Inventing Madness

Tesla's Breakdowns

"I approached Tesla to collaborate with me on my most important project because I realized he was a brilliant man. I was a little hesitant, however, because I knew he had had a number of mental breakdowns during his life. His most recent one had occurred in 1892 following the death of his mother. He arrived in Paris just hours before her death. He stayed by her side until he was exhausted, then he said he was awakened by a dream. He believed the dream was a message from the supernatural and told the press. They then wrote cruel articles about his suffering a mental breakdown. One of his other breakdowns occurred in 1879, soon after dropping out of school at the age of 23.

"I made the trip to Tesla's laboratory in Colorado Springs a few times, unbeknownst to the press, to personally view his experiments. During one of them, only he and I were in the room. I saw a large bolt of lightning hit him in his head and knock him across the floor of the laboratory. I ran over to him and could smell his burnt hair. He was not breathing. I violently shook him by his shoulders and screamed his name.

"After a few minutes, which seemed much longer than that, he opened his eyes and seemed to be fine . . . a little shaken, but fine, nonetheless. A few months later, Tesla was being interviewed by the press when one of the reporters asked him how he was doing. Tesla responded with, 'Well, recently I found out that I am alive. And I guess it's a lot to take in. I didn't realize exactly what it all entailed. And I really didn't know it was going to be so incredibly strange.'

"Shortly following the interview, Tesla was at the Colorado Springs laboratory and he observed unusual signals from his receiver, which he interpreted as 'one-two-three-four,' which he later believed were extraterrestrial radio wave communications coming from Mars. The signals were substantially different, he said, from the signals he had noted from the noise of storms and the Earth.

The press criticized him when he revealed his findings about the extraterrestrial radio waves. But I did not.

"By 1912, Tesla was clearly showing signs of mental illness. He became obsessed with cleanliness and fixated on the number three. He began shaking hands with people and washing his hands—all done in sets of three. He had to have eighteen napkins on his table during meals and would count his steps whenever he walked anywhere. He claimed to have an abnormal sensitivity to sounds, as well as an acute sense of sight, and he later wrote that he had 'a violent aversion against the earrings of women,' and 'the sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit.'

"Tesla was able to continue work on his experiments with radio waves and eventually realized that, with just a few modifications of his instruments, he was able to hear voices. Initially Tesla thought he was conversing with people from another universe, but he soon realized that he was speaking with individuals who were deceased. At first Tesla was very hesitant to tell me that his invention finally worked. He said he feared I would think him truly insane. Of course he only told me about his findings. But as soon as he told me, I believed him. I knew he had discovered the invention that would change the world.

"In 1899, John Jacob Astor IV invested one hundred thousand dollars for Tesla to further develop and produce a new lighting system. Instead, Tesla used the money to further fund our Colorado Springs experiments. On January 7, 1900, Tesla left Colorado Springs. His laboratory was torn down in 1905, and its contents, with the exception of the spirit phone and all the instrumentation attached to it, were sold to satisfy his supposed debt.

"Tesla's important and essential instrumentation was moved to my personal laboratory in West Orange. I knew I needed to work closely with Tesla. I too needed to know exactly how to work our device!"

I stared at Mr. Edison for a few seconds and then said, "Dear God, Mr. Edison! I can't believe what I am hearing! Surely you must be kidding me!"

"I have never been more serious in my life," he said. "Tesla and I have now configured the device so that each of us has a key. It takes both keys, turned at the same time, plus we must enter in the right series of numbers, to make the device work."