In this enlightening episode of The Good News with Angie Austin, we’re joined by Barbara Daddino, author of Tesla’s Cottage, as we dive into the untold stories of Nikola Tesla. Discover the human side of Tesla often overshadowed by his groundbreaking inventions, and gain insight into Tesla’s visionary ideas for a wireless world aimed at achieving global peace. With astounding revelations about Tesla’s remote control inventions and his association with renowned figures like Thomas Edison, tune in to explore the complex yet fascinating history that shaped our modern world.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with the good news. And I’m happy to welcome author Barbara Daddino to the show. Her book is Tesla’s Cottage, The Lost History of Wardenclyffe. So this is so cool because I know a little about Tesla, but a lot of people just think of the car, right? So they don’t know the man. And the man’s amazing.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, he was really an amazing personality. And most of his books are about his science. And his scientific contributions are so overwhelming that his personality gets lost. But he was just an amazing man. He was a humanist. He loved tricks. He loved children. He loved family. He was very vibrant. As a matter of fact, John Muir called him a wild man. He had a wonderful personality.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, I did a little research on him after I knew about my interview with you. And then when I read everything that he invented, how amazing he was. I mean, he was working with Thomas Edison and then went out on his own. After he came to America. And then he actually did things that were more advanced or more efficient in terms of AC electricity than what Thomas Edison was doing. And we’re still using Tesla’s technology today. But we don’t hear about Tesla like we do Thomas Edison.
SPEAKER 02 :
We don’t really. It’s the most, yeah. Perplexing. It’s the most amazing thing. I mean, he invented alternating current systems. And everything we use now is alternating current. He invented everything down to the speedometer in your car. And then he did early versions of fluorescent and neon lighting. He did remote control. I mean, he invented remote control and had a glimmer about AI itself, actually. Wow. He invented the bladeless turbine. I mean, he envisioned cell phones. We’re talking about 1900 when people still didn’t have electricity in their houses. And if they had a toaster, they were afraid of it.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, and I, one thing I was interested by, and I don’t know what kind of remote control they were talking about, but they said that he invented the remote control. Now I know it’s not the same when we’re talking about today with the TV, but obviously something similar for it to be dubbed a remote control.
SPEAKER 02 :
Actually it is. It runs on radio frequencies. And, um, Tesla figured out a way to find various radio frequencies. When Marconi did his cross-oceanic transmission, and he used Tesla’s patents besides to do it, he didn’t know how to keep the privacy from one frequency to another. He didn’t know how to isolate frequencies. Tesla figured that out. And so he knew how to use remote control. And he had a little boat that he actually used right here. right in Wardenclyffe, right on the water that I’m looking at right now. And she would operate the boat.
SPEAKER 04 :
That’s so cool. All right, so give us a little background about why you wrote The Cottage by the Sea and why you’re fascinated by Tesla and the link as to why you wanted to write this book.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, well, it all started, I lived in Shoreham, which had been Wardenclyffe, and I lived in there from the 1970s. And I had no idea about Tesla. I had never heard of him, even though his laboratory was less than a mile from my house. And in the 1970s, the 1990s, a man of an author named Mark Seifer, who was a great authority on Tesla, did a talk in Shoreham about Nikola Tesla. And I asked what everybody asks. Why haven’t I heard of him? You know, he’s done everything that we use today. And yet his name has disappeared. So I became a Tesla fan. And when I met my partner, my life partner, Daniel Byrne, we both became Tesla fans. And we lived in New York City. And everywhere in New York City that we went, we would find places where Tesla frequented. So we were amazing Tesla fans. At one point, we decided to look at a house on… on the bluffs of the Long Island Sound. We absolutely fell in love with it. It took us two years to buy it, two years of negotiation. The house was on and off the market. Finally, after two years, we made an offer that was accepted. And after we were talking to the owners and as we were leaving and walking out the door, the owner said to us, by the way, you know, this was Nikola Tesla’s house. What? What a coincidence. No, we almost died. We almost died. So as a matter of fact, we looked so dumbfounded. She said, you do know who he is, don’t you? And we said nothing because we didn’t want the price to go high. That is so crazy. It is crazy, but it gets crazier as the years go by. There are more and more and more coincidences that happened. And I really believe now in synchronicity. And I just, the feeling is that we were brought here to write this book.
SPEAKER 04 :
And it was just meant to be. And to tell his story, you know, I mean, here you got me researching him and all I knew was the car. But then I looked into that a little because I have a Tesla. So I was like, oh, why didn’t he name it Tesla? So then I found out about this genius named Tesla. And so I was just shocked that he invented so many things. I mean, he was really like one of the top inventors of all time of things that even we currently use. Like when you think about electricity, like electricity. You would have had to have, with Thomas Edison’s technology, a power station every few miles. But then with Tesla’s AC electricity, you could just go mile after mile after mile with hardly losing any of the strength of the electricity without having electrical stations in between. I mean, really, it’s just groundbreaking technology that we still use today. And then he dies penniless and people don’t know his name like ever. I just can’t wrap my head around it. So I do believe it’s kind of synchronicity that you ended up buying, you know, becoming a fan of his, buying his cottage unbeknownst to you, and then writing a book about him so that more of us are now learning about him.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s my dream. I hope that, you know, many people learn about him because he’s so relevant today for more than just his science. You know, if you asked people, why did he do all of this? What was in his mind? What was primary in his mind were certain values. He was, of course, operating with electricity, but the reason that he was trying to have wireless technology, wireless energy throughout the Earth was to have world peace and to improve humankind. He thought if we didn’t have to fight over oil… and everybody had enough food, and everybody was freed from drudgery because they’d have the power to run their engines and so on. He also had ways to make the soil more productive. If everyone had enough food, then we would be free to live lives and improve ourselves as a human race. And that was his whole concept. And that’s a concept that kind of gets overlooked. But that’s what he was about. He was a Serb. He was a Christian, an Orthodox, I guess a Serbian Orthodox Christian. But he didn’t follow the religion that much anymore, but he did have these values. And he had such awe for nature and such respect for the earth. He was a huge environmentalist. John Muir was a very close friend of his. So his message, you know, technology always overcomes technology. You invent something, we invented computers, and now we have quantum computers. You know, things always get updated and get improved, and then the old technology goes by the wayside. But his message will always live if people only can hear about it. So, you know, we have to ask ourselves, are we using technology responsibly? Are we using it to improve humanity? Or are we using it in ways that is making us just lazier and more contentious and narrow-minded, you know, and less prone to think deeply? We have the time now because we don’t, most of us, not the whole earth, but most of us have the time to be free from all of those tasks. And his hope was that we would improve ourselves.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, Barbara, on the cover of your book, Tesla’s Cottage, I see in the background a drawing of a cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea. Is that a rendition of your actual cottage, his cottage?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, that’s actually the cottage. I took the picture, a historic picture of the cottage, and I colorized it. and drew the bluff, which is pretty much what it looked like. And that’s it. That is so neat.
SPEAKER 04 :
No wonder you spent two years trying to get it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, it’s a beautiful house. I mean, it has these twin turrets that are just so characteristic of it. I mean, you can’t mistake it for any other house. It’s not just a little box, you know, and I’m sure he chose this house Because of its access to the water, we’re only 40 feet above the water. So he could, we have a path right down into the water and he could operate his boat. And, you know, he loved to swim and he loved the water. And so he’s right here and he could, I’m sitting here overlooking the sound and I see the entire horizon of the earth. I see the curve of the earth. And so whenever I sit here, I think of him sitting here and contemplating and calculating how high his power had to be to get around that curve. It’s just quite amazing to live here.
SPEAKER 04 :
So when you talked about the remote control on the boats, he’d operate them from up there or from the beach?
SPEAKER 02 :
Both. He could stand up here and operate it. And then he would go down to the beach. And according to local lore, he had a young boy named who would swim in the water, and if the boat got out of range, the boy would swim after it and retrieve it, and Tesla would give him a quarter. That was a lot of money in those days. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, that is so wild. So did he work with other great minds as well? Initially, I know he worked, when he came to the U.S. from Serbia, that he worked with Thomas Edison’s think tank, with his people, and then he went off on his own. Did he work with other great minds, or did he work much on his own?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, much on his own. He had one person, Lowenstein, was almost as bright as he was, And he helped him out. And there was a, if I could pronounce it right, CZ is how the name begins. And he was another man he worked with. But Tesla was on his own because most of the other minds, which were, to be honest, not as great as Tesla’s mind, were in a sort of conglomerate, the the Electrical Engineers Association kind of turned against Tesla because first there was the war of the currents between Edison and Tesla over remote and direct power. And then there was fear that Tesla’s products were so innovative that those people would get financially hurt and he would upset the whole world with what he could do. So they kind of organized against him, and he had to go it alone. It’s a fascinating story.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m hoping you have more time because I’d like to keep you for the next segment because I want to talk a little bit about why some people view him as a man defeated and what you think his legacy should be. And I thought it was interesting that you’ve been named a Tesla ambassador by the Serbian government. And so I want to find out all about that. So do you have time to stay with us for another segment? Yes. Oh, great. Okay. The book, again, is Tesla’s Cottage. And Barbara Daddino is the author. And we will be right back to talk about this man who gave so much to our world that many of us don’t know enough about. We’ll be right back with the good news.
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SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, welcome back to The Good News with Angie Austin. I’m really enjoying our interview with Barbara Daddino. We are talking about her book, Tesla’s Cottage, The Lost History of Wardenclyffe and how it was recovered. And she was a Tesla fan and had been trying to buy with her partner this beautiful cottage 40 feet above the water. And when she finally, after two years of negotiations, was able to purchase the house, the owner said, oh, and by the way, this was Tesla’s cottage. Do you know that? And they about fell over. But very funny, you said you didn’t tell her that, of course, you knew Tesla and you’re big fans because you didn’t want the price to go up. I’m sure she’s figured out, you know, over time that you were a big Tesla fan. Maybe you told her at closing. Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
No, no, I never mentioned it. Never mentioned it again.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, that is funny. Okay, so you move into this cottage, and then you’ve done, you know, to write this book, a lot of unique research for the book. What parts of the research did you find the most interesting about the man and his life and his inventions?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, all of his, you know, his personal, getting to know the man as a person. His inventions are so great. And so many wonderful books have been written about him. But even if they spoke a little bit about his personality, the technology is so overwhelming that it gets lost. So I started looking for just proof that he lived here because the surprise was when I moved here, a lot of the people in the village didn’t believe he lived here. And those that knew that, yeah, and a lot of them that knew he lived here said oh he only slept in the house for a couple of nights and he didn’t really live here or anything you know and i thought well but the you know the woman and the couple that sold us that cottage said it was his house so i i began researching and looking you know at old newspapers and and uh trying to find any evidence that tesla was here and one by one i found one one evidence one you know one piece of of one fact after another The confusion came when in some of the sources that I had, they said that he lived in the Wilson Cottage. And then other sources said he lived in the Bailey Cottage. And so that’s why people around here thought that he just slept in various cottages for a night or two. But we did a property search and we found out that the Wilson Cottage and the Bailey Cottage were one and the same. It was just that when the Wilson articles were written, that was owned, the cottage was owned by a young man named Wilson. And when the Bailey Cottage articles were written, they were referring it to those current owners. So we realized that this was indeed the house that Tesla lived in. And then in Serbia, in the Serbian Museum, there is a letter from Daniel, James Warden, um, he was acting attorney as, uh, Wilson who owned the cottage. Uh, and it was a rental agreement with Tesla and it was, um, you know, it was, it was signed by a lawyer and, and, uh, you know, stamped and everything. So I had proof positive that this was the cottage and this is where he lived. And that was the first brick to, to start building my foundation. And, uh, I knew that I wasn’t going to talk about his technology because, number one, I have trouble understanding it myself. So I had to leave that go. But living here, I can walk from one site to another as the village was in his day. And when you’re on the premises, you know that there are a certain amount of footsteps to get from one place to another. I know where the hotel was where he ate at. I know where he walked to the post office. And I can trace his path and walk in his path and feel what he saw and see what he saw just in the landscape. And so that gave me a whole lot. And then as I researched, I found names of people that I could tie together and link and found out why he came here and who were his neighbors and what was his life like and and what were people’s opinion of him, and so on and so forth. But that took 10 years to do.
SPEAKER 04 :
And why did Tesla move there?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, he was looking for a place on a certain parallel so that he could get around the Earth. He wanted to put another station in Scotland or in England. He wound up deciding, I think, in Spain. And so he was looking at a certain parallel. of the earth. But I wondered, why did he come to this little outpost of Shoreham? One thing was that the railroad was extended to this place so he could get back to New York City because he was a New Yorker. He lived in the Waldorf Astoria and all of his sponsors were there. He had to be there. And he also loved the High Life. He was part of the Gilded Age. He was a prime member of that whole society. So Wardenclyffe fit that bill, but so did a lot of other towns along the railroad route. And I was wondering why until one day I saw a tiny little announcement that Tesla was going to be speaking at the electrotherapy conference. And he was going to be speaking with a man named Dr. Herdman and a woman named Dr. Cleaves. And as I researched more and more, I found out that Dr. Herdman was best friends with James Warden, who was the one who established Wardenclyffe and built a community here. And so that was the link. I said, oh my goodness, here I found it. It was Herdman, who was an associate. He was close to Tesla. In one month alone, they wrote 31 letters to each other. So he was close to Tesla, and he was best friends with Warden, and of course that’s what brought him here. And there is a letter linking that. Later I found a letter linking the fact that Herdman had recommended Wardenclyffe.
SPEAKER 04 :
Was there a Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe as well? I was reading about that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, the Tesla Science Center is a organization that took over the Tesla lab. Now, that’s the only existing laboratory. So actually, Tesla’s laboratory, his end plan was to make a metropolis here. and to call it Radio City.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, wow. So it was lab. Okay, so you built a lab there. Okay, okay. Yeah, because I read that somebody was trying to restore that. So, yeah, a lot of history there. Why do you think it’s so important to you that people know about him, that they know his story, and that you took all this time to write this book?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes. And why it’s important is, number one, there’s a lot of misinformation about exactly what he did. People make it almost magical and kind of spooky. But he was very pragmatic and he had some reasons. But also because of his message, because it’s so relevant for today, especially with AI. And he had a glimmer about AI. I mean, when he did that remote control boat, he talked about machines that had their own mind. And so now that AI is coming to the fore, we really have to take his idea and make sure that we ourselves, because technology is neutral, we ourselves use it for human good. So that’s important. And it’s important that people know who he is and that he wasn’t a failure, that he had given up so much because he was disciplined and disciplined. He was almost a priest of science. He gave up his whole personal life to give this wonderful gift to us.
SPEAKER 04 :
And to use that brain, so few brains, that genius brain, that he gave up so much to just use his mind to create things. And it’s interesting that some people view Tesla as a man defeated. A lot of people don’t know about him, and that he died penniless. So why do you think a lot of people view Tesla in that manner?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, because he never had a chance to fulfill his dream of building that tower. The tower was built, but it was never operational. He ran out of J.P. Morgan, and this is way too long a story to tell now, but J.P. Morgan stopped funding, partly because he thought it would be too disruptive. And Tesla put every penny he had, every penny he owned, and went into debt. And then finally, just when this dream was in his grasp, it was torn out of his hand. He just ran out of money. So people think that the tower was a failure. But the point is, it was never proven. And he never wrote down his full plan. So we don’t know if that tower would have worked the way he wanted it to. If that tower had worked, we talk about Tesla cars. He didn’t think that batteries were the solution. Tesla would have run electricity wirelessly. from station to station, and these stations would have been far apart. So just as you get radio in your car, you would get the power to run your car in your car. You wouldn’t need a motor.
SPEAKER 04 :
People don’t understand that. What do you want people to take away, Barbara, from the book Tesla’s Cottage? What do you hope they take away from the book?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I hope that they take away his example and realize that somebody was so dedicated some aspect of discipline and how your dream is really worth fighting for and worth giving up certain things for and that you don’t become a success right away, but your work is worthwhile. And also world peace. You had asked about becoming a Tesla ambassador. There’s a huge international movement among people in the United Nations and led by Ambassador Niksic from Serbia. It’s an initiative for world peace because Tesla’s inventions were made really for world peace. And so I hope we all work towards that end.
SPEAKER 04 :
I saw you got a, I joined your Facebook group for the, I think, I’m assuming it’s yours. Someone started a Facebook group for your book, Tesla’s Cottage. I want to make sure, you know, people are able to get in touch with you. So give us that information. And then I want to figure out, you know, talk about what’s next for you as well. So what’s the best place to find you?
SPEAKER 02 :
The best place to find me is www.teslascottage, that’s one word, T-E-S-L-A-S. And I will be posting on Tesla’s Cottage on various social media. So if you just write it one word, no apostrophe, you’ll probably find me. And you could buy the book now, either the book or the e-book, at Book Baby. Just put in Book Baby, and when you get on the site, hit the bookshop, and it’s available right now. Barnes & Noble and Amazon have it available for pre-order, and it will be available everywhere April 11th.
SPEAKER 04 :
And then what’s next for you? Do you plan on writing anymore? What are you going to do? I mean, enjoy that house, that’s for sure.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s for sure. What’s really interesting, and I think you’ll be interested in this, is that this was not only, Wardenclyffe was not only the home to Nikola Tesla, but it was also where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Margaret Blatch, Harriet Blatch, and various other people of the Stanton family summered. And there were women suffragists throughout the cottage, I mean, throughout the village. It was quite a time. I mean, they were very, very famous people. So I think the next book might be The Suffragists.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, neat. Yeah, I’m looking at where you are on the map. Well, I’m a dog lover, so don’t worry about that. I really enjoyed our interview. Sometimes during my interviews, they somehow get outside my studio door. It’s so crazy. Yeah. Thank you so much, Barbara Didino. No problem. Again, the book is Tesla’s Cottage, Barbara Didino. And I just joined the Tesla Heritage group you have on Facebook as well. So how fun. Thank you so much, Barbara. It was a real pleasure.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
