Trechos de Wizard: The Life And Times Of Nikola Tesla (1996), de Marc Seifer.
Within two weeks of the beginning of World War I, Germany's transatlantic cable was severed by the British. The only reasonable alternative for communicating with the outside world was through Telefunken's wireless system. Suddenly, the Tuckerton and Sayville plants became of paramount concern. The Germans obviously wanted to maintain the stations to keep the kaiser abreast of President Woodrow Wilson's intentions, but the British wanted them shut down.
- - -
[...] Wilson prepared a presidential decree "declaring that all radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States of America were [to be] prohibited from transmitting or receiving... messages of an unneutral nature... By virtue of authority vested in me by the Radio Act," the president continued, "one or more of the high powered radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States... shall be taken over by the Government."
Throughout the beginning of the war, [Nikola] Tesla stepped up his legal campaign against Marconi and continued to advise and receive compensation from Telefunken. Since the country was officially neutral (America would not enter the war for another three years), the arrangement was entirely aboveboard. Nevertheless, few people knew about the German-Tesla link, although the inventor made no secret of it to Jack Morgan.
February 19, 1915
Dear Mr. Morgan,
I am expecting to embody in their plant at Sayville some features of my own which will make it practicable to communicate with Berlin by wireless telephone and then royalties will be very considerable. We have already drawn papers.
- - -
The years preceding America's entrance into World War I contained an overwhelming quagmire of litigation involving most countries and virtually every major inventor in the wireless field. At about the time of Tesla's breakup with Hammond, Fritz Lowenstein, who was paying royalties to both men (and to Morgan, through Tesla), began installing wireless apparatus aboard navy ships. Although the equipment was also being used by Hammond to test the guided missiles, this work was classified, and Hammond's patents became immune from litigation.
- - -
On Tesla's fifty-ninth birthday, the Times reported that not only were the Germans dropping bombs over London from zeppelins; they were also "controlling air torpedoes" by means of radiodynamics. Fired from zeppelins, the supposed "German aerial torpedo[es] can theoretically remain in the air three hours, and can be controlled from a distance of two miles... Undoubtedly, this is the secret invention of which we have heard so many whispers that the Germans have held in reserve for the British fleet." Although it seemed as if Tesla's devil automata had come into being, as the wizard had predicted a decade before, Tesla himself announced to the press that "the news of these magic bombs cannot be accepted as true, [though] they reveal just so many startling possibilities."
"Aghast at the pernicious existing regime of the Germans," Tesla accused Germany of being an "unfeeling automaton, a diabolic contrivance for scientific, pitiless, wholesale destruction the like of which was not dreamed of before... Such is the formidable engine Germany has perfected for the protection of her Kultur and conquest of the globe." Predicting the ultimate defeat of the fatherland, the Serb, whose former countrymen were fighting for their own survival against the kaiser, no doubt stopped doing business with von Tirpitz, although he probably continued his relationship with Professor Slaby, who may have been morally opposed to the war.
Tesla's solution to war was twofold, a better defense, through an electronic Star Wars type of shield he was working on, and "the eradication from our hearts of nationalism." If blind patriotism could be replaced with "love of nature and scientific ideal... permanent peace [could] be established."
The period from 1915 to the date of the United States entry into the war, in 1917, was marked by numerous reports of espionage. [...] Shortly after America's entrance into the war, Tesla informed [George H.] Scherff that Lt. Emil Meyers, "who ran the Tuckerton operation... [had been placed] in a Detention Camp in Georgia," suspected of spying.
- - -
With the onset of World War I, the use of wireless became a necessity for organizing troop movements, surveillance, and intercontinental communication. While the country was still neutral, the navy was able to continue their use of the German equipment - until sentiments began to shift irreversibly to the British side.
- - -
In April 1917, the U.S. Navy completed the seizure of all wireless stations, including those of their allies, the British. At the same time, Marconi was in the process of purchasing the Alexanderson alternator, which was, in essence, a refinement of the Tesla oscillator.
- - -
Shortly thereafter, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled to Holland; his country had incurred a debt of $33 billion to the Allies. The new heroes of the age were aeronauts, like Eddie Rickenbacker, hailed as the top ace with twenty-six downed Messerschmitts. Humans were leaping continents the following year, with the British propelling the sturdy Dirigible R-34 from Edinburgh to Roosevelt Field and back to London in seven days. This first-ever round-trip transatlantic airship journey was commanded by Maj. G. H. Scott of the Royal Air Force, complete with his thirty-man crew and Willy Ballantyne, a twenty-three-year-old stowaway. The same year, with Tesla, Thomson, Marconi, and Pickering bickering about Martian signals and lunar plant life, Robert Goddard, military rocket expert and physics professor from Clark University, proposed a seemingly outrageous trajectory for sending a man to the moon. Even Tesla thought the scheme far-fetched, for the known fuels of the day did not have sufficient "explosive power," and even if they did, he doubted that a "rocket... would operate at 459 degrees below zero - the temperature of interplanetary space."
As the war faded, sports figures became the new heroes, the young Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth making the papers after being sold to the Yankees for a whopping $125,000.
Hugo Gernsback tried to put Tesla on the masthead of yet another futuristic Electrical Experimenter spin-off, but his financial offer was, in Tesla's eyes, puny, and he rejected it. Feeling that he had been underpaid for his autobiography, Tesla replied, "I appreciated your unusual intelligence and enterprise, but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more, and then again." Gernsback, however, never wavered in his praise of Tesla and continued to feature Teslaic articles and drawings in his various periodicals.
Mais:
Electrical Age
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIb0I5V2pzWEZQYU0
- - -
[...] Wilson prepared a presidential decree "declaring that all radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States of America were [to be] prohibited from transmitting or receiving... messages of an unneutral nature... By virtue of authority vested in me by the Radio Act," the president continued, "one or more of the high powered radio stations within the jurisdiction of the United States... shall be taken over by the Government."
Throughout the beginning of the war, [Nikola] Tesla stepped up his legal campaign against Marconi and continued to advise and receive compensation from Telefunken. Since the country was officially neutral (America would not enter the war for another three years), the arrangement was entirely aboveboard. Nevertheless, few people knew about the German-Tesla link, although the inventor made no secret of it to Jack Morgan.
February 19, 1915
Dear Mr. Morgan,
I am expecting to embody in their plant at Sayville some features of my own which will make it practicable to communicate with Berlin by wireless telephone and then royalties will be very considerable. We have already drawn papers.
- - -
The years preceding America's entrance into World War I contained an overwhelming quagmire of litigation involving most countries and virtually every major inventor in the wireless field. At about the time of Tesla's breakup with Hammond, Fritz Lowenstein, who was paying royalties to both men (and to Morgan, through Tesla), began installing wireless apparatus aboard navy ships. Although the equipment was also being used by Hammond to test the guided missiles, this work was classified, and Hammond's patents became immune from litigation.
- - -
On Tesla's fifty-ninth birthday, the Times reported that not only were the Germans dropping bombs over London from zeppelins; they were also "controlling air torpedoes" by means of radiodynamics. Fired from zeppelins, the supposed "German aerial torpedo[es] can theoretically remain in the air three hours, and can be controlled from a distance of two miles... Undoubtedly, this is the secret invention of which we have heard so many whispers that the Germans have held in reserve for the British fleet." Although it seemed as if Tesla's devil automata had come into being, as the wizard had predicted a decade before, Tesla himself announced to the press that "the news of these magic bombs cannot be accepted as true, [though] they reveal just so many startling possibilities."
"Aghast at the pernicious existing regime of the Germans," Tesla accused Germany of being an "unfeeling automaton, a diabolic contrivance for scientific, pitiless, wholesale destruction the like of which was not dreamed of before... Such is the formidable engine Germany has perfected for the protection of her Kultur and conquest of the globe." Predicting the ultimate defeat of the fatherland, the Serb, whose former countrymen were fighting for their own survival against the kaiser, no doubt stopped doing business with von Tirpitz, although he probably continued his relationship with Professor Slaby, who may have been morally opposed to the war.
Tesla's solution to war was twofold, a better defense, through an electronic Star Wars type of shield he was working on, and "the eradication from our hearts of nationalism." If blind patriotism could be replaced with "love of nature and scientific ideal... permanent peace [could] be established."
The period from 1915 to the date of the United States entry into the war, in 1917, was marked by numerous reports of espionage. [...] Shortly after America's entrance into the war, Tesla informed [George H.] Scherff that Lt. Emil Meyers, "who ran the Tuckerton operation... [had been placed] in a Detention Camp in Georgia," suspected of spying.
- - -
With the onset of World War I, the use of wireless became a necessity for organizing troop movements, surveillance, and intercontinental communication. While the country was still neutral, the navy was able to continue their use of the German equipment - until sentiments began to shift irreversibly to the British side.
- - -
In April 1917, the U.S. Navy completed the seizure of all wireless stations, including those of their allies, the British. At the same time, Marconi was in the process of purchasing the Alexanderson alternator, which was, in essence, a refinement of the Tesla oscillator.
- - -
Shortly thereafter, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled to Holland; his country had incurred a debt of $33 billion to the Allies. The new heroes of the age were aeronauts, like Eddie Rickenbacker, hailed as the top ace with twenty-six downed Messerschmitts. Humans were leaping continents the following year, with the British propelling the sturdy Dirigible R-34 from Edinburgh to Roosevelt Field and back to London in seven days. This first-ever round-trip transatlantic airship journey was commanded by Maj. G. H. Scott of the Royal Air Force, complete with his thirty-man crew and Willy Ballantyne, a twenty-three-year-old stowaway. The same year, with Tesla, Thomson, Marconi, and Pickering bickering about Martian signals and lunar plant life, Robert Goddard, military rocket expert and physics professor from Clark University, proposed a seemingly outrageous trajectory for sending a man to the moon. Even Tesla thought the scheme far-fetched, for the known fuels of the day did not have sufficient "explosive power," and even if they did, he doubted that a "rocket... would operate at 459 degrees below zero - the temperature of interplanetary space."
As the war faded, sports figures became the new heroes, the young Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth making the papers after being sold to the Yankees for a whopping $125,000.
Hugo Gernsback tried to put Tesla on the masthead of yet another futuristic Electrical Experimenter spin-off, but his financial offer was, in Tesla's eyes, puny, and he rejected it. Feeling that he had been underpaid for his autobiography, Tesla replied, "I appreciated your unusual intelligence and enterprise, but the trouble with you seems to be that you are thinking only of H. Gernsback first of all, once more, and then again." Gernsback, however, never wavered in his praise of Tesla and continued to feature Teslaic articles and drawings in his various periodicals.
Mais:
Electrical Age
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxwrrqPyqsnIb0I5V2pzWEZQYU0
