An almost forgotten U.S. scientist returns to Cornell -- in bronze

By David Brand

Luminaries of the Cornell physics department received a lecture last week from a retired third-grade teacher from Ann Arbor, Mich., about the man who made much of the modern world possible.

A bust of the protean American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) is presented to the Cornell physics department, May 19, by John Wagner, right, a third-grade teacher from Ann Arbor, Mich. Accepting the bust is Saul Teukolsky, the Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics and Astrophysics, and department chair. Frank Dimeo/University Photography

Nikola Tesla. Nikola who? Well, the man who invented the system of polyphase alternating current (AC) power generation and transmission that is used throughout the world today. The man whose ingenuity built the Niagara Falls Power Project that electrified New York City. The man who developed a crucial circuit for tuning radios and whose patents were used by Marconi in the first radio transmission.

John Wagner, a 75-year-old third-grade teacher, thinks the Serbia-born Tesla is a "forgotten American scientist," and to make his point he has had cast a series of 250-pound bronze busts of Tesla, each set in Indian black granite. The 13th bust was presented on May 19 to the physics department in a ceremony in Rockefeller Hall, in front of a second-floor showcase dedicated to the great man, complete with a decade-old recreation of Tesla's original coil for generating high voltages, the basic invention for transmitting and receiving radio waves.

Saul Teukolsky, the department's chair, who accepted the bust from Wagner, agreed that "hardly anyone among the general public has ever heard of Tesla." But, he noted, every undergraduate in his department knows about him because there is an electrical unit called a Tesla, which is a measure of magnetic field strength (the Earth has a very weak magnetic field, about one ten-thousandth of a Tesla). Physics students at Cornell also see a demonstration of the Tesla coil in their introductory courses, said Teukolsky, who is the Hans A. Bethe Professor of Physics and Astrophysics.

Wagner thinks that's not enough. "Everyone has his name attached to something but Tesla," he insisted at the presentation ceremony, urging the faculty present to go back to their classrooms "and focus not so much on the Tesla coil as on all he invented -- and remember, what he really invented was the worldwide system of polyphase AC."

Tesla obtained the first U.S. patents in the field of polyphase AC motors (known as induction motors) and power transmission, comprising a complete system of generators, transformers, transmission lines, motors and lighting.

Tesla, who died in 1943, "unleashed a revolution," declared Wagner. "People were riding on horseback in 1896, and 73 years earlier, in 1823, people were riding on horseback. But advance 73 years -- after Tesla's polyphase system was used at Niagara Falls and took electric power to Buffalo and New York City -- to 1969, and that was the year man walked on the moon. You try to tell me it wasn't polyphase AC and the wide dissemination of knowledge through radio that made that possible. It had to be that."

Wagner's enthusiasm goes back to the late 1980s when he began exciting his third- and fourth-grade students with stories of Tesla's exploits. The father of one of his students offered to sculpt a bust of Tesla, and an ambitious project was born. The first bust went to Harvard University's physics department, followed by Yale, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. The Cornell presentation follows one to the Georgia Institute of Technology.

To finance the casting of the busts, Wagner designed a Tesla T-shirt that he began selling over the Web, and his students wrote letters to company executives urging them to support the project. Today, the $23 T-shirts continue to finance the project. Wagner is retired but still works as a volunteer teacher twice a week.

It's curious that it has taken Cornell so long to receive its Tesla bust because, as Wagner observed, the university "played an important role in Tesla's career." It was Cornell engineering professor William Anthony who first tested Tesla's new AC motors for efficiency. And, by way of thanks, Tesla traveled to Cornell in the 1880s to demonstrate his motors to engineering faculty.

"Smile every time you pass him, and nod in recognition," Wagner urged his audience.