Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute to Receive Sculpture Of Nikola Tesla, Developer of the World's First Waterborne Robot

PITTSBURGH— On June 20, Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute will unveil a bust of Nikola Tesla, the remarkable inventor whose U.S. patents for alternating current (AC) electrical transmission systems laid the foundation for the electric-powered world we live in today.

What most people don’t know is that he also invented robot-like devices before the word robot even existed. In July 1898, Tesla unveiled the world’s first wireless “teleautomaton,” a wooden-hulled boat equipped, as he described it, “with a borrowed mind.” Its internal machinery and steering mechanism responded to a remote control device he held in his hands.

The patent he got for the boat was just one of some 700 he received during his lifetime for hundreds of breakthroughs in electrical science, including the Tesla coil, which spawned radio, X-ray tubes and VTOL — vertical-takeoff and landing aircraft — as well as the polyphase AC system. Despite his enormous successes, Tesla died nearly penniless in New York on January 7, 1943, and subsequently slipped from the memory of the modern world he helped to create.

In anticipation of his 150th birthday — Tesla was born July 10, 1856 — and in recognition of his work on robotic precursors and his stature as one of the most important scientists of all time, Robotics Institute officials will dedicate the Tesla sculpture in the institute’s entry, 4000 Newell-Simon Hall, in a ceremony at 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, June, 20. The dedication will be followed by a luncheon and lecture about Tesla’s contributions, in room 3305 Newell-Simon Hall.

The 225-pound bronze sculpture is a gift to the university that comes through the efforts of John W. Wagner, a retired Michigan elementary school teacher. Wagner and his students began a mission to reinforce Tesla’s place among the world’s greatest scientists during the mid 1980s.

The father of one of Wagner’s students, sculptor Ronald Farrington Sharp, rendered a bust of Tesla, which could be purchased for donation to various institutions. Over the years, Wagner and his students raised funds by selling t-shirts and jerseys to purchase the busts, valued at $6,000 each. They subsequently have been placed at universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others. Carnegie Mellon is the 18th institution to receive a Tesla sculpture and the first to place it in a robotics setting.

“While most other institutions display the Tesla sculpture in their electrical engineering departments, we are unique in having this connection to robotics,” said Matthew T. Mason, director of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. “It is especially fitting for us to have this bust,” he continued. “Pittsburgh industrialist George Westinghouse bought Tesla’s patents on alternating-current systems in 1888, founded Westinghouse Electric Corp. and worked with Tesla to electrify the world. Ninety one years later, in 1979, it was the same Westinghouse Electric Corp. that gave the initial multimillion dollar grant to establish our Robotics Institute.”

Born in Serbia, Tesla immigrated to New York City at age 28 in 1884. His first job was with Thomas Edison at General Electric Co., where he worked to improve Edison’s electrical plants that operated on direct current (DC) systems. Tesla resigned from GE seven months later, after financial and scientific disagreements with Edison about the best form of electrical power generation. Tesla recognized that DC electricity can be transmitted only short distances making large centralized power plants impossible. By contrast, AC current can be transmitted at high-voltage over long distances and then converted with transformers at the point of use to safe low-voltage current.

Four years later, Tesla was granted seven U.S. patents on AC motors and power transmitters. Westinghouse bought them and he and Tesla revamped America’s electrical landscape with the implementation of AC networks. Their success led to the famous Niagara Falls Power Project, the advent of hydroelectric power and proof that AC generated power could be transmitted over great distances. The partnership between Tesla and Westinghouse enabled the nationwide usage of safe electricity.

For more information on Nikola Tesla and Wagner's efforts to memorialize his achievements, see www.ntesla.org.

For more information on Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, see www.ri.cmu.edu.

Contact:
Anne Watzman
aw16@andrew.cmu.edu
(412)268-3830
Byron Spice
bspice@cs.cmu.edu
(412)268-9068