When Tesla came to Edison, he had already proven himself at several European
Edison companies, and was given a technical job, not "laborer". His first
assignment was repairing the lighting plant on the SS Oregon.
At Colorado Springs, Tesla was SUPPOSED to be developing the "cold light" ('I
can run on a wire sufficient for one incandescent lamp more than 1000 of my own
lamps, giving fully 5000 as much light' - Tesla to Astor), with experiments
financed by J.J.Astor IV. Instead, Tesla wasted the money ($30,000) building
huge machines to test his theories about the atmosphere. He also claimed to be
in touch with Martians.
Tesla abandoned Colorado Springs, returned to New York, and found that Astor
would not 'invest' more money. Tesla later turned to J.P.Morgan, who had no
interest in Tesla's "world power" scheme, but only in wireless telegraphy. To
that end, Morgan financed the building of another expensive Tesla facility, on
Long Island. Morgan cut off the gravy train after Marconi announced his
signal
across the Atlantic, accomplished with much less money.
Tesla's contribution to the electrical industry was brilliant and important,
but
was limited to his first concepts. After that, he was not much more than a
crazy braggart, making wild claims without concrete proof, and wiping his
silverware with 18 linen napkins at each meal, as well as himself with 18
towels
each morning, to remove "the germs".
We're still waiting for the 1,000 lights 5,000 times brighter, on a single
light
bulb's wire .....
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Maeder" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 8:49 AM
Subject: RE: [Phono-L] Edison History Question
My guess would be that the movie is referring to Nkola Tesla, as he actually
built a power generating tower in Colorado. Tesla and Edison were rivals.
When Tesla arrived from Transylvania with the concept of Alternating Current
and took it to Edison, Edison responded by giving Tesla employment as a
laborer, no doubt to protect his and his investors' investment in DC power
generation and distribution. Eventually, Tesla was hired by Westinghouse,
who put his ideas to practice, eclipsing Edison's DC system. Much of
Tesla's experimentation was in high-frequency AC generation and reception.
He was able to remote-control a miniature submarine in the early 1890's,
invented the fluorescent light tube, and the aforementioned Tesla Coil
(think the sparks in the laboratory in the film 'Frankenstein'). Tesla's
high concept was that of the earth as a rotor and the atmospheric magnetic
field surrounding it as a stator. The tower he built in Colorado was to act
as a collector of the electrical field that is generated as the earth
rotates (i.e. the North & South Poles). The tower would form a pole and the
magnetic field encircling the earth from the tower would form an antipole
directly opposite on the globe where the power could be collected most
efficiently by another tower. This was a system of free power generation.
The tower and attendant buildings were attacked and destroyed one night,
allegedly by goons working for Edison's principal investor in metered power
distribution, J.P. Morgan. Anyone else care to chime in? Read "Tesla: Man
Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney Rice, and Tesla's own odd autobiography. He
was a very interesting man.
