Radio and Wardenclyffe
|
Tesla returned to New York City in January 1900, confident that he could build a system to wirelessly transmit energy. He published a sensational article for Century Magazine detailing plans that seemed like science fiction to most Americans. The article caught the eye of J.P. Morgan, a powerful Wall Street financier. He offered Tesla $150,000 to build a tower capable of cross-Atlantic communication. Tesla agreed, but secretly planned for the tower to transmit wireless energy instead. |
Tesla began construction of the tower in 1901 on Long Island, NY at a site called Wardenclyffe.1
 Guglielmo Marconi |
Meanwhile, an Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi was getting closer to transmitting the world’s first cross-Atlantic radio signal. Tesla had filed his own basic patents for the radio in 1897. On December 12, 1901 Marconi transmitted and received credit for the first cross-Atlantic radio transmission.2 |
Otis Pond, an engineer then working for Tesla, said, "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you." Tesla replied, "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."
The unfinished tower at Wardenclyffe - 187 feet tall
As lack of funds stalled progress at Wardenclyffe, J.P. Morgan decided to withdraw his support.
“Dear Sir:
I have received your letter…and in reply would say that I should not feel disposed at present to make any further advances.
Yours truly, J. Pierpont Morgan” –July 14, 19033
Mr. Morgan chose to invest in Marconi’s company instead. Unable to secure further funding, Tesla was forced to abandon the project in 1905. Newspapers called it “Tesla’s million dollar folly.” 4
Tesla suffered a complete nervous breakdown that year that marked the beginning of his decline.5
“It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! ...Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discover's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”
-Nikola Tesla
