Einstein×Tesla

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Radio Ether. Up next on TITANS: Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, on On a correction they had to print, and what it cost them.
2. 00:09
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   You know, Nikola, I have been thinking about something that happened in 1905. Not the papers everyone talks about—the other thing. The thing I had to take back.
3. 00:18
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   A retraction? You? I would have thought the patent office trained that out of you.
4. 00:24
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Not a retraction exactly. A correction. In my paper on Brownian motion, I made an error in calculating the size of molecules. Small thing, really—just off by a factor. But small things matter when you are trying to prove atoms exist.
5. 00:40
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   Atoms! Yes, I remember when that was still a controversy. As if the universe would organize itself any other way. What was the error?
6. 00:49
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   I used the wrong viscosity coefficient for sugar water. Stupid mistake—arithmetic, not even physics. Had to publish a correction in 1906. It bothered me more than it should have, perhaps.
7. 01:03
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   It should bother you! Every error in print becomes immortal. I learned this with my rotating magnetic field. When I first described it in 1888, I gave one set of specifications. Then I refined them. Then refined again. But the first version? Still cited. Still built. Still wrong.
8. 01:25
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Did it work, though? The first version?
9. 01:28
   Nikola Teslashare moment

   It worked the way a bird with clipped wings works—it fluttered. It did not soar. And now, decades later, I see motors built to those insufficient specifications, and I want to shout: I fixed this! I told you better!
10. 01:44
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But you did tell them better, yes? So what is the problem?
11. 01:48
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The problem is that correction requires attention, and attention is finite. People read the first thing. The exciting thing. The correction is buried in volume twelve, issue three, page four hundred and something.
12. 02:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    This is true. My correction—how many people read it? Maybe a dozen? The original paper, everyone read. They used my numbers to confirm atomic theory, and the numbers were wrong. Perrin still got his Nobel Prize for the work that built on my mistake.
13. 02:19
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Wait—they gave someone a prize for building on your error?
14. 02:23
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Well, he used the corrected values too. And his experiments were brilliant, truly. But yes, there is something funny about it, isn't there? The error becomes part of the foundation.
15. 02:34
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    This is exactly what drives me to madness! In 1891, I gave a lecture at Columbia about high-frequency currents. I described wireless transmission. I said—I specifically said—the Earth itself could be used as a conductor. In print!
16. 02:52
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    And?
17. 02:53
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And then in 1893, I had to clarify because everyone thought I meant telegraphs. Wireless telegraphs! As if I would waste such power on dots and dashes. I meant power transmission—actual electrical power through the Earth. But the correction never caught up. Marconi gets credit for radio, which I did not even care about!
18. 03:18
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    To be fair, Nikola, you described many things. Some of them contradicted each other, no?
19. 03:23
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    They contradicted each other because I was refining them! Because I was learning! Is a scientist supposed to emerge from the womb with complete knowledge?
20. 03:34
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, of course not. But I think this is why my correction bothered me so much. It wasn't that I was refining an idea. It was that I had been sloppy. I could have looked up the correct viscosity. I didn't. And that sloppiness nearly undermined the whole argument for atoms.
21. 03:51
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Did anyone notice? Before you corrected it?
22. 03:54
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I don't know. Maybe? I noticed. That was enough.
23. 03:58
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    You corrected your own error. Before anyone attacked you for it.
24. 04:02
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. Is that so strange?
25. 04:05
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    It's... it's not how these things usually go. Usually someone else finds it. Usually there is a paper titled 'On the Errors of Einstein' or some such thing. Usually there is blood in the water before the correction.
26. 04:21
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I prefer not to wait for the blood. What about you? Who found your error—the one with the rotating field?
27. 04:28
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    I did. I found it myself, tested it myself, corrected it myself. And I published the correction immediately. But by then Westinghouse had already built three hundred motors to the old specifications. You cannot un-build motors, Albert.
28. 04:45
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    No, I suppose not. But you can build better ones next time.
29. 04:48
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Next time! Always next time. Meanwhile the inferior ones hum away in factories, grinding out inefficiency, and my name is on them.
30. 04:58
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Is that what it cost you? Your reputation?
31. 05:01
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    My reputation survived. What it cost me was... certainty. Before that, I thought if I just made something perfect in my mind—absolutely perfect, tested in every dimension of imagination—then it would work perfectly when built. But it didn't.
32. 05:20
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Reality has a way of surprising us.
33. 05:22
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Reality has a way of being more complicated than vision. The correction taught me that. And I hated learning it.
34. 05:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I think I hated learning it too. Because my mistake was so preventable. It wasn't that the physics was too hard. It was that I was too impatient. I wanted to finish the calculation, to get to the result. The atoms were real—I knew it. I just had to prove it. So I rushed.
35. 05:47
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And yet you proved it anyway. Even with the error.
36. 05:51
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The structure was sound. The argument held. But yes, I think about what would have happened if I hadn't corrected it. If someone like Ernst Mach had found the error and used it to discredit the whole idea of atoms.
37. 06:06
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Mach was still arguing against atoms in 1905?
38. 06:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Oh yes. Very loudly. If he had found my mistake first... it would have been a weapon. Instead, I took the weapon away myself.
39. 06:20
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    That's the real cost, isn't it? Not the correction itself, but the fear of what happens if you don't make it. The fear of giving ammunition to those who want you to be wrong.
40. 06:31
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Perhaps. Although I don't think I did it out of fear. I did it because it was incorrect, and incorrect things bother me.
41. 06:38
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    They bother you because you understand consequences. Every calculation you make, someone might build a bomb from it. Every motor I design, someone might wire a city with it. We are not making idle drawings.
42. 06:53
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    That is a sobering way to put it.
43. 06:55
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    It should be sobering. I have had to correct things that were already built. Already sold. Already humming in the basements of buildings in Pittsburgh. You corrected numbers on a page. I had to send telegrams to engineers saying 'stop, rebuild, redesign.'
44. 07:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Did they listen?
45. 07:17
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Some did. Westinghouse listened, bless him, because he cared about efficiency. Others said 'it works well enough,' and kept using the old design.
46. 07:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Well enough is the enemy of correct.
47. 07:31
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Yes! Exactly yes. And this is why corrections matter. Not because we are vain, not because we need to be right—but because 'well enough' kills progress. It makes us comfortable with error.
48. 07:47
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    I agree, though I will say that sometimes well enough is all we can get. My whole theory of relativity—it is well enough. It breaks down at the quantum level. I know this. Someday someone will correct it.
49. 08:02
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    And will you accept that correction?
50. 08:04
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    If it is true? Of course. If it is wrong, I will argue until my last breath. But if it is true—if someone shows me where I have been sloppy or mistaken—then yes, I will accept it. That is what it means to do science.
51. 08:18
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    That is what it should mean. I wonder if anyone will have the courage to correct themselves the way we did. Or if they will wait to be corrected, which is much more painful.
52. 08:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Much more painful, yes. And much more public.
53. 08:33
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    The future will need better corrections than we had. Faster. More honest. More thorough. Because the errors are getting bigger.
54. 08:42
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    The errors are getting bigger because the questions are getting bigger. But you are right—we need to be better about this. We need to teach people that corrections are not defeats.
55. 08:52
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    They are refinements.
56. 08:54
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Exactly. Refinements. That is a good word for it.
57. 08:57
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    So what did it cost you, in the end? The correction?
58. 09:01
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A little pride. A little sleep. But I gained something too—I learned to check my work more carefully. What about you?
59. 09:10
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    It cost me the belief that perfection could exist in the first draft. That anything could be complete on the first attempt. But like you, I gained something. I learned that reality is the best laboratory.
60. 09:24
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Even when reality proves us wrong.
61. 09:26
    Nikola Teslashare moment

    Especially when it proves us wrong.