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Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter: A compilation of
material on this amazing device.
The question has often been posed as to whether Tesla's magnifying transmitter
could actually be constructed, today. This webpage will attempt to gather
available data, from a historical perspective and offer an opinion.
From: A Museum At Wardenclyffe - The Creation Of A
Monument To Nikola Tesla:
The year was 1900 and following 9 productive
months of wireless propagation research in Colorado, Nikola Tesla was anxious to
put a mass of new found knowledge to work. His vision focused on the development
of a prototype wireless communications station and research facility and he
needed a site on which to build. In 1901 he cast his eyes some 60 miles eastward
to the north shore village of Woodville Landing. Only six years before the north
branch of the Long Island Railroad had opened, reducing travel time to the
locality from a horse drawn five hours to less than two.
Seeing an opportunity in land development a
western lawyer and banker by the name of James S. Warden had purchased 1400
acres in the area and started building an exclusive summer resort community
known as Wardenclyffe-On-Sound. With an opportunity for further development in
mind, Warden offered Tesla a 200 acre section of this parcel lying directly to
the south of the newly laid track. It was anticipated that implementation of
Tesla's system would eventually lead to the establishment of a "Radio City" to
house the thousands of employees needed for operation of the facility. The
proximity to Manhattan and the fairly short travel time between the two, along
with the site's closeness to a railway line must surely have been attractive
features and Tesla accepted the offer.
The Wardenclyffe World Wireless facility as envisioned by Tesla was to have
been quite different from present day radio broadcasting stations. While
there was to be a great similarity in the apparatus employed, the method in
which it was to be utilized would have been radically different. Conventional
transmitters are designed so as to maximize the amount of power radiated from
the antenna structure. Such equipment must process tremendous amounts of power
in order to counteract the loss in field strength encountered as the signal
radiates out from its point of origin. The transmitter at Wardenclyffe was being
configured so as to minimize the radiated power.
The energy of Tesla's steam driven Westinghouse
200 kW alternator was to be channeled instead into an extensive underground
radial structure of iron pipe installed 120 feet beneath the tower's base. This
was to be accomplished by superposing a low frequency base-band signal on the
higher frequency signal coursing through the transmitter's helical resonator.
The low frequency current in the presence of an enveloping corona-induced plasma
of free charge carriers would have pumped the earth's charge. It is believed the
resulting ground current and its associated wave complex would have allowed the
propagation of wireless transmissions to any distance on the earth's surface
with as little as 5% loss due to radiation. The terrestrial transmission line
modes so excited would have supported a system with the following technical
capabilities:
Establishment of a multi-channel global broadcasting system with programming
including news, music, etc;
Interconnection of the world's telephone and telegraph exchanges, and stock
tickers;
Transmission of written and printed matter, and data;
World wide reproduction of photographic images;
Establishment of a universal marine navigation and location system, including a
means for the synchronization of precision timepieces;
Establishment of secure wireless communications services.
The plan was to build the first of many
installations to be located near major population centers around the world. If
the program had moved forward without interruption, the Long Island prototype
would have been followed by additional units the first of which being built
somewhere along the coast of England. By the Summer of 1902 Tesla had shifted
his laboratory operations from the Houston Street Laboratory to the rural Long
Island setting and work began in earnest on development of the station and
furthering of the propagation research. Construction had been made possible
largely through the backing of financier J. Pierpont Morgan who had offered
Tesla $150,000 towards the end of 1900.
By July 1904, however, this support had run out
and with a subsequent major down turn in the financial markets Tesla was
compelled to pursue alternative methods of financing. With funds raised through
an unrecorded mortgage against the property, additional venture capital, and the
sale of X-ray tube power supplies to the medical profession he was able to make
ends meet for another couple of years. In spite of valiant efforts to maintain
the operation, income dwindled and his employees were eventually dropped from
the payroll. Still, Tesla was certain that his wireless system would yield
handsome rewards if it could only be set into operation and so the work
continued as he was able.
A second mortgage in 1908 acquired again from the
Waldorf-Astoria proprietor George C. Boldt allowed some additional bills to be
paid, but debt continued to mount and between 1912 and 1915 Tesla's financial
condition disintegrated. The loss of ability to make additional payments was
accompanied by the collapse of his plan for high capacity trans-Atlantic
wireless communications. The property was foreclosed, Nikola Tesla honored the
agreement with his debtor and title on the property was signed over to Mr. Boldt.
The plant's abandonment sometime around 1911-1912 followed by demolition and
salvaging of the tower in 1917 essentially brought an end to this era. Tesla's
April 20, 1922 loss on appeal of the judgment completely closed the door to any
further chance of his developing the site.
Nikola Tesla, as quoted from the New York Times, March
27th, 1904 -
"Much has already been done towards making my system commercially available, in
the transmission of energy in small amounts for specific purposes, as well as on
an industrial scale. The results attained by me have made my scheme of
intelligence transmission, for which the name of "World Telegraphy" has been
suggested, easily realizable. It constitutes, I believe, in its principle of
operation, means employed and capacities of application, a radical and fruitful
departure from what has been done heretofore. I have no doubt that it will prove
very efficient in enlightening the masses, particularly in still uncivilized
countries and less accessible regions, and that it will add materially to
general safety, comfort and convenience, and maintenance of peaceful relations."
"It involves the employment of a number of plants, all of which are capable of
transmitting individualized signals to the uttermost confines of the earth. Each
of them will be preferably located near some important center of civilization
and the news it receives through any channel will be flashed to all points of
the globe. A cheap and simple device, which might be carried in one's pocket,
may then be set up somewhere on sea or land, and it will record the world's news
or such special messages as may be intended for it. Thus the entire earth will
be converted into a huge brain, as it were, capable of response in every one of
its parts. Since a single plant of but one hundred horsepower can operate
hundreds of millions of instruments, the system will have a virtually infinite
working capacity, and it must needs immensely facilitate and cheapen the
transmission of intelligence."
"The first of these central plants would have been already completed had it not
been for unforeseen delays which, fortunately, have nothing to do with its
purely technical features. But this loss of time, while vexatious, may, after
all, prove to be a blessing in disguise. The best design of which I know has
been adopted, and the transmitter will emit a wave complex of a total maximum
activity of 10,000,000 horsepower, one percent of which is amply sufficient to
"girdle the globe." This enormous rate of energy delivery, approximately twice
that of the combined falls of Niagara, is obtainable only by the use of certain
artifices, which I shall make known in due course.
"For a large part of the work which I have done so far I am indebted to the
noble generosity of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, which was all the more welcome and
stimulating, as it was extended at a time when those, who have since promised
most, were the greatest of doubters. I have also to thank my friend Stanford
White, for much unselfish and valuable assistance. This work is now far
advanced, and though the results may be tardy, they are sure to come. Meanwhile,
the transmission of energy on an industrial scale is not being neglected. The
Canadian Niagara Power Company have offered me a splendid inducement, and next
to achieving success for the sake of the art, it will give me the greatest
satisfaction to make their concession financially profitable to them. In this
first power plant, which I have been designing for a long time, I propose to
distribute 10,000 horsepower under a tension of 10,000,000 volts, which I am now
able to produce and handle with safety."
"This energy will be collected all over the globe preferably in small amounts,
ranging from a fraction of one to a few horsepower. One of the chief uses will
be the illumination of isolated homes. It takes very little power to light a
dwelling with vacuum tubes operated by high frequency currents and in each
instance a terminal a little above the roof will be sufficient. Another valuable
application will be the driving of clocks and other such apparatus. These clocks
will be exceedingly simple, will require absolutely no attention and will
indicate rigorously correct time. The idea of impressing upon the earth American
time is fascinating and very likely to become popular."
"There are innumerable devices of all kinds which are either now employed or can
be supplied and by operating them in this manner I may be able to offer a great
convenience to the whole world with a plant of no more than 10,000 horsepower.
The introduction of this system will give opportunities for invention and
manufacture such as have never presented themselves before. Knowing the far
reaching importance of this first attempt and its effect upon future
development, I shall proceed slowly and carefully. Experience has taught me not
to assign a term to enterprises the consummation of which is not wholly
dependent on my own abilities and exertions. But I am hopeful that these great
realizations are not far off and I know that when this first work is completed
they will follow with mathematical certitude."
"When the great truth, accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed,
is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to
electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by virtue
of this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable
consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first
plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as
secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial
distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections
faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy
of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power,
anywhere...on sea, or land, or high in the air...humanity will be like an ant
heap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming!" "Cloud born
Electric Wavelets To Encircle the Globe: This Is Nikola Tesla's Latest Dream,
and the Long Island Hamlet of Wardenclyffe Marvels Thereat," New York
Times, 27 March 1904.
How it Works:
Rather than acting as a radiator, the large metallic spheroid, now known as an
isotropic capacitance, which Tesla positioned above the extra coil was intended
only as a reservoir for electrical charge. Another important component of
Tesla's Long Island apparatus was an underground array of iron pipes which
extended outward from the bottom of a deep shaft beneath the transmitter tower.
When coupled with the transmitter these pipes provided a connection to the earth
through which a powerful oscillating electrical current would flow. Unlike a
conventional radio transmitter with an antenna that radiates dissipating
electromagnetic waves out into space, the magnifying transmitter's extra coil
excites a low-frequency ground wave called the Zenneck surface wave. In this
case the propagating energy does not radiate into space but is concentrated near
the earth's surface. Furthermore, Tesla asserted that it is possible to
periodically disturb the equilibrium of the earth's electrical charge and cause
it to oscillate with his apparatus. This would be accomplished by superposing an
extra low frequency baseband signal on the somewhat higher frequency signal
coursing through the resonator -- the low frequency current in the presence of
an enveloping corona-induced plasma of free charge carriers produced by the
oscillator in effect "pumping" the earth's charge.
In Tesla’s own words:
[Quote] "These and other inventions of mine, however, were nothing more than
steps forward in a certain directions. In evolving them, I simply followed the
inborn instinct to improve the present devices without any special thought of
our far more imperative necessities. The "Magnifying Transmitter" was the
product of labours extending through years, having for their chief object, the
solution of problems which are infinitely more important to mankind than mere
industrial development.
If my memory serves me right, it was in November, 1890, that I performed a
laboratory experiment which was one of the most extraordinary and spectacular
ever recorded in the annals of Science. In investigating the behavior of high
frequency currents, I had satisfied myself that an electric field of sufficient
intensity could be produced in a room to light up electrode less vacuum tubes.
Accordingly, a transformer was built to test the theory and the first trial
proved a marvelous success. It is difficult to appreciate what those strange
phenomena meant at the time. We crave for new sensations, but soon become
indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences. When
my tubes were first publicly exhibited, they were viewed with amazement
impossible to describe. From all parts of the world, I received urgent
invitations and numerous honors and other flattering inducements were offered to
me, which I declined. But in 1892 the demand became irresistible and I went to
London where I delivered a lecture before the institution of Electrical
Engineers.
It has been my intention to leave immediately for Paris in compliance with a
similar obligation, but Sir James Dewar insisted on my appearing before the
Royal Institution. I was a man of firm resolve, but succumbed easily to the
forceful arguments of the great Scotchman. He pushed me into a chair and poured
out half a glass of a wonderful brown fluid which sparkled in all sorts of
iridescent colors and tasted like nectar. "Now," said he, "you are
sitting in Faraday's chair and you are enjoying whiskey he used to drink."
(Which did not interest me very much, as I had altered my opinion concerning
strong drink). The next evening I have a demonstration before the Royal
Institution, at the termination of which, Lord Rayleigh addressed the audience
and his generous words gave me the first start in these endeavors. I fled from
London and later from Paris, to escape favors showered upon me, and journeyed to
my home, where I passed through a most painful ordeal and illness. Upon
regaining my health, I began to formulate plans for the resumption of work in
America. Up to that time I never realized that I possessed any particular gift
of discovery, but Lord Rayleigh, whom I always considered as an ideal man of
science, had said so and if that was the case, I felt that I should concentrate
on some big idea. At this time, as at many other times in the past, my thoughts
turned towards my Mother's teaching. The gift of mental power comes from God,
Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune
with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible;
therefore I devoted the next few months to the study of this work.
One day, as I was roaming the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching
storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds, but somehow the rain was
delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightening flash and a few moments
after, a deluge. This observation set me thinking. It was manifest that the two
phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led
me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of
the water was inconsiderable, the function of the lightening being much like
that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement.
If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet
and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the
water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a
state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and
wherever desired, this might life sustaining stream could be at will controlled.
We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers, and provide motive
power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing
the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop
electric forces of the order of those in nature.
It seemed a hopeless undertaking, but I made up my mind to try it and
immediately on my return to the United States in the summer of 1892, after a
short visit to my friends in Watford, England; work was begun which was to me
all the more attractive, because a means of the same kind was necessary for the
successful transmission of energy without wires. At this time I made a further
careful study of the Bible, and discovered the key in Revelation. The first
gratifying result was obtained in the spring of the succeeding year, when I
reaching a tension of about 100,000,000 volts -- one hundred million volts --
with my conical coil, which I figured was the voltage of a flash of lightening.
Steady progress was made until the destruction of my laboratory by fire, in
1895, as may be judged from an article by T.C. Martin which appeared in the
April number of the Century Magazine. This calamity set me back in many ways and
most of that year had to be devoted to planning and reconstruction. However, as
soon as circumstances permitted, I returned to the task.
Although I knew that higher electric-motive forces were attainable with
apparatus of larger dimensions, I had an instinctive perception that the object
could be accomplished by the proper design of a comparatively small and compact
transformer. In carrying on tests with a secondary in the form of flat spiral,
as illustrated in my patents, the absence of streamers surprised me, and it was
not long before I discovered that this was due to the position of the turns and
their mutual action. Profiting from this observation, I resorted to the use of a
high tension conductor with turns of considerable diameter, sufficiently
separated to keep down the distributed capacity, while at the same time
preventing undue accumulation of the charge at any point. The application of
this principle enabled me to produce pressures of over 100,000,000 volts, which
was about the limit obtainable without risk of accident. A photograph of my
transmitter built in my laboratory at Houston Street, was published in the
Electrical Review of November, 1898.
In order to advance further along this line, I had to go into the open, and in
the spring of 1899, having completed preparations for the erection of a wireless
plant, I went to Colorado where I remained for more than one year. Here I
introduced other improvements and refinements which made it possible to generate
currents of any tension that may be desired. Those who are interested will find
some information in regard to the experiments I conducted there in my article, "The
Problem of Increasing Human Energy," in the Century Magazine of June 1900,
to which I have referred on a previous occasion.
I will be quite explicit on the subject of my
magnifying transformer so that it will be clearly understood. In the first
place, it is a resonant transformer, with a secondary in which the parts,
charged to a high potential, are of considerable area and arranged in space
along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, and at proper
distances from one another, thereby insuring a small electric surface density
everywhere, so that no leak can occur even if the conductor is bare. It is
suitable for any frequency, from a few to many thousands of cycles per second,
and can be used in the production of currents of tremendous volume and moderate
pressure, or of smaller amperage and immense electromotive force. The maximum
electric tension is merely dependent on the curvature of the surfaces on which
the charged elements are situated and the area of the latter. Judging from my
past experience there is no limit to the possible voltage developed; any amount
is practicable.
On the other hand, currents of many thousands of
amperes may be obtained in the antenna. A plant of but very moderate dimensions
is required for such performances. Theoretically, a terminal of less than 90
feet in diameter is sufficient to develop an electromotive force of that
magnitude, while for antenna currents of from 2,000-4,000 amperes at the usual
frequencies, it need not be larger than 30 feet in diameter. In a more
restricted meaning, this wireless transmitter is one in which the Hertz wave
radiation is an entirely negligible quantity as compared with the whole energy,
under which condition the damping factor is extremely small and an enormous
charge is stored in the elevated capacity. Such a circuit may then be excited
with impulses of any kind, even of low frequency and it will yield sinusoidal
and continuous oscillations like those of an alternator.
Taken in the narrowest significance of the term,
however, it is a resonant transformer which, besides possessing these qualities,
is accurately proportioned to fit the globe and its electrical constants and
properties, by virtue of which design it becomes highly efficient and effective
in the wireless transmission of energy. Distance is then ABSOLUTELY
ELIMINATED, THERE BEING NO DIMINUTIONS IN THE INTENSITY of the transmitted
impulses. It is even possible to make the actions increase with the distance
from the plane, according to an exact mathematical law. This invention was one
of a number comprised in my "World System" of wireless transmission which I
undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900.
As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise,
they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which, I
quote, "The world system has resulted from a combination of several original
discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and
experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise
wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all
parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph,
telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present
equipment. By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up
and talk to any other subscriber on the Earth. An inexpensive receiver, not
bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a
speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant."
These examples are cited merely to give an idea
of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates
distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all
the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire. One
far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated through
one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated,
without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at
distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical
dimensions of the earth. Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial
exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission, but the old ones
vastly extended. The World System is based on the application of the following
import and inventions and discoveries:
1) The Tesla Transformer: This apparatus
is in the production of electrical vibrations as revolutionary as gunpowder
was in warfare. Currents many times stronger than any ever generated in the
usual ways and sparks over one hundred feet long, have been produced by the
inventor with an instrument of this kind.
2) The Magnifying Transmitter: This is Tesla's best invention, a
peculiar transformer specially adapted to excite the earth, which is in the
transmission of electrical energy when the telescope is in astronomical
observation. By the use of this marvelous device, he has already set up
electrical movements of greater intensity than those of lightening and passed
a current, sufficient to light more than two hundred incandescent lamps,
around the Earth.
3) The Tesla Wireless System: This system comprises a number of
improvements and is the only means known for transmitting economically
electrical energy to a distance without wires. Careful tests and measurements
in connection with an experimental station of great activity, erected by the
inventor in Colorado, have demonstrated that power in any desired amount can
be conveyed, clear across the Globe if necessary, with a loss not exceeding a
few per cent.
4) The Art of Individualization: This invention of Tesla is to
primitive Tuning, what refined language is to unarticulated expression. It
makes possible the transmission of signals or messages absolutely secret and
exclusive both in the active and passive aspect, that is, non-interfering as
well as non-interferable. Each signal is like an individual of unmistakable
identity and there is virtually no limit to the number of stations or
instruments which can be simultaneously operated without the slightest mutual
disturbance.
5) The Terrestrial Stationary Waves: This wonderful discovery,
popularly explained, means that the Earth is responsive to electrical
vibrations of definite pitch, just as a tuning fork to certain waves of sound.
These particular electrical vibrations, capable of powerfully exciting the
Globe, lend themselves to innumerable uses of great importance commercially
and in many other respects. The "first World System" power plant can be put in
operation in nine months. With this power plant, it will be practicable to
attain electrical activities up to ten million horsepower and it is designed
to serve for as many technical achievements as are possible without due
expense.
Among these are the following:
- The interconnection of existing telegraph
exchanges or offices all over the world;
- The establishment of a secret and non-interferable
government telegraph service;
- The interconnection of all present telephone
exchanges or offices around the Globe;
- The universal distribution of general news by
telegraph or telephone, in conjunction with the Press;
- The establishment of such a "World System" of
intelligence transmission for exclusive private use;
- The interconnection and operation of all stock
tickers of the world;
- The establishment of a World system -- of
musical distribution, etc.;
- The universal registration of time by
cheap clocks indicating the hour with astronomical precision and requiring no
attention whatever;
- The world transmission of typed or handwritten
characters, letters, checks, etc.;
- The establishment of a universal marine
service enabling the navigators of all ships to steer perfectly without
compass, to determine the exact location, hour and speak; to prevent
collisions and disasters, etc.;
- The inauguration of a system of world printing
on land and sea;
- The world reproduction of photographic
pictures and all kinds of drawings or records..."
I also proposed to make demonstration in the
wireless transmission of power on a small scale, but sufficient to carry
conviction. Besides these, I referred to other and incomparably more important
applications of my discoveries which will be disclosed at some future date. A
plant was built on Long Island with a tower 187 feet high, having a spherical
terminal about 68 feet in diameter. These dimensions were adequate for the
transmission of virtually any amount of energy. Originally, only from 200 to 300
K.W. were provided, but I intended to employ later several thousand horsepower.
The transmitter was to emit a wave-complex of special characteristics and I had
devised a unique method of telephonic control of any amount of energy. The tower
was destroyed two years ago (1917) but my projects are being developed and
another one, improved in some features will be constructed.
On this occasion I would contradict the widely circulated report that the
structure was demolished by the Government, which owing to war conditions, might
have created prejudice in the minds of those who may not know that the papers,
which thirty years ago conferred upon me the honor of American citizenship, are
always kept in a safe, while my orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other
distinctions are packed away in old trunks. If this report had a foundation, I
would have been refunded a large sum of money which I expended in the
construction of the tower. On the contrary, it was in the interest of the
Government to preserver it, particularly as it would have made possible, to
mention just one valuable result, the location of a submarine in any part of the
world. My plant, services, and all my improvements have always been at the
disposal of the officials and ever since the outbreak of the European conflict,
I have been working at a sacrifice on several inventions of mine relating to
aerial navigation, ship propulsion and wireless transmission, which are of the
greatest importance to the country. Those who are well informed know that my
ideas have revolutionized the industries of the United States and I am not aware
that there lives an inventor who has been, in this respect, as fortunate as
myself, -- especially as regards the use of his improvements in the war.
I have refrained from publicly expressing myself on this subject before, as it
seemed improper to dwell on personal matters while all the world was in dire
trouble. I would add further, in view of various rumors which have reached me,
that Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan did not interest himself with me in a business way,
but in the same large spirit in which he has assisted many other pioneers. He
carried out his generous promise to the letter and it would have been most
unreasonable to expect from him anything more. He had the highest regard for my
attainments and gave me every evidence of his complete faith in my ability to
ultimately achieve what I had set out to do. I am unwilling to accord to some
small-minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my
efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My
project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It
was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end and make it
a triumphal success." [End Quote] Nikola Tesla - My Inventions, Ch. 5 & 6 (in
part)
Pretty darn powerful words from Tesla. So, we now
know that TESLA thought it was possible. Let's see what else we can discover.
Wireless power:
The drawing for Tesla's wireless power patent looks like the earlier
power-by-wire patent except now spherical antennas replace the transmission
lines, which are dropped out of the picture almost as if they were redundant.
The ball antenna is peculiarly Tesla, as is the toroid, and you wonder why
nothing like them have appeared since. In this 1900 patent, wireless power is
not represented as an earth-resonant system. Here Tesla talks about transmission
through elevated strata. The patent contains much discussion of how rarefied
gases in the upper atmosphere became quite conductive when there is applied many
hundred thousand or millions of volts. Balloons are suggested to send the
antennas aloft. Appreciate that Tesla in this patent has invented nothing less
than the principles of radio.
Tesla recognizes only a quantitative difference between sending radio signals
and broadcasting electric power. Both involve sending and receiving stations
tuned to one another by means of Tesla coil circuits. Tesla's wireless power
would be the ultimate centralized electric system, a capitalist dream, but for
the fact that the technology is too simple. Just raising an antenna, planting a
ground, and connecting simple tesla coil circuitry in between could achieve
reception of power.
Although Tesla himself patented a couple of electric meters for high
frequencies, it would be all too easy for consumers to tune in for free, just as
many today bootleg pay TV signals using illicit equipment far more
sophisticated. It is no wonder, then, that the electric power establishment
didn't welcome this invention. This was one problem. Another was that the
established electric power system would have to be relegated to another great
pile of scrap, and maybe the established system of political power as well.
Tesla's announced dream was to use hydra sources where available and through
wireless power broadcast that energy around the planet, thus liberating the
world from poverty. Such a scheme would not be readily embraced by powers that
sustain their rule by keeping populations poor and weak. Centralized control of
energy, as well as other resources, is, of course, believed to be essential to
civilized rule, at least as far as thinking on that subject has progressed in
this era. Moreover, no multinational political system was in existence, or is
now for that matter, that could implement a technology of such global
implications. Tesla was blind to such considerations.
His commitment, his overriding priority as a technological purist, was to take
machine possibilities to their logical conclusions. Today, if wireless power
were seriously proposed, there would no doubt be at least one political problem
that would not have arisen in Tesla's time: resistance from environmentalists.
What would an environmental impact report have to say about biologic hazards? A
Navy submarine communication system that uses extremely low frequency (ELF)
waves, down to below 10 cycles, has been challenged by environmentalists, as
have microwave and 60 cycle high-voltage transmission lines.
Engineering details:
Patents normally don't give many quantitative specifics, but Tesla's wireless
power patent does give some about the big prototype power-transmission Tesla
coil (which was, incidentally, used to conduct a demonstration before skeptical
patent examiners). A 50,000-volt transformer charged a capacitor of .004 mfd.,
which discharged through a rotary gap that gave 5,000 breaks per second. The
eight-foot diameter primary had just one turn of stout stranded cable. The
secondary was 50 turns of heavily insulated No. 8 wire wound as a flat spiral.
It vibrated at 230-250,000 cycles and produced 2 to 4 million volts. This coil
evolved into the huge experimental magnifying transmitter
Tesla describes in his Colorado Springs notes. Housed in a specially built lab
110 feet square, the device used a 50,000 volt Westinghouse transformer to
charge a capacitor that consisted of a galvanized tub full of salt water as an
electrolyte, into which he placed large glass bottles, themselves containing
salt water. The salt water in the tub was one plate of this capacitor, the salt
water inside the bottles the other plate, and the bottle glass the dielectric.
Various capacities were tried, incremental changes being made by connecting more
or fewer bottles. A variable tuning coil of 20 turns was connected to the
primary, which consisted of two turns of heavy insulated cable that ran around
the base of the huge fence like wooden secondary framework. The secondary had 24
turns of No. 8 wire on a diameter of 51 feet Various extra coils were tried, the
final version being 12 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, and having 100 turns of
No. 8 wire.
The antenna was a 30-inch conductive ball adjustable for height on a 142-foot
mast. The huge transmitter could vibrate from 45 to 150 kilocycles. Even with
the big transformer, this bill of materials does not seem inaccessible to
enterprising people, and the technology does not seem so abstruse, so it is no
wonder that people have gotten together to build magnifying transmitters and
experiment with wireless power without support from corporations or government.
One such group was the People's Power Project in central Minnesota in the late
70's. This group, largely farmers, objected to high voltage power lines
trespassing on their land and set out to build an alternative. Limited by the
sketchy information then available, the project was not successful. Another
attempt, called Project Tesla, is being set up in Colorado. Endowed with more
precise calculations and more experienced personnel, Project Tesla will try to
repeat Tesla's wireless-power experiment and verify his theory by taking
measurements at various remote locations.
Earth Resonance:
Among the appealing features of Colorado Springs for Tesla were the region’s
frequent and sensational electrical storms. For Tesla, lightning was a joyous
phenomenon. Biographers report that, during storms back East, Tesla would throw
open the windows of his New York lab and recline on a couch for the duration,
muttering to himself ecstatically. In Colorado Springs he tuned in and tracked
lightning storms using rudimentary radio receiving equipment. He thereby
determined that lightning was a vibratory phenomenon, which set up standing
waves bouncing within the earth at a frequency resonantly compatible with the
earth's electrical capacity. This earth-resonant frequency, he reasoned, was the
ideal frequency for wireless power transmission, and he tuned his ultimate
magnifying transmitter accordingly.
The literature contains various reports on exactly what this frequency is. Some
say 150 kilocycles, which would be at the upper range of the Colorado Springs
transmitter. Others give frequencies considerably lower, 11.78 cycles, 6.8
cycles, frequencies Tesla's transmitter may have achieved harmonically. With
reinforcement from the earth resonance, the power would actually increase in the
process of transmission.
In one memorable experiment with the Colorado Springs transmitter, Tesla shot
from the antenna ball veritable lightning bolts of 135 feet, producing thunder
heard 15 miles distant, and, in the process, pulled so many amperes that he
burned out the municipal generator. In another experiment he lit up wirelessly,
at a distance of 26 miles from the lab, a bank of 10,000 watts worth of
incandescent bulbs. Two years after Colorado Springs, Tesla applied for patent
for the far more refined magnifying transmitter shown at the opening of this
chapter, a patent that was not granted until a dozen years later.
In this patent he no longer speaks of energy broadcast through the upper strata
of the atmosphere but of a grounded resonant circuit. Tesla predicted that his
magnifying transmitter would prove most important and valuable to future
generations, that it would bring about an industrial revolution and make
possible great humanitarian achievements. Instead, as we shall see, the
magnifying transmitter became Tesla's Waterloo.
Lighting Up The Sky:
Hold a fluorescent tube near a Tesla coil and it will light up in your hand.
This is true of any tube or bulb with vacuum or rarefied gas. A more efficient
way is to ground one end of the tube and put a length of wire as a sort of
antenna on the other. Better yet, put a coil of wire that resonates with the
secondary in series with the tube and ground and you have the optimal wireless
power arrangement.
Tesla conducted many experiments with different arrangements like this, using on
some occasions the widely available Edison filament incandescent, which lighted
up more brilliantly than usual because of the effects of high frequencies on the
bulbs rarefied interior. Inside his New York lab Tesla strung a wire connected
to a Tesla coil around the perimeter of the room. Wherever he needed light he
hung a gas tube in the vicinity of this high frequency conductor.
Tesla had a bold fantasy whereby he would use the principle of rarefied gas
luminescence to light up the sky at night. High frequency electric energy would
be transmitted, perhaps by an ionizing beam of ultraviolet radiation, into the
upper atmosphere, where gases are at relatively low pressure, so that this layer
would behave like a luminous tube. Sky lighting, he said, would reduce the need
for street lighting, and facilitate the movement of ocean going vessels. The
aurora borealis is an electrical phenomenon that works on this principle, the
effects of cosmic eruptions such as those from the sun being the source of
electric stimulation. I, for one, am grateful that this particular Tesla fantasy
never materialized since it is difficult enough to see the stars with existing
light pollution, and there might be undesirable biological impacts as well.
The Rotating Brush:
Tesla took an evacuated incandescent type lamp globe, suspended within it at
dead center a conductive element, stimulated that element with high voltage
currents from an induction coil, and thus created a beam-like emanation, a brush
discharge that was so eerily sensitive to disturbances in its environs that it
seemed to be endowed with an intelligent life of its own. The device works best
if there is no lead-in wire. In the bulb shown, every measure has been taken to
construct it so it is free from its own electrical influence. The bulb could be
stimulated inductively by applying energy to metal foil wrapped around its neck.
Thus excited, intense phosphorescence then spreads at first over the globe, but
soon gives place to a white misty light, observes Tesla. The glow then resolves
into a directional brush or beam that will spin around the central element. So
responsive is it to any electrostatic or magnetic changes in its vicinity that
the approach of an observer at a few paces from the bulb will cause the brush to
fly to the opposite side. A small, inch-wide permanent magnet will affect it
visibly at a distance of two meters, slowing down or accelerating the rotation
according to how it is held relatively to the brush.
Tesla never patented the rotating brush or used it in any practical application,
but he believed it could have practical applications. He saw one use in radio
where the device could conceivably be adapted to being a most sensitive detector
of disturbances in the medium. The rotating brush appears to be a precursor of
the plasma globe toys now in fashion; these are sometimes called Tesla globes.
Tesla's new lighting was famous in its time. Tesla, the promoter, saw to it. He
conducted demonstrations at lectures before the electric industry associations,
before large audiences in rented halls, and before select groups of influential
New Yorkers in his Manhattan lab.
His articles about the new lighting were published in the popular scientific
press and it was reported in the newspapers. Still, it did not catch on with the
powers-that-be who no doubt saw in it Tesla's perennial pile-of scrap problem.
But, I wonder, would the whole electric distribution system have to be scrapped
to implement the efficiencies of Tesla lighting? Conceivably, the new lighting
could be run off of local oscillators at the consumer end, the old power
distribution system remaining intact. This is still a possibility, as it has
been for about one hundred years.
A Better Way:
Tesla patented both his spark-gap oscillator and his Tesla coil specifically as
power sources for a new lighting system that used currents of high frequency and
high potential. Lest you get the impression that a lone genius named Tesla
invented this new form of lighting out of the blue, you should know that others
before him had used high frequencies to stimulate light, and others, like Sir
William Crookes, had done the same with high potentials, but Tesla was the first
on record to put the two together.
In Jules Verne's 1872 novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth, the
narrator tells of a brilliant portable battery lamp used by the underground
explorers. The device was powered by a Ruhmkorf coil; a high voltage buzzer-type
induction coil (step-up transformer) popular among early electrical
experimenters. The Ruhmkorf coil stimulated a lamp (type unspecified but
probably a gas tube), which produced the light of an artificial day. The lamp
had such a low current draw that the battery lasted throughout the subterranean
adventure. Verne evidently was drawing, at least in part, on experimental
knowledge of his day for what he calls this ingenious application of electricity
to practical purposes.
Perhaps somebody should reinvent such a high potential lamp to replace today's
flashlight, which seems to exist for the purpose of enriching the Eveready
division of Union Carbide. Modern neon lighting is high potential at 2,000 to
15,000 volts. (Neon sign transformers are good for powering Tesla coils, but a
low-frequency, high voltage device: caution.) Neon, as well as its cousin,
7,500-volt cold cathode (filament's) fluorescent, which is used in some
industrial lighting, is as close as we get to Tesla lighting today.
Circa 1900, Tesla experimented with luminous tubes bent into alphabetic
characters and other shapes. Although today's neon is simplistic Tesla, being
driven by 60-cycle high-voltage transformer power alone without the benefits of
high-frequency excitation, it should suggest to us the amazing efficiency of
high-potential lighting, since a single 15,000-volt neon transformer drawing
only 230 watts can light up a tube extending up to 120 feet. How superior is the
economy of Tesla high potential, high frequency lighting over Edison
incandescent? Tesla says certainly 20 times, if not more light is obtained for
the same expenditure of energy.
Tesla's Dreams Of Tomorrow:
This is an entire quote from Tesla - [Quote] "There will be enough wheat and
wheat products to feed the entire world, including the teeming millions of China
and India, now chronically on the verge of starvation. The earth is bountiful,
and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her
womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen
years later under the stress of war by German chemists.
Long before the next century dawns, systematic reforestation and the scientific
management of natural resources will have made an end of all devastating
droughts, forest fires, and floods. The universal utilization of water power and
its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and
will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence
being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material
lines.
Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income
on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this
order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the
field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important
than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are
beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh
philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will
give a mere "stick" in the back pages to accounts of crime or political
controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new
scientific hypothesis. "It will be possible to destroy anything approaching
within 200 miles. My invention will provide a wall of power," declares Tesla.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage
practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man
who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war. Like other inventors,
I believed at one time that war could he stopped by making it more destructive.
But I found that I was mistaken. I underestimated man's combative instinct,
which it will take more than a century to breed out. We cannot abolish war by
outlawing it. We cannot end it by disarming the strong. War can be stopped, not
by making the strong weak but by making every nation, weak or strong, able to
defend itself.
Hitherto all devices that could be used for defense could also be utilized to
serve for aggression. This nullified the value of the improvement for purposes
of peace. But I was fortunate enough to evolve a new idea and to perfect means
which can be used chiefly for defense. If it is adopted, it will revolutionize
the relations between nations. It will make any country, large or small,
impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack. My invention
requires a large plant, but once it is established it will he possible to
destroy anything, men or machines, approaching within a radius of 200 miles. It
will, so to speak, provide a wall of power offering an insuperable obstacle
against any effective aggression.
If no country can be attacked successfully, there can be no purpose in war. My
discovery ends the menace of airplanes or submarines, but it insures the
supremacy of the battleship, because battleships may be provided with some of
the required equipment. There might still be war at sea, but no warship could
successfully attack the shore line, as the coast equipment will be superior to
the armament of any battleship.
I want to state explicitly that this invention of mine does not contemplate the
use of any so-called " death rays." Rays are not applicable because they cannot
be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with
distance. All the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower)
transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being,
because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an
extent as to be ineffectual.
My apparatus projects particles which maybe relatively large or of microscopic
dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions
of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. Many thousands of
horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that
nothing can resist. This wonderful feature will make it possible, among other
things, to achieve undreamed-of results in television, for there will be almost
no limit to the intensity of illumination, the size of the picture, or distance
of projection. I do not say that there may not be several destructive wars
before the world accepts my gift. I may not live to see its acceptance. But I am
convinced that a century from now every nation will render itself immune from
attack by my device or by a device based upon a similar principle." [End Quote]
Nikola Tesla
J. P. Morgan "Sinks" Tesla:
Tesla's ambitious World System came to an end when its principal financier, J.
P. Morgan pulled the plug on funding. Morgan, the financial giant behind the
formation of many monopolies in railroads, shipping, steel, banking, etc., was a
major conduit of European capital into U. S. industrial development in the
Robber Baron era. He looms large in Tesla's life. Morgan money was in the
Niagara Falls project. He backed Edison, too. It was Morgan's pressure on
Westinghouse, whom he also financed, that caused the cancellation of Tesla's
dollar-a-horsepower contract and the loss of millions in royalties to Tesla for
his poly phase.
When Tesla's lab burned down (arson was suspected), one of Morgan's men promptly
arrived with aid, as well as with the offer of a partnership with Morgan
interests. Acceptance would have put Tesla firmly under Morgan's control. Tesla
refused. And Tesla succeeded in preserving his autonomy until he became
possessed with overwhelming ardor to fulfill the dream of his World system.
Tesla was ready to sell his soul to finance Wardenclyffe, and J. P. Morgan was
right there to buy it.
In 1901, Tesla signed over to Morgan controlling interest in the patents he
still owned, as well as all future ones, in lighting and radio. Morgan then put
about $150,000 startup funding into Wardenclyffe. Later he invested more, just
enough to bring the project within sight of completion. Morgan then became
elusive. Tesla tried desperately to communicate with the investor, but to no
avail. When word was out on Wall Street that Morgan had withdrawn support, no
one would touch the project. This finished Tesla as a functioning inventor. Work
on the Wardenclyffe tower came to a halt. Left to dereliction, the tower
remained only as a curiosity to passersby. During World War I, the tower was
unceremoniously dynamited to the ground.
An eerie prediction from Nikola Tesla that
fits right in with today's headlines...
"The truth of this has been borne out in hundreds of instances and I am
inviting other students of nature to devote attention to this subject, believing
that through combined systematic effort, results of incalculable value to the
world will be attained. The idea of constructing an automaton, to bear out my
theory, presented itself to me early, but I did not begin active work until
1895, when I started my wireless investigations. During the succeeding two or
three years, a number of automatic mechanisms, to be actuated from a distance,
were constructed by me and exhibited to visitors in my laboratory. In 1896,
however, I designed a complete machine capable of a multitude of operations, but
the consummation of my labours was delayed until late in 1897. This machine was
illustrated and described in my article in the Century Magazine of June, 1900;
and other periodicals of that time and when first shown in the beginning of
1898, it created a sensation such as no other invention of mine has ever
produced. In November, 1898, a basic patent on the novel art was granted to me,
but only after the Examiner-in-Chief had come to New York and witnessed the
performance, for what I claimed seemed unbelievable. I remember that when later
I called on an official in Washington, with a view of offering the invention to
the Government, he burst out in laughter upon my telling him what I had
accomplished. Nobody thought then that there was the faintest prospect of
perfecting such a device. It is unfortunate that in this patent, following the
advice of my attorneys, I indicated the control as being affected through the
medium of a single circuit and a well-known form of detector, for the reason
that I had not yet secured protection on my methods and apparatus for
individualization. As a matter of fact, my boats were controlled through the
joint action of several circuits and interference of every kind was excluded.
Most generally, I employed receiving circuits in the form of loops, including
condensers, because the discharges of my high-tension transmitter ionized the
air in the (laboratory) so that even a very small aerial would draw electricity
from the surrounding atmosphere for hours. Just to give an idea, I found, for
instance, that a bulb twelve inches in diameter, highly exhausted, and with one
single terminal to which a short wire was attached, would deliver well on to one
thousand successive flashes before all charge of the air in the laboratory was
neutralized. The loop form of receiver was not sensitive to such a disturbance
and it is curious to note that it is becoming popular at this late date. In
reality, it collects much less energy than the aerials or a long grounded wire,
but it so happens that it does away with a number of defects inherent to the
present wireless devices.
In demonstrating my invention before audiences, the visitors were requested to
ask questions, however involved, and the automaton would answer them by signs.
This was considered magic at the time, but was extremely simple, for it was
myself who gave the replies by means of the device. At the same period, another
larger telautomatic boat was constructed, a photograph of which was shown in the
October 1919 number of the Electrical Experimenter. It was controlled by loops,
having several turns placed in the hull, which was made entirely watertight and
capable of submergence. The apparatus was similar to that used in the first with
the exception of certain special features I introduced as, for example,
incandescent lamps which afforded a visible evidence of the proper functioning
of the machine. These automata, controlled within the range of vision of the
operator, were, however, the first and rather crude steps in the evolution of
the art of Telautomatics as I had conceived it.
The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond
the limits of vision and at great distances from the center of control, and I
have ever since advocated their employment as instruments of warfare in
preference to guns. The importance of this now seems to be recognized, if I am
to judge from casual announcements through the press, of achievements which are
said to be extraordinary but contain no merit of novelty, whatever. In an
imperfect manner it is practicable, with the existing wireless plants, to launch
an airplane, have it follow a certain approximate course, and perform some
operation at a distance of many hundreds of miles. A machine of this kind can
also be mechanically controlled in several ways and I have no doubt that it may
prove of some usefulness in war. But there are to my best knowledge, no
instrumentalities in existence today with which such an object could be
accomplished in a precise manner. I have devoted years of study to this matter
and have evolved means, making such and greater wonders easily realizable.
As stated on a previous occasion, when I was a student at college I conceived a
flying machine quite unlike the present ones. The underlying principle was
sound, but could not be carried into practice for want of a prime-mover of
sufficiently great activity. In recent years, I have successfully solved this
problem and am now planning aerial machines *devoid of sustaining planes,
ailerons, propellers, and other external attachments, which will be capable of
immense speeds and are very likely to furnish powerful arguments for peace in
the near future. Such a machine, sustained and propelled entirely by reaction,
is shown on one of the pages of my lectures, and is supposed to be controlled
either mechanically, or by wireless energy. By installing proper plants, it will
be practicable to *project a missile of this kind into the air and drop it*
almost on the very spot designated, which may be thousands of miles away.
But we are not going to stop at this. Telautomats will be ultimately produced,
capable of acting as if possessed of their own intelligence, and their advent
will create a revolution. As early as 1898, I proposed to representatives of a
large manufacturing concern the construction and public exhibition of an
automobile carriage which, left to itself, would perform a great variety of
operations involving something akin to judgment. But my proposal was deemed
chimerical at the time and nothing came of it. At present, many of the ablest
minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful
conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of
which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the SUN of December
20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but, on the contrary, in the
opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite.
It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the
terms of peace, because a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to
fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the
destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city, at
a distance, whatsoever, from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on
earth can stop him from doing so. If we want to avert an impending calamity and
a state of things which may transform the globe into an inferno, we should push
the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without
an instant's delay and with all the power and resources of the nation."
Nikola Tesla, My Inventions, Ch. 6 (in part)
So, I leave you with this question - is it possible to re-create Tesla's
amazing Magnifying Transmitter? With all of the documentation and notes,
plus numerous historical records, and patent information available, doesn't
anyone find it a little "odd" and dumfounding that this device has not been put
into use? Or, could it be, that in the same ways that J.P. Morgan stopped
Tesla...other forces, even more powerful and money-hungry than Morgan he, are
currently at work ensuring that this device and others possibly like it, are
never built. I leave you all to your thoughts. May God Bless,
Sincerely,
Frank D Germano
President
Global Energy Technologies, Inc.
Blakely, PA 18447
frank@germano.com
http://www.frank.germano.com
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