From 1899 to about 1905, Tesla pursued his grandest dream: a world system for sending messages, and eventually electrical power, without wires, through the Earth and the atmosphere. The dream produced astonishing experiments, enormous debts and Tesla's greatest failure.
Colorado Springs
In 1899, Tesla built an experimental station on the high plains near Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the thin dry air and frequent storms suited his experiments. Inside a large wooden building he constructed a giant resonant transmitter, which he called a magnifying transmitter, topped by a tall mast with a copper ball. He produced artificial lightning, discharges many feet long, with thunder that could be heard miles away. According to one story, he once overloaded the local power company's generator and blacked out the town.
Tesla believed his measurements of lightning storms showed that the Earth itself could be made to resonate electrically, like a giant bell, so that energy and signals could be sent anywhere on the planet. He also reported receiving strange, rhythmic radio signals that he suggested might come from another planet, possibly Mars. His announcement drew both excitement and mockery. Scientists today think he most likely picked up natural radio noise, or perhaps signals from other experimenters.
“The Problem of Increasing Human Energy”
Back in New York in 1900, Tesla published a long essay in The Century Magazine, “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy.” It ranged over physics, philosophy and the future of humanity, imagining wireless power, machines that would end the need for war, and humanity's progress through harnessing the sun's energy. The essay impressed wealthy readers and helped him find his most important investor.
J. P. Morgan and Wardenclyffe
In 1901, the banker J. P. Morgan, the most powerful financier in America, agreed to invest $150,000 in Tesla's plan. Tesla presented it to Morgan mainly as a system for transatlantic wireless communication, which would compete with undersea telegraph cables and with Marconi. Tesla began building a laboratory and a huge tower at Wardenclyffe, on Long Island, about sixty miles from New York City. The tower rose about 187 feet, topped by a mushroom-shaped dome, with a shaft that reportedly ran deep into the ground to grip the Earth.
Collapse
The project ran into trouble almost at once. Costs soared beyond Tesla's estimates. In December 1901, Marconi's transatlantic signal showed that a much cheaper system could already send messages across the ocean. Tesla then revealed to Morgan that his real goal was wireless transmission of power, not just messages. Morgan was not interested in funding a system that might give away electricity without a way to meter and sell it, and he declined to invest more. A stock market panic in 1901 and Tesla's increasingly desperate appeals did not help. Other investors stayed away.
By around 1906, work at Wardenclyffe had stopped. Tesla, deep in debt, suffered what appears to have been a breakdown. The tower stood unused for years. In 1917, it was demolished for scrap to pay debts, the hotel Tesla lived in having taken over the property to settle his unpaid bills.
Could it have worked?
Wireless communication worldwide clearly could, as radio proved. Wireless power on Tesla's global scale is another matter. Most engineers and physicists today conclude that sending large amounts of power through the Earth and atmosphere to anywhere on the planet would lose too much energy to be practical. Short-range wireless power is real, as in wireless phone chargers and electric toothbrushes, which use principles of induction Tesla helped explore. But the grand system he imagined remains unrealized.
A second life for the site
Wardenclyffe's laboratory building survived. In 2012, a crowdfunding campaign led by the web cartoonist Matthew Inman raised over a million dollars from the public, and with matching state funds, a nonprofit bought the site in 2013 to create a museum and science center in Tesla's honor.
Worked example: pitching an investor
Imagine you are advising Tesla in 1902 on how to deal with Morgan. Look at the decisions he made.
- The pitch. Tesla sold Morgan a communication system, a product with a clear market. But his real goal was wireless power, which he did not stress at first.
- The surprise. When Marconi succeeded cheaply, Tesla's communication pitch looked weaker, and his larger goal looked riskier.
- The reveal. Telling Morgan about free or unmetered power appealed to Tesla's idealism but not to a banker who needed returns.
- Better advice? Build a working communication system first, earn income, then fund power experiments separately. That would have meant scaling back his vision.
Tesla's failure here was not only technical. It was a mismatch between a visionary's goals and an investor's interests, made worse by optimistic cost estimates. Many ambitious projects since have failed for the same reasons. Great ideas need not only brilliance but honest plans, realistic budgets and backers who share the goal.