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>> this is a very special guest event here to talk about nikolai tesla to hear the accomplishments and inventions. >> and there is a market revival of larry page with google referred to him as a hero maple on -- people probably think of the battery but today i want to talk about

the man and the process. and i thought i offered some insight the first is just the extent of this man's genius. so with the electric motor according to the united states of court with remote control and the list goes on. that is the very basic of the economy done by one single man with those electrical engineers who said we will eliminate from the industrial world his work to cease to

turn and the talents would be dark. and then to envision things but then he foresaw radar or laser weapons vertical lift aircraft one of the quotes that knocked me out on the cell phone to talk about the ability and then to say we should hear one another so perfectly as if we were face-to-face of thousands of miles just 105 years ago so as a visionary he was quite

remarkable and then with the notion to complicate his legacy or make it more interesting he spent years trying to figure out how to communicate with people on other planets and spent years figuring out how to read your mind by putting monitors in your retina. here is the guy who had great success and missed several things he thought that some things were totally wrong but as an inventor he had an amazingly high batting average to get things right. also my day job i work for the environmental defense run on -- funded chicago what a surprise to me nikola tesla was a clean energy pioneer the first article was urinating

hundred and century magazine at the time the largest circulation of its kind the subtitle was how to capture the energies the 118 years ago he was describing in great detail how to capture energy from the sun and the wind. as environmentalist i keep mixing my day job and writing job what a wonder to have nikola tesla life here today so he could think outside of the box particularly with the electricity industry he helped to create which has become a little stodgy because it has been monopolized for many years but imagine what he could do thinking about the ways to send electricity wirelessly or ways to generate electricity thinking of ways to send electricity to

everyone around the world even to those who still don't have electric power in fact he was a magician. and would give presentations. thatst a wonder it keeps our beer cold and then to control that. create lightning this is something reserved for nature alone even though not connected to any wire this is a remarkable individual. my third surprise is to

present this guy struggle between the present and the future. can, weird or appropriate but he was born during the intense lightning storm at the very stroke of midnight between the ninth and tenth of july. how weird is that? and as a result felt he had some special qualities. and it was stuck between and always trying to balance the realities and envisioning what the future might look like and the year was 1897 and they had

just completed capturing the immense power and heat to put through a series of generators and then an amazing 400 miles all the way to new york city. just to give you a sense of how unbelievable that is thomas edison approach to electricity was direct-current could only send something half a mile. with the technological accomplishment of the 19th century that the man who made this project possible. there is still a statue that commemorates him.

but this is 1897 and he thinks this is so today. am bor with today this is a real accomplishment i want to thank about something new so i will create a whole new field of science today we would refer to i as robotic. his first piece of equipment was a model boat 4-foot long and 3-foot high and this was at a time he presented it in flashy places at matt's square garden on -- madison square garden in new york he set up a pond in the middle of the exhibition area three months after the battleship you're

just at the beginning of the spanish-american war so trying to figure out if there were new ways to make weapons. he had that presentation and for about 15 minutes going forward or going back and basically read those comments that it was controlled and other people thought it was haunted but after mesmerizing everybody and said would anybody like to ask a question? everybody has a blank look. so probably a math nerd says what is the cube root of 64?

tesla is standing in the back with his hand under a secret panel pushes the button four times that flashes the light on the model and as he said the crowd went not. that there has to be a monkey inside of there but this was the conflict between the realities of the day with the major accomplishment on the 19th century and that bores him. but what is remarkable of his accomplishments is marconi who gets the credit for radio he tried to do something like this three months later he brings out a little boat and pretended there was a spanish frigate on the other side of the pond to maneuver his little boat up there i can't

remember it was the beginning of the spanish-american war but punches the button and nothing happens. suddenly there is a huge explosion in the back room because he not f o how to individualize the messages so the message went back to the storeroom and blast and smoke comes pouring out into the area. so for tesla he thinks big. a reporter asked him is this a model boat or the submarine that can deliver bombs? he said are you kidding me? this is the first nonbiological form of life it is embodied with the mind. his view of this was that he foresaw artificial

intelligence and then went on to say the boat could follow the course laid out or obey commands that could be cabled to distinguish between wts or what it ought not to do artificial intelligence where the beginnings of it almost 100 years ago today. and the first surprise is that a lot of the articles about tesla appear to be superman. one biographer said he was like a supernova in the human rights and to be fair, inventing the electric motor and long distress electricity remote control radio is a super accomplishment but what intrigues me is he was also

human and charmingly so. one of the great benefits to be a biographer then you get to be surprised about things i was surprised when i was at the library of congress and asd the librarian what they had on tesla and she said i have a bunch of boxes in the back. in those boxes were these letters that tesla was writing to his friends or callings or business associates but in reality he had lots of friends it was robert and catherine johnson the editor of the magazine that we discussed before and catherine his wife had an intellectual salon at their townhouse in manhattan and they were not really rich but they acted that way and brought together for dinners musicians and other luminaries. one of them came all the time

was mark twain he would come to dinner and after would go to the tesla laboratory there is tesla there in the background and these two played like kids shooting lightning beams across the lab and they were having a marvelous time so my point is this man who is superman the intriguing part is he was human but one example of their letter is that tesla had been sick a couple of days with a cold and robert wrote him a letter that exemplifies the daily notes and it said it has been a whole week since we saw

you and we only need you. so with that very humane superman would have reveled in the excitement of discovery. i don't think there is any thrill and that of the inventor to see the young creation such emotions make a man forget everything. as in adventure perhaps one of the last curiosities motivated by idealism where edison invented largely practical products to make money but tesla felt that even though he didn't like many he did enjoy

it and he enjoyed his nice apartment at the waldorf-astoria but that's was in the marketplace and invention was more important than profit. no doubt he aimed high, perhaps higher than any other adventure we have had in this country part of my reason for writing the book is to give more credit and exposure that he has gotten. i'm not trying to criticize edison as they did amazing things but tesla did as well. these are a few pictures of him. but through his idealism thought he would bring power to everyone around the world

freely to create robots and basically driven by the inner force that felt sheer creation was the most important thing in the world and i would argue we are all better for it. thank you very much. [applause] >> we have time for just a few questions if anybody has time for our guest. >> i seems like. >> he made a lot of mistakes not long after the wright brothers flew the airplane he said airplanes will not make it they are too heavy. he said other options with a

way to go relative to einstein who was two decades younger but tesla thought he split and adamant no energy came out so he said atomic power is bomb and the cosmic rays could go faster than the speed of light. he did get things wrong but my point was but his batting average was really, really good. all inventors if they are out there on the cutting edge will make mistakes. but edison thought he had a brilliant new way to increase the efficiency to extract from rocks that all fails but that he had a better batting average than most and what he gave us two motors into electricity and robots and radio are at the very core of our economy and i for one am grateful we had him.

>> how did he do financially? >> a very good question. he went up and down is the short answer. his first job was working in budapest to install the phone system then he got to come to the united states to work for edison himself. he paid him a tiny bit of money in fact he quit because there was a squabble about money than he was cheated by his partner in a new business and he spent a year digging ditches making two dollars a day then suddenly with the electric motor patent was told to westinghouse and now he is wealthy. really wealthy. he goes into the waldorf-astoria but then after he and westinghouse did the niagara falls project

westinghouse was dressed in j.p. morgan the ruthless banker that he was went after to take over westinghouse and then he had to turn to tesla who had a contract to get a royalty for every horsepower of a motor that came out which is worth billions of dollars and westinghouse said i'm about to lose my company. can you help me? and tesla as a horrible businessman says you've always been kind to me you are the one who will bring my idea of this great electric motor to the world. i will tear up my contrt and gave away $1 billion so for the rest of his life he struggled and died for and alone and in a new york hotel he had to declare bankruptcy

only a few at westinghouse realize they made the country possible gave him a stipend so he had a room but up-and-down is the answer. >> so to be part of the modern world of technology would he be surprised or proud today? >> i still think he would be looking at the future just in a totally new way. . . . .