Back in New York, Tesla wrote an excellent article for Century Magazine where he detailed his futuristic vision. He described tapping the Sun’s energy with an antenna, he wrote how it would be possible to control the weather with electrical energy, and he explained how war would be impossible through the use of machines. Most importantly he proposed a global system of wireless communications, which to most was unimaginable, but Tesla as always, was not to be underestimated.
The article caught J.P. Morgan’s attention and at the time he was one of the most powerful men in the world. He frequently had Tesla to his home as a dinner guest and listened to his description of a “world system” where wireless communications would be able to send news, music, stock market information, private messages, military information, and even pictures to anywhere in the world. The Earth would act as a brain capable of response in every one of its parts, Tesla told Morgan. Morgan offered up $150,000 to Tesla, which he would need in the realm of $1,000,000 but never less accepted and began work on a station located on the Long Island Sound known as Wardenclyffe. The lab rose nearly 20 stories into the air and held a 55-ton steel sphere, beneath the tower he drove sixteen pipes over 300 feet into the ground so currents could pass through the Earth.
As construction continued it was clear Tesla would need more funding. Meanwhile, Marconi had signaled the letter “S” across the Atlantic from England to Newfoundland. Tesla was quick to remind Morgan that Marconi was working with 17 of his patents, but Morgan began to doubt Tesla and refused to give him any more money. To make things worse the stock market crashed doubling the cost of supplies Tesla would need to complete his project. In 1905 after several truly amazing electrical displays, Tesla and his team had to abandon the project forever. The newspapers labeled it, “Tesla’s million dollar folly.” Humiliated and defeated, Tesla had a complete nervous breakdown protesting, “It’s not a dream!” he concluded, “It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, that happens to be expensive.” Disgusted with the blind, faint-heated, doubting world, Tesla was now penniless and without any backers.
In 1909 Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his development of the radio, and from that point on was referred to in history books as “the father of radio.” In fact, there were many contributors to radio most notably Nikola Tesla, none the less, Marconi was now a wealthy famous man. Tesla stated, “My enemies have been so successful in portraying me as a poet and a visionary, that I must put out something commercial without delay.”
Westinghouse Corporation and General Electric Company has spent millions on development of a blade turbine engine. In 1912 Tesla was testing a revolutionary new kind of turbine engine that was completely different in that it used a series of closely spaced discs that were keyed to a shaft that was the only moving part. The turbine engine operated at such high speeds the metal in the discs would warp from the heat, and eventually Tesla scraped the project. With no funding, and no work Tesla began visiting local parks and nursing pigeons back to health with a mixture of seeds he had a chef prepare. His OCD and aversion to germs worsened, he would wash his hands dozens of times per day and only eat boiled food.
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