In Europe, and particularly in England, the invention came as a surprise; they did not expect an American to make an invention which required so much mathematical analysis of electrical motions, to which the American physicist had contributed very little, whereas Vaschy and Heaviside had written volumes about it. But these writers had paid too little attention to classical writers like La Grange, Thomson, and Kirchhoff. The construction of the inductance-coil required almost as much mathematical analysis as the dynamical theory of the invention, and the method of testing it also was new to the telephone engineers. The coil is now known all over the world as the Pupin coil, and many people think that the coil itself is the invention.
When it became known that I had studied at the Universities of Cambridge and of Berlin, my English and German friends claimed the credit of the invention for the scientific training which I had received at their universities. I think the French had a better claim, because it was La Grange who helped me more than any other mathematical reading. As a matter of fact, the engineers of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the herdsmen of Idvor deserve most of the credit. The first formulated the problem the solution of which led to the invention, and the second taught me the art of signalling through the ground which guided me to the physical principle which underlies the invention.
A vice-president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, who is a very high authority in telephony, informed me recently that one way to describe, roughly, the value of the invention is as follows: If during the past twenty-two years his company had been compelled to extend its network of conductors so as to give, without employing my invention, the same service which it is giving to-day, it would have had to spend at least one hundred million dollars more than it has actually expended. But after quoting him I wish to call attention to a fact which the public often overlooks. I ask, where are those one hundred million dollars which the invention has saved? I know that not even a microscopic part of them is in the pockets of the inventor. I have figured out also, with the same accuracy with which I once figured out the invention, that those hundred million dollars are not in the pockets of the telephone company. They must be, therefore, in the pockets of the American public. The invention made it possible to give the telephone service, which is now being given, at a lower rate than would have been possible if one hundred million dollars more had been spent. Every good invention benefits the public immeasurably more than it benefits the inventor or the corporation which exploits the invention. I certainly consider myself a public benefactor, and the National Institute of Social Sciences called me so when it gave me a gold medal almost as big as the full moon. But this gift would have made me much more happy if the institute had at the same time given another gold medal to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Some fifteen years ago, when Frederick P. Fish, the famous patent attorney, was the president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, I asked him in the course of a conversation whether he would like to sell me back my invention. “Yes,” said he, “but only if you will buy the whole telephone company with it. Our whole plant has been adjusted to the invention, and when one goes the other also must go. The invention has enabled us to detect many defects in our transmission system, and if it had done nothing else than that it would have been worth at least ten times what we paid you. It is the greatest faultfinder that we ever struck, and it is the only form of faultfinder for which we have any use.” A progressive industrial organization courts the criticism of an accurate and friendly faultfinder. It leads to research and development, and that supplies the vital energy to every industry. Twenty-five years ago the American Telephone and Telegraph Company had a small laboratory in Boston, where it did all its scientific research and development. But, presently, faultfinders like my inventions moved into the peaceful and drowsy precincts of that tiny laboratory, and stirred up the engineers and the board of directors. I am very happy whenever I think that, possibly, my inventions have contributed some to this healthful stirring up. What was the result? To-day the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the affiliated Western Electric Company employ about three thousand persons at an expenditure of some nine million dollars annually in their research and development work. The scientific research work at our universities looks very modest in comparison with operations of this kind. Young men of the highest academic training and splendid talents are busy day and night exploring the hidden treasures on the boundary-lines between the various sciences and the science and art of telephony, and their discoveries, I am sure, are the best investment of this great industrial organization. For instance, their development of the many details in my invention have been wonderful, and give testimony of the highest kind to the excellence of their scientific research. It is not so much the occasional inventor who nurses a great art like telephony and makes it grow beyond all our expectations, as it is the intelligence of a well-organized and liberally supported research laboratory. When I think of that I am perfectly convinced that very few of the great advances in the telephone art would have happened under government ownership. That explains why telephony is practically dead in most European countries. What little life it has in Europe is due to the American research in the above-mentioned laboratories.
The General Electric Company, The Westinghouse Company, the Eastman Kodak Company, and many other industrial corporations in this country are supporting similar research and development laboratories, where scientific men of the highest training are busily exploring what Helmholtz called the rich territories near the boundary-lines of the various sciences and of the science forming the foundation of their respective industries. This reminds me of what I saw on a much smaller scale in Germany, nearly forty years ago, when I was a student there. We copied Germany’s good example, but are leading now, and the pace is so swift that Europeans are dropping behind us very rapidly. The spirit of scientific research has moved into our universities, and from the universities it has moved into our industrial organizations. Industrial research is making bigger and bigger demands upon the universities for highly trained scientific research men; the demand is larger than the supply, and because the industries can pay much higher salaries than the universities can much difficulty has been experienced in inducing bright and promising young scientists to pursue the academic career of a teacher. The quality of the scientific teacher in the university is temporarily deteriorating, that of the industrial research scientist is steadily rising; on the whole, however, the country is a gainer. The university man in the industries will transplant there the scientific idealism of the university. The captains of our leading industries already admit, as will be pointed out below, that the cultivation of scientific idealism is the best policy for our American industries. Listen to the papers which are read by their research men and you will see that the industries actually practise the new gospel of scientific idealism which they are preaching.
But I must not depart too far from the main thread of my story. When it became known that the American Telephone and Telegraph Company had acquired the rights to my high inductance wave conductors, all kinds of legends were told about the invention and the fabulous price paid for it. Newspapers love legends, because the public loves them. The public is a child which loves to listen to fairy-tales. The only good that this publicity did was to help me sell my inventions relating to electrical tuning and rectification in wireless telegraphy. These lay idle for quite a number of years, and waited for further developments in the wireless art before they could be employed to advantage. Electrical tuning and electrical rectification are fundamental operations in the radio art to-day, but the wireless telegraphy of the early days is a distant and poor relation of our present radio art. The world had to wait quite some time for new discoveries which gave birth to the epoch-making inventions of new men, like Lee De Forest and Major E. H. Armstrong. It had to wait also for the great industrial research laboratories before electrical tuning and rectification could come into their own. In the early days of wireless telegraphy I suggested several novel developments which might give a fair chance to tuning and rectification, but I attracted scarcely any attention. The legends just mentioned made people a little more attentive.
One morning a man stepped suddenly into my office at Columbia, and introduced himself as Mr. Green, organizer and promoter of the Marconi Company of America. He was full of action and looked like business. “Are your wireless inventions for sale?” asked Mr. Green, without much preliminary talk. “They are,” I answered, and I felt that my heart was quivering on account of the unexpected blow which this laconic question had given it. “How much?” asked Mr. Green. I gave him the first figure that came into my head, and he, not a bit daunted, asked whether I would take one-half in cash and one-half in stock. I asked him twenty-four hours to decide. “All right,” said he, and promised to call again the next day at the same hour. I should have been perfectly satisfied to accept the cash offer and close the deal even without the stock, but I was afraid that any over-anxiety on my part might scare him away. The next day he called and the deal was closed, he making a certain cash payment immediately and I agreeing to furnish certain documents before the final payment was made. I was fairly well acquainted with trading transactions in my native land; my father often took me to market-places where he bought and sold cattle and horses. I remember well the never-ending bartering which very often ended in a fizzle. The nearer you get to Constantinople the worse becomes the custom of this Oriental method of trading. Mr. Green had none of that Orientalism, and his utter indifference to the figures involved in the deal astonished me. He also took it for granted that I could and would perform all the fine things which I promised to perform; that was very flattering to me, but I was too much of an Oriental to accept, without some apprehension, his apparently implicit trust in me.
This reminds me of an incident which happened eight years ago. The Serbian Government cabled me to make a contract for five thousand tons of lard; I was its only diplomatic and consular representative in America during the war. I called up the representatives of Swift and of Armour and told them over the telephone what was wanted, requesting them to file their bids in forty-eight hours. Two days later I met them in my office and some Serbian war commissioners happened to be present. The contract was closed in less than thirty minutes, and when I told the commissioners that it involved one million dollars they crossed themselves in utter amazement. In Belgrade, they assured me, the closing of such a contract would have required at least a month. I astonished them as much as Mr. Green had astonished me, and the lard transaction reminded me strongly of my deal with the Marconi Company of America. Of course, lard handled by Swifts or Armours is a much simpler proposition than a lot of belated inventions relating to electrical tuning and electrical rectification for which there was not yet a crying demand.
A few months after my deal with Green I was in Berlin, by invitation, for the purpose of negotiating, for my telephone invention, a business agreement with the famous electrical firm of Siemens and Halske. It was founded by Werner von Siemens, whom I had met fifteen years before through the kind introduction of my teacher, Excellenz von Helmholtz. During the negotiations which lasted one month I met the directors of this corporation in almost daily conferences, which lasted never less than an hour and very often several hours. Every detail of my invention was thoroughly discussed both from the purely scientific and from the engineering side, in its relation to the earlier publications which had a bearing upon it, in its legal aspects as determined by the German patent laws; and finally the financial side was carefully considered and definitely settled. There was no bartering of any kind, neither was anything taken for granted. Contrary to our American custom, the negotiations were directly between the inventor and the scientific experts. The lawyers had very little to say, and spoke only when the experts needed and asked for their opinion. When I recall my negotiations with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, I remember nothing but lawyers. The negotiations with Siemens and Halske recall scientific experts only; the negotiations with the Marconi Company of America recall only Green. At the close of the Berlin conferences and negotiations I was perfectly certain that I had accomplished something; I understood my invention better than I had ever understood it before, and I was perfectly certain that the scientists of Siemens and Halske understood it just as well. Their popular descriptions of it were better than anything I had ever done myself. They also gave it a new name, and called telephone conductors employing the invention “pupinizierte linien.” The French followed suit, and called them “les lignes pupinizé.” These two new words coined in my honor will last as long as the invention lasts, and so far there is no sign that it will be superseded soon by some other invention. Its simplicity and effectiveness give it much vitality.
After the completion of my negotiations in Berlin, the Siemens and Halske engineers took me to Vienna for the purpose of introducing me to the high officers in the Austrian Imperial Cabinet who guided the destinies of the telephone system of the Austrian Empire. They were glad, they said, to meet a native of Banat, a former subject of Austria, who had made so important an invention, and they assured me that their policy with regard to it would be guided entirely by the decision of the Berlin experts. Vienna did not seem to have a mind of its own, and all its thinking apparently was done for it by the experts in Berlin. I was quite elated by the idea that the Berlin experts who did the thinking for the Austrian Empire had been most happy to spend a whole month with me in daily conferences, eager to learn all they could from me. I could not help exclaiming: “Oh, what a fortunate thing it was that in my early youth I ran away from this moribund Empire, and landed in a country of opportunities, where every individual thinks through his own head and carries his load on his own back.” Germany, at that time, was so vigorous that she did not hesitate to do all the thinking and hustling for Austria as well as for Turkey, and did not realize that she was carrying around two corpses which could not be revived by even the combined vitality of all the young and vigorous nations, like the United States of America and United Germany.