Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah by Nigel Cawthorne
Authors: Nigel Cawthorne
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said. âThus, everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside ⦠What is it that causes inorganic matter to run into organic forms? ⦠It is the Sunâs heat and light. Wherever they are there is life.â
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Not Mad At All
Some people still had faith. Tesla boasted that he had produced a lamp that was far superior to the incandescent bulb, using one-third of the energy.
As my lamps will last forever, the cost of maintenance will be minute. The cost of copper, which in the old system is a most important item, is in mine reduced to a mere trifle, for I can run on a wire sufficient for one incandescent lamp more than a thousand of my own lamps, giving fully five thousand times as much light.
On the strength of this, Teslaâs friend John Jacob Astor invested $100,000 in the Tesla Electric Company and Tesla moved into the Waldorf-Astoria.
Chapter 8 â In Colorado Springs
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Nikola Tesla, the Serbian scientist, whose electrical discoveries are not of one nation, but the pride of the world, has taken up his abode in Colorado Springs ⦠On East Pikeâs Peak avenue, with limitless plains stretching to the eastward, and a panorama of mighty mountains sweeping away north and south, to the west â Tesla has caused to be constructed a [wireless] station for scientific research .
Desire Stanton, Colorado Springs, 1899
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With Teslaâs coils now generating up to 4 million volts with sparks jumping from the walls to the ceilings, Teslaâs Houston Street laboratory was becoming a fire hazard. Nor was it secure against the snooping of Edisonâs spies. And Tesla had experiments that he wanted to conduct, he said, in secret.
He had been out to Pikeâs Peak outside Colorado Springs in 1896 at the invitation of Westinghouse patent attorney Leonard E. Curtis. For his new experiments, he needed huge amounts of power, but he would be working mostly late at night when the load would be least and Curtis arranged for him to get free power from the local utility, the El Paso Power Company.
After stopping to show off his Telautomaton in Chicago, he arrived in Colorado Springs on 18 May 1899 and immediately breached his own secrecy. When a reporter asked him what his plans were, he said: âI propose to send a message from Pikeâs Peak to Paris, France. I see no reason why I should keep the thing a secret any longer.â He was welcomed with a banquet. Mining camps in the area had adopted his AC system, so he was already a celebrity out West.
With a local carpenter named Joseph Dozier, he built an experimental station on an empty field known as Knob Hill, which had a view over Pikeâs Peak to the west and rolling plains to the east. It was essentially a wooden barn measuring 60 ft by 70 ft (18 m by 21 m). It consisted of one large room with a roof that opened, two small offices at the front and a balcony.
Again intent on keeping the exact nature of his experiments secret, Tesla had the only window that Dozier had provided, boarded up. A fence ringed the station with numerous signs on it saying: KEEP OUT, GREAT DANGER . Above the door was a phrase from Danteâs Inferno said to be the inscription above the entrance to Hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here .
Â
The Magnifying Transmitter
Colorado Springs was 6,000 ft (1,800 m) above sea level and Tesla planned to tap into the rarefied air 5,000 ft (1,500 m) above the Earth. He soon discovered that the 10 ft (3 m) helium balloons he had bought from Germany could not lift the hundreds of feet of wire, so he devised a telescopic mast that raised a copper ball to a height of 142 ft (43 m). To steady the mast, Tesla built a 25 ft (8 m) tower on the roof of his laboratory.
Under it, he built a âmagnifying transmitterâ, which was essentially a huge Tesla Coil. On top of a 6 ft (1.8 m) wall, he laid two turns of thick cable. This was fed 500 volts
Â
Not Mad At All
Some people still had faith. Tesla boasted that he had produced a lamp that was far superior to the incandescent bulb, using one-third of the energy.
As my lamps will last forever, the cost of maintenance will be minute. The cost of copper, which in the old system is a most important item, is in mine reduced to a mere trifle, for I can run on a wire sufficient for one incandescent lamp more than a thousand of my own lamps, giving fully five thousand times as much light.
On the strength of this, Teslaâs friend John Jacob Astor invested $100,000 in the Tesla Electric Company and Tesla moved into the Waldorf-Astoria.
Chapter 8 â In Colorado Springs
Â
Nikola Tesla, the Serbian scientist, whose electrical discoveries are not of one nation, but the pride of the world, has taken up his abode in Colorado Springs ⦠On East Pikeâs Peak avenue, with limitless plains stretching to the eastward, and a panorama of mighty mountains sweeping away north and south, to the west â Tesla has caused to be constructed a [wireless] station for scientific research .
Desire Stanton, Colorado Springs, 1899
Â
With Teslaâs coils now generating up to 4 million volts with sparks jumping from the walls to the ceilings, Teslaâs Houston Street laboratory was becoming a fire hazard. Nor was it secure against the snooping of Edisonâs spies. And Tesla had experiments that he wanted to conduct, he said, in secret.
He had been out to Pikeâs Peak outside Colorado Springs in 1896 at the invitation of Westinghouse patent attorney Leonard E. Curtis. For his new experiments, he needed huge amounts of power, but he would be working mostly late at night when the load would be least and Curtis arranged for him to get free power from the local utility, the El Paso Power Company.
After stopping to show off his Telautomaton in Chicago, he arrived in Colorado Springs on 18 May 1899 and immediately breached his own secrecy. When a reporter asked him what his plans were, he said: âI propose to send a message from Pikeâs Peak to Paris, France. I see no reason why I should keep the thing a secret any longer.â He was welcomed with a banquet. Mining camps in the area had adopted his AC system, so he was already a celebrity out West.
With a local carpenter named Joseph Dozier, he built an experimental station on an empty field known as Knob Hill, which had a view over Pikeâs Peak to the west and rolling plains to the east. It was essentially a wooden barn measuring 60 ft by 70 ft (18 m by 21 m). It consisted of one large room with a roof that opened, two small offices at the front and a balcony.
Again intent on keeping the exact nature of his experiments secret, Tesla had the only window that Dozier had provided, boarded up. A fence ringed the station with numerous signs on it saying: KEEP OUT, GREAT DANGER . Above the door was a phrase from Danteâs Inferno said to be the inscription above the entrance to Hell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here .
Â
The Magnifying Transmitter
Colorado Springs was 6,000 ft (1,800 m) above sea level and Tesla planned to tap into the rarefied air 5,000 ft (1,500 m) above the Earth. He soon discovered that the 10 ft (3 m) helium balloons he had bought from Germany could not lift the hundreds of feet of wire, so he devised a telescopic mast that raised a copper ball to a height of 142 ft (43 m). To steady the mast, Tesla built a 25 ft (8 m) tower on the roof of his laboratory.
Under it, he built a âmagnifying transmitterâ, which was essentially a huge Tesla Coil. On top of a 6 ft (1.8 m) wall, he laid two turns of thick cable. This was fed 500 volts
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