Tesla came the closest to laughing that Paul had ever seen him.
“Oh, Mr. Paul Cravath. I have told you. Who is caring about light bulbs? We have them already. Now this, which I have built—Mr. Wilhelm Roentgen calls it an ‘X-ray,’ though I am liking my ‘shadowgraph’ more aptly. I have sent him my designs so that he may build these machines. This is a new thing. This is a wonder.”
“What the hell is anyone supposed to do with this X-ray?” said Paul.
If any man alive could save Paul’s career, his livelihood, it was Tesla. And yet he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. Perhaps for him there wasn’t even a difference. Paul cared about Tesla. Would Tesla ever care about him in return? He wasn’t sure. Tesla was unwilling to engage his mind in anything but his own daydreams, not even to save his only friends in the world.
Tesla noticed the defeated look on Paul’s face. “What is it that is the matter, Mr. Paul Cravath?”
“Paul is losing his lawsuit, Nikola,” said Agnes. “He’s worried that Thomas Edison is going to win.”
Tesla nodded sympathetically. “I have sadness about this also.”
Paul realized that there was a lot that had happened of which Tesla was unaware. He started talking fast. Maybe this would be his one chance to impress upon Tesla the importance of his work on A/C. Paul told the assembled everything, sparing no grisly detail of the past year. Damn confidentiality. His client had nothing to hide. The students took their seats, rapt with attention. It was quite a tale.
Paul watched Erastus’s face when he got to Westinghouse’s looming bankruptcy. There was little reaction. Erastus did not give Paul the sympathy he’d imagined, but neither did he present Paul with the pity he’d feared.
His sorry tale completed, Paul stood gloomily in the center of the room. What was there for anyone to say?
“Hmm,” said Robert. Paul turned, surprised to hear his voice.
“Robert,” said Erastus, “if you’ve something to add, you should add it.” Robert looked to his college president, then to Paul, then to Tesla.
“Well, it’s only…” Robert fidgeted. “Mr. Tesla says that there are two types of problems out there. On the one hand, you’ve got problems that people have been struggling over, solving or not solving, forever. Known problems. But then on the other hand, you’ve got problems that no one ever even thought to tackle—new problems. Uncharted ground, right? Unknown problems.”
“It is eloquently more so when I say it,” added Tesla, “but Mr. Robert Miles is correct.” He nodded at his student appreciatively. Somehow, thought Paul, Nikola Tesla had ended up being a surprisingly good instructor.
“And so?” said Paul.
“And so, sir, I don’t mean to tell you your business, but when we’re faced with a problem, Mr. Tesla has us, first and foremost, categorize it. We have to determine if it’s known or unknown. Have you done that with yours?”
“I suppose,” said Paul, “that defeating Edison is an unknown problem, since no one has ever…”
Paul stopped himself. “No, wait,” he continued. “Edison has been beaten before. He told me so himself when I deposed him.”
“Well,” explained Robert, “if it’s that type of problem that you’re trying to solve, then your first step should probably be to go to someone who’s solved it already.”
“There is exactly one person who’s gone up against Thomas Edison and won,” said Paul. “And you’re suggesting that he might have some interesting advice to share?”
Agnes smiled. She had already realized whom Paul meant.
“Your epiphany is pleasing,” said Tesla.
“Well,” said Erastus impatiently, “who is it?”
Paul told them. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this earlier.
“How do you think you might reach him?” asked Erastus.
“I imagine I’ll give him a ring on a telephone,” said Paul. “After all, he did invent the thing.”
That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.
—STEVE JOBS
IT TURNED OUT that Alexander Graham Bell did not own a telephone.
Fourteen years earlier, Bell had patented an “apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically.” A dozen other inventors, chief among them Thomas Edison, had been working on similar designs for a telegraph that could transmit the human voice itself. The uses and applications were tantalizingly lucrative. But Bell had beaten all his rivals, filing his patent mere hours before a nearly identical claim from Elisha Gray, and weeks ahead of another, from Edison. The lawsuits that resulted were still ongoing, and yet thus far Bell had won them resoundingly. His telephone patent was ironclad.
The invention, easily among the most significant in the world, had positioned him to be the most important inventor of his age. However, to the great shock of the scientific community, Bell had opted not to build the devices himself, nor to bring them to the market. Instead, he appointed a distant relative to manage the company that bore his name. Bell and his wife controlled more shares of the Bell Telephone Company than anyone else, and yet he steadfastly refused to have any involvement in its operation. Once his shares were comfortably generating millions per year in revenue, Bell had taken his family and moved to a remote Canadian peninsula.
Alexander Graham Bell had beaten Thomas Edison at his own game, and then vanished.
Paul and Agnes spent a week traveling from the dusty fields of Nashville to the quiet harbor of Bell’s frozen lake. Before they left, Agnes sent Henry Jayne a note to say that she was taking a last-minute trip with her mother. She sent her mother a note to say that she was staying another week in Nashville. Paul pointed out that Fannie would be sure to send a sternly worded reply, but Agnes only shrugged. She wouldn’t be there to receive it.
“What can she do? She’ll yell when I get home. There will be a great row. She’ll lock me up till the very day of my wedding, I’m sure. But at least, before all of that, I will have done this.”
They passed the 1,800-mile trip to Canada pleasantly. Happily, even. He finally brought himself to ask about her engagement, but they skipped through the painful details as quickly as possible. The wedding would not take place until the following July. It would take some time to organize. Everyone in New York, not to mention Philadelphia, would be in attendance. Everyone, Paul assumed, but himself.
That unpleasantness concluded, Paul and Agnes then had six days on a train together. The train became its own world—a glowing filament enclosed in a vacuum. Removed from the society of New York, they had only to be themselves. Paul wasn’t a young lawyer on the make. Agnes was not the star chanteuse of the Metropolitan Opera. They were just a good strong boy from Tennessee and a whip-smart wit from Kalamazoo. In the midst of all that was happening, it was actually…fun.
They made friends with a newlywed couple just across the border. When the bride gestured to Agnes’s ring and asked about their coming nuptials, Paul realized that this trip was almost like a honeymoon. Before he could correct their assumption, Agnes answered, “September!” To Paul’s surprise he found himself joining in her lie. Together they concocted an entire story of their lives—names, dates, a fictional romance that was soon to culminate in an imagined wedding. “Alice Boone” and “Peter Sheldon” were Tennessee mining heirs off to visit distant Canadian relatives. The foursome played bridge till all hours of the night.