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History this week. February 24th, 1893.
I'm Sally Helm. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
A small, stately building tucked away on 7th Street in Old City.
This is one of the scientific hubs of 19th century America.
a large audience is gathered inside to see a lecture.
On stage is a tall, thin man.
Dark hair, sharp features, a distinctive mustache.
As the Michelin man.
And today, Bibendum, or okay, a person dressed as Bibendum, has been all over New York City.
He goes to Central Park, takes in the trees.
He visits Times Square.
We don't know whether he made it to a Broadway show.
And when he poses for pictures, he holds in his bulbous hands a giant fork and spoon.
Because Bibendum's employer, Michelin, they don't just make tires.
They also publish the most famous restaurant guide in the world.
That night, at New York's Gotham Hall, Bibendum rubs elbows with some culinary big shots.
Daniel Balud, Eric Ripert, Anthony Bourdain.
This city is a top food destination.
But until now, the Michelin Guide has not seen fit to bestow its famous stars upon the culinary elite of New York.
They have been operating for over 100 years, but only in Europe.
Now, that is about to change.
In fact, it already has.
CEO Edouard Michelin takes the podium and reveals that his company's famous inspectors have been hard at work for months, secretly making their way through about 1 ,200 New York restaurants.
He says the New York City Michelin Guide will come out later that year, with reviews of 500 of those restaurants.
If the New York version of the Guide is anything like its European counterpart, a star or two or three could catapult any given restaurant onto the global stage.
Among the chefs in attendance, the reaction is mixed.
Some are excited. Some are nervous.
Some are even angry.
Eric Rappert, chef at Le Bernardin, is cautiously optimistic.
I was interested and I thought, oh, this is pretty good.
I like the idea of Michelin coming to New York because I thought it would bring something new.
But no matter how the chefs feel, Bibendum has officially arrived.
Today, the Michelin Guide comes to the United States.
Which restaurants win?
Which lose? And how does the battle itself transform American food culture?
Hey, History This Week listeners, your producer Ben here.
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History moves pretty fast.
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Hey, History This Week listeners.
Your producer Ben here.
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History moves pretty fast.
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one of the people in New York's Gotham Hall that February evening was a chef who had been a fixture of the city's culinary scene for a decade i am Eric Rupert chef of Le Bernardin in New York City Le Bernardin has long been considered one of the top restaurants in the world Eric Rupert has been its executive chef since 1994 he still goes in nearly every day I'm lunch and dinner Monday to Friday at the restaurant.
I go home and I have this sense of like, wow, I have done something good today.
Rapier grew up in France and in Andorra, a small country between France and Spain.
When he was little, he'd hang out in the kitchen with his mom or his grandma.
I was allowed in the kitchen, but I couldn't cook or touch anything other than eating.
Family meals were a real to -do in their household.
I guess a little ugly.
At one point, Edison tries to brand Tesla's alternating current, AC, the killer current.
He arranges for AC to be used in the first electric chair and for other public demonstrations of death.
He was electrocuting cats and dogs, horses with AC current.
but none of this will matter if tesla can prove that his ac technology is safe and powerful and in 1893 he gets his chance chicago is hosting the world's fair and it'll be the first fair in history to run on electric power electric power that someone will need to provide Edison throws his hat in the ring.
He's backed by the financier J .P.
Morgan. And a man named George Westinghouse places a bid, too.
He's an inventor, an industrialist, and he's purchased Tesla's A .C.
patents. Westinghouse wanted to prove that the A .C.
system was the best system.
So he underbid the contract by a million dollars.
Westinghouse wins the contract.
Tesla's technologies will be on display before an audience of millions.
On May 1st, 1893, President Grover Cleveland presides over the opening ceremony.
On the steps of the administration building, in front of a hushed crowd, he pushes a button.
all at once flags unfurl electric motors start whirring and the exposition comes to life at night the fair transforms into a city of light tesla's technology works and it's not scary it doesn't electrocute anyone He has bested Edison.
And now the whole restaurant.
You buy the ticket, you make your reservation and your whole trip revolves around you're getting that reservation and that special experience.
Eric Ripert's family uses the guide exactly as it was intended.
We were looking in a region where we were going on vacation for the three stars.
And if it was no three stars, we were looking for the two stars.
And then we were trying to do as many as we could.
For me as a kid, I was looking at the service and I was dreaming.
I was like, this is amazing what they're doing.
And then I was eating the food and I was like, oh wow, this chef is so creative.
For the young Eric Repair, a life's work is beginning to come into view.
I was appreciating every detail of the experience without even thinking about ratings because I was just experiencing as a client.
But those chefs, the kind of chefs who would one day be Eric Repair's peers, they were thinking about the ratings, specifically about the Michelin stars.
I think it was extremely stressful.
I think it was the gold standard.
There was a lot of pressure put on European chefs to get those stars.
Repair goes to culinary school at 15 and takes his first job in a kitchen at 17.
My first job after culinary school was in La Tour d 'Argent in Paris.
Iconic restaurant. At the time, it was a three -star Michelin celebrating their 400 -year anniversary.
Yes, it... If a force keeps falling, you have power.
In a world where most homes won't have electric light for another quarter century, this is like stepping into the future.
And for Tesla, it's also the seed of a new idea.
He's taken the power of a waterfall and used it to turn on the lights in a whole city.
That gets him thinking big.
What if he can somehow harness a huge amount of power and transmit it to the whole world?
We're amazed by the energy of the city, by the vibrancy of the city, by the quality of the restaurants, by the quality of the bars and hotels.
It was really something that was marvelous for me.
In 1991, he lands at the restaurant where he still works today.
I came to Le Bernardin, and the rest is history.
Riper becomes the executive chef in 1994.
Eric really made the menu his own.
Kathleen Squires again.
Focusing on beautiful seafood, which not a lot of people were doing during that time.
And he just really made the food shine on the plate.
Repair is thriving at Liberna Den.
And especially by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kathleen Squires says the overall food scene in New York is thriving too.
in a new way. It was really burgeoning in the sense that dining was not just for special occasions anymore.
Part of that, I think, had to do with the advent of Food Network and chefs becoming celebrities in a sense and people really wanting to become part of a social scene that was something besides nightclubs, bars, theater.
Remember, this is before the internet exploded, certainly before social media.
Peter Esmond was general manager at Per Se, a restaurant owned by chef Thomas Keller.
At that time, there was no marketing for a restaurant.
Like you don't market at all.
Your best marketing is a great customer experience because if that person has a great experience at your restaurant, they're going to go tell their friends and then their friends are going to come and then they'll eat and then they'll tell their friends.
And like, that is how you build a successful restaurant.
But especially at that time and like you're no other way.
And so these publications pulled a lot of power at that time.
The publications Esmond is talking about are the places where the food critics publish their reviews.
Newspapers, magazines, they're seen as the authorities on where to eat in the city.
New Yorkers relied on the New York Times.
That was the standard.
If you had a good review in the New York Times, you were fine for a couple of years, full.
If you were getting a bad review from The Times, probably you were closing your restaurant within six months.
You had other newspapers, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, New York Magazine was very influential in terms of dining.
And then you had Zagat, which everybody looked at as kind of the popularity contest.
The Zagat Guide will definitely make you very busy or not very busy, depending if you are number one or number two or ten or whatever in their classification.
The Zagat Guide relied on reviews from thousands of people.
It ranked restaurants in cities around the world.
It was democratic in the sense that people, the diners, were doing the reviewing.
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In 1898, Tesla reveals a major step forward in wireless technology.
Though it sounds small.
It is a remote -controlled boat.
Which he called the Tel Automaton.
The word robot hadn't come in yet.
He unveils his boat at the Madison Square Garden Electrical Exposition.
Gilded -age investors are there to watch.
The boat is made of steel.
It's four feet long, three feet high.
It's placed in a tank the size of a swimming pool.
Investors gather around the edge.
And live, in front of them all, Tesla begins steering the boat remotely using radio waves.
He had a counterspring on the rudder.
So when the spring was on, it was in one direction, and when you turned off the electricity, the rudder went in a different direction.
So you could steer the boat by turning on and off electricity.
So we had a series of these binary systems to put the lights on.
I mean, we're doing just fine here.
I would rather have my three or four New York Times stars.
I would rather have my very high Zagat rating than for some interloper to come in and say whether or not I'm up to the standards of someone, you know, far away.
Eric Rupere, though, he is much more enthusiastic.
I thought it would bring something new to have the three systems, opinion of a journalist, the Zagat.
Tesla isn't the only one experimenting with radio technology.
In fact, at this same exposition, Italian inventor Guillermo Marconi's technology will be on display, used to detonate a remote -controlled bomb.
Marconi's bomb is set up on another toy -sized ship.
That seems to have been the trend.
And it works, but there are a bunch of other bombs nearby too.
He didn't know how to create separate frequencies, so all the bombs that were in the back room went off when he bombed the ship.
Fortunately, nobody got hurt or killed.
Despite the kerfuffle, the demonstration of Marconi's technology seems to capture the public imagination, much more so than Tesla's boat had.
You know, explosions.
They're cool. But Tesla's product is more technologically sophisticated.
From that standpoint, he has the edge.
But it's clear that a new battle has arrived.
If Edison was Tesla's rival in the War of the Currents, his new rival in the wireless technology wars will be Marconi.
The following year, Tesla decides to leave New York City.
He heads west to Colorado Springs.
He was using a lot of electricity and it became too dangerous in New York.
So I think it enabled him to do giant wireless operations and not worry about blowing up a building.
Ordering. Many times I'll go to a restaurant and I love a dish and I have to go back for that dish.
But as a Michelin inspector, you're going to try to eat your way through the whole menu.
So I thank himself.
And he was offered essentially free electricity out in Colorado Springs.
Tesla sets up an experimental station about five miles outside of town.
The Rockies on one side, miles of planes on the other.
There's a photo of him there, peeking out from behind a door marked by the sign, Great Danger.
Keep Out. Tesla is still trying to figure out how can he wirelessly transmit power to the entire world.
He didn't know for sure the best way to send electricity.
One idea he had was to have balloons and send it up through the ionosphere.
He brings in oversized helium balloons more than 10 feet high, Attaches wires to them and hopes to run them miles into the air.
But you have to get the balloons way up there.
You've got wires attached to the balloons and it's very cumbersome.
He produces artificial lightning and sends bolts into the night sky.
He sets up light bulbs in fields and makes them glow wirelessly.
He also sets his lab on fire.
once he wipes out power for the whole town they give him his own power supply after that and the town itself transforms it's surreal sparks fly from the ground when people walk butterflies begin to glow violet because of all the static in the air and the horses grow restless They keep getting shocked through their metal shoes.
But for Nikola Tesla himself, none of these wonders is the strangest thing that happens in Colorado Springs.
So one night, he receives three pulses on his...
...are coming to town.
If I can make an analogy, it makes total sense.
It's like an actor on stage thinking about the Oscars all the time.
He's going to forget to act, right?
And he will never get the Oscar.
And then finally, Oscar Day arrives.
In early November, the first New York City Michelin Guide will be released.
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Hey, everyone. Sally here.
This episode of History this Week is sponsored by Quince, and producer Ben is here to tell you all about them.
Ben, take it away. Thank you, Sally.
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Self was alive with electricity and perhaps could be used as a carrier wave.
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November 1st, 2005.
Michelin inspectors have been making their way through 1 ,200 New York restaurants for over a year.
And all of these chefs, they want those stars.
I think it's pride.
I think it's business.
I think it's an honor.
It signifies success.
Peter Esmond remembers the moment that Per Se got word.
The result of the Michelin inspections.
There's a phone in the kitchen.
Everybody knew who was calling and said like...
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Wow, what's going on here?
What's happening? We are really shocked.
I mean, the ones who knew Michelin are like, cannot believe it, because again, we never thought you could start at three stars.
Riper celebrates with his staff that night with champagne and caviar.
And then the next step was to go to the party.
The following night, November 2nd, Michelin throws a huge event at the Guggenheim Museum.
The line to get in wraps around the block.
It was packed with chefs and people from the industry.
Bibendum is in attendance as well.
Apparently he knocks into someone holding a champagne glass who spills it.
And then the big moment.
Suddenly through the staircase, some waiters with white gloves and trays were carrying the Michelin guide.
The 2006 New York City Michelin Guide presented on its.
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Nikola Tesla is back in New York with a grand plan.
Create a giant tower that can wirelessly transmit both information and energy all over the globe using the power of the Earth itself.
There's just one problem.
He's flat. broke. He needs literally millions of dollars to do the kind of work that he wanted to do.
But Tesla's reputation isn't as shiny as it once was.
It's been almost a decade since he's invented something that's made anyone money.
Investors don't look favorably on that.
Plus, there's the whole Martian communication.
They don't even know to call it the subway.
They're calling it the metro.
In that first guide, there are also some surprises, like Peter Luger, a famously no -frills steakhouse in Brooklyn, got a star.
The New York Michelin Guide has endured, with a new version released every year since.
It does now include a more diverse restaurant selection, and there are now guides for lots of other U .S.
locations, too. Michelin stars still matter a lot.
They still have the power to cause controversy.
There is a chef that sued Michelin for...
Facular photographs.
In the most famous one, Tesla sits in his lab, nonchalantly reading a book, while a giant ball of lightning, dozens of feet long, crackles overhead.
The photos make him look like a mad scientist in an old monster movie.
In other words, extremely cool.
Tesla begins to use these photographs as his calling cards for fundraising.
He still has connections to New York's richest people, and he just needs one of them to buy in on his grand vision.
this giant tower for wireless communication, so powerful that you'd be able to transmit signals across the ocean.
And finally, he does get someone to listen.
And not just anyone, the same man who had backed his rival Thomas Edison in the War of the Currents, J .P.
Morgan. Morgan is interested, but skeptical.
So he offers Tesla this deal.
He was very clear to Tesla.
He said, I'm going to give you $150 ,000 under two conditions.
One, that I'll be a silent partner.
And two, you will not ask me for another dime.
Tesla agrees. With Morgan's money, he purchases a 200 -acre plot of land on the Long Island Sound, about 60 miles outside of New York City.
He christens it Wardenclyffe.
He has a grand vision.
Really mean that it's the best chicken salad sandwich in the world.
So it's good to have those standards.
It's good to have someone who's eaten, you know, maybe 150 chicken salad sandwiches before he determines which one is the best.
But Peter Esmond warns He hasn't told all of this to J .P.
Morgan. Tesla was a true visionary, but this vision might have been getting a little out of hand.
The money that he has now will cover just the first step.
A giant tower designed for powerful wireless transmission.
The first of its kind.
It's going swimmingly until one day, as Tesla is taking the train from New York City out to Wardenclyffe.
He's reading through the electrical journals, and he finds an article written by Marconi.
And Marconi said, in order to send wireless communication, you need to take a Tesla coil and do X, Y, Z, and Q.
And Tesla freaks out.
Marconi again. And this time, he's making advances using Tesla's own technology.
A patent violation, probably.
But what Tesla's really concerned about is winning.
He needs to blow Marconi out of the water.
So Tesla freaks out and decides to build a larger tower than he contracted with Morgan.
He had contracted a 90 -foot tower.
And he tells Stanford White, the architect, who was his builder, I want to make a 600 -foot tower.
And Stanford White says, no way.
You'd have no way into any of the money for a 600 -foot tower.
OK, fine, Tesla says.
Then just double it.
180 feet. And when Morgan returns from Europe, Tesla said, I double the size of the tower because of Marconi, he's stealing my ideas.
And with the larger tower, we'll not only be able to send electrical impulses to Europe, but we'll also be able to send it to Asia, South America, Africa, over the entire world.
So I know the costs might double, but the revenues will be five, six, seven times as much because we'll be able to control the whole planet.
J .P. Morgan is not happy.
All Morgan can see is a breach of contract, which is...
He's focused on the food.
But for him, the power of Michelin is still as real as it was back when he was driving around the French countryside with his family.
Some people like it.
Some people dislike it.
Sometimes it's controversial.
Sometimes it's not controversial.
When we're looking at standards, Michelin is very much right on.
When you travel and you go to a three -star, it's very rare that that three -star disappoints you.
One star to stop along the road, two stars to take a detour, three stars to plan a trip around that restaurant.
A place like La Bernardin.
Thanks for listening to History This Week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with The History Channel.
To stay updated on all things History This Week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast .com.
And if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweekathistory .com.
Special thanks to our guests, Peter Esmond, the former General Manager of Per Se and current sales leader at DoorDash, Eric Ripert, chef of La Bernardin in New York City, and Kathleen Squires, a food and travel writer whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and more.
This episode was produced by David Weisbord, produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein, and also produced by me, Sally Helm.
For BackPocket Studios, our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fidler.
Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts.
And we'll see you next week.
that tenacious letter s dot dot dot sent using some of tesla's underlying technology there is a giant party in marconi's honor at the waldorf astoria which is actually where tesla lives everyone's there morgan westing house edison can't make it but he sends a letter which is read aloud.
They all come to pay homage to this incredible accomplishment of Marconi.
It was a tremendous accomplishment.
Something Tesla was never able to establish or prove that he could do that.
Tesla doesn't go to the party.
He chooses to be out of town that night.
It's clear the age of mass communication has begun.
And it's been stamped with Marconi's name.
Tesla does keep toiling away out at Wardenclyffe.
Construction is finally underway.
This tower out on Wardenclyffe kind of looks like a mushroom with a big giant top.
It's 300 feet total, some of it reaching for the sky, the rest tunneling into the earth.
According to the New York Times, townspeople whispered that the ground around it was, quote, honeycombed with subterranean passages.
It might look like a radio tower, but Tesla intends to use it the way he first dreamed of back in Colorado Springs, to somehow use the earth to transmit power wirelessly across long distances.
He feels like he's on his way, but the money is drying up.
In July of 1903, as things are looking grim, Nikola Tesla fully fires up his Wardenclyffe Tower.
A last hurrah, or perhaps a primal scream.
The result is visible for miles around.
The air was filled with blinding streaks of electricity, the New York Sun reported, which seemed to shoot off into the darkness on some mysterious errand.
Over the next few years, Tesla continues to try to get funding, burning through his own cash to keep building.
But eventually, his creditors come calling.
Wardenclyffe falls silent.
And Tesla breaks down.
He went through a tragic period in 1906, totally fell apart.
But by 1908, 1909, he's back onto his game, and he's trying to figure out what else he can do.
He comes up with a steam engine, which he's hoping will replace the gasoline guzzler and sell it to Henry Ford.
He has torpedoes, and he had bladeless turbines and pumps.
But he's always trying to resurrect his real dream, worldwide wireless power.
He was always trying to get the money to go back and complete Wardenclyffe.
He just never was able to do it.
Eventually, Tesla sells the site to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Repayment for his debts.
He'd run up a $20 ,000 unpaid tab.
And in 1917... It's demolished with dynamite.
the parts are sold for scrap.
With Wardenclyffe gone and no funding in sight, it became clear Tesla would never be able to prove his theory that you could wirelessly transmit power through the earth.
And of course, no one has gone on to do this.
Most scientists are skeptical it could ever have worked.
Today, we live in a wireless age, but it's information that seems to travel invisibly around the world.
No one has been able to figure out a way to transmit large amounts of power wirelessly across long distances in an economical way.
Maybe it can't be done.
Then again, Tesla did spend his whole life accomplishing the seemingly impossible.
For the rest of his life, Tesla is plagued with debts.
He gets more and more eccentric, and in 1943, he dies in relative obscurity.
Six months later, his decades -long lawsuit against Marconi is finally settled.
Too late, but Tesla is vindicated as key in the invention of radio.
Yet, for decades, he remains a historical footnote, even as the world starts to look more and more like the one he envisioned.
Radio. Cell phones.
Intelligent robots.
Flying machines. Until, suddenly, Tesla comes revving back into the public consciousness.
In the early 2000s, Tempania and Eberhard invented the Tesla Roadster.
And when Elon Musk bought the company, he wasn't a big fan of Tesla.
He almost changed it to Edison.
And he decided to keep the name Tesla.
Even in death, Tesla can barely escape his rival.
So I'm very happy that he kept the name Tesla.
So Tesla is hugely famous all over the world.
Many people are inspired by him.
After all of Tesla's financial hardship, he finds himself the namesake of a company owned by the richest man in the world.
Ironic and not unprecedented.
He made other men rich his whole life.
But the electric car, a symbol of environmentalism, ingenuity and hope, that's perhaps a fitting tribute to Tesla after all.
Thanks for listening to History This Week, a BackPocket Studios production in partnership with The History Channel.
To stay updated on all things History This Week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast .com.
And if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an email at historythisweekathistory .com.
Special thanks to our guest, Mark Cipher, author of Wizard, The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla.
This episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein.
It was also produced by Catherine Isaac and by me, Sally Helm.
For BackPocket Studios, our executive producers are Ben Dickstein and David Weisbord.
From the History Channel, our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler.
Don't forget to follow, rate, and review History This Week wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week.
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