Remembering Nikola Tesla’s Life in Colorado
By Peter Rose
December 12, 2019
Who was this madman who sent lightning bolts up to the sky and blew the electric
company’s generator, plunging Colorado Springs into darkness?
He was Nikola Tesla, and the year was 1899. Tesla and other soldiers of the
industrial revolution will be honored Sunday, when the National Inventor’s Hall
of Fame celebrates Inventors Day.
Tesla was inducted into the hall in 1975 alongside Wilbur and Orville Wright,
Guglielmo Marconi and Samuel Morse. The select group also includes such
visionaries as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Cyrus McCormick, Enrico
Fermi and Louis Pasteur.
Back at the turn of the century, Tesla was doing his experimentation in a
barn-like laboratory topped by a copper ball on the plains east of the city, a
laboratory that must have been as frightening as it was fascinating — the kind
of place Frankenstein would have liked.
“Colorado is a country famous for its natural displays of electric force,” wrote
the dark-haired, mustachioed Yugoslavian in his book “Experiments with Alternate
Currents of High Potential and High Frequency.”
“In that dry and rarefied atmosphere the sun’s rays beat objects with fierce
intensity,” he wrote. “I raised steam to a dangerous pressure in barrels filled
with concentrated salt solution, and the tinfoil of some of my elevated
terminals shriveled up in a fiery blaze.
“On one occasion 12,000 discharges occurred, all in a radius of certainly less
than 50 kilometers from the laboratory. Many of them resembled gigantic trees of
fire, with the trunks up or down.” Such a madman became one of the greatest
inventors of all time.
He conceived an effective method for utilizing alternating current, which ended
the steam age, put the United States on electric power and made construction of
the internal combustion engine possible.
Although he
died in 1943, his electric genius is very much alive. Memory of him
remains strong in the science community and in Colorado Springs — where he did
some of his most important work — as well as in his many other residences in
this country and abroad. In 1966 Colorado Springs honored him with the
dedication of a historical marker in Memorial Park.
“It is quite possible Tesla was the greatest inventor who ever lived,” Eugene C.
Goodwin of Westinghouse Electric said at the dedication. “He may have done more
to change our lives than any man in history.” But back in 1899, the Colorado
Springs Electric Co. wasn’t impressed — not after his fireworks display
accompanied by a deafening roar had ruined the city generator.
“That’s the last free power you’ll get from this company!” they told him, Inez
Hunt and Wanetta Draper wrote in their book “Lightning in His Hand.”
Nevertheless, Colorado Springs was one of his favorite locations. He wrote, “The
perfect purity of the air, the unequaled beauty of the sky, the imposing sight
of a high mountain range, all contributed to make conditions for scientific
observations ideal.”
Tesla was born in 1856 and made his first discoveries and inventions in Gratz,
Austria, and the University of Prague. In 1884 he arrived in the United States
with four cents in his pocket, and within four years had sold his patents to
Westinghouse for a million dollars. In 1899 he came to Colorado Springs and
built a laboratory. According to Draper and Hunt, “He was dealing with such a
concentration of power that could kill in an instant.”
“At times the very grass seemed to crackle with electricity, and sparks an inch
long could be drawn from the water hydrant at a distance of 300 feet from the
laboratory.”
Tesla left Colorado Springs in 1900 for New York, with plans to establish a
world radio broadcasting station. Construction problems set him back on that
venture. In 1934 he announced the discovery of a secret death ray, possibly the
later laser beam. He attributed the discovery to experiments he conducted while
living here.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the Colorado Springs
Gazette Telegraph in 1979.
This article was originally published online at:
https://www.outtherecolorado.com/remembering-nikola-teslas-life-in-colorado/