BY MIKE COPPOCK …..
More than a century ago, in the spring of 1899, Colorado Springs residents might have thought a mad scientist had moved into their midst. Perhaps he had.
American inventor Nikola Tesla had returned to Colorado, this time to the community at the base of Pikes Peak. Tesla and archrival Thomas Edison, both geniuses working with electricity, had teamed up to harness this amazing power at the end of the 19th century. But they had a falling out and Tesla moved on with his own theories and experiments. Tall, austere and gaunt looking with jet black hair parted in the middle and combed to each side, Tesla could sometimes look the part of the eccentric scientist. His penetrating eyes seemed to promise mischief and he had come to Colorado’s high, dry climate with specific experiments in mind. He had just been lionized for overseeing General Electric’s massive Niagara Falls hydroelectric facilities using his polyphase alternating current or AC generators, which were now providing power to Buffalo, New York.
He had discovered the rotating magnetic field principle and invented the brushless AC induction motor. That alone would assure he would become a legend in the scientific community. Yet, with the backing of George Westinghouse, he also invented the Tesla coil, X-ray machines and even a wireless remote controlled surface-running torpedo. Tesla had something else in mind when he came to Colorado. He thought he knew how to make our high-tension electrical power transmission lines obsolete. He had a theory that the earth itself could be used to conduct electrical energy. But he needed a lab away from prying eyes where he could work with these dangerous, hard-to-control experiments.
He needed to prove his theory to satisfy his investors and keep his financing in place. Colorado had been good for Tesla almost 10 years before when he had worked for Telluride Gold King Mine owner Lucien Nunn. Nunn had needed an inexpensive power source for his mine and mill and Tesla had designed the first commercial AC power generation and transmission system in the nation to provide the electricity. This time, Colorado patent lawyer Leonard Curtis, who owned a majority share in the Colorado Springs El Paso Power Company, enticed Tesla with a site for his lab and all the free power he might need. Col. John Jacob Astor provided the financing by offering Tesla $30,000 to make the move to Colorado, according to author Margaret Cheney in Tesla: Man Out of Time. Some stories on Tesla recall that he told reporters he was in Colorado to design a machine that would transmit a signal to Paris, France, in time for the Paris Exposition of 1900.
But the Tesla wireless system does not involve radio waves. Furthermore, the proposed wireless transmission to the Paris Exposition Universelle that ran from April 15 to November 12, 1900, would have originated from New York, not Colorado, according to Gary Peterson of the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project. So whatever the cover story, Tesla and his assistants arrived via train and checked in to the Alta Vista Hotel. Tesla was soon dining with Colorado Springs movers and shakers, ensuring his ability to conduct his experiments. He was ready to get started and found a spot about 1,000 feet beyond the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind on Pikes Peak Avenue at what would become the intersection of Foote Avenue and Kiowa Street.
A large mineral-paper covered building was soon under construction. It was an odd–looking building that included a retractable roof able to roll back so it would not catch fire. There was also an 80-foot wooden tower acting as a temporary support for a 142-foot guyed metal mast that was capped by an impressively large copper ball. The property was posted with two signs. A small one out in front read KEEP OUT GREAT DANGER in bold letters. A larger sign hung above the building’s front door. It quoted Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Inside, the lab was taking shape as more and more supplies rolled in each week by rail.
Tesla was directing his assistants in putting together what he called a “magnifying transmitter.” This was a modified version of the Tesla coil with an additional third coil that focused electrical energy down into the earth. At 51 feet in diameter, it was the largest ever built. It
was capable of generating up to 12 million volts of electricity. It could produce lightning bolts 130 feet long. When the great machine was ready, Tesla ordered the switch on his magnifying transmitter closed for exactly one second. Everything went black — not just in the lab, but in the entire city of Colorado Springs.
Turning on the magnifying transmitter had burned out El Paso Power’s dynamo, or electrical generator. But it had also generated “a magnificent sight” according to an entry in Tesla’s Colorado Springs Notes. There was an “extraordinary display of lightning, no less than 10-12 thousand discharges being witnessed inside of two hours,” Tesla wrote. “This was a wonderful and most interesting experience from a scientific point of view.
It showed clearly the existence of stationary waves, for how could the observations be otherwise explained?” Tesla wrote. While Tesla was noting the success of his experiment, the city of Colorado Springs was using its backup generator and trying to restore electricity for its residents. City officials were not happy with their mad scientist. They denied Tesla further access to the city system if he did not repair the city’s primary generator at his own expense, which he did. Those who lived in Colorado Springs had to have wondered what this strange genius was doing in this weird-looking facility.
There was the lightning and there was a blue corona, similar to St. Elmo’s fire, that could sometimes be seen in the area around the laboratory. Thunder could be heard as far away as Cripple Creek. During some experiments, his monster coils gave birth to ball lightning that would violently explode if it was stopped in its path. Adjustments had to be made carefully so that these balls of fire wouldn’t destroy the very equipment that was generating them. (That ball lightning continues to garner interest from researchers today as they investigate what Tesla was generating and how to control it.) Tesla did believe he was making progress and kept working. From June 1, 1899, to January 7, 1900, he made some 500 pages of careful notes on his experiments. He believed in these stationary terrestrial waves he was measuring and their potential to transmit electricity without wires. In essence, he found that electrical energy can be transmitted through the earth and atmosphere.
In the course of his research, he successfully lit lamps at moderate distances from the electrical source. According to the ebook Veil of Invisibility by Alexander Putney, Tesla called his Colorado Springs discovery of stationary terrestrial waves his greatest achievement. Tesla noted that his experiments proved “beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Earth, considered as a channel for conveying electrical energy … is infinitely superior to a wire or cable, however welldesigned.” Then as suddenly as Tesla came to Colorado Springs, he left. He not only left a stunned city wondering why he came in the first place, but also unpaid bills and his unusual laboratory.
He may have simply run out of funds. The bizarre lab was torn down in 1905 with the main components auctioned to cover local debts. Not much is left from Tesla’s time in Colorado Springs, according to Leah Davis Witherow, archivist for the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. For years, the International Tesla Society sold books about Tesla and his engineering legacy and operated a museum where a few replicas of his equipment were on display off East Bijou Street. However, funds dried up and in 1998 the organization was disbanded and forced to liquidate the remainder of its inventory and exhibits.
A man from New Jersey bought the materials. Today Jeremiah Messenger is trying to get a new Tesla Museum of Science off the ground in Colorado Springs. As for Tesla, when he arrived back in New York City after taking the train from Colorado, he took up suites in one of New York’s most expensive hotels, the Waldorf Astoria. Robert Underwood Johnson asked him to write an article for his Century Magazine regarding his Colorado Springs experiments. Titled “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” for the July 1900 issue.
It was a stunner. Tesla wrote about the coming of television and radio broadcasting, of directly tapping the energy of the sun for industrial use, of how electricity could be used to artificially make it rain in the most arid regions of the world, of a charged particle beam weapon for national defense sometimes referred to as a death ray, of the massive and widespread production of his 1903 electronic logic gate circuit resulting in supercomputers that could ultimately think for mankind.
His time in Colorado Springs had evidently allowed Tesla to see a glimpse of what the future would hold. All of that electricity flashing and firing through his Colorado lab had sparked much in Tesla’s genius mind. It didn’t all come together in his lifetime, but, in the bolts of lightning he sought to control and the stationary terrestrial waves he studied and challenged, he saw much of the future.
Mike Coppock is a freelance writer from Oklahoma. This is his third feature for Colorado Country Life. Gary Peterson of the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project Committee contributed to this article.