His patents made him a rich man, at least for a while. He lived at the Waldorf-Astoria and loved to hobnob with the famous at Delmonico’s and the Players Club.
Around 1900, as Tesla planned what would become Wardenclyffe, inventors around the world were racing for what was considered the next big thing — wireless communication. His own plan was to turn alternating current into electromagnetic waves that flashed from antennas to distant receivers. This is essentially what radio transmission is. The scale of his vision was gargantuan, however, eclipsing that of any rival.
Investors, given Tesla’s electrical achievements, paid heed. The biggest was J. Pierpont Morgan, a top financier. He sank US$150,000 (today more than US$3 million) into Tesla’s global wireless venture.
Work on the prototype tower began in mid-1901 on the North Shore of Long Island at a site Tesla named after a patron and the nearby cliffs.
“The proposed plant at Wardenclyffe,” the New York Times reported, “will be the first of a number that the electrician proposes to establish in this and other countries.”
The shock wave hit Dec. 12, 1901. That day, Marconi succeeded in sending radio signals across the Atlantic, crushing Tesla’s hopes for pioneering glory.
Still, Wardenclyffe grew, with guards under strict orders to keep visitors away. The wooden tower rose 57m over a wide shaft that descended 37m to deeply anchor the antenna. Villagers told the Times that the ground beneath the tower was “honeycombed with subterranean passages.”
The nearby laboratory of red brick, with arched windows and a tall chimney, held tools, generators, a machine shop, electrical transformers, glass-blowing equipment, a library and an office.
But Morgan was disenchanted. He refused Tesla’s request for more money.
Desperate, the inventor pulled out what he considered his ace. The towers would transmit not only information around the globe, he wrote the financier in July 1903, but also electric power.
“I should not feel disposed,” Morgan replied coolly, “to make any further advances.”
Margaret Cheney, a Tesla biographer, observed that Tesla had seriously misjudged his wealthy patron, a man deeply committed to the profit motive. “The prospect of beaming electricity to penniless Zulus or Pygmies,” she wrote, must have left the financier less than enthusiastic.
It was then that Tesla, reeling, fired up the tower for the first and last time. He eventually sold Wardenclyffe to satisfy US$20,000 (today about US$400,000) in bills at the Waldorf. In 1917, the new owners had the giant tower blown up and sold for scrap.
Today, Tesla’s exact plan for the site remains a mystery even as scientists agree on the impracticality of his overall vision: The tower could have succeeded in broadcasting information, but not power.
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