page_title: Science and technology in the United States
section_title: Science immigration
hierarchical_section_title: Science and technology in the United States / Science immigration
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: Science and technology in the United States has a long history, producing many important figures and developments in the field. The United States of America came into being around the Age of Enlightenment, an era in Western philosophy in which writers and thinkers, rejecting the perceived superstitions of the past, instead chose to emphasize the intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the 18th century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. Enlightenment philosophers envisioned a "republic of science," where ideas would be exchanged freely and useful knowledge would improve the lot of all citizens.
  The United States Constitution itself reflects the desire to encourage scientific creativity. It gives the United States Congress the power "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
context_section_description: American political leaders' enthusiasm for knowledge also helped ensure a warm welcome for scientists from other countries. A notable early immigrant was the British chemist Joseph Priestley, who was driven from his homeland because of his dissenting politics. Priestley, who went to the United States in 1794, was the first of thousands of talented scientists who emigrated in search of a free, creative environment.
  Other scientists had come to the United States to take part in the nation's rapid growth. Alexander Graham Bell, who arrived from Scotland by way of Canada in 1872, developed and patented the telephone and related inventions. Charles Proteus Steinmetz, who came from Germany in 1889, developed new alternating-current electrical systems at General Electric Company, and Vladimir Zworykin, an immigrant from Russia in 1919 arrived in the States bringing his knowledge of x-rays and cathode ray tubes and later won his first patent on a television system he invented. The Serbian Nikola Tesla went to the United States in 1884, and would later adapted the principle of rotating magnetic field in the development of an alternating current induction motor and polyphase system for the generation, transmission, distribution and use of electrical power.
  Into the early 1900s, Europe remained the center of science research, notably in England and Germany. From the 1920s onwards, the tensions heralding the onset of World War II spurred sporadic but steady scientific emigration, or "brain drain", in Europe. Many of these emigrants were Jewish scientists, fearing the repercussions of anti-Semitism, especially in Germany and Italy, and sought sanctuary in the United States. One of the first to do so was Albert Einstein in 1933. At his urging, and often with his support, a good percentage of Germany's theoretical physics community, previously the best in the world, left for the United States. Enrico Fermi, came from Italy in 1938 and led the work that produced the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Many other scientists of note moved to the US during this same emigration wave, including Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf, Otto Stern, and Eugene Wigner.
  Several scientific and technological breakthroughs during the Atomic Age were the handiwork of such immigrants, who recognized the potential threats and uses of new technology. For instance, it was the German professor Einstein and his Hungarian colleague, Leó Szilárd, who took the initiative and convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to pursue the pivotal Manhattan Project. Many physicists instrumental to the project were also European immigrants, such as the Hungarian Edward Teller, "father of the hydrogen bomb,"  and German Nobel laureate Hans Bethe. Their scientific contributions, combined with Allied resources and facilities helped establish the United States during World War II as an unrivaled scientific juggernaut. In fact, the Manhattan Project's Operation Alsos and its components, while not designed to recruit European scientists, successfully collected and evaluated Axis military scientific research at the end of the war, especially that of the German nuclear energy project, only to conclude that it was years behind its American counterpart.
   
  When World War II ended, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were all intent on capitalizing on Nazi research and competed for the spoils of war. While President Harry S. Truman refused to provide sanctuary to ideologically committed members of the Nazi party, the Office of Strategic Services introduced Operation Paperclip, conducted under the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. This program covertly offered otherwise ineligible intellectuals and technicians white-washed dossiers, biographies, and employment. Ex-Nazi scientists overseen by the JIOA had been employed by the US military since the defeat of the Nazi regime in Project Overcast, but Operation Paperclip ventured to systematically allocate German nuclear and aerospace research and scientists to military and civilian posts, beginning in A
caption: Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla sitting in the Colorado Springs experimental station with his "Magnifying transmitter" generating millions of volts.
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