WindLift Power

In “The Invention of Everything Else” Samantha Hunt has written a hypnotic novel about invention, love, and Nikola Tesla. My wife brought the book home from the library, and I devoured it last night. It was filed under “romance” which turned out to be strangely appropriate. This novel is a journey into the magic and madness of invention. The wild spell that grabs hold of an inventor and drives them to do the impossible. Ms. Hunt does such a masterful job weaving fact and fantasy, history and fiction, that I woke up today in a totally new reality. It was one of those bright shiny mornings with the sun glistening on the snow, my son discovering a new toy, my wife well rested after sleeping in, and me dreaming about all the possible ways that kite energy could reshape the world in a tribute to Tesla.

The story takes place at the Hotel New Yorker in 1943. By interweaving the life of a curious chambermaid with Nikola Tesla’s epic creations it explores the technological foundations of the “economy” we know today.

I am endlessly fascinated by 19th century inventors, and Tesla is the greatest of them all. He has gone by many honorifics like, “Master of Lightning”, but my favorite is. “The Forgotten Father of Today“. The short list of his inventions include Alternating Current, Tesla Coils, Radio, Radio control, Hydro-electric Power, and Induction motors. Because Tesla wasn’t interested in academics his pioneering work in x-rays, vacuum tubes, logic gates, neon tubes, fluorescent lights, electron microscopy, radio telescopy, particle physics, and resonance are still unappreciated to this day. Tesla also had plans for microwave ovens, radar, automobile ignition systems, and the wireless transmission of electricity. Other inventions such as the bladeless disk turbine engine, and particle beam weapons are only becoming possible today after advances in materials science.

Nikola Tesla has been much abused by history. Thomas Edison is responsible for much of this. The war between Alternating and Direct Current was the first format war. This format war made the Beta/VHS, Windows/Unix, and HDDVD/Blu-ray wars seem like friendly rivalry. Edison pulled out all the stops to convince the world that AC electric was to dangerous, going so far as to invent an AC electrocution device that was used to electrocute stray dogs, cats, and even an elephant. Ironically DC electric may have caused less electrocutions, but the hotter wires are a major fire hazard and caused many more deaths from fire than AC caused from electrocution. In the end the immense cost and safety advantages of AC electric drove Edison out of the power business, but ironically ended up opening up huge new markets for his lightbulbs. It should be noted that Edison didn’t invent lightbulbs, he figured out how to make them last longer.

Edison never forgave Tesla and mounted a campaign to totally discredit Tesla and erase him from history. Tesla’s more radical inventions were easily spun by the media into the rantings of a mad scientist. Radio telescopy became “Tesla talks to Martians”, particle beams became “Tesla’s Death Ray”. The fact that Tesla was a a Serbian immigrant in an era of rampant bigotry against eastern-Europeans probably didn’t help his cause in the popular press either.

His numerous eccentricities, terrible business sense, and complete naivete towards the practical dishonesty of most men ultimately led to his total impoverishment. He also made some key errors in his quest for the wireless transmission of electricity that pulled crucial funding away from more profitable projects. It is true that Tesla was repeatedly lied to and taken advantage of by many of the key business leaders of his day. He famously ripped up a royalty agreement with Westinghouse that would have earned him many millions of dollars, and was later sued by Westinghouse for some generators he was using in a wireless project. Edison promised him $50,000 if Tesla would improve the operations of Edison’s New York grid (saving Edison over $100,000), and when Tesla demanded the money Edison laughed in his face and told him it was an “American Joke”. Experiences like these soured Tesla on “capitalism”, and perhaps led him to place the ideology of “free energy” over the practical impossiblity of his method.

The modern world would be simply inconceivable without Tesla’s radical rethinking of the possibilities of electricity. It is only recently that people have begun to recognize Tesla as the true father of the modern electrical age.

Update: Christian Science Monitor has an excellent review of the book here.