An article exploring Tesla’s struggle with bureaucracy, frustration with finances, and society’s vindication coming too late for most innovators.

“This letter will never get to you, Mother. I don’t know why I write it to you when you cannot read it…rest in peace Mother and please forgive me for choosing paths that had led me away from you. I cannot even be there for your funeral. I read the telegram that informed me of your death and despise people who weren’t ready to understand two years ago that electricity can be transferred without wires. Now, they have seen it but they won’t use it for centuries to come because someone burned my downtown laboratory to the ground, with all of my formulas and writings in it.”

-Fragment of Tesla’s Last Letter to His Mother

Were it not for the title of this article, could you have guessed that this grieving son writing to his then-deceased mother, was the man behind revolutionary ideas like Alternating Current, Radio, Microwaves, Radar, Computing, Robotics and scores more? It’s easy to think of ‘eccentric geniuses’ as people absorbed in their work to a fault, and there’s ample evidence that Tesla was both – eccentric and genius. His notable eccentricities included – “obsessive compulsive disorder, only inhabiting a hotel room that was divisible by the number three, pigeons, and an aversion to women wearing earrings”. Nevertheless, it’s important not to let the odd traits be the sole markers of his identity. So here’s an attempt to humanize Nikola Tesla.

Tesla’s lasting legacy is Alternating Current (AC) which famously stood against Thomas Alva Edison’s Direct Current (DC) in the Current Wars, which were over the procurement of an electricity transmission contract from companies like General Electric. While people love to pit them against each other as feuding scientists, reality wasn’t as dramatic.

“Tesla’s biggest fans champion him as an isolated aesthete, focused on creating breakthrough inventions like his ideas for wireless electricity. They also portray Thomas Edison as a cutthroat businessman who wasn’t nearly as inventive as Tesla — but was simply better at patenting ideas, relying on truly inventive assistants, and bamboozling the easily impressed media.”

-Tesla vs. Edison, and what the never-ending battle says about us. Vox

Most records show that after Edison lost the Current Wars, they still kept in touch and Edison even attended some of Tesla’s lectures where Tesla made sure that Edison was respected. But there was some truth to Edison’s use of media and if Tesla ever had a rival, it was this instinct to be politically and socially savvy.

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In James Gleick’s Chaos, he talks of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot navigating the ‘politics of science’. What Tesla struggled with was this navigation. It’s tempting to think of Science as a standalone field, churning out rules that govern our lives, in a sequential Experiment-Theorem-Proof, Experiment-Theorem-Proof cycle but that’s not how things worked. Unless you were born into wealth, you had to approach investors and patrons to contribute to your experiments. And if they were investors and not patrons, they expected returns.

In early 1900s, J.P Morgan had invested $150,000 in Tesla’s idea of wireless transmission, impressed with Tesla’s vision. He realized soon that Tesla’s grand idea was far from becoming a commercial reality and withdrew his investment, causing for reclamation of the property so the assets could be monetized. Accounts vary of Morgan’s intention – some claim he was just a businessman making shrewd decisions, others suggest he withheld money out of worry that if everyone had access to electricity, why would anyone want to pay for it, thus masterminding the entire investment to gain control of Tesla’s patents. The correspondence between the two comprise of heartfelt letters on Tesla’s end and terse replies on Morgan’s part.

What I contemplate and what I can certainly accomplish, Mr. Morgan, is not a simple transmission of messages without wires to great distances but it is in the transformation of the entire globe into a sentient being, as it were, which can feel in all its parts and through which thought may be – as through a brain – Tesla to Morgan

 

I have received your letter of 10th. And in reply would say that I should not feel disposed at present to make any further advances – Morgan to Tesla

 

Believe me, that however keen my satisfaction would be in completing this great work, an equal pleasure I would find in telling to the whole world that it is yours more that my own – Tesla to Morgan

 

In reply to your note I regret to say that I should not be willing to advance any further amounts of money as I have already told you. Of course I wish you every success in your undertaking.– Morgan to Tesla

 

I had the same difficulty in convincing the world of the practicability of my invention referred to in the editorial inclosed. The present one is incomparably more important and valuable.– Tesla to Morgan

 

Referring to your letter of 13th October, Mr. J. P. Morgan wishes me to inform you that it will be impossible for him to do anything more in the matter.– Morgan’s Private Secretary to Tesla

It wasn’t helped that during this time, Marconi was using several of Tesla’s own patents to ‘invent’ radio, much to Tesla’s frustration, and Morgan’s indifference. “My enemies have been so successful in portraying me as a poet and a visionary that I must put out something commercial without delay“, recounts Tesla in a letter soon after Marconi filed for the patent for radio.

Tesla’s desperation for commercial success stemmed from the state of his poor finances. It was also an unsatisfactory realization that the brilliance of one’s mind was not sufficient to succeed. There were bureaucratic machines to be greased and egos to be pacified. “Governments here are the same as the ones back home. I have realized now, at the very end, that the mankind depends on governments and the individual cannot change the world on himself”. In between bouts of frustration, when his ideas, truly ahead of their time, found little support in the masses, he was prone to philosophical musings. “I would maybe feel sad before but not anymore because I am now sure that someone is keeping “my” patents under control, that “my” discovery isn’t “mine” at all and finally, that mankind was not ready for it. I know that someone is overseeing everything and has a plan of their own, which is probably why I am indifferent.” It must have taken a lot to carry on with his ideas despite layers of resistance.

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The way we treat Tesla today is indicative of society’s need to vindicate those who shone with a spark so bright that we still bask in their afterglow. But this vindication is retrospective. It is only when we applied what he suggested so long ago that we pause to reflect on his greatness. Tesla wasn’t an unsung hero. By all means, he was respected when he was alive, a fate most innovators don’t get to enjoy. But every time society, governments, and bureaucracy stonewall ideas, people, and innovations, we lose out collectively, not just the brilliance of an individual but also those his genius would’ve touched, like the waves that transpire when you drop a pebble into water.

Tesla is forever immortalized due to his contributions to Science. But I want to ensure that the lasting thought you take away of him is not that. So I leave you with a poem he wrote for a dinner with friends, a satirical take on the ever-changing nature of Science, of novel ideas steamrolling older ones, of established laws giving way to newly discovered truths. Here is ‘Fragments of Olympian Gossip’.

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Note : The accuracy of Nikola`s last letter hasn’t been verified and is said to be directly translated from Serbian.

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PS. I am planning to make this a series of articles about people/things/events that were part of our syllabi in school but left out some really interesting stuff about them. If you have recommendations, please share them in the Comments below.

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Sources

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/7/21/8951761/tesla-edison

[2] https://www.aaas.org/brilliant-and-tortured-world-nikola-tesla

[3] http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_poevis.html

[4] https://www.telegraf.rs/english/1470330-the-last-teslas-letter-to-his-mother-please-mother-pray-for-me-over-there

[5]https://steemit.com/tesla/@mage00000/n-tesla-vs-j-p-morgan

[6] Detailed correspondence between Tesla and JP Morgan