In May 1895, newspapers around the country reported that Columbia President and alumnus Seth Low (CC 1870) had donated $1 million for the construction of the library building on the future Morningside Heights campus. This was at the time the largest donation ever made by an individual to a college or university. Low received letters from all over the country, from alumni and many from librarians, in appreciation of his most generous gift. Among the many correspondents is, perhaps surprisingly, inventor Nikola Tesla. How was Tesla connected to Columbia?
On May 21, 1891, at the invitation of professors Michael Pupin (CC 1883) and Francis Crocker (CC 1882), Columbia hosted a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The members came for the lecture-demonstration “Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and their Applications to Methods of Artificial Illumination” given by the inventor Nikola Tesla. Columbia had recently started its own Electrical Engineering program in the School of Mines and, for the lecture, Tesla was assisted by Gano Dunn. (Dunn was a member of Columbia’s first graduating class of electrical engineers in 1891 and was also a pallbearer at Tesla’s funeral in 1943.) This was the very first performance of the now famous lecture that led Tesla to popular fame in the US and around the world. Tesla demonstrated the high-frequency, high-voltage transformer, later known as the “Tesla coil,” and flameless gas-filled tube lights (light bulbs without filaments!) similar to what we now know as neon and fluorescent lights. He would go on to present the same lecture in London and Paris (1892) and in Philadelphia and St. Louis (1893).
In 1893, Prof. Crocker spoke to Columbia President Seth Low about awarding Tesla an honorary doctorate. Henry Fairfield Osborn, then Dean of the Faculty of Pure Science, also wrote to Low to support Tesla’s nomination. In his letter, Osborn mentions Tesla’s first electrical lecture at Columbia in 1891, and notes that, since then, Tesla had been “covered with honors while in England and France. We certainly must not allow any other university to anticipate us in honoring a man who lives under our very walls.” Osborn’s letter was presented to the Trustees and, at the Commencement in June 1894, President Seth Low awarded Nikola Tesla an honorary doctorate, Tesla’s first of many honorary degrees.
In May 1895, President Low’s generous gift of a library building for the new Columbia site made headline news. Now knowing about his previous visits to campus, it makes some sense that Tesla would be among the many letter writers. You can find Tesla’s letter in the Seth Low papers, Box 18.
May 11, 1895
Mr. Low,
Through the journals I have learned of your rare generosity. I can not refrain from telling you that I most sincerely wish you may find in success and happiness the reward which your noble action deserves.
Sincerely yours,
N. Tesla
