page_title: Wardenclyffe Tower
section_title: Financing
hierarchical_section_title: Wardenclyffe Tower / Design and operational principles / Financing
caption_attribution_description: English: Famous photograph of Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs around 1899, supposedly sitting reading next to his giant "magnifying transmitter" high voltage generator while the machine produced huge bolts of electricity. The photo was a promotional stunt by photographer Dickenson V. Alley; a double exposure. First the machine's huge sparks were photographed in the darkened room, then the photographic plate was exposed again with the machine off and Tesla sitting in the chair. In his Colorado Springs Notes Tesla admitted that the photo is false: "Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined!" Tesla's biographers Carl Willis and Mark Seifer confirm this. During 1899-1900 Tesla built this laboratory and researched wireless transmission of electric power there. The Magnifying Transmitter, one of the largest Tesla coils ever built, with input power of 300 kW could produce potentials of around 12 million volts at a frequency of about 150 kHz, creating 130 ft. (41 m) "lightning bolts". The arcs in the image are 22 feet long. When he first turned it on, the machine blew out the Colorado Springs power company's generator. These long arcs were not a feature of the normal operation of the coil because they wasted energy; for these photos Tesla forced the machine to produce arcs by switching the power rapidly on and off. The photo was part of a publicity spread taken by photographer Dickinson Alley in December 1899 to accompany his magazine article Nikola Tesla, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", Century Magazine, The Century Co., New York, June 1900, fig. 8; a version without Tesla appears in the article. The note accompanying the image: "Fig. 8 - The coil, partly shown in the photograph, creates an alternative movement of electricity from the earth into a large reservoir and back at a rate of one hundred thousand alternations per second. The adjustments are such that the reservoir is filled full and bursts at each alternation just at the moment when the electrical pressure is maximum. The discharge escapes with a deafening noise striking at an unconnected coil twenty two feet away, and creating such a commotion of electricity in the earth that sparks an inch long can be drawn from a water main at a distance of three hundred feet from the laboratory. This copy was sent to British physicist William Crookes, and is inscribed: 'To my illustrious friend Sir William Crookes of whom I always think and whose kind letters I never answer! Nikola Tesla June 17, 1901' Wellcome Images Keywords: Electrical energy; Electric; Power; Electricity; Energy; Volt; Power (Psychology); Static; Voltage; Laboratories; Nikola Tesla
context_page_description: Wardenclyffe Tower, also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York in 1901–1902. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to scale up the facility and add his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project's primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
  In an attempt to satisfy Tesla's debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down to 16 acres but the original, 94 by 94 ft, brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day.
context_section_description: Tesla was back in New York in January 1900. He had convinced his friend Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of The Century Magazine, to allow him to publish an article covering his work and Johnson had even sent a photographer to Colorado Springs the previous year to photograph Tesla's experiments. The article titled "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy" written by Tesla appeared in the June, 1900 edition of Century Magazine. 
  Instead of the understandable scientific description Johnson had hoped for it was more of a lengthy philosophical treatise where Tesla described his futuristic ideas on harnessing the sun's energy, control the weather with electricity, wireless control, and how future inventions would make  war impossible. It also contained what were to become iconic images by photographer Dickenson Alley of Tesla and his Colorado Springs experiments.
  Tesla made the rounds in New York trying to find investors for his system of wireless transmission, wining and dining them at the Waldorf-Astoria's Palm Garden (the hotel where he was living at the time), The Players Club and Delmonico's. Tesla first went to his old friend George Westinghouse for help.  Westinghouse seemed like a natural fit for the project given the large-scale AC equipment Westinghouse manufactured and Tesla's need for similar equipment.
  Tesla asked Westinghouse to "…meet me on some fair terms in furnishing me the machinery, retaining the ownership of the same and interesting yourself to a certain extent".  While Westinghouse declined to buy into the project, he did agree to lend Tesla $6,000. Westinghouse suggested Tesla pursue some of the rich venture capitalists. Tesla talked to John Jacob Astor, Thomas Fortune Ryan, and even sent a cabochon sapphire ring as a gift to Henry O. Havemeyer. No investment was forthcoming from Havemeyer and Ryan but Astor did buy 500 shares in Tesla's company. Tesla gained the attention of financier J. P. Morgan in November 1900. 
  Morgan, who was impressed by Guglielmo Marconi's feat of sending reports from the America's Cup yacht races off Long Island back to New York City via radio-based wireless the previous year, was dubious about the feasibility and patent priority of Tesla's system.
  In several discussions Tesla assured Morgan his system was superior to, and based on patents that superseded, that of Marconi's and of other wireless inventors', and that it would far outpace the performance of its main competitor, the transatlantic telegraph cable. Morgan signed a contract with Tesla in March 1901, agreeing to give the inventor $150,000 to develop and build a wireless station on Long Island, New York, capable of sending wireless messages to London as well as ships at sea. The deal also included Morgan having a 51% interest in the company as well as a 51% share in present and future wireless patents developed from the project.
caption: Tesla with his "magnifying transmitter", Colorado Springs, 1899, in photo taken for his 1900 Century Magazine article. This photo was a double exposure; Tesla was not actually in the room when the device was operating.
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