The Last Days of Night, page 8
What did Nikola Tesla want?
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
—THOMAS EDISON
LEMUEL SERRELL, TESLA’S attorney, made it quite clear he shared little of his client’s ambivalence toward money—he wanted an additional forty thousand dollars to make a deal. Just for a start.
Serrell’s office looked as if it had been there for a hundred years, rather longer than the fifteen it had actually occupied the space. Serrell was a legend, if such a thing existed, in the relatively recent class of patent attorneys. His father had likely been America’s very first patent lawyer, establishing his own firm immediately following the Patent Act of 1836. The act had created for the first time in the history of the world a “patent office” of a government. No longer would any patent applied for be granted, with the merits to be weighed if and only if a lawsuit was later filed. The office was staffed with scientific experts to evaluate every application. Serrell’s father had cleverly realized that if there were government experts managing the half-legal, half-scientific realm of the patent, there would necessarily be a market for private experts as well. Scientists were not known for their legal expertise; nor, for that matter, were lawyers known for their scientific fluency. The elder Serrell, and then his son, had developed invaluable experience in both.
The younger Serrell had cut his teeth on Edison’s own early patent work. Boasting a keen eye for talent, Serrell had signed up the twenty-three-year-old Edison and composed all of the prodigy’s early telegraph and telephone patents. Not long after, Edison had decamped for Grosvenor Lowrey’s more prestigious firm.
The summer sun warmed the black-dyed maple of Serrell’s desk. Serrell and Paul took seats directly across from each other in high-backed leather chairs. Serrell removed his jacket in a sign of familiarity. Despite the heat, Paul kept his on.
“I spent two years working on the A/C patents with Nikola,” said Serrell in a genial tone. “They were sent back at first with a demand for more specificity, if you can believe it. But of course, dear Nikola wouldn’t give up, so we refined both his device and the language of the claim. You’ll see they’re quite airtight.”
“That’s why my client would like to purchase them.”
“Yes, yes,” said Serrell. “Purchase…”
Serrell turned in his chair to gaze out the window. This was not Paul’s first negotiation, and he knew the move well. He’d guessed, when he’d received Serrell’s note, that as the more experienced attorney, he would elect to play the bully in negotiations, all bluster and ballast. An Edisonian strategy. But Serrell had adopted the role of the thoughtful moderate. A kind of disinterested third party who wanted only for Tesla and Westinghouse to reach a fair arrangement. So much the better for Paul’s afternoon, he reasoned, though he would certainly appreciate it if Serrell would get on with things.
“So you’re Westinghouse’s young prodigy,” said Serrell as the light from the grand window framed his bearded face. “Such responsibility on such young shoulders. You know he approached me about your position, before he offered it to you.”
Paul could not afford to show his surprise. To allow that Serrell knew more than he on the subject of Paul’s own client would be a disaster.
“Well, of course,” lied Paul coolly. “I assumed he’d discussed the job with many men in town. You know George. He never likes to make a decision without examining all the possible choices.”
“Have you ever asked him about it?”
“About what?”
“About why he chose you.”
Paul looked Serrell dead in the eye. Politeness was not going to work.
“Sir,” said Paul, “not to be indelicate, but I’ve been intimidated a lot recently. And quite a bit more forcefully than this. If you’re trying to scare me, get on with it. If you’re not, you might want to tell me how much more money you’d like my client to pay your client in exchange for his patents and then we can both find other ways to spend the remainder of our afternoons.”
Lemuel Serrell smiled.
“My goodness, Mr. Cravath. You really haven’t been long at this, have you? There’s this lawyerly code of conduct—well, we just prefer our threats unspoken, if we can help it. You understand. Needling each other under cover of pleasantry, that sort of business.”
“Apologies.”
“You’re a better fit for Westinghouse than I would have been.” Serrell took a piece of paper and wrote down a relatively simple financial formula. “Mr. Tesla is not going to sell you his patents. Calm down, calm down, don’t give me that look. He’s not going to sell them. But he will license them to you. A combination of cash, stock, and per-unit fee. Look over these numbers, talk through them with Westinghouse, and then let’s chat again. I’d tell you I need an answer within twenty-four hours, or some such ticking-clock tactic, but I suspect you wouldn’t respond well to it.”
Paul glanced down at the paper as Serrell handed it to him. The numbers were exceedingly generous to Tesla. But certainly negotiable.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Paul as he placed the folded paper into his jacket pocket and rose from his seat.
“My best to Mr. Carter and Mr. Hughes,” said Serrell. “Oh, and…I hope you don’t think it impolite, but if you’ve ever a mind to leave your firm, we have quite a few clients here who would love to know that they’re cared for by the same hands that handle George Westinghouse’s business.”
“I’m happy with my position. And Mr. Westinghouse is content at our firm. But thank you.” Paul stood in the doorway. There was a thought he couldn’t shake.
“Out of curiosity,” said Paul, “why did you turn it down?”
“Hmm?”
“The job that Mr. Westinghouse offered you.”
“Oh.” Serrell looked down, tapping his fingers together as if their rhythm might instruct him how best to phrase his answer.
“More-experienced attorneys, like myself, we’re done no good by taking on a losing case. But someone like you…a young man, starting out. Your career will still benefit from having your name in the papers. And I’m sure you won’t be blamed personally for losing a case that no one could win.”
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best.
—STEVE JOBS
THE DEAL WAS finalized by July. Tesla would get a total of $70,000 up front, two-thirds of which would be in Westinghouse stock and one-third of which would be in cash, as well as $2.50 per horsepower sold on all machines utilizing Tesla’s alternating-current technology. However, Tesla would work for his money: He would join the Westinghouse Electric Company as a consultant, moving his own laboratory to Pittsburgh. Westinghouse had concerns about Tesla’s ability to work in the more rigid confines of his corporate environment. He expressed these to Paul as the two entered his study on a sweltering morning in the first week of July.
“It still says ‘Westinghouse’ on the front door,” Paul reassured him. “You’re in charge. If he wants to work, he’ll have to work for you. Unless Mr. Tesla is as handy with a chisel as he is with a rotor, you haven’t much to worry about.”
Paul couldn’t tell if Westinghouse had even heard him. Speaking louder, he decided to broach a delicate topic.
“Why did you hire me?”
Westinghouse was as surprised by the question as Paul was by his own nerve in asking it. Each man looked away from the other.
“Serrell said you offered him the job first. Before me.”
Westinghouse took a moment to answer. “That’s true.”
“So why me? Not just my own partners, but fifty attorneys I could name have more experience than I do.”
“Would you like me to see if any of them are available to take your place?”
“No. I want you to tell me why you chose me.”
Westinghouse looked Paul in the eyes. He was gauging something.
“You are correct that I did not hire you for your experience. In fact, I hired you for your lack of it. Between EGE and the dozen financiers on Wall Street who have an interest in its success, there isn’t a law firm in New York that’s not in one way or another bound up in Edison’s web. I looked, believe me. Every one of them had financial arrangements with either Edison or one of Edison’s supporters. J. P. Morgan owns sixty percent of EGE personally. Can you imagine the difficulty—the impossibility—of finding a firm that isn’t in business with Morgan?”
“While I hadn’t a client to my name.”
“No clients. No conflicts. No ambiguous allegiances.”
Westinghouse’s logic was very good. Funny, to think that all this time he thought he’d been valued for what he had accomplished—instead, it turned out that his value lay in his very lack of accomplishments.
“Don’t make a sour face,” suggested Westinghouse. “With a little luck we just might make something out of you yet.”
Paul felt that this was as close to a fatherly pat on the back as he was going to get from his client. It was certainly more than he’d gotten from his actual father.
“Your friend Tesla,” said Westinghouse, “may have provided just that good fortune. My men have much refining to do, but we’re changing almost everything about our electrical system: generators, dynamos, even the width of the wires. By the time we’re done, our A/C system will not only be the best method for producing and delivering electrical light in the world, but it will be so different from Edison’s D/C system as to render moot practically all of his three hundred twelve lawsuits.”
Westinghouse was correct in his legal analysis. But there was a crucial detail that the inventor had left unaddressed.
“You’re changing everything?”
Westinghouse knew to what Paul was referring. “I said almost everything.”
“The light bulb.”
“That goddamned light bulb.”
“The biggest suit of them all. You can change every element of your electrical system, but if the light bulb that system powers is still similar to Edison’s, it’ll all be for nothing.”
“This is how I will put Mr. Tesla to use. If he was able to theorize a new kind of electrical system, then it’s possible he can theorize a new kind of light bulb as well. A better one, one that takes full advantage of alternating current’s efficiencies.”
“It doesn’t have to be better,” said Paul. “It only has to be different. From a legal perspective, if you and Tesla can together create a fundamentally new design of light bulb, then, sir…well, then you won’t have to worry about Edison in court.”
“Kid…your courts, your lawsuits…If you only understood. The promise of A/C is so much greater than that.”
Paul had never before seen such enthusiasm from Westinghouse. It occurred to him that this was the side of the inventor that only the men in his laboratory got to see: the childlike response of the man who chose to make his living inventing things for the joy of it.
“Fessenden and I, we’ve been going over the A/C ideas, and by solving the distance problem, well, it suggests to us an even greater advantage.” Westinghouse walked to his desk. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the bottom drawer and removed a set of large paper sheets. Paul expected to see engineering schematics. But as he drew closer, he realized that they were maps. Maps of the United States.
“Edison’s D/C current may only travel a few hundred feet at a time, so he is forced to sell his generators one by one. He has done a damnably good job of convincing wealthy men across this nation to wire their homes with his current, but he still must sell a generator to every single one of them. By utilizing A/C, we will no longer be so encumbered.”
Westinghouse gestured for Paul to come closer. Paul read the legends on the corners of the maps. “Grand Rapids, Michigan.” “Jefferson, Iowa.”
“Alternating current will allow us to build one great generator at the center of every community. After which we can simply attach as many homes to this single generator as wish to be. It doesn’t take much work to attach a new home to the system once it’s built. We can put up our generator, have a few homes take us up on our current…then their neighbors will see how brilliant our light really is…and soon enough the entire town will be lit by Westinghouse lamps.”
Here, between the bent and soiled gear bits, lay the framework for the electrification of the United States.
“You’ll be able to sell to whole municipalities at once,” said Paul. “Entire towns will become Westinghouse towns.”
“Precisely. Alternating current isn’t just better technology. It’s better business.”
Paul thumbed through the maps. Red dots blotted what was clearly already Edison territory—New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington. Only Pittsburgh among the large cities was unmarred by a crimson spot.
Yet Westinghouse had also placed tiny blue dots throughout the land, marking off receptive townships: Lincoln, Nebraska; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Duluth, Minnesota.
Westinghouse’s electrical revolution would not hail from the steel towers of America’s moneyed metropolises. Instead, his insurgence would come from a thousand sleepy villages. Together, these hamlets would form a network of power that would stretch from Ithaca, New York, to Portland, Oregon.
Edison had taken Broadway. So Westinghouse would take Broad Street, Ohio.
The lines were drawn. Everyone would have to choose a side. Everyone would join a network. Networks of light. Networks of people. Networks of power. Networks of money.
“We can begin selling immediately,” said Westinghouse. “And we should be able to install our first system by the autumn.” He took in the wonder on Paul’s face. “If you can keep the courts off our backs, then Nikola Tesla and I will stop Thomas Edison.”
What I do has to be a function of what I can do, not a function of what people ask me to do.
—TIM BERNERS-LEE
ON THE NIGHT Tesla moved into his new laboratory on the Westinghouse estate, there was to be, at Paul’s suggestion, a welcome dinner in the inventor’s honor. A friendly meal at the central mansion, attended by Tesla, Westinghouse, and the more garrulous members of the senior staff, Fessenden and his lieutenants. Would Tesla do something strange at Westinghouse’s dinner table? Likely. But Marguerite would be there to soothe, and the engineers would be there if Tesla launched into one of his impenetrable monologues. The conversational bases were manned.
While the household staff helped Tesla move into his newly furnished apartment, Marguerite supervised the preparation of the rosemary-roasted chickens. George Westinghouse whipped up his traditional salad dressing. White ties were knotted across the gentlemen’s necks, and Paul’s lone dinner jacket was pressed yet again.
Everyone gathered at the door as the servants ushered Tesla into the mansion for the first time. The gentlemen bowed in a line, right to left. Tesla approached Marguerite, bending to take her hand, and then he emitted a high-pitched yelp.
Paul—and everyone else—was too startled to speak. Tesla retreated slowly to the door. Marguerite strained what looked to be every muscle upon her face to keep a smile in place. It was the butler, finally, who inquired of Tesla as to whether he was all right.
“It is the hair,” said Tesla gravely. He looked in horror to his sleeve. Paul peered. Sure enough, there on Tesla’s shirtsleeve was a long white hair. It could only have belonged to Marguerite.
“I cannot stand to its touch,” said Tesla. “My apologies, Mrs. Marguerite Westinghouse.”
With that, Tesla walked out the front door. The dinner that followed at the Westinghouse table was mercifully brief.
As it turned out, Tesla would never set foot in the main house again. His laboratory space was only a short walk down the dirt road, but the engineers tasked with assisting him reported that he almost never left.
His meals consisted solely of water and saltine crackers, brought to his apartment above the lab at odd hours of the night upon an urgent ringing of his bell. Any attempt to get a bit of meat into his belly met with disastrous results, as the cubic contents of the braised pork shoulder presented to him on a polished silver plate were deemed to be a multiple of seven, and hence toxic to his bloodstream.
Weekly meetings were set to inform Westinghouse of the inventor’s progress at designing a light bulb that would elude the reach of Edison’s patents. The meeting times came and went without an appearance from Tesla himself. In fairness to him, there was no progress to report, so his decision not to attend such meetings was in some sense perfectly rational.
For all these eccentricities Westinghouse had little patience. This was a place of business, in which men conducted themselves in a manner commensurate with the seriousness of their task. Westinghouse seemed to think of himself as the father to a large clan of eager children; he would famously grace them with presents at holidays, and had in fact been the first employer in America to reduce his employees’ workweek to six days. Every soul in his company, from the head of his accounting division to the lowest assembler in his factories, received at least a day of rest per week. For Westinghouse, such gifts were signs of respect. All hands in the Westinghouse Electric Company were in this mess together. There was a clear enemy not so far away in New York, a rival army dwarfing theirs in number and resources and power.
Westinghouse found himself impotent in the face of Tesla’s willful insubordination for the simple reason that he needed Tesla, while Tesla only found Westinghouse to be vaguely useful. Westinghouse could not dock Tesla’s pay, because Lemuel Serrell had ensured its inviolability. He could not forbid access to any tools of the lab, because he needed Tesla to make as much of their resources as possible. And any social pressures he might place on Tesla were equally pointless: Isolation was no punishment for a man who sought, above all else, to be left alone.
