Paul looked Serrell dead in the eye. Politeness was not going to work.
“Sir,” said Paul, “not to be indelicate, but I’ve been intimidated a lot recently. And quite a bit more forcefully than this. If you’re trying to scare me, get on with it. If you’re not, you might want to tell me how much more money you’d like my client to pay your client in exchange for his patents and then we can both find other ways to spend the remainder of our afternoons.”
Lemuel Serrell smiled.
“My goodness, Mr. Cravath. You really haven’t been long at this, have you? There’s this lawyerly code of conduct—well, we just prefer our threats unspoken, if we can help it. You understand. Needling each other under cover of pleasantry, that sort of business.”
“Apologies.”
“You’re a better fit for Westinghouse than I would have been.” Serrell took a piece of paper and wrote down a relatively simple financial formula. “Mr. Tesla is not going to sell you his patents. Calm down, calm down, don’t give me that look. He’s not going to sell them. But he will license them to you. A combination of cash, stock, and per-unit fee. Look over these numbers, talk through them with Westinghouse, and then let’s chat again. I’d tell you I need an answer within twenty-four hours, or some such ticking-clock tactic, but I suspect you wouldn’t respond well to it.”
Paul glanced down at the paper as Serrell handed it to him. The numbers were exceedingly generous to Tesla. But certainly negotiable.
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Paul as he placed the folded paper into his jacket pocket and rose from his seat.
“My best to Mr. Carter and Mr. Hughes,” said Serrell. “Oh, and…I hope you don’t think it impolite, but if you’ve ever a mind to leave your firm, we have quite a few clients here who would love to know that they’re cared for by the same hands that handle George Westinghouse’s business.”
“I’m happy with my position. And Mr. Westinghouse is content at our firm. But thank you.” Paul stood in the doorway. There was a thought he couldn’t shake.
“Out of curiosity,” said Paul, “why did you turn it down?”
“Hmm?”
“The job that Mr. Westinghouse offered you.”
“Oh.” Serrell looked down, tapping his fingers together as if their rhythm might instruct him how best to phrase his answer.
“More-experienced attorneys, like myself, we’re done no good by taking on a losing case. But someone like you…a young man, starting out. Your career will still benefit from having your name in the papers. And I’m sure you won’t be blamed personally for losing a case that no one could win.”
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best.
—STEVE JOBS
THE DEAL WAS finalized by July. Tesla would get a total of $70,000 up front, two-thirds of which would be in Westinghouse stock and one-third of which would be in cash, as well as $2.50 per horsepower sold on all machines utilizing Tesla’s alternating-current technology. However, Tesla would work for his money: He would join the Westinghouse Electric Company as a consultant, moving his own laboratory to Pittsburgh. Westinghouse had concerns about Tesla’s ability to work in the more rigid confines of his corporate environment. He expressed these to Paul as the two entered his study on a sweltering morning in the first week of July.
“It still says ‘Westinghouse’ on the front door,” Paul reassured him. “You’re in charge. If he wants to work, he’ll have to work for you. Unless Mr. Tesla is as handy with a chisel as he is with a rotor, you haven’t much to worry about.”
Paul couldn’t tell if Westinghouse had even heard him. Speaking louder, he decided to broach a delicate topic.
“Why did you hire me?”
Westinghouse was as surprised by the question as Paul was by his own nerve in asking it. Each man looked away from the other.
“Serrell said you offered him the job first. Before me.”
Westinghouse took a moment to answer. “That’s true.”
“So why me? Not just my own partners, but fifty attorneys I could name have more experience than I do.”
“Would you like me to see if any of them are available to take your place?”
“No. I want you to tell me why you chose me.”
Westinghouse looked Paul in the eyes. He was gauging something.
“You are correct that I did not hire you for your experience. In fact, I hired you for your lack of it. Between EGE and the dozen financiers on Wall Street who have an interest in its success, there isn’t a law firm in New York that’s not in one way or another bound up in Edison’s web. I looked, believe me. Every one of them had financial arrangements with either Edison or one of Edison’s supporters. J. P. Morgan owns sixty percent of EGE personally. Can you imagine the difficulty—the impossibility—of finding a firm that isn’t in business with Morgan?”
“While I hadn’t a client to my name.”
“No clients. No conflicts. No ambiguous allegiances.”
Westinghouse’s logic was very good. Funny, to think that all this time he thought he’d been valued for what he had accomplished—instead, it turned out that his value lay in his very lack of accomplishments.
“Don’t make a sour face,” suggested Westinghouse. “With a little luck we just might make something out of you yet.”
Paul felt that this was as close to a fatherly pat on the back as he was going to get from his client. It was certainly more than he’d gotten from his actual father.
“Your friend Tesla,” said Westinghouse, “may have provided just that good fortune. My men have much refining to do, but we’re changing almost everything about our electrical system: generators, dynamos, even the width of the wires. By the time we’re done, our A/C system will not only be the best method for producing and delivering electrical light in the world, but it will be so different from Edison’s D/C system as to render moot practically all of his three hundred twelve lawsuits.”
Westinghouse was correct in his legal analysis. But there was a crucial detail that the inventor had left unaddressed.
“You’re changing everything?”
Westinghouse knew to what Paul was referring. “I said almost everything.”
“The light bulb.”
“That goddamned light bulb.”
“The biggest suit of them all. You can change every element of your electrical system, but if the light bulb that system powers is still similar to Edison’s, it’ll all be for nothing.”
“This is how I will put Mr. Tesla to use. If he was able to theorize a new kind of electrical system, then it’s possible he can theorize a new kind of light bulb as well. A better one, one that takes full advantage of alternating current’s efficiencies.”
“It doesn’t have to be better,” said Paul. “It only has to be different. From a legal perspective, if you and Tesla can together create a fundamentally new design of light bulb, then, sir…well, then you won’t have to worry about Edison in court.”
“Kid…your courts, your lawsuits…If you only understood. The promise of A/C is so much greater than that.”
Paul had never before seen such enthusiasm from Westinghouse. It occurred to him that this was the side of the inventor that only the men in his laboratory got to see: the childlike response of the man who chose to make his living inventing things for the joy of it.
“Fessenden and I, we’ve been going over the A/C ideas, and by solving the distance problem, well, it suggests to us an even greater advantage.” Westinghouse walked to his desk. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the bottom drawer and removed a set of large paper sheets. Paul expected to see engineering schematics. But as he drew closer, he realized that they were maps. Maps of the United States.