The Last Days of Night(33)



At this both Westinghouse and Paul were momentarily at a loss for words. The waiters took the opportunity to slip between the men fresh pours of Bordeaux and three sautéed duck breasts.

“I make things, Tesla. I make wonderful things. My company manufactures triple-valve automatic air brakes and steam engines and ampere meters and Rotair valves. We make these things better than anyone else in the country. Better than Eli Janney. Better than George Pullman. Most certainly better than Thomas Edison.”

“I will grant the factual veracity of that statement,” offered Tesla.

“In Edison you two have a common foe,” said Paul.

But even Westinghouse ignored this. “What do you make?” he asked Tesla.

“Thoughts,” answered Tesla, as if speaking to a child. “I have thoughts. And my imaginings, they will last longer and drive deeper into the next centuries than shall your fragile toys.”

“The many things that I have built will last for ages.”

“No, Mr. George Westinghouse. Buildings are ephemeral. It is ideas that last forever.”

Tesla stood and gestured to the server for his long coat.

Paul mediated the wars of men who devoted their lives to creating things from thin air. But such different things! Westinghouse created objects. Tesla created ideas. While Edison, a few miles away, was busy creating an empire.

Paul did not have a creative mind. He knew that men like Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse possessed something he did not. An extra organ, an extra region of the brain, a God-lit candle such as the one that gave Saint Augustine faith—there was a creative thing, and Paul knew he didn’t have it.

What would it feel like to be a creative man? To experience their eurekas, to thrill at their inventive madnesses? Paul tried to imagine what an Edison, a Tesla, a Westinghouse might feel in the moment of pure inspiration…but he couldn’t do it. Paul did not invent; he solved. Problems came across his desk, and he solved them. Questions answered, mistakes corrected. The way Paul thought of it, if you asked him a question, he was exceptionally good at providing the right answer. But he wasn’t the sort of person who came up with the questions.

In the strangest sense, Paul felt that he saw these men more clearly than they would ever see one another. Because he was not of them, he could peer at them remotely, three great giants in the misty distance. Three entirely incompatible ways of approaching science, industry, and business.

“Farewell,” said Tesla before turning away and walking out the door. “You may consider me no longer any part of your Westinghouse Company.”





Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

—THOMAS EDISON



“WE’RE HERE TO help,” lied Charles Hughes. He was leaning against the frame of Paul’s office door in an attempt to appear casual. It wasn’t working.

Carter stood behind him. The elder partner’s scowl disarmed the younger partner’s imitation of friendliness.

“I appreciate that,” lied Paul in return.

“I doubt it,” said Carter. He made no effort to conceal his condescension toward his onetime protégé.

“Where are you with Tesla?” asked Hughes. It was two weeks after Westinghouse and Tesla’s ill-fated dinner. Paul had sent a few letters care of Lemuel Serrell, but had heard nothing back.

“I’ve received no response. But he’s been seen in Manhattan a few times—dining with high society, if you can believe it. My theory is that he’s seeking financiers for his own company. Setting up shop somewhere in New York, but Serrell either won’t tell me exactly where he is, or doesn’t know himself.” Why were his partners so focused on Tesla? Of all the crises before them, the loss of Tesla seemed the most manageable.

“We must convince him to go back to Westinghouse,” said Carter.

“Or find someone else to help Westinghouse create a non-infringing A/C lamp.” Paul knew that geniuses of Tesla’s caliber did not grow on trees. But they had to grow somewhere. “The loss of Tesla’s expertise is a problem, to be sure, but it’s a scientific one, not a legal one. The patents remain firmly in Mr. Westinghouse’s hands.”

“Yes,” said Hughes. “That’s what concerns us.”

It seemed that Paul’s partners knew something he did not.

“We looked over the contracts,” said Carter.

“Two dollars and fifty cents per horsepower on every unit sold?” asked Hughes.

“I don’t have the papers in front of me, but yes, I believe that’s the royalty Westinghouse is paying.”

“And he’s paying them whether or not Tesla is working with him to make the patents useful.”

“Yes,” said Paul. “Westinghouse keeps the patents even if Tesla leaves, no change in conditions. This is a good thing.”

“Well,” said Hughes with a carefully feigned humility, “the thing of it is, it’s not.”

“…How do you mean?”

“Oh my,” said Carter. “He genuinely doesn’t understand.”

“Walter,” said Hughes, “we don’t need to make Mr. Cravath feel any worse about this, do we?”

“Make me feel worse about what?” asked Paul.

“When you negotiated with Mr. Serrell,” said Hughes, “on your own, without our guidance, you negotiated a flat fee and a royalty structure that covered both Mr. Tesla’s patents and his future work. And of course this structure was quite generous, wasn’t it?”

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