Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: to bling the Druk reboarding and I'm fared out, and
Speaker 1: we're picking back up here again with our discussion of
Speaker 1: one of our most requested subjects, Nicola Tesla, an engineer
Speaker 1: and an inventor. Tesla's perhaps best known for creating a
Speaker 1: system for delivering electricity using alternating current, a method that
Speaker 1: is still used today. And we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about the difference between alternating current and direct current and
Speaker 1: their advantages and disadvantages in part one of this podcast.
Speaker 1: And Tesla's preferred alternating current was capable of distributing electricity
Speaker 1: across greater distances than direct current, and he believed that
Speaker 1: it had the potential to be used for more than
Speaker 1: just lighting. But he had some trouble getting support, both
Speaker 1: financial and otherwise for his ideas, at least at first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in the last episode we talked about how
Speaker 1: he came to America, how he approached Edison, armed with
Speaker 1: a recommendation letter from his old boss, Charles Bachelor. The
Speaker 1: letter just said, quote, my dear Edison, I know two
Speaker 1: great men, and you are one of them. The other
Speaker 1: is this young man. It's a pretty great recommendation. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though Edison, who was a firm believer that direct
Speaker 1: current was not the way to go, shot Tesla down
Speaker 1: on his alternating current ideas on that front, he must
Speaker 1: have agreed with Bachelor's assessment to some degree because he
Speaker 1: did hire Tesla to work for his power company when
Speaker 1: we left off with the story, though Tesla had quit
Speaker 1: working for Edison after just a few months because of
Speaker 1: their personal differences and a little disagreement over money. Tesla
Speaker 1: wanted to strike out on his own at this point
Speaker 1: and develop his own ideas, but when we saw him last,
Speaker 1: his first attempt to do so hadn't worked out so well,
Speaker 1: and he was stuck doing manual labor to survive. So
Speaker 1: Tesla may have been down in the dumps, but he
Speaker 1: stuck fast to his ideas about alternating current and kept
Speaker 1: on trying to get financial backing to make them a reality,
Speaker 1: And in eighteen eighty seven he did manage to attract
Speaker 1: the attention of two investors, Alfred Brown of the Western
Speaker 1: Union Company and Charles Peck, who was an attorney. But
Speaker 1: according to that American Heritage article by Bernard Carlson that
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the Laugh podcast. All Tesla had to
Speaker 1: show them initially was this really crude version of the
Speaker 1: motor he had designed back when he was in Europe,
Speaker 1: and it was basically a shoe polished him that would
Speaker 1: spin around in a big donut shaped coil. So Brown impact,
Speaker 1: they come and look at this creation of of Tesla's
Speaker 1: and they were kind of skeptical of the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to make believers of them, Tesla devised a little
Speaker 1: electrical spectacle which was based on an old legend about
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus. So, as the story goes, Columbus scott Queen
Speaker 1: Isabella to finance his journey by challenging members of her
Speaker 1: court to balance an egg on one end, And of
Speaker 1: course several people tried and they couldn't do it. So
Speaker 1: then Columbus up and he made the egg stand up
Speaker 1: by gently cracking the shell on one end. Queen Isabella
Speaker 1: was so impressed by his resourceful solution that she gave
Speaker 1: him the funds that he needed. So Tesla asked Brown
Speaker 1: and Peck, who knew of this legend, He said, if
Speaker 1: I can make an egg stand on end without cracking
Speaker 1: the shell will you support these experiments again? According to
Speaker 1: Carlson's article, Peck basically said, yeah, we might. We might
Speaker 1: help you to some extent. We might help you a
Speaker 1: little bit if that were to happen. So Tesla came
Speaker 1: back with a copper plated egg and his donut coil
Speaker 1: attached to the underside of a wooden table. When Tesla
Speaker 1: applied alternating current to that coil, the egg not only
Speaker 1: stood on end, but it started spinning. Then it flipped
Speaker 1: up and started rotating on its axis. I mean it
Speaker 1: looks like a magic trick. So better than a shoe
Speaker 1: polished tin. Right, much better than a shoe polished tin.
Speaker 1: And Brown and Peck were so impressed that they agreed
Speaker 1: to back his work. So with their help, Tesla was
Speaker 1: able to set up a laboratory in Lower Manhattan and
Speaker 1: perf all the components of his alternating current system, and
Speaker 1: that same year he built the prototype for his polyphase
Speaker 1: induction motor. And the problem with alternating current systems before
Speaker 1: this had been that there wasn't really a workable motor
Speaker 1: that alternating current could power. So Tesla's motor solved that
Speaker 1: issue at least and then again with the help of
Speaker 1: Peck and Brown. In late he was able to secure
Speaker 1: seven more patents for a complete alternating current system based
Speaker 1: on this induction motor, including patents for generators, transformers, transmission lines,
Speaker 1: and lighting. So he had the whole set. Finally, there
Speaker 1: was still that little detail of getting these breakthrough ideas
Speaker 1: introduced commercially though. I mean, you have the technology, great,
Speaker 1: you have the patents, that's great, but how are you
Speaker 1: going to actually make money off of it? So that
Speaker 1: process started to take off the next year after Tesla
Speaker 1: demonstrated his alternating current motor at the meeting of the
Speaker 1: American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and that demonstration caught the
Speaker 1: eye of George Westinghouse. Westinghouse's company, which was based in Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: had successfully developed some safety components for rail transportation, including
Speaker 1: the air brake, and by eight eight or so, he'd
Speaker 1: become interested in getting in on the electricity transmission game.
Speaker 1: According to the article by Ronald Bailey in American History,
Speaker 1: which we referenced in the last podcast, Westinghouse had already
Speaker 1: set up a limited alternating current system, but it was
Speaker 1: confined to downtown Buffalo, New York, and he was attracted
Speaker 1: to that potential of Tesla system to distribute power over
Speaker 1: longer distances, so Westinghouse made a move. He offered to
Speaker 1: buy Tesla's patents, and again Pack and Brown helped Tesla
Speaker 1: negotiate this deal, and the deal is slightly different depending
Speaker 1: on what stores you look at, but it basically amounted
Speaker 1: to Westinghouse paying about sixty thousand to seventy thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and anywhere from five thousand to twenty thousand dollars if
Speaker 1: that was paid in cash. He also agreed to pay
Speaker 1: Tesla two dollars and fifty cents in royalties for each
Speaker 1: horsepower of developed electrical capacity, so according to Bailey's article,
Speaker 1: Westinghouse also agreed to a minimum of thirty thousand in
Speaker 1: royalties to be paid over the next three years, and
Speaker 1: according to PBS dot Org, Tesla got one hundred fifty
Speaker 1: years of Westinghouse stock in the deal, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot covering um. I don't know depending on how
Speaker 1: successful the implementation of the ideas was how much Tesla
Speaker 1: would benefit from that. When the deal was done, Tesla
Speaker 1: went off to work as a Westinghouse consultant and helped
Speaker 1: develop the Alternating Current system for commercial use. So not
Speaker 1: only did he get some money out of the deal
Speaker 1: and potential for more money, but he also got to
Speaker 1: still work with his invention Westinghouse engineers, though just as
Speaker 1: an aside, a little side note here, they didn't really
Speaker 1: love working with Tesla though. He didn't make real blueprints.
Speaker 1: He just had these sketches that he made in a
Speaker 1: tiny notebook and they were really hard to follow. And
Speaker 1: Tesla himself said, well, I can just give you the
Speaker 1: measurements and they will be exactly what you need to
Speaker 1: build this. But as you might imagine, these engineers, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean interestingly, also, Tesla had always said that he
Speaker 1: just created this induction motor from like as he had
Speaker 1: envisioned it in Europe before he came to America, is
Speaker 1: exactly how he built it. Like, he didn't develop it.
Speaker 1: You might imagine this going through like many revisions and
Speaker 1: many changes, but with a prototype or something, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: But he said that he just made it as soon
Speaker 1: as he saw it in his mind. He knew that
Speaker 1: that was like composers who say that they just heard
Speaker 1: it in their head and wrote it down exactly. He
Speaker 1: claimed that exactly as he saw it is how he
Speaker 1: built it, and it was meant to work. But these engineers,
Speaker 1: they also disagreed with Tesla over what the motors frequency
Speaker 1: should be, but Tesla one out with the sixty cycles
Speaker 1: per second, so Tesla had the final say in that regard.
Speaker 1: But this was where the full on current war really
Speaker 1: started to take off, and it was a battle between
Speaker 1: Westinghouses alternating current and Edison's direct current. And what was
Speaker 1: really at stake here was whose system was going to
Speaker 1: become the standard and fuel the development of electricity in
Speaker 1: the future. Edison, though, of course, had a bit of
Speaker 1: an edge going in since he already had about one
Speaker 1: power stations in operation compared to Westinghouses nine stations. But
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned a few times, Testla's alternating current system
Speaker 1: showed more promise for carrying electricity over long distances, whereas
Speaker 1: Edison's direct current had a range of only about a mile,
Speaker 1: so it seemed like it was going to have more
Speaker 1: limited applications. Also, alternating current was a lot cheaper because
Speaker 1: direct current required the use of these expensive copper wires,
Speaker 1: and alternating current systems used copper as well, but only
Speaker 1: about a third of the amount that direct current used,
Speaker 1: so it looked like Westinghouse and alternating Current might provide
Speaker 1: some serious competition for Edison, and Edison stepped up his
Speaker 1: game at that point by starting a propaganda campaign against
Speaker 1: alternating Current. He focused in this campaign on his own
Speaker 1: belief that alternating current was unsafe, so he started to
Speaker 1: spread around the idea that alternating current and its high
Speaker 1: voltages could actually kill you. The most direct Current could do,
Speaker 1: he said, was just give you a little shock. Edison
Speaker 1: even hired a professor named Harold Brown to go around
Speaker 1: and lecture on the dangers of alternating current, and these
Speaker 1: talks included things like public electrocution of animals, including dogs, cats, horses,
Speaker 1: and cows. Edison even had an elephant named Topsy electrocuted
Speaker 1: once to previous point, We've had a tragic run for
Speaker 1: elephant from the podcast between this and P. T. Barnum.
Speaker 1: But Edison made his biggest point August six when Brown
Speaker 1: helped New York's Auburn State Prison perform the first execution
Speaker 1: by electric chair. And according to PBS, Brown had obtained
Speaker 1: Westinghouse technolog illegally to build the chair. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can imagine Westinghouse would not have wanted his work associated
Speaker 1: with that. The man who was executed was the convicted
Speaker 1: murderer William Kemmler. His death was described as quote an
Speaker 1: awful spectacle, worse than hanging, and thereafter electrocution was known
Speaker 1: as Westinghouse being through really bad pr for alternating current Yeah.
Speaker 1: Despite these negative associations, though, team Westinghouse and Tesla started
Speaker 1: to come up with some wins. They were picked to
Speaker 1: illuminate the Chicago World's Fair, for example, which was also
Speaker 1: of course known as the Columbian Exposition, something we discussed
Speaker 1: a little in the H. H. Holmes podcast indeed, and
Speaker 1: if you pick up Eric Larson's book Double in the
Speaker 1: White City, you'll learn a little bit more about kind
Speaker 1: of some of the things we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1: But this was the first all electric World's Fair in history,
Speaker 1: and Westinghouse has bid ended up winning out here just
Speaker 1: because it was so much cheaper. It was about half
Speaker 1: as much as the competition Shian And in Bailey's article
Speaker 1: he talks about how the fair became this grand showcase
Speaker 1: for alternating currents and electricity in general. So it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a really good win for them, and
Speaker 1: Tesla system lit up something like one D eighty thousand bulbs,
Speaker 1: and it was used to power a lot of exhibits,
Speaker 1: and there was even a great Hall of Electricity where
Speaker 1: his system was displayed, and Tesla was even on display
Speaker 1: to some degree. He did a demonstration in which he
Speaker 1: sent two hundred thousand volts through his body while wearing
Speaker 1: corks old shoes for protection. So don't get too worried,
Speaker 1: but he sent these volts through his body to prove
Speaker 1: basically that alternating current was indeed safe. And I can
Speaker 1: see how that would be more compelling combined with the
Speaker 1: glowing white city too, then seeing an elephant electrocuted or
Speaker 1: somebody put in an electric chair, somebody surviving this, the
Speaker 1: demonstrating it really is okay if it's handled properly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're willing to do it on yourself, then you
Speaker 1: must have some faith in it. But after the fair
Speaker 1: according to pb quote, of all the electrical devices ordered
Speaker 1: in the United States were for alternating current, And this,
Speaker 1: of course at the stage for another big win in
Speaker 1: the current war, which was a contract with the Niagara
Speaker 1: Falls Commission, and the mission wanted the Westinghouse Company to
Speaker 1: use alternating current to harness the power of the falls
Speaker 1: to generate electricity. And this was the realization of a
Speaker 1: long time dream for Tesla. As we mentioned in part one,
Speaker 1: he had started dreaming about converting the power of water
Speaker 1: to electricity when he was only about five years old,
Speaker 1: and he had specifically thought about Niagara Falls at some point.
Speaker 1: And it did take several years to get the project completed,
Speaker 1: which was a situation that made investors pretty nervous. But
Speaker 1: on the night of November they flipped a switch and
Speaker 1: by midnight the Niagara Systems were providing power to the
Speaker 1: city of Buffalo, which was twenty six miles away. The
Speaker 1: Buffalo Enquirer wrote, quote, it was the journey of God's
Speaker 1: own lightning to the employee of man. In a few years,
Speaker 1: there were ten enormous generators at Niagara Falls, and according
Speaker 1: to Bailey's article, of all the electricity in the United
Speaker 1: States came from there, including all the power that lit
Speaker 1: up in New York City and Broadway and all of that.
Speaker 1: And even the Edison systems converted to alternating current after that.
Speaker 1: So with that about face on Edison's part, it seemed
Speaker 1: that Tesla and Westinghouse had won the war of the currents.
Speaker 1: But the inventor had made some significant sacrifices along the
Speaker 1: way too, though, and during the financial panic of the
Speaker 1: eight nineties, Westinghouse and Edison's company were both in trouble,
Speaker 1: and on top of this, seeing the money making potential
Speaker 1: of hydroelectric power, some Wall Street forces like JP Morrigan
Speaker 1: he's been popping up in podcast lately, tried to take
Speaker 1: over Westinghouse. So Westinghouse the Man asked Tesla to release
Speaker 1: him from the initial contract that gave Tesla those generous royalties,
Speaker 1: and HeLa generously agreed to give up future royalties and
Speaker 1: supposedly even tore up the contract. Um. He might wonder,
Speaker 1: considering the problems he had had making money off of
Speaker 1: his work earlier, why he would do that, But according
Speaker 1: to PBS, he was very grateful to this one man
Speaker 1: who had believed in his invention, and this was his
Speaker 1: way of showing how grateful he was. He also just
Speaker 1: probably wanted them to keep going, I would imagine instead
Speaker 1: of going under. Must save the Westinghouse Electric Company while
Speaker 1: Edison's own company was taken over by General Electric. Tesla, though,
Speaker 1: had trouble with finances for pretty much the rest of
Speaker 1: his life, so it's could have used the royalty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's sort of a poignant thinking about those royalties gone
Speaker 1: away and and how much money he could have made
Speaker 1: down the line. But it wasn't for lack of trying, though.
Speaker 1: Tesla did keep on experimenting, and he was convinced that
Speaker 1: there were more amazing inventions on the horizon, And so
Speaker 1: we want to talk about some of the other things
Speaker 1: that he did even while the so called current war
Speaker 1: was going on. Of course, we can't cover everything. There
Speaker 1: are just so many inventions and patents to to cover,
Speaker 1: and so many ideas to cover that you know, maybe
Speaker 1: didn't get patents or didn't um immediately inspire inventions. But
Speaker 1: we're just going to go over a few of those.
Speaker 1: He had invented what we now know as the Tesla
Speaker 1: coil in eightee, and this basically allowed him to take
Speaker 1: the ordinary sixty cycle per second household current and kind
Speaker 1: of kick it up a few notches into the hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of cycles per second, so maybe more than
Speaker 1: a few notches. So this let him experiment with high
Speaker 1: frequency electricity, which was a big interest of his for
Speaker 1: a while, and that in turn allowed him to create
Speaker 1: the first meat lights and the first fluorescent lights, and
Speaker 1: he also took the first X ray photographs, another obsession
Speaker 1: of his which really stuck with him to the end
Speaker 1: with the wireless transmission of energy, and he discovered in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen nineties that he could use his Tesla
Speaker 1: coils to send and receive radio signals, but a lab
Speaker 1: fire in eighteen destroyed his work before he could truly
Speaker 1: test this, and that was just the little bit of
Speaker 1: delay that really messed him up here. Yes, Tesla did
Speaker 1: end up filing for radio patents in eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: but by this time he had a competitor across the pond,
Speaker 1: Guielmo Marconi. Marconi had been granted a wireless communication patent
Speaker 1: in England in eighteen ninety six, and he tried to
Speaker 1: file for a patent in American nineteen hundred, but it
Speaker 1: was turned down at that point because of Tesla's existing patent.
Speaker 1: But in late nineteen o one, Marconi became the first
Speaker 1: to transmit and receive signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Jesla
Speaker 1: did take that turn pretty well. Um Otis Pond, who
Speaker 1: was an engineer working for Tesla at the time, said
Speaker 1: to him a quote, looks as if Marconi got the
Speaker 1: jump on you to which Tesla replied, quote, Marconi is
Speaker 1: a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen
Speaker 1: of my patents. No one could accuse him of lack
Speaker 1: of confidence. But he was singing a different tune in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four, when inexplicably the U. S. Patent Office
Speaker 1: changed its mind and gave Marconi the patent for inventing
Speaker 1: the radio. Marconi also ended up winning the Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine, and Tesla was really unhappy about this.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was angry, but he didn't have the
Speaker 1: cash to get involved in a patent infringement case. He
Speaker 1: wanted to, He wanted to sue, but then he was like,
Speaker 1: I don't really have the ability to carry this out.
Speaker 1: Tesla continued to experiment with the wireless transmission of energy,
Speaker 1: and in eight he made a demonstration of the world's
Speaker 1: first radio controlled vessel at an electrical exhibition in Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden. It was basically a toy boat that was
Speaker 1: manipulated by remote control. Yeah, and as a side note here,
Speaker 1: many people think of this as the birth of robotics.
Speaker 1: Tesla hoped that it would eventually lighten the workload of humans.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a toy boat for now, but
Speaker 1: it could be something more in the future. So in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen nineties, Tesla also began to experiment with
Speaker 1: the transmission of a let trical power without wires, and
Speaker 1: in order to conduct these experiments, he went out to
Speaker 1: Colorado Springs for a while and set up a lab there,
Speaker 1: and he created man made lightning to test his ideas
Speaker 1: while he was there. The first experiment was successful in
Speaker 1: a way, but also fairly disastrous. He did create man
Speaker 1: made lightning, but it burned out the dynamo at the
Speaker 1: El Paso Electric Company and the entire city lost power,
Speaker 1: and Tesla was made to pay for the damage of
Speaker 1: causing this outage. Yeah be at the head of the
Speaker 1: power station wasn't very happy with him at that point.
Speaker 1: But it was in Colorado that Tesla also noticed a
Speaker 1: signal being picked up on his transmitter that he later
Speaker 1: said was a signal from outer space, or he believed
Speaker 1: it to be a signal from outer space. According to
Speaker 1: PBS dot org, it's quite possible that he was the
Speaker 1: first to actually detect radio signals from space, but people
Speaker 1: just dismissed this. They just thought that he was crazy
Speaker 1: suggesting these things. But ultimately this time in Colorado. It's
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. It could probably be you know, a
Speaker 1: separate episode or a blog post or something, but it's
Speaker 1: a very shrouded in mystery. A lot of people still
Speaker 1: really don't have a handle on exactly everything he was
Speaker 1: working on there. It just reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: his role in that movie The Prestige, where um, I
Speaker 1: think he might have been in Colorado at the time
Speaker 1: that maybe it's been a long time since I've seen that,
Speaker 1: but with just sort of the experiments that we're going
Speaker 1: on there and the mystery surrounding that as well, so
Speaker 1: we could go on and on. Like I said about
Speaker 1: toughless ideas and patents and inventions, he continued to come
Speaker 1: up with ambitious concepts for pretty much the rest of
Speaker 1: his life, though not much that really inspired immediate practical applications.
Speaker 1: During his lifetime, he experimented with a new type of
Speaker 1: turbine n engine, for example, and at age seventy eight,
Speaker 1: he announced that he was working on a death ray
Speaker 1: that could send a concentrated beam of particles through the
Speaker 1: air and bring down up to ten thousand enemy planes,
Speaker 1: and this was intended by him to help prevent war,
Speaker 1: which he really hated. I think that could be the
Speaker 1: title of an article in his later career, to toy
Speaker 1: Boats to Death rays Tesla's later life. So his ideas
Speaker 1: definitely had taken on a kind of mad scientist type
Speaker 1: edge as he aged, especially, but Tesla was really known
Speaker 1: almost as much for his eccentricities as he was for
Speaker 1: his inventions as the years went on, and he did
Speaker 1: have friends. He have friends like Mark Twain, for instance,
Speaker 1: but he never married, even though he was linked to
Speaker 1: several heiresses at various times, and he said quote, I
Speaker 1: did not believe an inventor should marry, because he has
Speaker 1: so intense a nature, with so much of it of
Speaker 1: wild passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman
Speaker 1: he might love, he would give everything and so take
Speaker 1: everything from his chosen field. So he was really in
Speaker 1: love with his work, I guess, is what he was
Speaker 1: trying to say in part there. But according to Bailey,
Speaker 1: he had a lot of phobias that probably prevented him
Speaker 1: from having a relationship as well. So it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that he wanted to give all of his intention and
Speaker 1: focus to his work. There were some personal issues that
Speaker 1: he had that maybe kept him from connecting with people.
Speaker 1: For example, one of his phobias was throughout his lifetime
Speaker 1: he sort of was a germophobe, but he also didn't
Speaker 1: like to touch people's hair. Specifically, he didn't like the
Speaker 1: site of smooth round surfaces, which gave him an aversion
Speaker 1: to women's earrings. He couldn't stand to see peaches the fruit.
Speaker 1: He also had quote strange numerical fixation, so, for example,
Speaker 1: the number of his hotel room always had to be
Speaker 1: divisible by three, And strangely enough, Tesla did end up
Speaker 1: living in a hotel, the Hotel New Yorker at the
Speaker 1: end of his life, and he didn't have that much
Speaker 1: money at that point, and by then some of his
Speaker 1: closest companions were pigeons who were hanging out around the hotel.
Speaker 1: He would actually take thick birds to his room and
Speaker 1: nurse them back to help. He even had the hotel
Speaker 1: make a special mixture of food for them, and he
Speaker 1: clearly became very attached to these pets. So when one
Speaker 1: of Tesla's favorite pigeons died, he told a newspaper writer,
Speaker 1: John O'Neil, quote, I loved that pigeon. Yes, I loved
Speaker 1: her as a man loved the woman. When that pigeon died,
Speaker 1: something went out of my life. Up to that time,
Speaker 1: I knew his certainty that I would complete my work.
Speaker 1: But when that something went out of my life, I
Speaker 1: knew my life's work was finished. Tesla died January seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. He'd gotten his last patent in nine
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy two, and it was for
Speaker 1: a quote apparatus for aerial transportation, which is said to
Speaker 1: have inspired today as a vertical short take off and
Speaker 1: landing plane, but he never had the money to actually
Speaker 1: build a prototype of this. He never won the Nobel Prize,
Speaker 1: though there were rumors that he and Edison might share
Speaker 1: it in nineteen fifteen, which he was kind of unhappy about.
Speaker 1: They didn't. Neither of them really wanted to share it
Speaker 1: with each other, considering their relationship, but Tesla did, ironicly
Speaker 1: when the Edison Medal in nineteen seventeen, which was the
Speaker 1: highest honor of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. According
Speaker 1: to Encyclopedia Britannica, he almost didn't accept this award though
Speaker 1: because of the name, because of the Edison Association. He
Speaker 1: said this would basically be something that was honoring Yeah,
Speaker 1: not honoring me. So he sat outside where the awards
Speaker 1: ceremony was being held, feeding the pigeons for a little
Speaker 1: while and had to be convinced to come inside, which
Speaker 1: he finally did come inside and accept the award. Who
Speaker 1: really won the war between Tesla and Edison? You know,
Speaker 1: you have Tesla winning the Edison Award, but it's called
Speaker 1: the Edison Award. I mean that really illustrates that point.
Speaker 1: And people still debate who went out in the end.
Speaker 1: Some say Tesla because we still use the A C
Speaker 1: system today. I mean that system clearly one. Others, though,
Speaker 1: say Edison because he did have more patents, he made
Speaker 1: more money, and let's face it, he just became more famous.
Speaker 1: Tesla has a lot of people who are clearly very
Speaker 1: devoted to his memory. We can tell that by the
Speaker 1: number of people who have suggested him. But I would
Speaker 1: say Thomas Edison is probably still the more famous name. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I think more school students learn about Edison growing up
Speaker 1: than Tesla in their classroom. Even though Tesla is the
Speaker 1: one in our recording studio. That is true, he's on
Speaker 1: our wall. Interesting side note here too, in just A
Speaker 1: few months after Tesla's death, the U s. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: upheld Tesla's radio patent over Marconi's. According to PBS dot org,
Speaker 1: the court had a selfish reason for doing this, though.
Speaker 1: The Marconi Company was suing the US government for use
Speaker 1: of its patents in World War One, and so to
Speaker 1: just kind of make that problem go away, they restored
Speaker 1: the priority of Tesla's patent over Marconi's. So a slight
Speaker 1: win for Tesla in the end, regardless of the reasons.
Speaker 1: But um, still kind of a sad end to a
Speaker 1: very interesting and inventive Yeah. Okay, let's see what we
Speaker 1: have our listener mail today. So there's so much more
Speaker 1: that we could say about Tesla, but we really did
Speaker 1: want to focus on the current war here again. Um,
Speaker 1: if anyone has any favorite Tesla stories or inventions or
Speaker 1: patents that we didn't mention that you want to share
Speaker 1: with us and and maybe the other listeners stuffinitely miss
Speaker 1: in history class, you can feel free to write to us.
Speaker 1: We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you
Speaker 1: can also look us up on Facebook and we're on Twitter.
Speaker 1: In mist in History before we find off that we
Speaker 1: wanted to include a little real male listener mail that
Speaker 1: we got. Um. Some of you might remember we've been
Speaker 1: getting postcards from Hillary from her European adventures and actually
Speaker 1: went from Monticello to from a stop in the state.
Speaker 1: But um she sent she must be in Germany right now,
Speaker 1: because she sent us several several postcards from their Munich
Speaker 1: and Baden Baden. And um, I love this postcard of
Speaker 1: the market in Munich. It just looks so good. It's
Speaker 1: got like jams and fresh vegetables, and it makes me
Speaker 1: feel like going out and enjoying our local bounty this
Speaker 1: weekend or something if I'll stop by. Yeah, tis the season.
Speaker 1: Tis the season. Well, thank you Hillary for sending us those.
Speaker 1: And like I said, if you want to, I already
Speaker 1: gave you guys all our contact info. But you know
Speaker 1: how to reach you know how to reach us. If
Speaker 1: you have some cool postcards like that, we love to
Speaker 1: get them, and we do decorate our cubes with them
Speaker 1: and look longing and sometimes put them on our social
Speaker 1: media accounts. Do you say you guys can see them?
Speaker 1: Very true, So definitely send us those if you have them. Also,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: some of the ideas we talked about in today's podcast.
Speaker 1: We have an article called how did Nicola Tesla Change
Speaker 1: the Way We Use Energy on our website and you
Speaker 1: can look that up by visiting our homepage at www
Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: He was named the Day that was named This Day
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