Tesla

He had a black cat named Machek when he was a boy.

The cat followed him everywhere.

And one day, when he stroked the cat's back,

he saw a miracle.

A sheet of light crackling under his hand.

"Lightning in the sky,"

his father explained,

"is the same thing as the spark shooting

"from Machek's back."

And Tesla asked himself,

"Is nature a gigantic cat?

"And if so,

"who strokes its back?"

Mind over matter,

that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Eventually, we'll be able to see in the dark.

I found them.

I think there are more in the crazy drawer.

Do you know where that is?

The crazy drawer?

That means is you don't have crazy drawers

where you're from?

My mother had a crazy drawer.

And yours?

Leave my mother out of this.

No one expected you to come in tonight, Tom.

Ha, no?

Seriously?

Well I expected it.

When I was five years old...

Ed, you don't have to stop because I'm talking.

I was five years old and we sailed across Lake Erie

to visit the Edison clan there in Vienna.

Vienna, Ontario.

Mother and father, sisters, Marriane and Tanney,

my brother, Charlie, and my Grandpa Sam.

I learned to swim.

When I got back to Ohio,

I went exploring with my good friend, George.

George Lockwood.

He was exactly my age.

We went out to the canal below my house

and I went into the water and George followed me

and afterward, I went home feeling very subdued

and crawled into bed.

When my mother woke me, it was very dark

and she asked about George.

Everybody was looking for him, half the town.

Had lit lanterns, called his name looking everywhere.

I told her I saw George's head disappear in the water

and I waited for him a long time

and I didn't know what to do.

I was five years old.

What made me think of that just now.

Go home, Tom.

Seriously.

I aways assumed people can swim.

Oh, Tesla, didn't see you there before.

It is true you're from Transylvania?

No.

Have you ever eaten human flesh?

Are you married?

No.

Why do you ask?

We like to give the new men a hard time.

I can swim.

What's that?

What you said before,

I can swim.

Can you?

Well good.

We'll see.

Pity the poor immigrant,

as the song goes.

Tesla came to America with an open heart

filled with expectation and hope.

I told you about my brother.

It was this time of year.

I was seven,

he was 12.

He didn't die instantly when he was thrown

from the horse.

My mother woke me,

brought me to the body,

told me to kiss him on the lips.

His very cold lips.

He was the brilliant one.

I could never measure up.

Dear Szigeti,

I'm finding my way at Edison's Machine Works,

where there's always too much to do and not enough time,

never enough money or men,

constant fixes, upgrades, emergencies.

Edison hardly sleeps and expects everyone around him

to sleep even less.

He talks to everyone, but is incapable of listening.

He has no interest in my motor.

You know the proverb, nothing grows in the shadow of an Oak.

I had hoped that Edison and I would,

I don't know, work together,

that he would understand.

Yes.

That we could be friends.

Edison doesn't have time to comb his hair.

It's more than that.

There was a death in the family.

Nobody talks about it.

His wife,

his wife died.

When was this?

Tuesday.

Alternating current is a waste of time.

Impractical and deadly.

There's no future in it.

$50,000.

You think I owe you $50,000 honestly?

Tesla,

you don't understand the American sense of humor.

This is pretty surely not how it happened

but what can I tell you?

If you Google Nikola Tesla you get 34 million results,

but for images there are mostly just

three our four photographs repeated over and over.

They get flipped around.

Some are colorized or photoshopped with lightning

in the background but it's basically just four pictures.

Beyond that, things get murky and more imaginative.

He was born in 1856, far from the Gilded Age

in Likas Milian, a small rural village

in what's now Croatia.

His father is an Orthodox Serbian priest,

but he's closer with his mother, a brilliant woman

who couldn't read or write.

He's a precocious boy, a bit withdrawn, secretive

with a gift for languages and mathematics.

Defying his father, he studies engineering in Prague,

but never graduates.

In Budapest, coming out of a depression,

walking in a park with a friend, he sees in a flash,

in a vision the motor that will be

his first revolutionary invention.

Alternating current is a waste of time.

Impractical and deadly.

There's no future in it.

$50,000.

You think I owe you $50,000?

Tesla, you have no understanding

of the American sense of humor.

A man who says he doesn't care about money

can find himself tormented by the lack of it.

Whereas Edison, Edison values money

but spends it faster than he makes it.

But he's always making it

in great quantities.

Google Thomas Edison and you get over 64 million results.

Twice as many as Tesla.

Edison's one of the most famous, most successful men

of his time.

But some facts slip out of sight.

Tesla went to work for Edison the same year,

the same summer that Mary Edison died.

Congestion of the brain was the official report,

code for a Morphine overdose.

She was 15 when they met in the rain

outside Edison's new workshop,

16 when they married, 25 when she died,

leaving Edison with three young children

and a lot on his mind.

This, you might think, is where Tesla's luck turns.

He finds investors and sets up the Tesla Lighting Company,

but his partners swindle him, leaving him penniless.

He falls into the abyss of poverty,

becomes a ditch digger digging trenches for cables,

phone lines for Western Union.

After a humiliating year, a sympathetic foreman

introduces him to Alfred S. Brown and Charles F. Peck.

They key is the motor rotates by virtue of induction

of rotating magnetic fields.

I've eliminated the commutator which distributes

electricity to the rotor.

So you've eliminated the need for the commutator

and brushes the sparks.

Amazing.

There are no sparks.

Is that so bad?

They're just unnecessary.

The magnetic field redirects the current.

May I?

The work you did for Edison, what was it?

I redesigned 24 different dynamos,

standard machines,

replaced longer magnets with short coils,

replaced older models.

I couldn't interest him in alternating current,

but of course you know...

I know, I'm an electrician.

But he...

The lawyer, the sensible one.

He understands...

This is more than just a motor.