-Caveat Lector-
Das GOAT wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> Excerpt from "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla --
> Biography of A Genius," by Marc J. Seifer,
> 1996, Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing Group
> (ISBN 1-55972-329-7)
> [Jump ahead to the end to get a taste of things to come ...]
> ____________________________________________________________
>
> 2
>
> Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Edison, Westinghouse had been
> surreptitiously meeting with Henry Villard, Edison's financial
> backer, over a two-year period to discuss a possible merger ...
> [Villard] conferred with J. Pierpont Morgan, the real power
> behind the operation, and had Morgan send Edward Dean Adams, a
> longtime banking associate, to Menlo Park to try and get Edison
> to align with Westinghouse. Edison would hear none of it.
***
But this doesn't let us know why Edison "would hear none of it". Was
there a finical offer that did not appeal to Edison?
> Villard switched tactics and approached Thomson-Houston with
> the thought of buying them out ... In December a meeting was held
> at 23 Wall Street, in [J. P.] Morgan's office, to finalize plans
> for a merger. After Morgan looked over the financial records of
> both companies, he realized that Edison Electric, which was in
> debt for $3.5 million, had less revenue [so he] suggested that
> Thomson-Houston buy out Edison Electric ...
***
Bought out for how much? How much did Edison thus profit? It sounds like
Edison got shafted.
> [H]e created a monopoly ... Morgan maneuvered Villard out of
> the company altogether --he had to blame someone for problems--
> and Charles Coffin took control of the new consolidation. They
> named the company General Electric (GE).
> Edison realized that a new age of electricity had arrived,
> one that would not countenance [the financial losses created by]
> his commonsense, trial-and-error approach.
***
In other words, he realized that he was falling behind the "text book"
knowledge and thus needed to go into something else where his skills
were needed.
> So Edison turned his
> interests to furthering the work of Edward Muybridge, a pioneer
> in motion pictures. In 1888 and 1891 he had his first patents on
> a device he called the kinetograph and a few years later he
> developed a fully-working movie camera and projection system.
***
Very smart move on Edison's part.
> The "Morganization" of General Electric created an even
> greater foe for Westinghouse but also a critical problem for GE.
> Whereas Westinghouse was blocked [by Morgan's control of Edison's
> patents] from using an efficient lightbulb, GE was blocked from
> generating AC ...
> From the point of view of the courts, it was still undecided
> as to who the author of [Tesla's] AC polyphase system really was.
> Westinghouse had [patents from his own technicians] to back those
> of Tesla ... [GE] approached Charles Steinmetz with a scheme to
> work on improvements on AC designs in such a way that these would
> obscure Tesla's. Attracted [by] intrigue, Steinmetz accepted.
> The fray between Westinghouse and GE took a new turn in the
> race to win the bid to light the upcoming Chicago World's Fair
> and to harness Niagara Falls.
> Westinghouse [conferred] with Tesla ... and the money men
> reluctantly agreed to dismantle the lucrative but outmoded [pre-
> Tesla] machinery. [GE] hoped someone like Steinmetz could come
> up with a competing design, but they hadn't realized that Tesla
> held all the fundamental patents. Quite simply, there was no
> other [possible] system; one couldn't proceed without [Tesla].
> [GE's Elihu] Thomson and Steinmetz were reduced to figuring
> out ways to somehow bypass the patents ... In a [clear] case of
> industrial espionage, [they] apparently paid a janitor to steal
> the Tesla blueprints from the Westinghouse plant.
> The intrigue must have triggered a variety of emotions in
> Steinmetz [who] had already lived a clandestine life in Germany.
> Editing a radical socialist newspaper under a pseudonym during
> the so-called Reign of Terror, he had learned to use secret
> passwords at radical meetings and write with invisible ink, as
> when he [acted as courier for] his leader, the charismatic
> revolutionary Heinrich Lux ...
> Steinmetz never renounced his affiliation with the Socialist
> movement, [yet] he supported an unscrupulous capitalist corporate
> structure ... motivated by the all-consuming profit motive [and
> counting on] its ability to subvert the law to achieve its ends.
> His affiliation with the Machiavellian policies of [J. P.
> Morgan-controlled] GE induced Steinmetz abandon his ideals: His
> opus on AC, "Theory and Calculations of Alternating Current
> Phenomena," first published in 1897, omitted any reference to
> Tesla ... (At the time, Tesla's [own] book was a veritable bible
> for all engineers in the field. That it does not even appear in
> the blibliography of Steinmetz's work is astounding.} In the
> foreword to Steinmetz's second text, "Theoretical Elements of
> Electrical Engineering,' written in 1902 ... Steinmetz wrote,
> "The electrical literature has been haunted by so many theories,
> for instance [Tesla's, about] the induction motor, which are
> incorrect." This not only aided in obfuscating the truth, it
> bolstered [Steinmetz's] own image in the corporate community.
> As these texts on AC would serve as important [sources] for
> subsequent writers, it was quite common in later years for
> engineers to obtain degrees, study AC, and even write textbooks
> on the topic themselves and never come across Tesla's name.
> Clearly, it was to GE's benefit to pretend that Tesla never
> existed, and to Westinghouse's benefit to [do the same] ...
***
Thus, Steinmetz had a strong reason to obfuscate Tesla's role and was a
major instrument in that process.
> Perhaps the most blatant case of misrepresentation occurred
> a generation later, when Michael Pupin published his Pulitzer
> Prize-winning [book, including] a long [section] on the history
> of AC [which] described "four historical events, very important
> in the annals of electrical science" [in ALL of which Tesla had
> played a central role] [yet] ignored Tesla almost completely.
> Pupin concluded, "If [J. P. Morgan's company] had contributed
> nothing other than Elihu Thomson to GE, it would have contributed
> more than enough ... [Through him,] senseless opposition to the
> system of AC current vanished quickly ..."
> [And] in the preface, Pupin had the audacity to write that
> "the main object of [my] narrative [is] ... to describe the rise
> of IDEALISM in American science and related industries ..." !
***
This, of course, led to an estrangement between the two that lasted
until the day of Pupin death. They had previously been friends (both
were Serbs). Later in the book the author describes how Pupin on his
death bed asked to see Tesla. Tesla was informed and thought about it
over night. The next day he visited Pupin. When he walked in he greeted
his long lost friend with great warmth. He spoke of him going to soon to
the meet with all the other great scientist. The door was closed while
the two talked. Pupin died while Tesla was with him.
Howard Davis
> Om
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