RICHARD MUNSON: Nikola Tesla.
He is getting a bit
of a popular revival.
In part, as we were
mentioning, it's
because your boss, not long
ago, referred to him as a hero.
Everybody's
thinking, oh my gosh,
if Larry Page
thinks he's a hero,
maybe we need to learn
a little bit more.
And then suddenly
Elon Musk decides
that he's got a car
company and a car that's
named after this character.
So who the heck is he?
There are sort of
two broad categories,
of at least those
folks that sort of know
something about him, at
least my experience is.
One says that he's
this Superman that
has provided us these
amazing inventions that
underlie our economy.
The other side says that
he's kind of quirky,
like he's an odd character.
I mean, he abhors jewelry.
He gets a fever if
he looks at a peach.
He counts his steps as he walks.
And if they're not
divisible by 3,
he has to go back and do
his whole journey again.
So that you've got
this sort of contrast.
But I guess what I want to do,
for you know, maybe about 20,
25 minutes or so, is talk a
bit about some observations
that I came up with in the
course of doing the research--
things that sort of surprised
me that may surprise you,
hopefully.
And then I'd welcome, actually,
just having a dialogue.
Answering some
questions about what
you want to know, or know about
this remarkable individual.
So let me start with just--
my first observation is, I
was unaware of the extent
of his genius.
This man got 300 patents.
He invented the electric motor.
He invented the long distance
electricity transmission.
According to the United
States Supreme Court,
he provided us the
basics of radio.
He did remote control,
he did robots.
I mean, the list goes on.
According to the
American Institute
of Electrical Engineers, were
we to seize and eliminate
from our industrial world the
result of Mr. Tesla's work,
the wheels of industry
would cease to turn.
Our towns would be dark.
And that's not all.
Long after his death, his
visions inspired great minds.
I mean, he foresaw cell
phones radar, laser weapons,
artificial intelligence,
vertical lift airplanes.
Cell phones for instance, this
guy is-- about 110 years ago--
he's talking about
a device that can
provide news, and stock prices,
and all sorts of information.
And he said, "We shall see and
hear one another as perfectly
as though we were face to face,
despite intervening distances
of thousands of miles.
A man will be able to carry
one in his vest pocket."
110 years ago.
He didn't invent it.
But he sort of thought about it.
That envisioning is, I
think, quite amazing.
He does come across as
a bit of a magician.
He would do presentations
at various universities.
And he would admit that
electricity is this force
that even physicists will
admit, they don't fully
understand what it is.
But he was-- and
others as well--
were able to capture
it and utilize it.
And in fact, last century,
you asked engineers
as to what was the
major accomplishment
of the 20th century, they
ignored the internal combustion
engine, the computer chip, all
these other sort of things.
They said the most amazing
thing was the ability
to capture and transmit
electric power.
And this man, this
magician, was one of those.
He created lightning.
This was something that had
been reserved only for nature.
But he zapped it
all over the place.
You know, hundreds
and hundreds of feet.
He also made lamps glow.
They were not attached to wires.
So this man was, in
fact, a magician.
But you should also
recognize that he
had some quixotic notions
that complicated his legacy,
or made him more
interesting, depending
upon your perspective.
He spent a lot of time
trying to figure out
how to communicate
with intelligent beings
on other planets.
He spent a lot of time
trying to figure out
how to read your mind by
putting little monitors
near your retina.
So he was both practical, as far
as coming up with, if you will,
systems.
He was a visionary, in
thinking about new things
that he couldn't actually
make, because the equipment
or technology just wasn't there.
And he was also a little
weird and off sometimes.
And I think it's
that combination that
makes him so interesting.
The second surprise for me--
as was noted, I'm
an environmentalist.
I run the Midwest office of
the Environmental Defense Fund,
working on clean energy issues.
And so for me to find out that
Nikola Tesla, not only did
he invent the electric
motor, but he also
was a clean energy pioneer.
That to me was pretty exciting.
And he remains an
inspiration, I think,
to a variety of solar and
battery manufacturers.
Elon Musk-- who we
mentioned before-- has
his car and his company
named after him.
But he contributed
a million dollars
to revitalize the Tesla
laboratory up on Long Island.
I actually work in a
shared office space.
It's sort of a
startup incubator.
And there is, right--
10 feet behind my desk
there is a full sized
cut out of Nikola Tesla that--
at least, I used
to tell my wife--
was haunting me from behind
to go home and write more.
But he is-- his
leadership on clean energy
began actually, in 1900,
about 118 years ago.
He published an article
in "The Century"
which then was the nation's
largest circulation periodical.
It was entitled "The
Problem of Increasing
Human Energy With
Special References
to the Harnessing of
the Sun's Energy."
Again, published 118 years ago.
Was probably the earliest,
most detailed look
at how to capture power
from the sun and the wind.
For me, as a
environmental advocate,
he inspires me to think
of, if he was here today,
how great it would be to focus
on the electricity industry,
which he helped start.
But today, largely because it
is monopolized-- in other words,
the electric utilities
have total control
in many states over
both the generation
and the delivery
of electricity--
this industry has become
innovation averse,
has become risk averse,
it has become stodgy,
it has become frayed,
the list goes on.
If, in fact, Tesla was around,
he'd be off thinking about,
how am I going to
send power wirelessly?
How am I going to make it
without having pollution?
How am I going to electrify
other sectors of the economy,
particularly transportation?
How am I going to
bring drudgery saving
electric power to
everyone around the world,
perhaps for free?
Including that we have two
billion people on this planet
that do not have access to
electricity at this moment.
He-- in my mind--
if he were with us today, would
be thinking outside of the box,
away from sort of
the monopoly think
that currently
degrades that industry.
My third surprise was his
constant attempt and need
to balance the present
and the future.
Call it apocryphal, call it
weird, call it appropriate,
but he was born during a
giant lightning storm, exactly
at the stroke of midnight,
between the 9th and 10th
of July 1856.
That's weird enough.
Just in the midst of a gale.
And this became
part of Tesla lore.
You know, his family
sort of thought this was,
you know, this was
how Nikola came in.
And he, I think, thought
he was kind of special,
because he had this trait that
he was born at this weird time.
For me as a biographer, I
was able to get the sense
that in fact, the birth
story sort of figuratively
placed him in the
present as well
as in the future, both
today and tomorrow.
And I think he spent
his life trying
to struggle to find this
balance between focusing
on current realities
and envisioning
the future, the unknown.
And consider, for
example, the year 1897.
He had just figured out how
to transmit the enormous power
from Niagara Falls 26 miles
all the way to Buffalo,
and then a total of 400
miles down to New York City.
This is huge.
Because the technology
that Thomas Edison--
who everybody looks
towards of thinking he
was the electrical genius.
He, however, favored
direct current,
which could basically move
maybe half a mile, maybe a mile
if you're lucky.
Tesla was able to move
this power 400 miles.
The "New York Times" referred
to this Niagara project
as the unrivaled engineering
triumph of the 19th century.
And who did the
paper give credit to?
They said, "To Tesla belongs
the undisputed honor of being
the man whose work made this
Niagara project possible."
And of course there are statues
to him on both sides, Canadian
and the United States.
He did this amazing thing.
He was praised by "The Times,"
and at parties, et cetera.
And he was bored.
This was too much today.
He had done this.
He needed to look
towards the future
to create a new area of science.
And he called this
[? tellemetonics, ?] or what we
might call robotics.
His initial project was a
radio controlled model boat,
measured about--
oh, I don't know--
4 feet in length and
maybe about 3 feet high.
And he-- although he was
a rather shy scientist,
he was capable of being
a showman if he had to.
And so, he had the debut
of this [? tellemeton ?]
at the Madison Square Garden--
huge arena.
This is the old one,
but this is where
it happened-- during the
electrical exposition
in May 1898.
Remember, this was
about two months
after the Battleship Maine
had blown up in Havana Harbor.
We were in the midst,
just the beginning
of the Spanish-American war.
So there was a lot of interest
in trying to figure out,
can we develop new weapons?
And so here comes Tesla.
He has this model boat.
He builds a pond in the
middle of the exhibition hall.
And he invites possible
investors, reporters,
other inventors and scientists,
and he tantalized them
for 15 or 20 minutes.
He moved the boat backwards
and forwards, around the pond,
he made it dance almost
like a water bug.
And so, everybody was
mesmerized by this.
You know, some
people were thinking,
there's a tiny monkey in there.
I'm sure there's a
tiny monkey in there.
But then, after a while, he
then turns to the audience
and says, all right, who wants
to ask the boat a question?
And everybody's thinking, you
don't ask boats questions.
Some probably
future Google person
came up and said, all right,
what's the cube root of 64?
And Tesla, you
know, with his hand
hidden on a lever
underneath the panel
arranges to flick the lights
on the boat four times.
And he said, he
created a sensation,
"such as no other invention
of mine has ever produced."
His success at this
was further highlighted
by Marconi's failure.
Remember, Marconi
is the one who's
given public credit for
wireless transmissions.
But about three
months later, Marconi
tried to do a very
similar project.
Built his own pond,
he built a model
frigate that he was to guide
over to what was referred
to as the Spanish boat.
And it would have
little bombs on it,
would blow the tiny little
Spanish boat to smithereens.
Unfortunately, Marconi
had not mastered
how to send
individualized messages.
So when his assistant
punched the button,
the Spanish ship was just fine.
But there was a loud explosion
in the back room where Marconi
had kept his miniature bombs.
Because that's where
the signal went.
He hadn't figured out how
to get it to the right spot.
And so, there were
loud blasts and smoke
that went throughout
the exhibition hall.
Not surprisingly,
Tesla was never
satisfied with
just a model boat.
And to the Navy, was
not satisfied to suggest
this was a submarine
that would carry
bombs to blow up a frigate.
That was kind of boring.
You know, they're thinking,
it's the Spanish-American war,
this is great.
But he thinks this is a new
non-biological form of life.
This is a machine that is
embodied with a borrowed mind.
This mind, of course,
happens to be his.
But he's foreseeing
artificial intelligence,
and he's predicting that this
[? tellemeton ?] not only would
quote, "follow a course laid
out or obey commands given far
in advance, but it will be
capable of distinguishing
between what it ought and
what not ought to do."
This is, again, over
100 some odd years ago.
We were beginning to
think, in his mind,
about artificial intelligence.
My fourth surprise, actually,
as I was telling Richard,
resulted from the discovery
at the Library of Congress
of boxes of letters that either
Tesla had written or had been
written to him by
friends, or colleagues,
[? et ?] [? cetera. ?] From
a biographer's perspective,
this is like manna from heaven.
You know, suddenly
you get to see
this man's voice in real time.
What those letters showed, I
think, was an overlooked side
to this remarkable genius.
As I mentioned at
the beginning, you've
got this school of people who
think that he was a Superman.
In fact, one
biographer called him
a supernova in the
galaxy of the human race.
And no doubt the combination
of electric motors, robots,
remote control, radio, these
are all super accomplishments.
I'm not taking anything
away from that.
But this scientist
was also human.
And charmingly so.
And that was the fun part to
sort of get behind and tell
that story.
His closest friends were
the Johnsons, Robert--
who edited the
"Century Magazine,"
which I mentioned before
was the largest circulation
periodical--
and his wife, Catherine.
They operate in an
intellectual salon
at their townhouse in
Manhattan's Murray Hill
neighborhood.
They were not particularly
rich, but they sort of
acted that way.
And they gathered around them
this cadre of writers, artists,
and sculptors, and
would have them
over for all these great
dinner conversations.
Mark Twain came
to most of these.
And he and Nikola Tesla
became great friends.
This is Mr. Twain, and Tesla
there is in the background.
So he would come to
Tesla's laboratory.
And the two of them
would just play.
They'd send electrical
sparks across the room.
They'd hold up globes that
were unconnected to wires
and make them glow.
They would X-ray
each other's hands.
They were two kids having a
great time in their laboratory.
They just happened to be the
engineering genius of the time,
and perhaps the best
writer at our time.
One cute story about this
is that when they first met,
Tesla recalled that when
he was 14 years old,
he had been quite sick.
And his parents had given
him some Mark Twain novels.
And at least,
according to Tesla,
he told Mark Twain this, that
you saved my life, because I
got through this sickness.
And then Tesla said--
commented upon Twain-- he said,
this great man of laughter
broke out into tears.
I just thought that was so cute.
So the two of them were a pair.
But I think this
relationship that Tesla
had with both Robert
and Catherine reveals
sort of a jovial
and relaxed side
to this usually
intense inventor.
They exchanged
almost daily notes.
They were talking
about their health,
the writings of
other scientists,
Tesla's latest inventions,
the state of the Johnson kids.
Just to give you one
sense of one letter, when
Tesla had had a cold
for a little while,
Robert wrote to him.
And he said, "It's been a
whole week since we saw you,
and you need cheering up.
Come as early as
possible and get cheered.
We're in a jolly mood, and the
fire is lighted on the hearth,
and we only need you."
So here is this unbelievably
intense inventor
who really loved to
spend most of his time
by himself in his lab.
He was human.
Charmingly so, would
be my observation.
He never married.
He did fall in love once, with
a woman that I never found out
her last name, is Anna.
Supposedly beautiful eyes.
And the two of them,
when he was 23 years old,
they would walk
through Austrian parks,
and plan how they were
going to have a big family,
and he was going to go
off to engineering school.
That did not happen.
He went off to
engineering school,
the relationship did not pursue.
But he later would
admit that inventors
are not to be intimate.
That was sort of his conclusion.
He said, you know, you can be a
musician, you can be an artist.
You can be all these
sorts of things.
But if you're an inventor,
you're too intense.
And if you become
married, that will
take away from the intensity
and focus that you need to have.
And there was one sad note
near the end of his life.
And he says, yeah,
that may be true,
but it also makes us lonely.
So this very human
scientist, I think also
give us lessons about the
role and the example of being
a discoverer and an inventor.
He reveled most in the
excitement of discovery.
I just have a few
pictures of him
sort of going through his life.
He would say, "I do not think
there is any thrill that
can go through the human heart
like that felt by the inventor
as he sees some creation of
the brain unfolding to success.
Such emotions make a man forget
food, sleep, friends, love,
everything."
So where did this come from?
Where did this inventing
spirit come from?
Some has to be just
innate, the guy was bright.
I mean, he could speak
eight languages fluently.
He could recite lengthy poems
and stories just from memory.
He also had a father who was
a Serbian Orthodox priest who
gave him mental exercises.
He had to remember
sequences of numbers.
He had to recite long stories.
And the list goes on.
He also was a little strange.
This man who was born during a
midnight lightning storm, when
he was young, used to have
strobing light flashes
in his brain that led him
to admit that sometimes he
couldn't tell the difference
between reality and something
that was fake.
It also sort of
led him to go off
on journeys, mental journeys.
So he had daytime
and nighttime sort
of dreams where he would travel
around the world to new lands,
meet new people, who were
almost real friends to him.
So where did it come from?
Exercise, natural
brilliance, and a little bit
of strangeness, I think.
But that's probably
true of all of us.
Not that yours
truly is any genius,
but it is that combination.
He however, had a particular
type of invention, that I think
is somewhat missing today.
And that's unfortunate.
His was a curiosity driven
quest for discovery,
or for invention.
And it was motivated
by idealism.
And this is in contrast to
Thomas Edison, who basically
invented because he
was an entrepreneur
and he wanted to make money.
And nothing wrong with that.
But Tesla, although he certainly
enjoyed his fancy dinners
at the Delmonicos, and
he had a nice apartment
at the Waldorf Astoria.
But he said that technology
transcended the marketplace.
That invention should not
just be tied to profits.
He wrote, "the desire
that guides me in all I do
is the desire to harness
the forces of nature
to the service of mankind."
So what does this
teach us, if you will,
about his inventing style
that we might utilize today?
One observation-- two.
One is that, he
firmly demonstrated
the link between a
love of humanities
and the love of science.
He loved poetry, would
recite it at length,
was deeply into, as I
said, foreign languages
and foreign
literature, et cetera.
And to give you an
example, he envisioned
his revolutionary
electric motor--
the thing that made the
electricity industry possible--
he envisioned it while walking
through a Budapest park quoting
Goethe's "Faust."
And then he picked up a stick
and drew a little design of it
in the sand.
It's this mix of
humanities and science
that I think we are
somewhat missing today.
We separate them
more than, I guess,
Tesla would argue is necessary.
The other observation,
sort of my final one,
is that he would observe--
I think-- that we
have moved too far
away from the individualization
of the inventor
or the discoverer.
We now do things with teams.
And this is not a
knock at all on teams.
But a lot of inventing--
as you probably know--
you have your own
teams here, there
are teams at universities,
research centers,
corporate laboratories,
et cetera.
And they work marvelously.
But what's missing,
he would argue,
is that sometimes you just need
the isolated individual who's
free enough to go out there
and be stupid and alone.
That's not to say--
he needed to balance,
again, this envisioning,
individualized inventing,
with some reality.
And he did that largely
because he had--
at least for a brief
period of his life--
a lawyer who kept him in check.
And he needed that.
And it's not like you just have
some individual wacko out there
just thinking about the future.
You do need a team, if you will.
But he would argue you
don't need as big of teams
as we currently mostly focus on.
I don't know if that's true.
I'd welcome your
insights on that one.
But that would be my guess of
what he would come at this.
My final comment is that I think
he aimed high, perhaps higher
than any other inventor.
Just a few more shots of him.
He worked tirelessly to
bring electric power freely
to the world.
And he built robots
that he thought
would reduce life's drudgery.
He was, in short,
driven by inner forces
that made shear creation
the most important thing
in his life.
And we are the better for it.
Thank you very much.
I hope you enjoy reading
about this mastermind.
And I also hope that
you help give him
more of the due recognition
that at least I, and your boss,
thinks that he deserves.
So I'm happy to take
a few questions.
There are books that are
available for the people that
are here.
But I'd welcome some
questions and some dialogue.
What do you want to know?
Or what do you know?
AUDIENCE: I'll
start off with one.
RICHARD MUNSON: Oh good.
AUDIENCE: So, how did he end up?
What's the end of the story?
RICHARD MUNSON: He
ended up poor and alone.
And lived his final
days sort of isolated
in the Hotel New Yorker,
where he refused to see anyone
and would restrict the maids and
others from actually spending
much time with him, and just
sort of shoving his gruel
to him.
And the only reason that he
even had enough money at the end
was because some scientists at
the Westinghouse Corporation--
which he essentially
made possible
because he formed this
partnership with George
Westinghouse to do the
Niagara Falls project.
And so Westinghouse bought,
initially, his patents
for his electric motor.
But at the end, it was a few
scientists at the Westinghouse
Corporation that convinced
the corporation that it
was an embarrassment
to their company
that he had just
declared bankruptcy,
and they needed to give
him enough of a stipend
so that at least
he could survive.
Now that said, he died--
I forget the room number
in the Hotel New Yorker,
but it was divisible by--
AUDIENCE: Three.
RICHARD MUNSON: Very good.
And more than 2,000 people then
attended his funeral service
at the Cathedral St. John
the Divine in New York City,
out by Columbia University.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so
much for coming today.
It's really nice to see someone
speak without a teleprompter
here at Google.
RICHARD MUNSON: Oh, really?
OK.
AUDIENCE: Most people use it.
But it's nice when it's natural.
So my question is, you
know, you told this story
about when he was born.
How much do you think
someone's success
is based on what
they believe they
can do throughout their life
versus their natural born
intelligence?
RICHARD MUNSON: Well this
is a tough one for Nikola.
And this is probably a longer
answer than you wanted.
But his life, his early life up
until he was about seven years
old, was blissful.
He had two older sisters that
doted on him, lived on a farm,
having a great time.
But when he was seven years
old, his older brother Dane,
who was then I think 12 or
13, and he was Nikola's idol.
And was the family favorite,
was considered gifted
beyond all means.
And he would follow his
father into the priesthood.
Unfortunately, the
family's white stallion
bolted and threw his
brother to the ground,
and he died that night
from his injuries.
And Nikola there witnessed this.
So this was a real
changing event in his life.
Where this comes
back to your comment
is that, you would
think his parents
would then say, oh, we've
got our remaining son,
let's focus on him.
But no.
His mom and dad are thinking,
oh, if only Dane had lived,
he would have been great.
Think of the amazing
accomplishments
that he would have had.
So Nikola claims that he
grew up without any sense
of confidence.
Because anything he did
that was noteworthy,
his parents would think oh,
Dane might have done it better.
So he had this constant struggle
to find his father's affection.
And it never came.
In fact, he-- this is far more
than your question wanted.
But I mean, he ended up
finally getting his father
to allow him to go to
engineering school.
And he did it for two years
and got stellar marks.
But whenever he
got stellar marks,
his father was still, oh,
Dane could have been better.
And so he drops out of school.
Nikola Tesla drops
out of school,
takes up gambling and
billiards, moves secretly
to a town like 200 miles away,
gets arrested for vagrancy,
and is brought back by
the police to his parents.
You can imagine, they're
not exactly happy.
And I'm not suggesting this
is the model for any Google
tenure.
And his father died not long
after that just from the shock.
So I don't know that--
I mean, he's not an
example of someone
who was told all your
life, you are the greatest.
He was told that he
was not the greatest.
And yet he persevered.
And in part he persevered
in response to his father,
trying to get his
father's attention.
And he said that he went through
these strobing intense light
dreams that he had were
in part sort of a response
to this father figure.
But no, he did not grow
up with confidence.
It was actually
quite the opposite.
AUDIENCE: Tesla, as
we're discussing,
is a bit of a cult
figure in odd ways
and actually turns up
in popular culture.
He shows up in some movies in
somewhat ahistorical fashion.
What's your take on that?
RICHARD MUNSON: The
thing that amazes me,
is that as I wrote
this book, my publicist
posted a small excerpt of
it on a Nikola Tesla club.
I think it was based in Chicago.
And then suddenly the
Nikola Tesla club in Toronto
picked it up.
And then there was a Nikola
Tesla club in Minneapolis.
There are hundreds
of these things.
And they're fervent
followers of the man.
And so the dialogue that
goes back and forth on
whether what I wrote was halfway
true, or their new theory
of some conspiracy that was
associated with his final days.
And whether he in fact did
do a death beam and the CIA
has squashed it.
So yes, he has a cult following.
In the movie, I mean,
the perfect person
played him in one
movie, David Bowie.
Is that not great?
I mean, David Bowie
and Nikola Tesla.
And yes, they were not exactly
accurate in their depictions.
They had this one scene
where Tesla's one dream was
that he was going
to send electricity
into the earth, a burst of the
lightning, artificial lightning
if you will, into the
earth and take advantage
of what he felt was the Earth's
natural electrical charge.
And also take advantage of
resonance, or an echo of force.
So that he could have charge
go throughout the planet
and people could basically
plug something into the earth
and have free
power, essentially.
Well in this movie.
It's really quite great.
I mean, the stars are out there,
they're screwing light bulbs,
like hundreds of them
across this field.
That did not happen.
But he does have,
indeed, a cult following.
And I think it's fair.
I think it's in part--
he hasn't received the
recognition that, say,
Edison or Marconi have.
And this is not any knock
on those great inventors.
But the "New York
Times" in their obituary
basically said that it was Tesla
who was the inventor of radio.
And it was Tesla who brought
us the electric motor
and electricity transmission.
And I don't think most people
recognize that and give him
his due.
So if that necessitates also
having kind of the weirdness
involved, OK.
What other questions?
AUDIENCE: Anything else?
RICHARD MUNSON: Yeah, please.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So I was really curious about
you saying that he died poor
and he's like this
great inventor.
And I wanted to know what you--
I mean, what did
he feel about being
rewarded, at least monetarily,
for this passion that he had?
And also, yourself as a
writer, and writers in general
also, being such hard workers
and not being [? venerated. ?]
I think--
RICHARD MUNSON: Boy,
is that the truth.
You know, I'm not exactly
answering your question,
but let me try an angle and
you can tell me if I get there.
He actually could have
been amazingly wealthy.
I mean, when he sold
his electric motor
patents to George Westinghouse,
he was living high on the hog.
As I said, he was
eating his meals
at Delmonico's every
night, filet mignon.
He lived in a large apartment
at the Waldorf Astoria, probably
the best hotel then
in New York City.
He got tons of money.
But Westinghouse, in large
part because JP Morgan--
the banker who was not exactly
a nice man, he wasn't--
tried to squeeze out George
Westinghouse not long
after the Niagara project.
Which is, you know, they
obviously spent a lot of money
to make this happen.
And so they were a
little cash short.
And the economy sort of
just does its cycles.
And this was in
one of the cycles.
So Westinghouse was
in not great shape.
And JP Morgan basically
tried to squeeze him out.
And said, you know, you
either cut expenses immensely,
or you give your
company to me, and I'll
create the total
electricity trust, just
like what he did with
the steel industry.
So Westinghouse goes to Tesla
and says, I'm in a real jam
here.
You know, I'm about
to lose my company.
And you have this royalty,
$2.50 per horsepower of motor.
I can't afford it.
Tesla is sitting there,
he has all the cards.
He has the patent.
He has the contract.
And he's not a really
good businessman.
So he turns to
George Westinghouse
and says, oh, you've
been nice to me.
You're the one who will bring
my electric motor to the world.
I'm willing to tear
up my contract.
He tore up a billion
dollars of money
that would have come his way.
Simply, number one,
I don't think he
was a great business man.
He certainly was a
horrible negotiator.
But because he was an idealist.
Here was a man who was going
to bring his invention, which
he thought was the greatest
thing in the world.
And I'm not [INAUDIBLE]
argue with that.
And for that, he was
willing to sacrifice
an amazing amount of wealth.
I'm not sure if that
answered your question,
but I like that story better.
AUDIENCE: Where was the lawyer?
RICHARD MUNSON: The lawyer
had died about a year before.
AUDIENCE: Aw.
RICHARD MUNSON: I know.
This is when you need a lawyer.
There are so many times you
don't, but this time you did.
What other questions?
Yes please.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Thanks very much.
I was wondering if you ran
into any associations of Tesla
with the Boston area at
all during your research?
There is a Tesla Ave in
Medford over by Tops.
And I've heard stories that
he used to live over there.
RICHARD MUNSON: I don't
know that he lived here.
There is a very
interesting MIT connection,
which I probably shouldn't say.
So in his later years,
when he was, to be honest,
a little bit senile, but
also had flashes of genius,
he would have birthday
parties for himself.
And he would invite reporters.
And really, 50 of the major
reporters from the "New York
Times," the "New York
Herald," "Time Magazine,"
all these people would
come and sit at his feet
for like five hours as the
great man would ramble on.
90% of the time about
gibberish, and 10%
of the time about something,
oh my god, you know?
So one of his visions during
these birthday parties
was a death beam.
Something like Star Wars
that could zap battleships
and airplanes out of the air.
All right, we're talking
in the early 1940s,
at a time when we're
about to go to war.
And the thought of Nikola Tesla
dying and he had the designs--
possibly-- for a
death beam did not
make the Federal
Bureau of Investigation
all that excited about allowing
his papers to go anywhere
in the world.
So they hired an MIT physicist
and assembled all of his papers
together, which
were in huge boxes.
And he spent at least a week,
if not a couple of weeks,
being overseen by Naval
intelligence and federal FBI
agents as he went
through the documents.
And there was one
that he actually
put the top secret clearance
on, because it was, in his mind,
close enough to being practical
that it needed to be considered
to be top secret.
The rest of it, he says,
basically the ramblings
of an old man.
And I say that feeling old.
But here's the
critical question.
Does anybody know
who the MIT professor
was that they hired to do this?
John Trump.
John Trump was a
member of the National
Academy of Engineering.
He won the National
Academy of Sciences award.
He also happens to be the
uncle of the 45th President
of the United States.
How's that?
And in fact, when the current
president of the United States
was running for office, he
would refer to his uncle
as somebody really bright.
Notice that I have a lot of
smart genes, I'm really bright.
And it's because that's
my only sort of Boston
connection through MIT
was through Mr. Trump.
What other questions?
AUDIENCE: So what brought
them from Austria to the US?
RICHARD MUNSON:
He came because he
had been installing Edison phone
systems in Budapest and Paris.
To be honest, he had been
spending most of his time
thinking about electricity.
And in the Budapest park,
envisioned the engine.
But he had done such a great job
that his supervisors sent him
to New York to actually work
with Thomas Edison himself.
And they sent him
with, probably,
the greatest letter
of recommendation
that's ever been written.
They said to Thomas Edison,
this letter to Thomas Edison,
I know of two great men.
You are one of them and
this young man is the other.
So they worked
together, actually.
But I mean, they were totally
different temperaments.
I mean, Edison was frumpy.
He was crass.
I mean, he was a genius.
I'm not-- you know,
there's no knocking him.
He just sort of was.
Tesla was this immaculately
refined cosmopolitan
that spoke eight languages, knew
literature fluently, and looked
like he dressed like he was
ready to go to the opera
during the day.
So the two of them just--
they were different
sort of characters.
And they argued vehemently
about how to transmit power.
I mean, Edison wanted to do
it through direct current
because he thought it
was, number one, his.
And safer was his
biggest argument.
And Tesla was far more
interested in trying
to send it long distances
so that more people
could take advantage of it.
And in fact-- this is
more than your question
was-- but they split
because Edison refused
to provide the promised
bonus if Tesla would increase
the efficiency of one of
the dynamos, or generators.
And Tesla had worked
like three months
to triple the output
of this thing.
Then he goes to the Wizard
of Menlo Park, who he still
idolized at this time,
and Edison basically
just mocked him.
And said, oh come
on, that was a joke.
And then, to this
young immigrant
who is still a little sensitive
about being in the United
States, he says, you're
such an immigrant.
If you were only
an American, you'd
appreciate an American joke.
[? Edison ?] of
course, did not laugh.
He put on his bowler
hat, appropriately so,
and walked out and quit his job.
And started his own company.
So that's how he got
to United States.
AUDIENCE: All right,
thank you very much again.
It was wonderful.
RICHARD MUNSON: Thank you.
I appreciate you guys having me.
And I hope you enjoy the book.
[APPLAUSE]
