The History Behind The Scene

But first, Personal Commentary by Author:

I have a passion for a segment of history that truly—in all respects—is very sad. This event is a story of one man’s scientific contributions that bolstered America’s Industrial Revolution in ways that society had never seen before. His achievements in the dawn of this exciting era were paramount to a thriving society that was eager to replace their old ways with newly developed machines. The time ranged from the 1880s through 1910. In this individual’s wake, teams of newspaper reporters published articles that told of his brilliance. But when it was all said and done this man meandered aimlessly along the streets of New York City—penniless.

Lonely and destitute, he was often seen sitting by himself feeding pigeons in Central Park. Ironically, just a few blocks away, the U.S. Patent Office contained his patents that were a testament of his genius. Somehow, his name slipped through the cracks of time and went untold. And his mark he thought was etched in history had quickly faded. He never married nor had any children to tell his story. This physicist was Mr. Nikola Tesla.

And his greatest enemy was Thomas Edison.

The scene that I wrote is fictitious. However, the discussion that my character, Grant Ford, initiates with Tesla regarding the Nobel Peace Prize is based upon historical fact.

Story Excerpt

A cloudy sky drizzled on much of the northeastern seaboard. After several hours, the train came to a stop at New York City’s Grand Central Station. Numerous cabs, waiting for passengers, lined the sidewalks outside the station.

“Good morning,” Grant said greeting a driver, his voice carrying important agendas.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asked.

“The Waldorf Astoria Hotel.”

“At your service!” The short drive through the city concluded at the hotel entrance.

“Thank you, and good day.” Grant paid the charge and added a tip.

He entered the building and approached the lobby desk.

“May I help you?” the lobbyist asked.

“Yes, if possible, I would like to inquire of Mr. Nikola Tesla.”

“Sir,” the lobby attendant said, “Mr. Tesla just walked out that door about a minute ago and turned left. He shouldn’t be far off.”

“Thank you, sir.” Grant exited the glass lobby doors with haste and gazed down the half-busy sidewalk. As he began walking, his eyes surveyed clusters of people, when suddenly, he spotted a man in a black trench coat treading slowly. The man wore no hat in the steady drizzle.That must be him, Grant concluded. He hurried toward the man, but, as he neared the stranger, Grant cautioned himself.What if that’s not Tesla?

Nevertheless, Grant girded himself with courage and took a deep breath, “Mr. Tesla!” he called out.

From behind, the disheartened physicist heard someone call out his name. Tesla stopped and turned to see who was calling him. Nikola Tesla, the infamous physicist, examined with curiosity a young man, well tailored in a brown trench coat, staring back at him.

Grant paced several steps forward knowing that he stood face to face with the defamed physicist. The lines formed on Tesla’s face marked the wounds he had suffered from innovative setbacks, and the distant look in his eyes told that he had been a lonely man—silenced by unfortunate circumstances. The physicist, for some time, had been withdrawn from society. And the recent retraction of the Nobel Peace Prize delivered another hard blow, plummeting Tesla’s spirits even lower.

“Mr. Tesla,” Grant said respectfully, “Please pardon my intrusion.” A pause followed. “I read about you in the newspapers—in Boston.” The expressionless Tesla just stared back at the young man.

“Sir,” Grant expressed, “I grieve that the Nobel Peace Price was retracted from you.”

Not knowing who the young man was, Tesla nodded slightly and muttered, “Thank you,” in his Yugoslavian accent to the kindhearted stranger.

“Mr. Tesla, after all that you have contributed for our thriving society, you deserve this award,” Grant added. Touched by the young man’s sincerity, Tesla asked, “What is your name?”

“Grant Ford. I’m an engineering student attending the University of Boston. My studies are in radio development … sir,” Grant said as he offered a handshake.

“Thank you again,” Tesla replied as his distant eyes and saddened countenance managed to acknowledge the young man’s sincerity.

As Grant stood in front of Nikola Tesla, he strained hard to fathom how such a noted inventor, who for more than a decade had stood in the spotlight of fame, could now drift penniless among the common folk of New York City. Ironically, just twelve blocks away from where Tesla lived, the U.S. Patent Office held claim to volumes of inventions that told of Tesla’s incredible ingenuity. But in these recent years, passersby streaming along the sidewalks of New York City had observed a lonely man sitting by himself and feeding clusters of pigeons.

As Tesla turned to go, Grant interjected, “I would like to offer you coffee, if you don’t mind.”

Warmed by the stranger’s offer, Tesla hesitated at first, but then nodded. “There’s a café at the corner,” he said.

Grant, full of questions—and seated at a booth in the presence of a man he dreamed of meeting—inquired of Tesla’s past works. That caused the physicist to recount historical milestones of how he transformed many of his hypotheses into working apparatuses—and how he further rubbed elbows with the legendary Thomas Edison, Charles Batchelor, Guglielmo Marconi, George Westinghouse, Lord Kelvin, Mark Twain, J.P. Morgan, and so many others. Grant absorbed the firsthand details and episodes of Tesla’s exciting life.

On the plateau of inborn genius, the brilliant Nikola Tesla rose above the clouds. The degree of intelligence contained in his human mind kept the physicist occupied with unending ideas—his mind was like a great city that never sleeps. The onslaught of growing theories, mathematical equations, and unending experiments kept Tesla trapped in an isolated world—a lonely place where the physicist saw plainly into the sciences of electromagnetic currents and radio frequencies. But his concepts, theorized in the pages of the newspapers, boggled the understanding of many, which explains why they eventually concluded that the physicist was going mad. Society at large misunderstood the physicist, and Tesla’s genius eventually led him into isolation. But in truth, Tesla’s scientific mind existed in a place that wasn’t realized until years after his time.

An hour passed quickly and Tesla had to go. Grant paid the bill, thanked Tesla for his time, then headed back to Boston. Years later, when Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the radio patent to be retracted from Marconi and awarded back to Tesla, claiming the physicist as the inventor of radio.

(Excerpt from The Silent Note reprinted with permission from the author, Patrick Davis).

(Originally published at GoArticles and reprinted with permission from the author, Patrick Davis).