Nikola Tesla

Permit me to say a few (a few?) words about my favourite historic character… Nikola Tesla… the electrical genius who dramatically changed the daily lives of each and every one of us. And I’m not exaggerating. That’s why I have given him his own About section.

First, let’s get one thing clear… his name is Nikola. Not Nichola, or Nicholas, or even Nick. Ok, maybe you can call him Niko if you’re family. But to the rest of us he’s Nikola. And it’s not Dr. Nikola Tesla either, because he never received a PhD. Oh sure, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1937 by his former school of engineering, Graz Polytechnic Institute in Austria, but that’s not a real degree. Nope, it’s just plain old Nikola Tesla. But, that said, there is nothing plain about the man. He was as colourful a character as the world of science & engineering has ever seen. And his influence over our day-to-day lives is as real today as when he lived back in Victorian times.

A Shoestring Bio of Tesla

There are many excellent biographies about Nikola Tesla in print. One of my all-time favourites is Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc Seifer, a well-researched and highly entertaining account of Tesla, from his early life as a prodigal genius in his homeland of Serbia, to his myriad brilliant inventions that, almost overnight, thrust North America (and the world) into a bright & productive, some might say overpowering, twentieth century. I won’t even attempt to match the scope of that writing here.

Instead, I intend to share with you an excerpt from an email I recently sent to Hollywood Visual Effects Editor, Tim Eaton. Tim, and project partner Marc Seifer, are currently revving up the Hollywood machine to make a blockbuster movie or miniseries about Tesla. Fans like me, who are aware of their plans, are beside themselves with excitement. You see, Tim has already performed visual magic on films like Titanic, Men in Black, Twister, Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, and Field of Dreams, to name but a few. So he has an impeccable Hollywood pedigree. Imagine what he could bring to a movie about Tesla. But I do digress.

I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with Tim on several occasions, and in one such missive I shared with him what I felt were the highlights of Tesla’s life that I’d like to see make it onto the screen. It is relatively brief and in point form. And I believe it touches on the key dramatic elements that make Tesla’s life so mesmerizing, and such great fodder for a full-length motion picture or epic miniseries. What follows below is some of what I wrote to Tim. I don’t think he’d mind.

NOTE: Before I proceed, let me make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with Tim and Marc’s film project. Tim and I have simply corresponded informally, and my input is that of an enthused and interested party. In addition, some of the original email text has been reworded or expanded to help those of you who know very little about Tesla.

To Tim Eaton I wrote…

“Having researched Tesla, it occurs to me that the world needs to know the true story of this amazing man. After all, his life really does possess all the elements of good drama…

• A modest but precocious childhood with an inventive & caring mother and religiously-domineering father, the untimely & traumatic death of his cherished older brother Dane, an early aptitude for science & creativity as evidenced by his unique little bug-driven machines and clever waterwheel devices, and his innate skills with machinery.

• A prescient adolescence where, as a child, he predicted that he would one day harness the otherwise untapped power of Niagara Falls. Then, years later, his obsession with overcoming the inefficiencies of the DC motor with an, as yet, unrealized AC motor that his professor sarcastically admonished him was an impossibility.

• His uncanny ability to visualize the mere thought of something so vividly that, to him, it appeared to float right before his eyes like a real, solid object. He could maneuver it, operate it, and modify it as if he possessed some kind of 3D modelling software in his head.

• His almost schizophrenic episodes at middle school which somehow seemed related to his savant skills with anything electrical. This period was followed by a brilliant yet bizarre early manhood, including a dramatic, spark-of-genius moment that revealed to him in a poetic vision the elusive principles behind what would eventually become his AC polyphase induction motor.

• The impression he made on Thomas Edison’s man-in-Europe, Charles Batchelor, who advised Tesla to head to America to seek employment, and even wrote for him a note of introduction to Edison, in it saying “I know of two great men. One is you, and the other is this young man.”

• His brief but humourous and somewhat eye-opening employment with Edison, his one-time idol, that later developed into what became a life-long competition between the two geniuses.

• His subsequent resurrection from ditch digger to being financed to start his own arc-lamp street lighting business, leading to his speech before an enthralled meeting of the IEEE and from there to pitching his AC motor ideas before an intrigued and very wealthy inventor/industrialist George Westinghouse.

• His being hired by Westinghouse and provided all the tools and resources needed to realize his AC motor and numerous other AC transmission patents.

• The almost serendipitous announcement by the Cataract Construction Company that it was now accepting bids to harness the power of Niagara Falls with the building of a hydroelectric power plant. The success of Edison’s Pearl Street Station in NYC, which was distributing DC power to local businesses, had convinced investors that the time was right. Besides, Niagara Falls was currently a seething mess of conventional mills, local small DC generators, and mechanical waterwheels. All that was about to change.

• Most biographers now dwell on what has become known as the War of the Currents but which, to me, is merely another period in Tesla’s life. I see Tesla & Westinghouse powering Chicago’s dazzling White City (the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition)
  with AC power. I see Tesla demonstrating, before amazed fairgoers, his enigmatic Egg of Columbus … a football-sized solid metal egg that spins without any direct contact with a driving mechanism. I hear them gasp as Tesla runs thousands of volts of snapping, sparking electricity across his body without harm. As a dramatic counterpoint, I see Edison’s thugs busily roaming the streets of New York City using AC to electrocute (or “westinghouse”, as Edison prefers to say) healthy dogs, horses, and even a full-grown elephant right before the eyes of stunned & appalled watchers, in a perverse attempt to discredit Tesla and AC. The electric chair is a throw-back to that period, promoted aggressively by Edison as a more effective means of execution, but all just part of his ongoing quest to dissuade the public to the notion of using Tesla’s dangerous alternating current in their homes.

• In the afterglow of the Columbian Exposition, Tesla & Westinghouse were awarded the long-coveted contract to harness the power of Niagara Falls. Tesla was able to fulfill the prediction he had made as a child. He oversaw the design, construction, and opening in 1895 of the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant in Niagara Falls, NY, the first station to transmit electricity from Niagara Falls to Buffalo. It was his crowning achievement.

• Tesla subsequently became the toast of the town in NYC. He could often be found hobnobbing with elegant well-to-dos in ritzy locations like grand Delmonico’s, and partying in the glorious & opulent homes of John Jacob Astor and J.P. Morgan. Then there was Tesla’s mysterious NYC alchemist’s lab with its near catastrophic earthquake machine incident, his overlooked discovery of x-rays, the first remote-controlled robot that mystified the military, his high-frequency coil and the wireless lights that it made glow, and various mysterious electro-therapy devices. To his lab he welcomed a steady stream of curious celebrities like Mark Twain (who was subjected to an awkward oscillation-produced laxative moment) and adoring stage diva Sarah Bernhardt. And who could overlook his odd but touching “love affair” with young and attractive (but married) socialite Katherine Johnson. Talk about your genius-geek meets flirtatious babe situation. Tesla was a superstar, complete with paparazzi, an adoring public, and a doting media. But it all came to ruin with an inexplicable and soul-shattering blaze that destroyed his lab and years of irreplaceable work. Even Tesla lamented about the monumental tragedy of the loss.

• I personally feel that the story now got more interesting when, in 1899, Tesla headed west by train to beautiful Colorado Springs. I picture not an unrealistic portrayal like that of David Bowie in The Prestige, but an honest & factual account of an isolated barn-like lab perched atop a shallow knoll in the barren, grassy foothills just east of that pioneering, yet cultured little town at the foot of spectacular Pikes Peak. Try to imagine it. Tesla repeatedly burning out the town’s generators while conducting his bizarre electrical experiments. The subsequent visits by increasingly disgruntled yet terrified local officials, curious townsfolk, concerned cowboys, confused constabulary, and perplexed indians. And what were they to think about those incredible lightning bolts that arced far out into the desert from the towering antenna of his amplifying transmitter, his claim that he may have detected signals from Mars (even as Marconi was trying to transmit a signal across the Atlantic), and those acres of wireless lights glowing like a luminous garden of planted bulbs in the desert night? As I see it, this was where Tesla’s story arc began to change from that of productive realist to kooky but idealistic visionary.

• Tesla started talking about being able to pump electricity into the Earth, of being able to establish global electrical standing waves that would allow anyone with an antenna to freely tap electrical power from the heavens. He also talked of being able to destroy the Earth. And the public and media lapped it up.

• Tesla now headed back to New York with fire in his eyes, apparently ready to rise yet again and take on Marconi (who’s radio success was only made possible by using seventeen of Tesla’s wireless patents) just as he once took on Edison. In NYC Tesla convinced financier J.P. Morgan to underwrite his building of a tall mushroom-shaped tower on the north shore of Long Island to, supposedly, transmit radio signals around the world. But Morgan was no George Westinghouse. The times had changed … the stakes were now higher. Even Edison had been replaced at General Electric by a new generation of theoretical scientists like Charles Proteus Steinmetz. It was all business now … all return-on-investment. The days of the gifted solitary inventor were all but over. It was no longer financial support for curious exploration. It was now the saving of lives on the sinking Titanic; the bypassing of the transAtlantic cable with wireless signals; of being able to bill customers for their use of electricity in their homes and businesses. It was the lucrative powering of industry and commerce. To the investors, electricity was the new energy commodity … alongside oil and gas. But to Tesla, still the idealistic inventor, the distribution of free electricity seemed a more noble quest. Here we witness his departure from reality and start feeling sorry for him. David was pitted against Goliath, but lost this time. Morgan soon discovered that Tesla intended to use his tower to transmit free electrical energy. Incensed over the loss of all that potential electric utility revenue, he withdrew his financial support and ordered the destruction of Tesla’s tower. The tearing down of his Wardenclyffe Tower was the sad final chapter in Tesla’s strange but brilliant career. It was a blatant rejection of his vision & ideals. His creativity, dreams, and individuality had lost out to the new paradigm of corporate bottom-line science. Only the pragmatic with business savvy would survive.

• From here on the world saw a crazy & eccentric Tesla. He revealed his Promethean fall from grace by the poor manner in which he responded to the rumour that he was about to be nominated to share the Nobel Prize with Edison (he adamantly refused the offer), or his resentment at being awarded the Edison Award which he considered a pity prize (the night of the awards ceremony he sat on a NYC park bench stubbornly feeding pigeons, including a white dove, while stewing in his own bitterness). Edison’s eventual death years later marked the end of Tesla’s quest. The dragon was now dead. From here on in it was all wild claims of free energy, particle beam weapons, power-free motors and human potential. Yet neither the public nor the media knew whether to laugh at him or wonder if he might be right. He was, after all, Tesla.

• Even Tesla’s senior years were marked with notoriety. Ayn Rand, in her novel Atlas Shrugged alluded to Tesla in the guise of the mysterious hero John Galt who, in her story, invented a revolutionary motor that required no fuel. And, in its July 1931 issue, Time Magazine celebrated Tesla’s seventy fifth birthday by featuring him on the cover and devoting much of the issue to myriad milestones from his illustrious career.

• Tesla’s story came to an end with his sad and lonely death in his room at the Hotel New Yorker while looking out over a city now illuminated brightly, yet indifferently, by his AC power. A city, and a world, that now rose high into the sky because of elevators made possible by his AC motors, and dancing to the sounds of swing, jazz, and blues broadcast over the air waves using what would, in 1943, be officially acknowledged by the US patent office as Tesla’s (not Marconi’s) radio patents. Yet he died penniless and virtually forgotten in that musty flat surrounded by piles of unpublished papers and inventions, and watched over by his beloved pigeons (maybe even that white dove).

• What seems to say it all were the final actions of US and Serbian government agents tripping over each other in a desperate effort to ransack Tesla’s room and claim his papers, while just across town New York Mayor Fiorello Laguardia gave a stirring and flattering eulogy at Tesla’s funeral. In it he said the world must never dismiss the man or his contributions. Tesla, he said, had changed the world and all our lives forever.

• In the years since Tesla’s death two statues have been erected at Niagara Falls in his memory. The first on Goat Island by the American falls. It shows Tesla seated and in the gown of an academic looking down as if studying a document. It is located a few meters from a relocated portion of the stone archway to the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant, the first AC power plant at Niagara Falls, made possible by forty three of Tesla’s AC patents. The second statue is located in a park on the Canadian side of the Niagara gorge and shows Tesla standing proudly, using a cane to sketch his AC motor concept in the dirt as he once claimed to have done when the idea first came to him in that poetic flash-of-genius moment. He is standing atop a portion of his AC polyphase motor that helped elevate AC power over Edison’s popular, but commercially doomed DC power.”

Tesla’s Legacy Today

These days Tesla’s name, reputation, and inventions live on. His influence is everwhere. For example…

• The choice of 60 Hz, 110 V AC power coming out of most North American electrical wall outlets was established by Tesla.

• Tesla’s 3-phase AC induction motors are still used today, virtually unchanged from the one he invented in his head in 1883 and introduced to the world in 1888.

• Every power line, transformer, and electrical substation you see uses principles and technologies invented by Nikola Tesla.

• A unit of magnetic field strength is known as a Tesla. I have an iPad app that uses the tablet’s magnetic field sensor to measure the ambient field strength in Tesla units.

• There is an all-electric sports car produced in the States called a Tesla. My son has his sights set on owning one some day (I hope he lets me drive it).

• The technology behind an experimental research facility in Alaska, called HAARP (which stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program), is admittedly based on Tesla’s energy field theories. The station uses a large antenna array to resonate small sections of the ionosphere, raising its temperature and expanding its atmosphere into space, to measure the effect on satellites. Part of the facility’s mission, or so it is said, is to also investigate the possibility of using this idea to communicate with submarines. Hmmm. There is much suspicion among conspiracy theorists as to what is actually going on at HAARP.

• There’s an indy rock band called Tesla. Can’t say I’ve ever heard any of their music, though.

• Dozens of biographies and works of fiction (my own included) revolve around Tesla and/or his ideas.

• Many surviving locations where Tesla worked have been preserved, possibly in hope that they can someday be converted into historic sites. This includes the Wardenclyffe Tower building in Shoreham, NY on Long Island, the last remaining building of the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant in Niagara Falls, NY, and Tesla’s hotel room in the Hotel New Yorker which, I’ve been told, is being converted into an historic exhibit on January 1, 2013. Another location dedication of which I am familiar is Tesla Corner at the intersection of West 40th and the Avenue of the Americas in NYC, right behind the Public Library. It’s just a street sign but, hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

• Movies like The Prestige and TV shows like Canada’s Murdoch Mysteries, and Warehouse 13, and the Disney Channel’s cartoon The Weekenders, have featured Nikola Tesla or his inventions.

• The luxurious Niagara Fallsview Hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario features a strange but magnificent water contraption in its rear lobby that pays homage to Nikola Tesla and his lasting legacy to water and power.

• Many alternative lifestyle festivals & events like Burning Man and the Telluride Tech Fest feature Tesla’s ideas, mostly because they like to fry the sky with huge lightning bolts emitted from beefed up variations of his amplifying transmitter called … wait for it … a Tesla Coil.

• Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters once featured an episode devoted to investigating Tesla’s earthquake machine. As I recall, they got a derelict bridge to oscillate a bit more energetically than Adam Savage found comfortable.

• Many futuristic teen video games feature weaponry supposedly based on Tesla’s ideas. One offers a kind of electric flamethrower called a Tesla Gun. And if you check out the technology section at any major bookstore you’ll see several Evil Genius kind of books that show you how to build electric rail guns and Tesla Coils based on Tesla’s designs.

• Clubs and societies all over the world are devoted to Tesla and his inventions. There are also technical clubs that faithfully recreate some of his more dramatic devices like his Tesla Coil, AC polyphase motor, and remote-controlled robot boat. I personally know of a brilliant Electrical Technologist who even acquires vintage hardware to reconstruct his amazing museum-quality Tesla machines.

Speculation or Just Plain Goofy?

Then there are those who buy into some far fetched ideas about Tesla. It’s true that there was an aura of supernatural mystery surrounding the man. He only has himself to blame. How could he expect to stand on stage with electric sparks coursing over his body without evoking some kind of mystique? And, in his final years, he made some outrageous claims about having invented a particle beam weapon (what some have called his death ray) and free-energy devices. No wonder myths started to arise even during his lifetime. But what has followed since is starting to get a little out of hand.

Here are some of the more inventive, far-fetched and even fantastic notions about Tesla.

• The most commonly held Tesla myth is that, in his final years, he actually perfected a so-called particle beam weapon that, he claimed, could be used to put an end to war. The story goes that he first offered his weapon to the Americans but they either didn’t believe him or wouldn’t meet his terms for how it was to be used. So he then took his invention to the Russians. But there is no supportive evidence that either happened, nor that Tesla ever invented such a device. Supporters of this story point to the haste with which the American and Serbian governments sought to take possession of his private papers in the days after he died. And, although the American government claims to have returned all his notes to the Serbian authorities as promised, there is still speculation that some papers were never returned and that these remain in a top secret vault somewhere (perhaps beside the Arc of the Covenant). The fact is that Tesla was a devout pacifist, so it is highly unlikely that he ever designed, let along marketed, a death ray.

• On June 30, 1908, a unexplained force struck, or exploded over, Tunguska, Russia, laying flat the boreal forest for 10s of kilometres in all directions, and heard & felt by residents hundreds of kilometres away. The immense energy of this explosion has been estimated as the equivalent of 30 megatons of TNT … a thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Of course, there are many conflicting theories of plausible natural events that could have caused the explosion, such as the high altitude detonation of an inbound comet. But there are also those who insist that it was caused by Nikola Tesla’s initial tests of his Wardenclyffe Tower which produced an intense energy spike high in the atmosphere over Tunguska.

• Steam Punk societies portray an alternative technical reality where Tesla and other Victorian inventors have created the most amazing array of personal weapons, tools and doodads. But it’s not fair to imply that any of them believe in this fantasy world they have created. It’s mostly for fun and inventiveness.

• Some New Age groups claim that Tesla was an alien (from Venus, I believe) who came to Earth to bestow upon us his culture-changing inventions, like some kind of modern Prometheus. Part of this notion may have originated with Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land about a fictional, but similar, alien visitation (which believers say was actually based on Tesla).

• Conspiracy Theorists are convinced that the elder Tesla researched several amazing technologies such as anti-gravity, free-energy (or zero-point energy), that particle beam weapon of his, and even electromagnetically-induced invisibility. In fact, some believe that, right before his death in 1943, Tesla participated in a top-secret military project to render battleships invisible to light & radar using some sort of high-energy electromagnetic bubble… the infamous Philadelphia Experiment. They also claim that during an attempt to render the American battleship USS Eldridge electromagnetically invisible, it entered a mysterious fog, got transported many miles away (some say to another time or dimension), then returned back to its jetty in Philadelphia harbour with its distraught crew in all states of mental and physical distress, with some crew members bodies even merged into the hull. See what I mean about the out-there notions about Nikola Tesla?

The Truth is in Here

The truth is that Tesla was just a man. But what an incredible man. He was one of the last true natural philosophers who, like his predecessors, sought to grasp the meaning behind the science. He wasn’t satisfied with just making the numbers work. He wasn’t after profit (obviously). He really wanted to understand electricity… to know, as it were, what made it tick. All his research was devoted to that single-minded purpose. He once said …

“The day that we know exactly what electricity is will chronicle an event probably greater, more important, than any other recorded in the history of the human race.”

Not just your average scientist or engineer, eh? Nope, not in the least.

The Injustice of History

You would think that, after all this, Nikola Tesla would be a household name. But he isn’t. He has either been forgotten or neglected by those who keep track of who deserves credit and who doesn’t. Most North American museums that include an electricity exhibit will wax eloquent about Edison and his lightbulb. But did you know that, contrary to legend, Edison didn’t actually invent the light bulb? He just improved on Joseph Swan’s existing incandescent bulb design to make a more practical one. No small feat, I grant you, but hardly amazing. It was Edison’s marketing genius that put electric lights into people’s homes and businesses that made him a hero. No argument. On the other hand, you may have to search far and wide in that same museum to find even a brief mention of Tesla and his amazing induction motor, or his key role in the electrification of North America’s cities, farms, and factories. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Maybe Tim and Marc’s movie will be able to set the record straight and get him the recognition he deserves.

Further Reading & Links

There is an almost endless number of resources, books, magazine articles, games, and videos that can provide you with more information about the incredible Nikola Tesla. It’s my blog, so I get to choose some of my favourites, a few that are factual biographies and historical accounts, and a few off-the-wall speculative science or conspiracy theory books. I’ve even included a handful of websites sponsored by clubs, societies and hobby groups that dabble in Tesla technologies. I know there are many other resources, so please forgive me if I haven’t listed your favourites.

I do hope you will take the time to learn more about Tesla. We owe it to him.

Factual Books

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc Seifer (1996)
A well-researched and thoroughly entertaining account of Tesla’s life and the events surrounding it.

Tesla: Man out of Time by Margaret Cheney (1983)
Pretty much the first book you should read about Tesla. Cheney made it almost a lifelong quest of hers to bring the technology and romance of Nikola Tesla’s life to the world.

Tesla: Master of Lightning by Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth (2001)
An illustrated look at Tesla’s life, and probably one of the easiest, most approachable books for anyone who wants to be entertained by the amazing adventures of the man. This is the first book I ever purchased on the subject. I think it was a Barnes & Noble publication, so it may be hard to find, but well worth it if you come across a copy. Note that it shares its title with an excellent 2001 PBS documentary produced by co-author Robert Uth.

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes (2004)  An ambitiously thorough account of the culture and events of that period describing the contributions of all the key players. This is a terrific book even if it doesn’t focus only on Tesla.

Harnessing the Wheelwork of Nature by Thomas Valone (2002)
Follows Tesla mostly from his days in Colorado Springs and back to New York where he starts building his Wardenclyffe Tower and dreaming of providing free electrical energy to the world. A little more speculative than some of the more factual books.

Acid Tongues and Tranquil Dreamers by Michael White (2002)
The subtitle of this book is “Eight Scientific Rivalries that Changed the World”. A section of the book is devoted to the Battle of the Currents between Edison and Tesla.

Speculative Books

Angels Don’t Play this HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology by Nick Begich (1995)
Begich is the son of an Alaskan Congressman who’s plane mysterious disappeared in the “Alaska Triangle” back in the 70s and was never seen again. So Begich knows all about conspiracy and mystery. In his book he makes claims that there are nefarious activities going on at the HAARP facility north east of Anchorage. He believes that the feds have not come clean with the American public as to what exactly is going on out there.

The Tesla Papers by David Hatcher Childress (2000)
There is widespread belief that, after the fall of his Wardenclyffe Tower, Tesla continued to conduct secret research that he recorded on notes kept locked away in his room at the Hotel New Yorker. US and Serbian agents appropriated his papers in the days following Tesla’s death. But neither government has ever admitted whether any of those papers contained any new secrets or technologies. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t, now does it? This book looks at some of Tesla’s accepted technologies as well as some of the more speculative ones.

The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology by Nick Cook (2002)  This books isn’t specifically about Tesla, but it does make mention of him and his work. And while it looks like your garden variety kookfest, keep in mind that Cook is a reporter for Janes Aviation Weekly, a very serious journal about aircraft technology, so he knows what he’s talking about. This one will have you wondering.

Clubs, Societies, and Hobby Groups

Tesla Universe  These guys take Tesla and his gizmos seriously. There’s lots of fun stuff to see here, so take your time and explore the site. Be sure to click on the link to the Winter Western Teslathon because there are some amazing videos of Tesla Coils at work.

Tesla Memorial Society of New York  These folks are dedicated to preserving the memory and reputation of Nikola Tesla. New York was where he called home, so they have lots to say about the man.

Nikola Tesla Club  I don’t know much about this group. But they seem to have an extensive website, so I suspect you will learn a lot about Tesla there.

Tesla at Niagara Falls  This site is sponsored by the Tesla Memorial Society (above). But since it focuses on Tesla’s activities at Niagara Falls I have included it here separately.

So that’s about it, although there is so much more I haven’t even touched on. If I haven’t convinced you by now that the guy was almost superhuman, then I haven’t done my job. That’s ok, I’ll get over it. But if I have, then Tim & Marc can probably count on selling a few more tickets when their movie comes out … whenever. See you in line.

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