: like its hyper Bowl. It's way better than that Super One.
Speaker 1: I like the hyper Bowl a lot more. I am
Speaker 1: never gonna let you live that down, and we are
Speaker 1: not re recording it. Let's move on. So yeah. Tesla
Speaker 1: born on July tenth, eighteen fifty six, in what is
Speaker 1: now Croatia now eighteen fifty six by the Gregorian calendar.
Speaker 1: If you have looked up at Tesla's birth and you
Speaker 1: saw that it was actually in June June, that's because
Speaker 1: at the time they were keeping time with the Julian calendar.
Speaker 1: And it's only when you account for that, when you
Speaker 1: match those up, that you realize that. Okay, well, if
Speaker 1: you're using a real calendar like I do, the one
Speaker 1: that's on my smartphone, and that's the only way I
Speaker 1: know what day it is, it was July t so
Speaker 1: eight fifty six and born in in Uh part of Austrio,
Speaker 1: Hungary which is now Croatia UM And as a boy,
Speaker 1: he went to what we would think of in the
Speaker 1: United States is elementary school or primary school and studied
Speaker 1: German arithmetic and religion because his dad was a pastor
Speaker 1: and his mom's father was a pastor, both both in
Speaker 1: the Orthodox Church. Actually, so yeah, so he definitely had
Speaker 1: a religious upbringing and his father really wanted him to
Speaker 1: be a priest. By the way, Yes, he did a lot.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was not so thrilled about Tesla going
Speaker 1: into engineering. UM. When he was a young boy, Tesla's
Speaker 1: Tesla's older brother named Dane, died in a tragic accident.
Speaker 1: He actually fell off a horse and died. There were
Speaker 1: some stories that Tesla or Nicola Tesla was playing around
Speaker 1: and spooked the horse that caused. Yes, and so actually
Speaker 1: I've heard I'm sorry, I meant to I meant to
Speaker 1: insert this earlier. But but the very first terrific tall
Speaker 1: tale that I heard about Tesla was that he was
Speaker 1: born on a dark and stormy night to lightning. Right right,
Speaker 1: he was born on the stroke of midnight, as lightning
Speaker 1: crap in the sky. And that one person said he
Speaker 1: would be a boy of storms, and his mother said, no,
Speaker 1: he shall be a man of the light. I might
Speaker 1: be inserting some of my hyper bowl in there. Goodness
Speaker 1: make gracious. So yeah, and as a child they moved
Speaker 1: around quite a bit as his father was finding a
Speaker 1: church to be pastor in and in eighteen seventy, so
Speaker 1: I remember he's born in eighteen fifty six. By eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy he moves in with his aunt and starts to
Speaker 1: attend a school that we're a teacher named Martin skul Chick,
Speaker 1: sorry Skolich, Sokolich. Uh So, Martin so Coolich is teaching there,
Speaker 1: and he's teaching math and physics, and Tesla finds both
Speaker 1: the professor and the subject matter fascinating, and he becomes
Speaker 1: really focused on math and physics. And in fact, he's
Speaker 1: so focused he graduates a year early. So he was
Speaker 1: certainly a man of genius. He possessed a genius and
Speaker 1: an affinity for physics, for math, for engineering that far
Speaker 1: outstripped most of his contemporaries. Oh yeah, definitely. But then again,
Speaker 1: this is also the era where we start seeing these
Speaker 1: technologies form and uh and so it was an exciting
Speaker 1: time if you were interested in physics, because this is
Speaker 1: when we're making lots of big discoveries, things that some
Speaker 1: people say are low hanging fruit, you know, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: the idea that there were all these discoveries to make.
Speaker 1: But it's hard to see how we're going to advance
Speaker 1: from this point forward because all the quote unquote easy
Speaker 1: things have been discovered. Not that any of these things
Speaker 1: were easy, it's just that now you are have to
Speaker 1: become increasingly specialized in whatever scientific fields you're in to
Speaker 1: really understand it. Sure, but while doing this research, it
Speaker 1: kind of blew my mind. I actually don't have a
Speaker 1: strong history in in electronic background, and and it blew
Speaker 1: my mind that it wasn't until eighteen seventy three that
Speaker 1: that James Clerk Maxwell proved that light is is electromagnetic energy. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: this is He's he's growing up at a time when uh,
Speaker 1: these discoveries are being made and that would impact his
Speaker 1: own work and in fact drive him to achieve great things. Also,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, that was the year he contracted cholera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was due to the cholera that he kind
Speaker 1: of shaped the rest of his life. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: quite a few things. Yeah, because if you if you've
Speaker 1: heard about Tesla, you know that he uh, he reportedly
Speaker 1: had a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, that he was
Speaker 1: a germophobe, that he was a clean he was obsessed
Speaker 1: with being clean and having clean things around him. He
Speaker 1: reported in his own biography that he had a severe
Speaker 1: aversion to touching other people's hair, that he had to
Speaker 1: do things if if they required repetition, in the repetition
Speaker 1: of threes, and if he did not, then he had
Speaker 1: to stop and restart. Yeah, so he he may have
Speaker 1: developed some of these peculiarities at this time. He was
Speaker 1: in bed for about nine months, nearly died a few times.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine that was definitely something that would
Speaker 1: shape you whether or not that. I'm sure there were
Speaker 1: other issues that are beyond just getting sick. There were
Speaker 1: probably some things that were psychologically part of his being
Speaker 1: from the point where he was born, but we don't
Speaker 1: know to what extent obviously, and um, and you know
Speaker 1: what's odd to me, I might as well talk about
Speaker 1: this for right now. So neat freak, if you want
Speaker 1: to put it that way. Germophobe doesn't like touching people.
Speaker 1: Loved pigeons. Them rats with wings, that's what they are. Well,
Speaker 1: that that was that was also towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life that he became obsessed with him became incredibly
Speaker 1: obsessed with pigeons. Yeah, it just makes me think of
Speaker 1: that great scene in the documentary The Producers, Boydes filthy rotten, Boydes.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that that your your Yiddish accent there is
Speaker 1: is better than mine. That's excellent. I should also now
Speaker 1: that that that's the nineteen sixty eight version of the
Speaker 1: documentary The Producers, not the musical version starring Nathan Lane
Speaker 1: Matthew Broderick, actually has zero Mustell and Gene Wilder. I'm
Speaker 1: getting off track anyway. Um so yeah, so he's he's
Speaker 1: definitely got some interesting personality quirks eighteen seventy four. He
Speaker 1: starts to move around a little bit, mostly hiding out
Speaker 1: from the army because in that part of the world,
Speaker 1: in Austro Austria, Austro Hungary. Look, I can't say that.
Speaker 1: Uh yes we do, thank thank goodness. We don't speak
Speaker 1: into a microphone for a living right. Uh, But back
Speaker 1: in that time, in that part of the world, Army
Speaker 1: service was required of all young men. There was three
Speaker 1: years mandatory service, and Tesla was not too keen on
Speaker 1: doing that right. He kind of um, he was dodging,
Speaker 1: that's the best way of putting it. Uh. The next year,
Speaker 1: eighteen five, he starts to attend the Austrian Polytechnic School
Speaker 1: and he starts off really strong. He's doing really well
Speaker 1: in his classes. He understands the concepts and unlike some
Speaker 1: other some other visionaries like say Stephen Hawking, he was
Speaker 1: very good in school. Yep, yep. Also, you know, not
Speaker 1: not like Einstein or some of the other famous folks
Speaker 1: who seemed to have trouble in class. Now that that
Speaker 1: was true for about a year, and then about that
Speaker 1: second year things began to take a little bit of
Speaker 1: a dip because he began to point out shortcomings or
Speaker 1: what he thought of as shortcomings and his professor's understanding
Speaker 1: of things like electrical engineering and saying things like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could build a device that does the same thing
Speaker 1: without this one component that you are claiming is absolutely
Speaker 1: necessary for it to work. That furthermore puts off gigantic
Speaker 1: electrical shocks that are actually pretty dangerous, like you could
Speaker 1: do it this way and then, uh, if you mouth
Speaker 1: off to your professors often enough, you might find yourself
Speaker 1: in some academic trouble. And that's kind of what Tesla did.
Speaker 1: He he began to get disillusioned about pursuing studies in
Speaker 1: an academic setting, and after about a little over three
Speaker 1: years he actually dropped out of the polytechnic school. So
Speaker 1: he moved to Slovenia in eight to work as a
Speaker 1: draftsman for an engineering firm. But by eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the next year, some some police officials show up and
Speaker 1: asked to see his residents papers, which he did not have.
Speaker 1: So then he was escorted back to his family's home
Speaker 1: because he didn't have a residence permit Fort Slovenia. And
Speaker 1: that same year his father passes away. Uh and Tesla
Speaker 1: starts to a new career as a teacher in the
Speaker 1: same school that he attended as a boy, but realizes
Speaker 1: very quickly that's not not for him. Yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do that. Um. So then the next year eighteen,
Speaker 1: he moved to Prague. He tries to attend Carl Ferdinand University,
Speaker 1: but he's unable to understand Greek or check, both of
Speaker 1: which were prerequisites to attend as a student, so instead
Speaker 1: he audits classes uh, and he begins to work for
Speaker 1: the Budapest Telephone Exchange and also the Central Telegraph Office.
Speaker 1: Eighteen eighty by the way, it was the year that
Speaker 1: the Thomas Edison unveiled his electric in kendescent lamp to
Speaker 1: the public for the first time. Yep, so that's a
Speaker 1: good thing to to keep in mind. There are some
Speaker 1: big things happening at the same time that Tesla's kind
Speaker 1: of uh. You know, he hasn't really made a name
Speaker 1: for himself yet. He's been a very uh enthusiastic student
Speaker 1: at times of his life, and he is certainly interested
Speaker 1: in electronics or really we should say electricity from electronics
Speaker 1: electrons too early, but electricity and its applications. Um. So
Speaker 1: he does that for a couple of years. In eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, he joins the Continental Edison Company and begins
Speaker 1: to work on things like UH dynamos, which are well,
Speaker 1: you've heard us talk about dynamos and our episodes about
Speaker 1: electro magnets and motors and uh induction in the reverse
Speaker 1: of that, so we I won't go into it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he starts to work on that. Now, this means that
Speaker 1: he becomes an employee, although you know, indirectly and way
Speaker 1: down the line of Edison. So yeah, he's sitting there
Speaker 1: working for the company of the man who would one
Speaker 1: day become his greatest rival. According to my nemesis, they
Speaker 1: have dragon ball style fights in the sky. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: also would occasionally catch Pokemon, but it was only um
Speaker 1: the one that shoots the electricity. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know which one. Oh, come on, it's Peakachu. I was
Speaker 1: just I was trying to bait Lauren to see if
Speaker 1: I can get it. I actually know that. Dang, you
Speaker 1: win this time voco baum uh. So at this time,
Speaker 1: he also gets the idea for the a C induction motor,
Speaker 1: although Asterisk not necessarily the first person to think about that.
Speaker 1: Supposedly in a vision, well supposedly he had these visions.
Speaker 1: Supposedly he was was very light and audio sensitive, and occasionally,
Speaker 1: upon looking at one object or having a certain idea,
Speaker 1: would would get an extremely strong visual perception of something
Speaker 1: that he had already seen, or or of nothing nothing
Speaker 1: imaginary unless it was a new invention. But yeah, occasionally
Speaker 1: he would get these flashes that that kind of disturbed
Speaker 1: him a lot, according to his autobiography. Yeah, so essentially
Speaker 1: what would happen is he would be walking through a
Speaker 1: park and look at a beautiful scene, and then suddenly
Speaker 1: an idea would form, fully formed in his head, like
Speaker 1: not not something he had been puzzling about necessarily. It
Speaker 1: might just be hey, boom, here are all the pieces
Speaker 1: and the puzzle is completely put together. You know, we
Speaker 1: opened up the box and the puzzles there, as opposed
Speaker 1: to you've been trying to fix this problem for years,
Speaker 1: and oh, here's the inspiration. And so Yeah. Supposedly he
Speaker 1: was walking through the city park in Budapest with a
Speaker 1: friend and saw a beautiful sunset and quoted some poetry
Speaker 1: and then had an idea for for the induction motor, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just drew it in the sand and then kept walking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Whether or not that's true, it's hard to say, because Tesla,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, was something of a showman, a
Speaker 1: little bit of an unreliable narrator. Narrator I would say,
Speaker 1: unreliable narrator is a very kind way of putting it.
Speaker 1: The same sort of thing is true of all the
Speaker 1: big names at this time, because they were the rock
Speaker 1: stars of that of that era. So Edison, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Edison was a master at at PR. You know,
Speaker 1: beyond beyond being the head of a very successful research
Speaker 1: and development firm, he was very good at presenting his
Speaker 1: ideas to a public and explaining why they were the
Speaker 1: best ideas, even if they weren't the best ideas. Tesla was.
Speaker 1: He was no slouch in that department either. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who will paint Tesla as being
Speaker 1: the the dedicated genius who is working for the betterment
Speaker 1: of all mankind but doesn't ever look to get gain
Speaker 1: glory in the process. That's not entirely accurate. Now, that's
Speaker 1: that's not If you've ever seen any of the photographs
Speaker 1: that that he took around his equipment, I would say
Speaker 1: that those are not the mark of someone who is
Speaker 1: not a showman. I saw this one photograph. He looked
Speaker 1: just like David Bowie. Um. I might be mixing that
Speaker 1: up with a documentary though. So then the the in
Speaker 1: in uh In two. This whole time where he's making
Speaker 1: he's working for Edison. He's got this idea for the
Speaker 1: a C induction motor. He also is reportedly not paid
Speaker 1: some money for the work he's doing for Edison company,
Speaker 1: at least not not all of it. Like there's money
Speaker 1: due to him that's not being paid. And this this
Speaker 1: is partly what lays the groundwork for this whole idea
Speaker 1: of the heated rivalry between Edison and Tesla. A lot
Speaker 1: of it is money that's withheld from Tesla that was
Speaker 1: promised to him. I mean, and yeah, and this this
Speaker 1: is when he was very he was twenty six at
Speaker 1: the time, and and in Paris, and so he was
Speaker 1: he was really distantly connected from to Edison at the time,
Speaker 1: but apparently started right you use this, If you use
Speaker 1: this and just say like, this is indicative of how
Speaker 1: Edison treats people. Uh, it would apparently become company policy
Speaker 1: not to pay people for their work. That's what That's
Speaker 1: what suggested of this. It also becomes you know, a
Speaker 1: common thread in Tesla's life of getting getting cheated out
Speaker 1: of things that were owed him, which makes you wonder,
Speaker 1: if it happens so frequently, why is that? Is it
Speaker 1: all due to Was it just that he only worked
Speaker 1: with corrupt individuals and companies, or was it that there
Speaker 1: was something else going on here? Besides that part of
Speaker 1: the story. I have no doubt that Tesla was really
Speaker 1: cheated out of many of the things he deserved. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that he was cheated out of everything that
Speaker 1: is attributed as being something he deserved. Um, but then
Speaker 1: we'll get into that again. Yeah. Four, he makes the
Speaker 1: big move from Europe to America. He he had basically
Speaker 1: no money at the time. From what I understand, well,
Speaker 1: he definitely had no money by the time he got there. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took a little longer for him to get there
Speaker 1: than he had anticipated. According to one timeline I read
Speaker 1: the ship he was on. This is just Tesla's luck, right.
Speaker 1: The ship he was on had a mutiny aboard the
Speaker 1: ship Goodness, I did not read about this, and supposedly
Speaker 1: Tesla himself was nearly thrown overboard, probably for being a witch.
Speaker 1: That that last part is just me guessing. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any reason. I didn't have. There was no reason
Speaker 1: given as to why Tesla would have been thrown overboard,
Speaker 1: so I'm just inventing one. But no, Apparently the shipp
Speaker 1: he was on had a mutiny aboard it. He ended
Speaker 1: up getting to New York way later than when he expected, and,
Speaker 1: according to some reports, had four cents in his pocket. Now, also,
Speaker 1: depending upon whom you ask, he either immediately went to
Speaker 1: work for Edison, as in got off the out filed
Speaker 1: and went into the office, or he started the next day.
Speaker 1: That seems to be the two stories. Either way, I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty remarkable. Um and uh. And he works
Speaker 1: for Edison and he's helping them with their systems. Uh.
Speaker 1: Supposedly again, he started to suggest to Edison that they
Speaker 1: switched to an alternating current model as opposed to direct current,
Speaker 1: and Ederson was very much against that idea. So then
Speaker 1: in eighteen five, Tesla forms the Tesla Electric Light Company.
Speaker 1: An investor group actually asks him if he will work
Speaker 1: on an ARC lighting system, and he agrees to do
Speaker 1: it and then is later forced out of his own
Speaker 1: company with nothing to show for it. Was was that all?
Speaker 1: I mean? Because he started the company because he had
Speaker 1: been he had quit Edison's correct. Yeah, Essentially, that same
Speaker 1: year he resigns from the Edison company, And some say
Speaker 1: the reason he did that was because again here's another
Speaker 1: story of Tesla getting cheated. That Edison had promised Tesla
Speaker 1: a princely saw a fifty thou dollars for a particular project,
Speaker 1: and when Tesla completed the project again supposedly with flying
Speaker 1: colors and beyond all expectations. Edison then said, ha, ha,
Speaker 1: you don't understand American humor. I'm not giving you any money,
Speaker 1: and then Tesla resigns, even though Edison supposedly at that
Speaker 1: point offered an enormous raise to keep Tesla there. This
Speaker 1: makes Edison look like the biggest jerk on the face
Speaker 1: of the planet. I mean, I can't imagine my boss
Speaker 1: coming up to me and saying, hey, you know when
Speaker 1: I told you were going to make fifty dollars if
Speaker 1: you did this thing, and then you did that thing,
Speaker 1: you did it really well, Well you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: any money. Oh you want to leave, I'll raise your salary.
Speaker 1: That just like what kind of crazy person does that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't sound I mean, you know it
Speaker 1: could I start. I never met Edison, didn't did you
Speaker 1: mean him? You're very old? Uh. Tesla then claimed that
Speaker 1: he spent the next year making money by digging ditches.
Speaker 1: So again, a great, great story. If you're looking at
Speaker 1: his life in the terms of like a tragic tale,
Speaker 1: you know where you have this genius, incredible super genius.
Speaker 1: The man who will one day light up the United
Speaker 1: States with his alternating current power grid, making money scraping
Speaker 1: by by digging ditches. Yeah. Again, a lot of this
Speaker 1: comes from Tesla himself, and whether or not all of
Speaker 1: it is true, it remains part of myth. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that. I don't doubt there were some
Speaker 1: bad business dealings. I'm sure that was the case, and
Speaker 1: I don't doubt he had some hard times and maybe
Speaker 1: he did make his living for a full year being
Speaker 1: you know, digging ditches and that was the only thing
Speaker 1: he could do. But it sounds more it sounds like melodrama.
Speaker 1: But sometimes like works like that, sometimes that's sometimes that's
Speaker 1: the truth stranger things. But anyway, Uh, then by by
Speaker 1: eighty seven, so you know, A six digging ditches, we
Speaker 1: don't need to go into. That's well. I mean, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighties six actually it's interesting Westinghouse Electric had
Speaker 1: developed a transformer for commercially. Yeah, so that's another thing
Speaker 1: we should mention is that, Uh, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: Tesla was really pushing for this alternating current thing with
Speaker 1: Edison is that back in Europe that's what they were using.
Speaker 1: A C was that's that's the route they took. They
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't go down the direct current route at all.
Speaker 1: They went with alternating current. And that becomes important when
Speaker 1: we start talking about the myths of of Tesla as well.
Speaker 1: In a little bit, right, Yeah, the u s as
Speaker 1: so embroiled in d C current. The name the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Dodgers actually comes because they were using direct current power
Speaker 1: lines that were kind of haphazardly strung across the city,
Speaker 1: and and Brooklyn Knights had to dodge these lines so
Speaker 1: often that their team was thus named the bog whereas
Speaker 1: the New York Giants were called that because they came
Speaker 1: from a race of mythical creatures that lived up Giant. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to show off that I knew something too,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know anything. Seven after the ditch
Speaker 1: digging has finished, Tesla begins to work with investors again,
Speaker 1: and he establishes a lab at eighty nine Liberty Street
Speaker 1: in New York and then just a few blocks away
Speaker 1: from Medicine's. Yeah yeah, And the next year he starts
Speaker 1: to talk about a C motors and transformers for the
Speaker 1: American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Now known as the I
Speaker 1: Triple E, or as I always prefer to call them.
Speaker 1: I ye that once for all you engineers out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he also agrees to start selling patents to George Westinghouse.
Speaker 1: So even though you know, Lauren, like Lauren was saying
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty six, you already had Westinghouse working on
Speaker 1: transformers and alternating current, that was before Tesla had even
Speaker 1: started to work for westinghends. Uh that that's something to
Speaker 1: keep in mind as well. So eighteen eighty nine he
Speaker 1: establishes a new lab on Grand Street in New York.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of labs. He had a lot of
Speaker 1: labs spread out throughout New York. He also lived in
Speaker 1: hotels mostly even then. Yeah, mostly towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life, but yeah, early on he was living in
Speaker 1: a lot of hotels as well. I think he also
Speaker 1: joked about about how is his hours, especially when he
Speaker 1: was working in Edison's lab. We're from like ten in
Speaker 1: the morning until five thirty am the next day, and
Speaker 1: and so that a lot of his sleeping A wasn't
Speaker 1: really sleeping, and B was probably under his desk, right,
Speaker 1: I can identify were that Uh. In he begins to
Speaker 1: experiment with wireless power in fluorescent and neon lighting, as
Speaker 1: well as X rays, although at the time he isn't
Speaker 1: sure exactly what they are. He was calling shadow pictures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was before Wilhelm laurent Gen had really established what
Speaker 1: X rays were and what they could do. So Tesla
Speaker 1: was one of the people who was observing the phenomena
Speaker 1: of X rays early early on. Yeah, there are a
Speaker 1: few other people at the time who were working with them,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, yeah, in fact, that'll go into the
Speaker 1: myths as well. But then he becomes an American cities
Speaker 1: and also I believe patented the Tesla coil. There you
Speaker 1: go an interesting thing in his mother passes away. That
Speaker 1: same year, he becomes the vice president of the AI
Speaker 1: Triple E, which is even it's a I I guess
Speaker 1: is how I would say that. And he becomes famous
Speaker 1: worldwide for his lectures on alternating current So at this
Speaker 1: point he's on the lecture circuit. I mean, he's he's
Speaker 1: going from city to city, you know, he stopped in
Speaker 1: places like Chicago and New York, London, Paris. So he
Speaker 1: becomes again, like I said, like a rock star. He's
Speaker 1: known for these lectures and it sounds weird for us
Speaker 1: to say that that he's like a rock star. But
Speaker 1: this was an era where these these thinkers were really
Speaker 1: pushing the development of technology to a point where everyone
Speaker 1: was sure that, you know, okay, we're five years away
Speaker 1: from the incredible future. And in many ways they were right.
Speaker 1: It's just that their view of what the incredible future
Speaker 1: would be ended up being a lot different from what
Speaker 1: it really was. But it was an era of rapid development,
Speaker 1: so these guys were considered to be the people pushing
Speaker 1: that rapid development. Is really exciting. Yeah, I think things
Speaker 1: like when the Chicago World Fair was that was that
Speaker 1: oh three years I want to say, yeah, that was
Speaker 1: that was famous because there was the whole Edison Tesla
Speaker 1: story there about who is going to provide power? Right,
Speaker 1: and it was really Edison versus uh Westinghouse. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I mean Westinghouse backed by Tesla. Sure, sure, yeah, west
Speaker 1: Westinghouse was using technology that Tesla had patented and and
Speaker 1: systems that Tesla worked on, but it was not truly
Speaker 1: Tesla versus Edison. That's that's kind of how I think.
Speaker 1: Even in a previous episode of Tech Stuff, we sort
Speaker 1: of talked about it in those terms, because that's sort
Speaker 1: of the romantic way of doing it, right as the
Speaker 1: idea of these two geniuses facing off against each other
Speaker 1: and who will win and alternating current one out in
Speaker 1: that one. So it was really Westinghouse at one al right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: The story goes that there was a there was a
Speaker 1: business deal the government was looking to contract either either
Speaker 1: Westinghouses Company or Edison's Company to power the World's Fair
Speaker 1: and and Westinghouse one out because it was cheaper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and when and yeah, and when they threw
Speaker 1: when president for Cleveland, I think it was through that
Speaker 1: switch and which like a hundred hundred thousand bulbs lit
Speaker 1: up all at the same time, and people were like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a thing trivia for you folks out there
Speaker 1: who don't know your history. Grover Cleveland was the only
Speaker 1: president to serve two non consecutive terms as president. He
Speaker 1: was president, then he wasn't president, then he was president again. Yes,
Speaker 1: he also liked the song Funky Cold Medina eighteen nine five.
Speaker 1: So then one of the buildings that held one of
Speaker 1: Tesla's labs caught fire in eight and his lab burned
Speaker 1: down and the fire destroyed what was estimated to be
Speaker 1: about fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment and information, and
Speaker 1: he had no insurance. Yeah, and fifty dollars that's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of money today, it was a huge amount
Speaker 1: of money in um. And and at the time he
Speaker 1: was experimenting with with radio signal. Yeah. And and supposedly,
Speaker 1: according to him, was ready to trans to signal fifty
Speaker 1: miles out to West Point, New York. Yeah. So that
Speaker 1: this is during if you've listened to the Old Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode about who invented the radio, there's a lot
Speaker 1: about Tesla and Marconi. And there there's a whole story
Speaker 1: there too about how Marconi, like Tesla, got a patent
Speaker 1: for for the radio. Then Marconi applied for a patent,
Speaker 1: then the patent office overturned Tesla's patent, gave Marconi the patent,
Speaker 1: and then later on overturned it again and gave it
Speaker 1: back to Tesla. Later on is in like the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: after Tesla was dead. Um. Yeah, there's that whole story,
Speaker 1: and and there's there's arguments there too, because again, the
Speaker 1: invention of any sort of technology requires that you talk
Speaker 1: about so many different people who who contributed to the
Speaker 1: discoveries that led to the possibility of something existing. That
Speaker 1: it's impossible to actually point at one person and say
Speaker 1: this person invented radio, but both Marconi and Tesla were
Speaker 1: working on it and uh, and there's argument over who
Speaker 1: should have real credit there. Uh, but go listen to
Speaker 1: our episode about who invented the radio if you want
Speaker 1: to hear more about that, because I think that that
Speaker 1: that that argument is so long and detailed that it's
Speaker 1: hard to sum up in an episode just about Tesla. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, certainly another another one of those points that
Speaker 1: people like to bring up in terms of he was
Speaker 1: so downtrodden. Yeah, it's a good another point. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's a more firm one that Yeah, he absolutely lost
Speaker 1: that fight and lost probably a lot of money in fame.
Speaker 1: I think. Uh Marconi won the New Belt Prize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all kinds of fun. Was not happy about that. I'm excited. Uh.
Speaker 1: In he demonstrated a wirelessly controlled model boat, so essentially
Speaker 1: a an RC boat at the Electrical Exposition in Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden, where years later Highlanders would fight it out
Speaker 1: to determine who would win the prize and Queen would
Speaker 1: sing Princess of the universe in the background. I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't really like that documentary. WHOA Alright, getting back
Speaker 1: into Tesla's life. In eight he moves to Colorado to
Speaker 1: perform warms some experiments with wireless power. And this is
Speaker 1: where one of the big myths about Tesla comes up,
Speaker 1: this idea that he wanted to build this huge tower
Speaker 1: that would tap into the this this resonant frequency that
Speaker 1: exists around the world, and that you could transmit power
Speaker 1: wirelessly across miles of space. Um. He claimed that he
Speaker 1: had another one of those visions that let him understand
Speaker 1: the geoelectrical phenomenon he called terrestrial stationary waves. An idea
Speaker 1: about tapping into the Earth itself as a conductory sounds interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's not that, uh, it's not that everything was
Speaker 1: that he said was crazy or it was just that
Speaker 1: to be able to actually use this in a way
Speaker 1: that would allow you to transmit power reliably safely without
Speaker 1: losing power over distance or zapping and killing everybody, uh,
Speaker 1: is something we haven't solved yet. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who say that all of his work
Speaker 1: would have proven if if it's still existed. We'll get
Speaker 1: into more about more destruction of his work and where
Speaker 1: it all when it went to. But then if it's
Speaker 1: still existed, it would prove that this sort of thing
Speaker 1: is possible, and it's only the energy companies that are
Speaker 1: keeping it down because they stand to lose so much
Speaker 1: if this, if this information got out, I'm hesitant to
Speaker 1: agree to anything like that because it suggests that no
Speaker 1: one but Tesla could have ever come up with this,
Speaker 1: and therefore the idea is lost forever. When I would argue,
Speaker 1: we have people who are far more informed about electrical
Speaker 1: engineering than Tesla was, even though he was a brilliant man.
Speaker 1: You know, perhaps the people these days are not a
Speaker 1: visionary the way that he was. But yeah, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: that's it. Maybe they just need to take a walk
Speaker 1: in the park and look at the sunset, think about
Speaker 1: some poetry that would help. I guess. You know, hey,
Speaker 1: far be it from me to downplay the importance of
Speaker 1: poetry in the world. I certainly think it's important. Being
Speaker 1: English lit major uh in nineteen o one. Well, all right,
Speaker 1: so so he starts to think really about wireless power
Speaker 1: and the phenomena that it would be, Like what what
Speaker 1: would go into making this and how it would change
Speaker 1: the world, and he really was thinking it was an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. So a nineteen o one, with funding from
Speaker 1: various sources, including people like JP Morgan, he starts to
Speaker 1: build the Warden Cliff Tower. This is at a long
Speaker 1: Island Sound and uh, this is um. This thing is
Speaker 1: supposed to be a wireless power transmitting station essentially, and
Speaker 1: within nineteen o three he starts to test it, even
Speaker 1: though the tower itself is not completed at that point.
Speaker 1: And this this was this was a tower that that
Speaker 1: again reached deep into the ground to kind of tap
Speaker 1: into this this terrestrial uh wave stationary wave. Actually have
Speaker 1: a really great quote from Tesla, if I had made
Speaker 1: without excellent in the system that I've invented, it is
Speaker 1: necessary for the machine to get a grip on the earth,
Speaker 1: otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have
Speaker 1: a grip so that the whole of this globe can quiver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you also remember the story about Tesla putting an
Speaker 1: oscillating motor onto a building and then nearly shaking it
Speaker 1: to its foundation, that kind of dates from the same
Speaker 1: sort of concept. Um. And the earth is still here,
Speaker 1: by the way, so that's kind of a spoiler alert
Speaker 1: to how this story plays out. The MythBusters actually actually
Speaker 1: cracked that one in the episode back in two exciting
Speaker 1: they showed. They showed that it could, like a small
Speaker 1: repetitive motion could cause a bridge to start to shake
Speaker 1: a little enough to notice a couple of couple hundred
Speaker 1: feet away, right, but not necessarily enough to to make
Speaker 1: it crumble into pieces. Um. But anyway, all earthquake, Warncliffe
Speaker 1: Tower becomes an important part of Tesla's life. It was
Speaker 1: one of these things that he really thought that that
Speaker 1: the terrestrial stationary waves was the uh discovery of his life.
Speaker 1: That was the most important out of everything that he'd
Speaker 1: worked with with alternating current, with transformers, with all these
Speaker 1: other technologies, those paled in comparison to this one. And
Speaker 1: so Warncliff I was very important to him. Unfortunately, uh,
Speaker 1: there weren't. He didn't have a whole lot to show
Speaker 1: for it. And also he was running up the electric bill,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and Morgan was getting pretty sick of it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: across the ocean, um, Marconi had signaled the letter as
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic and that didn't make Tessla happy. And
Speaker 1: and I mean and and you know, Marconi was such
Speaker 1: a such a newspaper Darling. Yeah, he was again yet
Speaker 1: another person who was very good at catering to the
Speaker 1: media to get a message across. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: not unusual at this time. So in nineteen o four,
Speaker 1: the Colorado Lab is torn down due to excessive use
Speaker 1: of electricity and the building materials are sold for scrap
Speaker 1: to pay for the cost couch. And in nineteen o six,
Speaker 1: like you said, JP Morgan, who had been an investor
Speaker 1: Withdraws and Tesla, has to end up laying off a
Speaker 1: lot of employees over at Warncliff Tower. Uh, We're gonna
Speaker 1: skip ahead a few years because this is essentially where
Speaker 1: he's working on this Warncliff Tower experiment, which ends up
Speaker 1: draining a lot of his energy literally and resources and
Speaker 1: without a lot to show for it. Um. The next day,
Speaker 1: I have his nineteen eleven when he started working with
Speaker 1: steam turbines and electricity production. Uh, he was this was
Speaker 1: a big development. It was very important in the whole
Speaker 1: uh part of generating electricity for a growing need in
Speaker 1: America because at this point you're starting to see communities
Speaker 1: get wired for electricity and beyond just the narrow band
Speaker 1: in the northeast that had it, so it was important
Speaker 1: to find different ways of generating it beyond firing from
Speaker 1: coal plants. I wanted to find something that was sustainable,
Speaker 1: even at that time. And in nineteen twelve, Tesla's suffered
Speaker 1: another setback, although not one nearly as large as Lady Astor.
Speaker 1: John Jacob Astar, who was one of Tesla's most wealthy
Speaker 1: and enthusiastic investors, stopped investing in Tesla's work because he
Speaker 1: stopped breathing. He was a or a little boat called
Speaker 1: the Titanic. Oh, I've heard of that one. I think
Speaker 1: I saw a documentary about it one. Yeah, his heart
Speaker 1: will go on, but his investment payments stopped. Yeah. He Um,
Speaker 1: he went down with the boat. He did get Lady
Speaker 1: Astor on a lifeboat, so he made sure his wife
Speaker 1: was safe and he stayed behind to wait for his
Speaker 1: turn to get on a lifeboat, but tragically was not
Speaker 1: able to do that and he did die, and with that,
Speaker 1: Tesla lost one of his most significant sources of investment money.
Speaker 1: So it was another financial setback for Tesla. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't think he could blame that one on Edison, maybe
Speaker 1: Mark Coney because we're talking about the use of radios
Speaker 1: on the Titanic, but then that was more of a
Speaker 1: personnel thing than a technology thing. A nineteen fifteen, Tesla
Speaker 1: and Edison are both listed as being uh considered for
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize and that they would be co recipients
Speaker 1: of the Nobel Prize. When the Nobel Prizes are announced,
Speaker 1: the prize goes to two people. That would be William
Speaker 1: Henry Bragg and his son. Now, the Nobel Committee admitted
Speaker 1: that Edison and Tesla were under consideration for the Nobel Prize,
Speaker 1: but they did not say any more than that. What
Speaker 1: has come up since then as the rumor, which is
Speaker 1: gospel in some corners of the Internet, that the reason
Speaker 1: why Tesla and Edison did not receive the Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: together is because they'd rather be caught dead than to
Speaker 1: share a prize with the other man's. That's a good myth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the rivalry was so great that they would both
Speaker 1: refuse a Nobel prize rather than have to share it
Speaker 1: with the other. That's pretty amazing. And it may be
Speaker 1: true that when I say rumor, I don't mean that
Speaker 1: it's fake or false or a lie. I just mean
Speaker 1: that we don't know for sure. Other people probably do,
Speaker 1: but I don't. Tesla declares bankruptcy. He did not pasco
Speaker 1: or collect two hundred dollars. Yeah, it was just not
Speaker 1: a good year for him. Uh. In nineteen seventeen, he
Speaker 1: ended up proposing what would Uh depending upon whom you ask,
Speaker 1: Okay people, some people will say in nineteen seventeen, Tesla
Speaker 1: predicted radar radar. Yeah, that he was the guy who
Speaker 1: came up with radar, but the government turned him down.
Speaker 1: The Navy board said that they would not invest in
Speaker 1: such a technology. By the way, the person from private
Speaker 1: industry who was on the Navy board a said, well,
Speaker 1: he was from from what I understand about the story. Uh,
Speaker 1: Tesla had proposed this, this way of finding ships underwater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the problem. Right. So the more you look into it,
Speaker 1: the more you realize it's not radar he's talking about,
Speaker 1: not in the sense that we use it today. Well,
Speaker 1: he he was talking about radar, but it was not
Speaker 1: really the best system for finding ships underwater. And so
Speaker 1: therefore when the guy ferment, when the Navy didn't didn't
Speaker 1: really give him to go ahead. It wasn't because radar
Speaker 1: is dumb. It's or the Tesla's demos because it wasn't
Speaker 1: the right technology for that application. What Tesla did not
Speaker 1: take into account was he he wanted to use tightly
Speaker 1: controlled electric beams of energy to zap them into the
Speaker 1: water to reflect off the surfaces of submarines, detect that
Speaker 1: those reflections and the information would be displayed back in
Speaker 1: a fluorescent display, which sounds great, except for the problem
Speaker 1: is that these beams would attenuate underwater, and so you
Speaker 1: would not get accurate representations of what you were looking at.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't you couldn't be sure that you know, you
Speaker 1: could be pointing it directly at a submarine and miss
Speaker 1: it because of this attenuation problem. And so it just
Speaker 1: isn't practical for the use that Tesla was suggesting it.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so that shows that Tesla had a
Speaker 1: misunderstanding either of the physics of water or the technology itself.
Speaker 1: Either way, it wasn't truly radar. It's not exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing that radar is, and it was not being
Speaker 1: used in the way that radar ultimately would be used.
Speaker 1: So while some people claim that he invented radar, that's
Speaker 1: being a little generous. Nineteenth we just busted a myth,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't I apologize because I haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: that section yet. But that's okay, that's one less for
Speaker 1: us to worry about when we get there. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four, actually, if we can, if we can step
Speaker 1: back just to shore, let's please in In nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: he published an autobiography called My Inventions Uh that was
Speaker 1: published in six parts in the Electrical Experiment or magazine.
Speaker 1: And this is important because it is one of the
Speaker 1: main sources of information about Tesla's life, which is why
Speaker 1: you have to take everything with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: because he was a bit of a self promoter. So
Speaker 1: there's not I'm not saying that Tesla was lying in
Speaker 1: his autobiography. What I'm saying is you just have to
Speaker 1: take into consideration the possibility that he may have exaggerated
Speaker 1: some facts, not that he was purposefully trying to mislead people,
Speaker 1: but that when you become a self promoter, that that
Speaker 1: can happen. Even if you don't mean it to happen,
Speaker 1: it can happen, which is kind of crazy that you're
Speaker 1: just you know, in your mind, you're like, this is
Speaker 1: totally how it happened, and then anyone else is like dude,
Speaker 1: I was there, and that totally is not how it happened. Um, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: You've never beheaded anyone in the cold blood of a fight.
Speaker 1: On the cold blood of a fight four and The
Speaker 1: New York Times publish as an article about Tesla's death,
Speaker 1: ray beam, Yeah this was. Tesla said that he had
Speaker 1: come up with an idea that would allow governments to
Speaker 1: build a device capable of emitting a beam of energy
Speaker 1: that could bring down a fleet of ten thousand enemy
Speaker 1: planes at a distance of two hundred fifty miles, and
Speaker 1: that his idea was that by outfitting pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: with one of these, you would have that mutually assured
Speaker 1: destruction that makes peace possible, all right. He actually called
Speaker 1: it a piece beam from what I understand, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: said that would really end war, because how could you
Speaker 1: have war? Or if you can't fly over another country
Speaker 1: without worrying about your entire fleet being destroyed, then obviously
Speaker 1: war is off the table. That was kind of his
Speaker 1: his somewhat naive plan. And whether or not this thing
Speaker 1: would ever work is another interesting question, or if there
Speaker 1: ever was anything beyond just this idea that hey, maybe
Speaker 1: one day I could build something that does this Uh,
Speaker 1: that's another you know, it's another one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's a myth, a right. Uh. He decided to go
Speaker 1: feed the pigeons in the park, which was a bad
Speaker 1: decision to make that particular day, as as he was
Speaker 1: crossing the street, he was struck by a cab. Then,
Speaker 1: depending upon which report you read, he flew thirty five
Speaker 1: to forty ft in the air and landed and was
Speaker 1: perfectly unharmed except a little bruised or he had broken
Speaker 1: several ribs. It all depends on which person you're asking.
Speaker 1: Tesla said, yeah, I'm all right. Other people like, dude,
Speaker 1: he was messed up. He was crying about his pit jins.
Speaker 1: It was ugly. He had He had at this point
Speaker 1: become a little bit destitute, um, due to all of
Speaker 1: these various financial troubles over the years and and basic misspending.
Speaker 1: I think head, yeah didn't. Yeah. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of hotels that were suing him because he had lived
Speaker 1: inside the hotel for years and years and owed them
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, and then he would relocate to a
Speaker 1: different hotel and he think, like, why would another hotel
Speaker 1: even trust him? He was Tesla again, this is a
Speaker 1: rock star guy, and it elevates the status of your
Speaker 1: hotel that he's staying there. But you can only have
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan in your hotel for so long before you're like, seriously,
Speaker 1: could you please stop making holes in the growing TVs
Speaker 1: out the window? Guys, I am sitting across from the
Speaker 1: from the person who had just compared Nicola Tesla to
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan. I think it's an apt comparison. Look, Lindsay
Speaker 1: Lohan hasn't reached the age Tesla was at when he
Speaker 1: started to really uh contribute to humanity, So I think
Speaker 1: we owe her a year or two. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: if anyone actually figures out Tesla's particle beam and aims
Speaker 1: at at the HW office is and just just just
Speaker 1: just let me know, I am perfectly willing to give
Speaker 1: you Jonathan's g A Syncretis coordinates. Please keep in mind
Speaker 1: that stuff you missed in history class and stuff Mom
Speaker 1: never told you sit really near me, So if you
Speaker 1: love those shows, keep your being particle pointed somewhere else.
Speaker 1: That's not cool. January three was a bad day for
Speaker 1: Tesla because that's the day he passed on. He was
Speaker 1: eighty six years old. Uh, and two days later, all
Speaker 1: of his papers and a state was seized by the government. Well,
Speaker 1: some some stories say that his nephew showed up the
Speaker 1: morning after he passed away, and that his body had
Speaker 1: already been removed, and that the nephew noticed that it
Speaker 1: seemed like some of his papers were missing. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is where one of those stories pops up. In fact,
Speaker 1: now that we've had Tesla shuffle off the mortal and
Speaker 1: Tesla coil no, thank you, I've been waiting to use
Speaker 1: that one. Uh, we can talk a little bit about this,
Speaker 1: this idea. So there are a lot of rumors either.
Speaker 1: One of the big rumors is that the FBI seized
Speaker 1: all of Tesla's papers and did so in an effort
Speaker 1: to to use them for various nefarious purposes for the
Speaker 1: United States government. Now keep in mind, this is World
Speaker 1: War two is a thing, and so there is a
Speaker 1: genuine concern that information that has scientific significance could fall
Speaker 1: into the hands of other nations and give give other
Speaker 1: other nations a lot of advantages over the United States,
Speaker 1: and so it was very important to guard whatever advantages
Speaker 1: you had against them. Absolutely. And also, I mean remember
Speaker 1: that that Tesla was a Serbian American as as such.
Speaker 1: The from from from what we can discern, of fact,
Speaker 1: it was actually the Department of Justice Alien Property Custodian
Speaker 1: Office that temporarily seized his papers, right, so it was
Speaker 1: not the FBI. It was the Department of Justice and
Speaker 1: the FBI still they've got like a like a top
Speaker 1: ten minutes on on the internation. Number ten. Number ten
Speaker 1: is is that we took Tesla's papers, like guys, Like, guys,
Speaker 1: we didn't. We did it for reals, yo, we didn't
Speaker 1: grab those and actually I looked into it and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be until you know, if you read most of
Speaker 1: the stories, it's like the FBI took the papers and
Speaker 1: they never released them, and we want, we demand that
Speaker 1: these papers be released. Guys. It was the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice number one and number two. In ninety two they
Speaker 1: sent the papers to uh To Kassanovich, his nephew, and
Speaker 1: that is that is nine years later, Yeah, alright, granted
Speaker 1: nine years. Like we're just talking about time during not
Speaker 1: just the World War two, with the Red Scare as well,
Speaker 1: so so I mean not that that justifies suppressing information. Also,
Speaker 1: you're talking about the government, so it may very well
Speaker 1: be that there wasn't any intentional um slowness on the
Speaker 1: part of the government. That's just the way the government works.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I honestly don't know. What I
Speaker 1: do know is they did release the estate and the
Speaker 1: papers to Yugoslavia to to his nephew that they wound
Speaker 1: up in a in a musing him. So if you wanted,
Speaker 1: if you're one of the people demanding that there's a
Speaker 1: Tesla museum, good news there is. You just have to
Speaker 1: go to Europe to see it. Also, supposedly after World
Speaker 1: War two was there were copies of his papers um
Speaker 1: were sent out to one of the Air Force spaces
Speaker 1: and Project Nick was a thing that was heavily funded,
Speaker 1: and then the papers have disappeared, never to be seen again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their love of conspiracy theories here there. And there was
Speaker 1: one one person posted on Facebook when I mentioned that
Speaker 1: we were going to be covering Tesla today, So are
Speaker 1: you going to talk about how they used a lot
Speaker 1: of his work in the developments of stuff in Area
Speaker 1: fifty one And the answer to that is no, because
Speaker 1: there's no real documentation of that. There's actually quite a
Speaker 1: bit of information about what went on at Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: It's stuff that was top secret at the time. But um,
Speaker 1: we'll have to do an episode all about Area fifty
Speaker 1: one sometime in the future, just because it's a fascinating topic.
Speaker 1: But it's all about you know, developing things like stealth
Speaker 1: technology and various kinds of test prototypes for the Air
Speaker 1: Force or for the army. But but nothing like the
Speaker 1: Slaw death ray, at least nothing that shows up in
Speaker 1: any real record. And I would argue that the reason
Speaker 1: why it doesn't show up on a real record is
Speaker 1: probably because it didn't exist. Um that my second choiceold
Speaker 1: be it didn't work and so there was no point
Speaker 1: in more valut. I don't think we would still be
Speaker 1: debating whether or not exists if it actually did exist,
Speaker 1: because someone would have come forward by now, probably I
Speaker 1: would have zapped somebody. Although there there is stuff I
Speaker 1: don't want you to know. Did I did an episode
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago on this even you can
Speaker 1: go check that out on YouTube. That's true, oh bolan uh.
Speaker 1: Then also there here's some other myths that Tesla invented
Speaker 1: alternating current. He did not. He did not. He alternating
Speaker 1: current was already a thing in Europe by the time
Speaker 1: Tesla was born, it wasn't widespread. It wasn't like there
Speaker 1: was a huge power grid in Europe. But there were
Speaker 1: people working on alternating current and even working on things
Speaker 1: like induction motors and transformers at that time. And so
Speaker 1: Tesla even studied alternating current when he was in school.
Speaker 1: So it's not something that he invented. He did, however,
Speaker 1: take the knowledge that was being generated around alternating current
Speaker 1: and applied it and furthered it. So it's not it's
Speaker 1: not that he just copied someone else's work. He really
Speaker 1: did make legitimate contributions, I'm sure, and it was it
Speaker 1: was his patent in his his work with Westinghouse that
Speaker 1: led to alternating current becoming the thing that the US
Speaker 1: uses and and the thing that is capable of going
Speaker 1: across long distances. Both of those are extremely extremely important.
Speaker 1: I can't downplay either of those exactly. Yes, but but
Speaker 1: he did not invent it. He didn't invent it. He's
Speaker 1: not the reason why it's what's being used in Europe.
Speaker 1: Uh So that's one thing we can kind of put
Speaker 1: to bed. And in fact, the first work with alternating
Speaker 1: current dates back to five, which was, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years before Tesla was born. So unless he also invented
Speaker 1: time travel, and don't write me and tell me he did,
Speaker 1: that's not That's not the case. Um, like I would
Speaker 1: believe anything after watching The Prestige again another documentary, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, a Westinghouse, like we pointed out, was working
Speaker 1: on UH distribution grids designs for A C power and
Speaker 1: transformers before Tesla had even started to work for the company. Now, granted, again,
Speaker 1: Tesla's patents and the information that he was able to
Speaker 1: provide to Westinghouse ended up making those much more robust
Speaker 1: and it made it possible to actually act on that.
Speaker 1: But again it shows that he's not the only one
Speaker 1: working on this at the time. Um. He's also not
Speaker 1: the guy who invented transformers. Those were first being used
Speaker 1: in Budapest in the eighteen seventies uh, and the very
Speaker 1: first modern transformer was built by William Stanley in eighty five.
Speaker 1: He did not invent the fluorescent lamp. Alexandra A. Beccarell
Speaker 1: was the first guy to to observe fluorescence, and he
Speaker 1: did so in eighteen fifty seven when Tesla was one.
Speaker 1: So again, unless Tesla was also observing florescence at one
Speaker 1: year old, and maybe he was. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: born in a storm after all. Thor was his buddy. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't say that he invented that. He did not
Speaker 1: discover X rays used before. Yeah, Ivan Pului, I have
Speaker 1: no idea how to say his last name. I know
Speaker 1: I just butchered it. But but Ivan, my buddy Ivan,
Speaker 1: he he had actually observed the phenomena of X rays
Speaker 1: before Tesla had, But just like Tesla, he wasn't really
Speaker 1: sure what it was he was looking at. He thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting, but he wasn't really sure about, you know,
Speaker 1: what this stuff actually is. It wouldn't be until Wilhelm
Speaker 1: Ronen really looked into it and began to make theories
Speaker 1: and hypotheses and test things about them. That's that's when
Speaker 1: we started to know that what they were. But other
Speaker 1: other scientists had been observing it, they just didn't understand it. Again,
Speaker 1: we talked about the radar thing, and we talked about FBI.
Speaker 1: So those are the big myths. Other myths are you know,
Speaker 1: the whole Tesla versus Edison thing. Uh, it was really
Speaker 1: more Edison companies versus Westinghouse companies and not so much
Speaker 1: a personality thing. Well, it does sound like the two
Speaker 1: of them clashed. There are a whole bunch of reports
Speaker 1: about how I mean, right, right from the get go,
Speaker 1: they didn't really like each other, right, um, and and
Speaker 1: it's easy to see, you know, they were both very
Speaker 1: strong personalities, um and very big showman and it didn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound like either of them really liked not
Speaker 1: that anyone likes it, but but to be made a
Speaker 1: fool of. And both of them were in the business of,
Speaker 1: in fact, trying to make a fool of the other person.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there was some of that. There was some showmanship,
Speaker 1: There was some there's some and and I mean there
Speaker 1: was clearly some sort of legitimate beef between Edison and Tesla,
Speaker 1: at least as far as you know, Tesla getting the
Speaker 1: credit that he wanted and Tesla, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of his fortunes switched, mainly because he made some really
Speaker 1: bad business deals. He sold patents off at a pittance
Speaker 1: at times, because the company would come to him say,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this massive economic downturn coming. We need
Speaker 1: this these patents, but if we pay you what they're worth,
Speaker 1: then we're going to go under. And contest was like,
Speaker 1: I'll cut your deal. Yeah. They were basically kind of like,
Speaker 1: can we give you a tenth of the fee that
Speaker 1: we're going to promise you and then give you some
Speaker 1: stock right before a terrible economic downturn, and Tesla was like, yes,
Speaker 1: is good, give me that, and and yeah and and
Speaker 1: and the famous Westinghouse deal where um uh. Even even
Speaker 1: even though Westinghouse won the so called War of the Currents,
Speaker 1: the company was not doing well and and wound up
Speaker 1: after they had built the generator at Niagara, I think,
Speaker 1: started to go under and there were some issues with
Speaker 1: Mostly it was just again just just poor decisions on
Speaker 1: Tesla's part. Um Testa let him out of the contract,
Speaker 1: just said said like, oh no, you don't have to
Speaker 1: pay me the rest. That's fine, you save your company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is great. I mean, it's lovely, it's
Speaker 1: a nice it's a terrific I mean, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's when you when you end up having no
Speaker 1: friends there than pigeons and owing every hotel in New
Speaker 1: York money, maybe that's why. Yeah, yeah, that could that
Speaker 1: could be one of the factors. Um He's certainly and
Speaker 1: I know that people are probably listening to this episode
Speaker 1: and thinking that I'm I think Tesla was a worthless
Speaker 1: lay about that. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: I think he really did make incredible contributions to UH,
Speaker 1: to the success of the United States in general, and
Speaker 1: to several technologies around the world in particular. But it's
Speaker 1: also important not to overstate his contributions and to understand,
Speaker 1: especially at the expense of other very important inventors and
Speaker 1: minds and works, it's a disservice to everyone else who
Speaker 1: worked on these same things and helped make them a
Speaker 1: possible a reality really in our lives. And and you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to also pay attention to some of the
Speaker 1: crazier ideas like the death ray. The death ray, yeah,
Speaker 1: or being able to move the entire earth with putting
Speaker 1: essentially a wire around it and topping into the frequency
Speaker 1: that it generates, which hey, maybe that is possible, it's
Speaker 1: just not practical, right, Yeah, that's and I think that
Speaker 1: that's a problem with a lot of his latter theories,
Speaker 1: is that they were not particularly practical. Yeah, So he
Speaker 1: was also I mean, there there's stories about him having
Speaker 1: a couple of nervous breakdowns at various times in his life.
Speaker 1: I think that he was probably not necessarily mentally well
Speaker 1: for a great deal of his existence. I agree, I agree,
Speaker 1: I think he probably had quite a few uh issues
Speaker 1: to work through, and that I mean, you know, can
Speaker 1: considering how well we treat those kinds of people today,
Speaker 1: it is easy to see how at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century he was not particularly given the chances that
Speaker 1: he needed well. I hope you enjoyed that look back
Speaker 1: on Nicola Tesla and our our attempt at stripping away
Speaker 1: some of the mythology to really get a look at
Speaker 1: the man and his contributions. We really had a good
Speaker 1: time researching that episode and recording that episode. And since
Speaker 1: we started this whole endeavor, you heard that the beginning
Speaker 1: that I was going to do a debate at Dragon
Speaker 1: Con Tesla versus Edison. I am here to report on
Speaker 1: the outcome of that debate. I won, or rather Tesla one.
Speaker 1: So the way they decided this was by taking donations
Speaker 1: that all went to the Atlanta Food Bank, and I
Speaker 1: raised twice as much as my Edison opponent. So it
Speaker 1: turns out that even when I strip away the mythology,
Speaker 1: people just like to side with the underdog. And if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff.
Speaker 1: You can write me tech stuff at hell Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com, and I'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and basands of other topics because
Speaker 1: it has to works dot com.