To be a stranger in the place of your coming-of-age, to be an old man to your peers but a young man to your partners—these were the signs of generational displacement endemic to the young and successful. Paul felt an instinctive desire to be back here, to be a student again with so much to prove. And yet he remembered how tense and unhappy those years had been. He had found himself the poor Tennessee boy among the moneyed children of New York royalty. He’d thought he’d met a well-to-do crowd—sons of merchants and railroad men—at Oberlin, but that was only because he’d never met the truly affluent. He had never felt poor before Columbia.
As Paul led Westinghouse into the engineering school, he noticed he was far from the only postgraduate walking under the new stone archway. Clearly the publication of Tesla’s designs had served as some advertisement that tonight’s lecture would be far from ordinary. Whatever “ordinary” might mean in an organization so young as the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and in a field so untested.
As he and Westinghouse settled into two empty seats near the back of the long hall, Paul saw a familiar face several rows closer to the podium. Charles Batchelor winked as their eyes met. And then Batchelor turned away, lost in the sea of engineers.
So Thomas Edison was tracking Tesla too. Of course he was.
The schematics that Thomas Martin had published in Electrical World a week before were incomplete. They suggested the beginnings of some new device, but gave little indication as to its function. Yet evidently whatever Tesla had sketched had the potential to be quite revolutionary.
No one knew precisely what Tesla was to unveil. Westinghouse had said that, based on the schematics, it could be one of a hundred different electrical devices. The mystery only served to increase the potential.
They waited for half an hour. The longer the delay, the greater the expectations became. The chattering of the tightly packed crowd grew louder and more insistent with every minute in which Tesla failed to appear. The seats creaked under the weight of their gossip.
Finally the main doors opened to reveal Thomas Martin—identified by Westinghouse—leading a man who could only be Nikola Tesla into the hall. Tesla was shockingly thin, easily six and a half feet tall, with a delicately curled mustache and a part dead in the center of his slick black hair. Paul’s first thought was that he must be on loan from P. T. Barnum’s circus. Tesla appeared immaculate in his stiffly pressed suit and thickly greased hair, and yet utterly uncomfortable as he was literally yanked to the stage by his host. Martin deposited Tesla awkwardly into a reserved seat in the front row before immediately stepping up to the podium.
Everyone settled in for the evening’s performance.
“I will begin by stating the obvious,” said Martin with a commanding voice. “Our guest of honor does not want to be here.”
The joke was greeted by a warm chuckle from the crowd. Martin was as close to an éminence grise as New York’s engineering community possessed. Science was becoming a young man’s game, if the composition of this audience was any indication, and the white of Martin’s beard made clear that he no longer was one.
“Nikola Tesla is a genius,” continued Martin. “And like many geniuses, he is a deeply private man. However, he has allowed himself to be convinced that on this one night, he should share his particular genius with us. Discoveries such as his, I am sure you will shortly realize, were never meant to remain in the dark.” Paul could read the satisfaction in Martin’s slight smile. Ownership, that’s what Martin was imparting upon the crowd. Tesla was his discovery. By extension, whatever it was that Tesla would bring into the world, Martin was laying a claim to as well.
“Gentlemen,” continued Martin, “if you’ll permit me one last unorthodoxy, I will not bore you with further introduction of your guest of honor. He has requested that the details of his life before this moment go unmentioned, as they have little bearing on tonight’s proceedings. So I will honor his wish, and without further ado, I present to you my friend and colleague Nikola Tesla. He has something he would not like to show you.”
It took a moment for the applause to catch up with the speech. Martin had already bounded away from the podium. Tesla ascended toward the great chalkboard at the front of the room, then turned to face the crowd. He kept his hands in his pockets as he stared off into the distance. The applause died down, but Tesla seemed not to notice. He placed no notes before him on the lectern. He did not reach for the chalk, or do anything else that might convey to an observer that he was in fact about to deliver a lecture.
Tesla continued staring into a vague and uncertain distance. Whatever world this man occupied, he was its only inhabitant. He seemed completely unaware of the existence of the hundreds assembled before him, prepared to hang on his every word if only he’d be so kind as to utter a few.
“Please pardon my face,” came Tesla’s high-pitched and thickly accented voice. “My pallor is white as pale. My health is in a condition dishabille.”
Between the muddle of his Serbian accent and the bizarre nature of his syntax, it took Paul a few moments to determine that Tesla was in fact speaking in English. It was soon clear that his command of the raw materials of the language—words, short phrases—was deep, and yet his use of its intricacies—grammar, sentence construction—was haphazard. It was as if Tesla tossed up into the air all the words he knew on a given subject, and then walked away before he could see where they landed.
“Laboratories are better-fit places for machines than personages,” continued Tesla. “But I am digressed. The notice I received for tonight’s lecture was rather small, and I have not been able to treat the subject so extensively as desired. My health, I have said. I ask your kind indulgence, and my gratification shall be in your minor approvals.”
And with that, Nikola Tesla marched out of the room.
Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: There will always be some who misunderstand you.
—KARL POPPER
THOMAS MARTIN DID his best to calm the crowd. From the aggrieved look on Martin’s face, it seemed to Paul that this stunt was but the latest in a long line of Tesla’s rebellions.
If Martin’s intent had been to claim Tesla as his own, this disaster in progress served to convey precisely the opposite impression. Tesla belonged to no one.
And then, quite suddenly, Tesla burst back through the wide double doors. He entered as quickly as he’d departed. But this time he pulled behind him a four-wheeled cart, atop which hung a long black cloth. From the uneven protrusions along the surface of the cloth, it was clear that something strange lay underneath. Something that Tesla intended to display at the right moment. Paul couldn’t help but be reminded of a magician setting up a trick.
“The subject on which I have the pleasure of carrying to your notices is a novel system of electrical distribution and power transmission.” Tesla’s words were delivered at a volume more suited to luncheon with an old friend than to a lecture hall of hundreds. The audience members hushed one another as they struggled to make out what he was saying. Paul looked to Westinghouse. Could the old man even hear a word?
“Alternating currents are the basis of my system’s use, as they afford advantages particular over the direct currents common to the terrain in this age and day. I am confident that I will at once establish the superior adaptability of these currents to both the transmission of power and to the ways of motors.”
The recently won quiet of the audience broke instantly. Shouts of disbelief came from all corners of the lecture hall. “Alternating current?” came the first cry of many. Whatever Tesla was saying seemed deeply controversial.
Tesla yanked away the black cloth, revealing three metal devices underneath. To Paul’s eye, these devices, each about twice the size of a typewriter, looked to be collections of wire coils, hollow tubes, and strange wheels.