T E S L A The lost Inventions
by George Trinkaus
Here are the suppressed inventions of Nikola Tesla all in one
place rendered in clear English and in 42 illustrations. Tesla
was famous at the turn of the century for inventing the alternating
current system still in use today. But his later inventions,
documented in some 30 U.S. patents between 1890 and 1921, have
never been utilized as Tesla intended despite their obvious potential
for advancing in fundamental ways the technology of modern civilization.
Among these lost inventions: the disk-turbine rotary engine,
the tesla-coil electric energy magnifier, high-frequency lighting
systems, the magnifying transmitter, wireless power, and the
free-energy receiver. about this book
Except that I have built a tesla coil, I have no special direct
knowledge of Tesla. I never knew the man. I am not his "channel."
This work is, simply one person's distillation of the existing
Tesla literature. Particularly, this book is derived from Tesla's
patents. I have also drawn upon his published notes and lectures,
his magazine articles, as well as biographies and other secondary
sources. But most of my energy has gone into translating into
informal English the techno-legalese of the patents. Tesla was
eloquent in English (and several other languages as well). This
shows in his patents, and I quote him extensively. But Tesla's
patents, like all patents, make tough reading, because they are
not written for the curious but are defensive, legalistic exercises
designed to protect the inventor's interests. about the author
Like many of us, I have been fascinated with electricity since
my youth. I was a pre-teen basement experimenter and a novice-class
ham (WN3UEH). I read many of the conventional books on the subject
My liberal arts college offered just one course in electronics;
I took it. Out in the corporate world, as an editor of textbooks,
I presided over the publication of a series of basic electronics
books for the schools. But, now, I confess: I never really understood
how electricity works until I read Tesla. I had to deschool myself
to write this book. Tesla
TESLA, tes'le Nikola (1856-1943), electrical inventor. Born Yugoslavia.
Educated at the polytechnical school at Graz and at University
of Prague. Worked as telephone engineer in Prague and Paris.
Conceived new type of electric motor having no commutator, as
d.c. motors have, but works on principle of rotating magnetic
field produced by polyphase alternating currents. Constructed
prototype. Found nobody interested in Europe. Emigrated to U.S.
(1884). Worked briefly and unhappily with Thomas Edison. Established
own lab and obtained patents on polyphase motors, dynamos, transformers
for a complete a.c. power system. Formed alliance with George
Westinghouse, who bought polyphase patents for $1 million plus
royalty. With Westinghouse, engaged in struggle against Edison
to convince public of efficiency and safety of a.c. over d.c.
Succeeded in getting a.c. accepted as the electric power system
worldwide. Also with Westinghouse, lit the Chicago World's Fair,
built Niagara Falls hydro-power plant, and installed a.c. systems
at Colorado silver mines, other industries. By turn of the century
was lifted to celebrity status comparable to Edison's as media
promoted him along with the expanding electric power industry.
Experimenting independently in Manhattan lab, developed and patented
electric devices based on superior capabilities of high-potential,
high-frequency currents: tesla coil, radio, high-frequency lighting,
x-rays, electrotherapy. Suffered lab fire. Rebuilt, continued.
Moved lab to Colorado Springs for about one year (1899). Built
huge magnifying transmitter. Experimented with wireless power,
radio, earth resonance. Studied lightning. Created
lightning.
Returned to New York. With encouragement of financier J.P. Morgan,
promoted a World System of radio broadcasting utilizing magnifying
transmitters. Built huge tower for magnifying transmitter at
Wardencliff, Long Island as first station in World System. Received
enough from Morgan to bring station within sight of completion,
then funds cut off, project collapsed. Continued to invent into
the 1920's, but flow of patents meager compared to earlier torrent
which amounted to some 700 patents worldwide. High-frequency
inventions ignored by established technology, as were disk turbine,
free energy receiver, other inventions. Shut out by media except
for birthday press conferences. At these predicted microwaves,
TV, beam technologies, cosmic-ray motor, interplanetary communications,
and wave-interference devices that since have been named the
"Tesla howitzer" and the "Tesla shield."
In the 1930's involved in wireless power projects in Quebec.
Last birthday media appearance in 1940.
Died privately and peacefully at 87 in New York hotel room from
no apparent cause in particular. Personal papers, including copious
lab notes, impounded by U.S. Government, surfaced many years
later at a Tesla Museum in Belgrade Yugoslavia. Of these notes,
only a fragment, Colorado Springs Notes, has been published by
the Museum. 1. Disk-Turbine Rotary Engine
Tesla called it a "powerhouse in a hat." One version
developed 110 h.p. at 5000 RPM and was less than ten inches in
diameter. Tesla believed larger turbines could achieve 1000 h.p.
The disk-turbine rotary engine runs vibration free. It is cheap
to manufacture because nothing but the rotor bearings needs to
be fitted to close tolerances. It requires little maintenance.
If necessary, the rotor can be replaced with ease. The turbine
can run on steam, compressed air, gasoline, or oil. how it works
Unlike conventional turbines that use blades or buckets to catch
the flow, Tesla's uses a set of rigid metal disks that, instead
of battling the propelling stream at steep angles, runs with
smooth efficiency in parallel with the flow. What drives the
disks is a peculiar adhesion that exists between the surface
of a body and any moving fluid. This adhesion, a hinder vehicles,
is, in Tesla's words, caused by "the shock of the fluid
against the asperities of the solid substance" (simple resistance)
and "from internal forces opposing molecular separation"
(a sticking phenomenon). The propellent enters the intake and
is nozzled onto the disks at their perimeter. It travels over
the spinning disks in a spiral fashion, exiting at the disks'
central openings and is exhausted from the casing. Tesla notes
in his patent that, in an engine driven by a fluid, "changes
in the velocity and direction of movement of the fluid should
be as gradual as possible." This, he observes, is not the
case, though, in existing engines where "sudden changes,
shocks, and vibrations are unavoidable." "The use of
pistons, paddles, vanes and blades," notes Tesla, "necessarily
introduces numerous defects and limitations and adds to the complication,
cost of production, and maintenance of the machines." We
who are stuck with the piston engine know this all too well.
The Tesla turbine is vibration-free because the propelling fluid
moves "in natural paths or stream lines of least resistance,
free from constraint and disturbance." The turbine is easily
reversed by conducting the propellent through the intake valve
on the other side. internal combustion
A hollow casting is bolted to the top of the turbine for the
internal combustion mode. A glow plug or spark plug screws into
the top of this chamber. Sticking out of the sides are the intake
valves. Interesting thing about these valves, there are no moving
parts. They work on a fluidic principle. The Tesla turbine's
only moving part is its rotor. Imagine, a powerful internal combustion
engine with only one moving part. fluidics
The fluidic valve, which Tesla calls a valvular conduit, allows
easy flow in one direction but in the other the flow gets hung
up in dead-end chambers(buckets) where it gets spun around 360
degrees, thus forming eddies, or counter-currents that stop the
flow as surely as if a mechanical valve were moved into the shut
position. The spinning rotor creates plenty of suction to pull
fuel and air into the combustion chamber. Tesla notes that "after
a short lapse of time the chamber becomes heated to such a degree
that the ignition device may be shut off without disturbing the
established regime." In other words, it diesels. The disk-turbine
motor principle in reverse becomes a very efficient pump. (Tesla's
Patent No. 1,061,142). fluid drive
The disk turbine principle is employed in the speedometer, which
presents the problem of having to turn the rotary motion of a
vehicle's wheels to angular motion in order to push a spring-loaded
indicator needle over a short arc. Tesla's solution: the speedometer
cable connects to a disk which spins in interface with a second
disk, imparting spin to the fluid in between and, hence, to the
second disk which moves the needle. Interface two disks of different
sizes in a fluid medium and "any desired ratio between speeds
of rotation may be obtained by proper selection of the diameters
of the disks," observes Tesla in his patent, thus anticipating
in 1911 the fluid-drive automatic transmission. Tesla First worked
on his turbine early in his career, believing it would be a good
prime mover for his alternating-current dynamos, far superior
to the reciprocal steam engines that were the work horses of
that era. But he did not get down to perfecting and patenting
it until after the collapse of his global broadcasting scheme
(1909). By this time the internal-combustion piston engine was
firmly rooted in Western power mechanics. Tesla referred to "organized
opposition" to his attempts to introduce the superior engine,
and so have others who have made the attempt since. But Tesla
still saw a glorious future for his turbine. To his friend, Yale
engineering professor Charles Scott, Tesla predicted, "My
turbine will scrap all the heat engines in the world." Replied
Scott, "That would make quite a pile of scrap." 2.
Spark-Gap Oscillator
Tesla was central in establishing the 60cycle a.c. power system
still in use today. Yet he suspected that the more striking phenomena
resided in the higher frequencies of electric vibration. To reach
these heights, he first tried dynamos spun at higher speeds and
having a greater number of poles than any that had existed before.
One having as an armature a flat, radially grooved copper disk
achieved 30,000 cycles, but Tesla wanted to go into the millions
of cycles. It occurred to him that this vibratory capability
was to be found in the capacitor. With a capacitor circuit, the
spark-gap oscillator, he did indeed achieve the higher frequencies,
and he did so by nonmechanical means. The circuit was promising
enough for him to patent it as "A Method of and Apparatus
for Electrical Conversion and Distribution," for Tesla saw
in it the possibility of a whole new system of electric lighting
by means of high frequencies. Though it was quickly succeeded
by the tesla coil and is not numbered among the more famous of
the lost inventions, the spark-gap oscillator is pivotal for
Tesla as the invention that launched him into his career in high
frequencies. how it works
The capacitor There are only a few basic building blocks of electrical
circuitry. The capacitor is one of them. Tesla didn't invent
it, it had been around for some time, arguably for millennia,
but he did improve upon it in three of his patents. Also called
condenser, the common capacitor is just a sandwich of conductive
and nonconductive layers that serves the purpose of storing electrical
charge. The simplest capacitor has just two conductive sheets
separated by a single sheet of insulation. In the capacitor shown,
the conductive elements are two metal plates. The insulation
between them is oil. In the official vocabulary, the plates are
indeed called "plates" and the insulative layer (oil,
glass, mica, or whatever) is called the "dielectric."
Connect the two terminals of a capacitor into a circuit where
there is plus-minus electrical potential, and charge builds on
the plates, positive on one, negative on the other. Let this
charge build for a while, then connect the two plates through
some resistance, a coil, say, and the capacitor discharges. Very
suddenly. Tesla said that "the explosion of dynamite is
only the breath of a consumptive compared with its discharge."
He went on to say that the capacitor is "the means of producing
the strongest current, the highest electrical pressure, the greatest
commotion in the medium." The capacitor's discharge is not
necessarily a single event. If it discharges into a suitable
resistance, there is a rush of current outward, then back again,
as if it were bouncing off the resistance, then out, and back
and so forth until it peters out. The discharge is oscillatory,
a vibration. The vibration can be sustained by recharging the
capacitor at appropriate intervals. When Tesla talks of the capacitor's
discharge causing "commotion in the medium," he means
a vibration or mix of vibrations. The character of this vibration
is determined in part by the capacity of the capacitor, that
is, how much charge it will hold. This is a function of it size,
the distance between plates, and the composition of the dielectric.
Upon discharge there would be, typically, a fundamental vibration,
some harmonics, and perhaps other commotion, maybe musical, maybe
not. Additional circuitry can tame the vibration to a "pure"
tone. the "medium"
When Tesla speaks of "commotion in the medium," what
is the "medium?" In Tesla's time it was an article
of faith that there existed a unified field that permeated all
being called the "ether." The ether as the electric
medium still is an article of faith in some circles, but in official
science its existence is presumed to have been disproved in the
laboratory. Nevertheless, this conviction about an ether ran
very deep, not only among scientists but among all thinkers,
until only about forty-some years ago when particle theory, E=MC^2,
and, finally Hiroshima firmly established the new faith. Tesla
said the electron did not exist. The materialistic concept of
these little particles running through conductors is alien to
Tesla electric theory. Here is the Quaker writer Rufus Jones
on the ether in 1920: "An intangible substance which we
call ether - luminiferous (light-bearing) ether - fills all space,
even the space occupied by visible objects, and this ether which
is capable of amazing vibrations, billions of times a second,
is set vibrating at different velocities by different objects.
These vibrations bombard the minute rods of the retina... It
is responsible also for all the immensely varied phenomena of
electricity, probably, too of cohesion and gravitation... The
dynamo and the other electrical mechanisms which we have invented
do not make or create electricity. They merely let it come through,
showing itself now as light, now as heat, now again as motive
power. But always it was there before, unnoted, merely potential,
and yet a vast surrounding ocean of energy there behind, ready
to break into active operation when the medium was at hand for
it." Jones, who was not a scientist but a religious thinker
and communicator, was making a point about the nearness of God's
power and could do so by invoking the physics of his time. This
would be difficult using the Einsteinian physics in fashion today,
which W. Gordon Allen has called "atheistic science."
Although the ether is intangible, it is assumed to have elastic
properties, so that Tesla can say "a circuit with a large
capacity behaves as a slack spring, whereas one with a small
capacity acts as a stiff spring vibrating more vigorously."
This elastic character of the ether, which you experience palpably
when you play with a pair of magnets, is due to the medium's
lust for equilibrium. Distorted by electrical charge (or by magnetism
or by the gravity of a material body), the ether seeks to restore
a perfect balance between the polarities of positive-negative,
plus-minus, yangyin. Voltage is the measure of ether strain or
imbalance, called potential difference, or just potential. Balance
is not restored from this strained condition in one swing-back.
As we have seen with the capacitor, the disturbed electric medium,
like a plucked guitar string, over-swings the center line of
equilibrium to one side, then to the other, again and again,
and this we know as vibration. In this way of looking at nature,
vibration is energy, energy is vibration. So you could say that
the commotion in the medium caused by the capacitors discharge
is energy itself. Thus, you can speak of the capacitor as an
energy magnifier. Even though a feeble potential may charge it,
the sudden blast of the capacitor's release plucks the medium
mightily. The capacitor is common in modern circuitry, but Tesla
used it with much greater emphasis on its capability as an energy
magnifier and on a scale almost unheard of today. It's difficult
to find commercial capacitors that meet Tesla specifications.
Builders of tesla coils and other high-voltage devices usually
must construct their own capacitors. Fortunately, this can be
done using readily available materials. how it works
The spark gap A simple way to discharge a capacitor is through
a spark gap. The spark-gap oscillator is just a capacitor firing
into a circuit load (lamps or whatever) through the spark gap.
The opening between the spark-gap electrodes determines when
the capacitor will fire. This setting is one determinant of the
frequency of the circuit. The others are capacity and the reactance,
or bounce characteristics, of the load. The potential needed
to bridge the gap is in the tens of thousands of volts. It takes
a potential of about 20,000 volts to break down the resistance
of just a quarter of an inch of air. The gap doesn't necessarily
have to be air. Tesla has referred to a gap consisting of a "film
of insulation." A spark gap is a switching device, a semiconductor
in fact. But the spark gap is problematic, particularly the common
two-electrode air-gap version. Heating and ionizing of the air
cause irregularities in conduction and premature firing. This
arcing must be quenched. It can be to a great degree by using
a series of small gaps instead of one larger one, or by using
a rotary gap. Tesla also emersed the gap in flowing oil, used
an air blow-out, and even found that a magnetic field helps to
quench. For the gap Tesla substituted high-speed rotary switches
which he called "circuit controllers." One has a rotor
that dips into a pool of mercury, and another uses mercury jets
to make contact. You can operate a spark gap without a capacitor
by connecting it directly to a source of sufficient voltage.
This is, of course, how our automotive spark plugs work, directly
off the coil. (The capacitor in that circuit is used to juice
the ignition coil primary.) The auto distributor, incidentally,
is a rotary gap, pure Tesla. Early radio amateurs used spark-gap
oscillators as transmitters. The capacitor was, more often than
not, left out of the circuit, but with it the transmitter could
create a greater "commotion in the medium." 3. Tesla
Coil
Tesla's best-known invention takes the spark-gap oscillator
and uses it to vibrate vigorously a coil consisting of few turns
of heavy conductor. Inside of this primary coil sits another
secondary coil with hundreds of turns of slender wire. In the
tesla coil there is no iron core as in the conventional step-up
transformer, and this air-core transformer differs radically
in other ways. Recounting the birth of this invention, Tesla
wrote, "Each time the condenser was discharged the current
would quiver in the primary wire and induce corresponding oscillations
in the secondary. Thus, a transformer or induction coil on new
principles was evolved Electrical effects of any desired character
and of intensities undreamed of before are now easily producible
by perfected apparatus of this kind." Elsewhere Tesla wrote,
"There is practically no limit to the power of an oscillator."
The conventional step-up transformer (short primary winding,
long secondary on an iron core) boosts voltage at the expense
of amperage. This is not true of Tesla's transformer. There is
a real gain in power. Writing of the powerful coils he experimented
with at his Colorado Springs lab, coils with outputs in excess
of 12 million volts, Tesla wrote, "It was a revelation to
myself to find out that ... a single powerful streamer breaking
out from a well insulated terminal may easily convey a current
of several hundred amperes! The general impression is that the
current in such a streamer is small." how it works
A tesla-coil secondary has its own particular electrical character
determined in part by the length of that slender coiled wire.
Like a guitar string of a particular length, it wants to vibrate
at a particular frequency. The secondary is inductively plucked
by the primary coil. The primary circuit consists of a pulsating
high-voltage source (a generator or conventional step-up transformer),
a capacitor, a spark gap, and the primary coil itself. This circuit
must be designed so that it vibrates at a frequency compatible
with the frequency at which the secondary wants to vibrate. The
primary circuit's frequency is determined by the frequency and
voltage of the source, the capacity of the capacitor, the setting
of the spark gap, and the character of the primary coil, determined
in part by the length of its winding. Now when all these primary-circuit
components are tuned to work in harmony with each other, and
the circuit's resulting frequency is right for plucking the secondary
in a compatible rhythmic manner, the secondary becomes at its
terminal end maximally excited and develops huge electrical potentials,
which if not put to work, boil off as a corona of bluish light
or as sparks and streamers that jump to nearby conductors with
crackling reports. Unlike the conventional iron-core step-up
transformer, whose core has the effect of damping vibrations,
the secondary of the Tesla transformer is relatively free to
swing unchecked. The pulsing from the primary coil have the effect
of pushing a child in a swing. If it's done in a rhythmic manner
at just the right moment at the end of a cycle, the swing will
oscillate up to great heights. Similarly, with the right timing,
the electrical vibration of the secondary can be made to swing
up to tremendous amplitudes, voltages in the millions. This is
the power of resonance. man-made earthquake
Tesla was fascinated with the power of resonance and experimented
with it not only electrically but on the mechanical plane as
well. In his Manhattan lab he built mechanical vibrators and
tested their powers. One experiment got out of hand.
To a steel pillar Tesla attached a powerful little vibrator driven
by compressed air. Leaving it there, he went about his business.
Meanwhile, down the street, a violent quaking built up, shaking
down plaster, bursting plumbing, cracking widows, and breaking
heavy machinery off its anchorages. Tesla's vibrator had found
the resonant frequency of a deep sandy layer of subsoil beneath
his building, setting up an earthquake. Soon Tesla's own building
began to quake, and, just at the moment the police burst into
the lab, Tesla was seen smashing the device with a sledge hammer,
the only way he could promptly stop it. In a similar experiment,
on an evening walk through the city, Tesla attached a battery-powered
vibrator, described as being the size of an alarm clock, to the
steel framework of a building under construction and, adjusting
it to a suitable frequency, set the structure into resonant vibration.
The structure shook, and so did the earth under his feet. Later
Tesla boasted that he could shake down the Empire State Building
with such a device, and, as if this claim were not extravagant
enough, he went on to state that a large-scale resonant vibration
was capable of "splitting the Earth in half." No details
of Tesla's vibrators are available, but they probably resembled
one of Tesla's reciprocating engines (such as Patent No. 511,916).
These exploited the elasticity of gases, just as his electrical
vibrators, like the tesla coil, exploit the elasticity of the
electric medium. a new power system
Tesla invented his resonant transformer. as the tesla coil is
sometimes called, to power a new type of high-frequency lighting
system, as his 1891 patent drawing shows. This was the first
tesla coil patent. There followed a series of other patents developing
the device. All of these are for bipolar coils: both ends of
the secondary are connected to the working circuit (usually lamps),
as opposed to the monopolar format favored by today's basement
builders in which the top is connected to a ball or other terminal
capacitor, the bottom to ground. The monopolar format emerges
later in patents for radio and wireless power, including Tesla's
magnifying transmitter. The 1896 patent drawing shows an evolved
bipolar coil using tandem chokes to store energy for sudden release
into the capacitor, enabling the device to be powered by relatively
modest inputs. Chokes are coils wound on iron cores. They store
energy as magnetism. When the charging current is interrupted,
the magnetic field collapses inducing current in the coils which
rushes in to charge the capacitors. superconductive
Alternating currents can be sent over long distances with relatively
low losses. This is why Tesla's early 60-cycle system triumphed
over Edison's direct current. The high-frequency, high-potential
output of a tesla coil can travel over relatively light conductors
for vastly greater distances than conventional 60-cycle a.c.
Losses occur to some degree from coronal discharge but hardly
at all from ohmic resistance. This type of current also renders
conductive materials that are normally nonconductive, rarefied
gases, for example. You might say these currents make a medium
"super-conductive." Although super-magnetism is not
in the picture because high-frequency vibrations would be severely
damped by an electromagnet's iron core, it is revealing to reflect
upon the unexploited superconductivity of Tesla energy these
days when science is congratulating itself on new advances in
the field. Prior to recent breakthroughs, superconductivity and
supermagnetism were low-temperature (cryogenic) phenomena, occurring
when circuits were cooled down to near absolute zero. The new
superconductivity at less drastically reduced temperatures developed
out of the cryogenic work of the last twenty years, and this
may be in debt to Tesla, who patented a similar idea way back
in 1901. Tesla's patent obsenes that the deep cooling of conductors
with agents like liquid air "results in an extraordinary
magnification of the oscillation in the resonating circuit."
Imagine the performance of a supercooled tesla coil. no electrocution
Since we tend to associate high voltage with possibly fatal electric
shock it may be puzzling to learn that the output of a well-tuned
tesla coil, though in the millions of volts, is harmless. This
is customarily thought to be because the amperage is low (it's
not) or it's explained in terms of something called the "skin
effect," which means that the current travels over you instead
of through. But the real reason is a matter of human frequency
response. Just as your ears cannot respond to vibrations over
about 30,000 cycles, or the eyes to light vibrations at or above
ultra violet, your nervous system cannot be shocked by frequencies
over about 2,000 cycles. electrotherapy
Now that you know it's harmless, would you believe these currents
are even good for you? Fact is that a whole branch of medicine
was founded on the healing effects of certain tesla-coil frequencies.
Tesla understood the therapeutic value of high-frequency vibrations.
He never patented in the area but did announce his findings to
the medical community, and a number of devices were patented
and marketed by others. Patients, by focusing certain frequencies
on afflicted areas, or, in some cases, just sitting in the vicinity
of vibrations from a device like the Lakhovsky Multiwave Oscillator,
which produced a blend of specific frequencies, were said to
have experienced relief from rheumatism and other painful conditions.
It was even considered a cure for certain types of paralysis.
Such radiations increase the supply of blood to the area with
a warming effect (diathermy). They enhance the oxygenation and
nutritive value of the blood, increase various secretions, and
accelerate the elimination of waste products in the blood. All
this promotes healing. Electrotherapists even spoke of "broadcasting
vitamins" to the body. Reversals of cancer tumor growths
have been documented. Lakhovsky predicated that "science
will discover, some day, not only the nature of microbes by the
radiation they produce, but also a method of killing disease
within the body by radiations." Electrotherapy devices were
sold directly to the public via ads in popular
magazines and in the
Sears catalogs. Self-treatment was widespread. This easy access
to treatment of all sorts of conditions led to the eventual suppression
of the technology by the medical establishment. Electrotherapy,
however, is making a big comeback. In chiropractic and sports
medicine, low-frequency a.c. and d.c. pulses are being used to
kill pain and exercise muscles. High-frequency electrotherapy
is coming back in alternative healing practices. There is an
increasing appreciation of the electrical nature of biological
functioning and that some electric vibrations in the environment
are harmful while others are healing. Reprints of Lakhovsky's
works are widely read. There is a growing conviction that cancer
can be effectively treated with high-frequency therapies. In
his experimenting over an eight-year period, Tesla made no fewer
than 50 types of oscillating coils. He experimented with lighting
and other vacuum effects, including x-rays. He also experimented
with novel shapes for the normally cylindrical coils, getting
satisfying results from cone shapes and flat spirals. At Colorado
Springs Tesla achieved phenomenally increased outputs by using
a third coil resonantly tuned to the secondary. Observing the
tremendous magnification this achieved, he gave much of his attention
to integrating this "extra coil," as he called it,
into an evolved outsize tesla coil called the magnifying transmitter.
4. Magnifying Transmitter I
Wireless Power
In 1893 Tesla told a meeting of the National Electric Light Association
that he believed it "practical to disturb, by means of powerful
machines, the electrostatic conditions of the earth, and thus
transmit intelligible signals, and, perhaps, power". He
said, "It could not require a great amount of energy to
produce a disturbance perceptible at a great distance, or even
all over the surface of the earth." The ultimate "powerful
machine" for these tasks is Tesla's magnifying transmitter.
how it works
An extra coil gives the resonant boost of a tesla coil secondary
but has the advantage of being more independent in its movement.
A secondary, being closely slaved to the primary, is inhibited
somewhat by it, its oscillations slightly damped. The extra coil
is able to swing more freely. "Extra coils," writes
Tesla, "enable the obtainment of practically any emf, the
limits being so far remote that I would not hesitate to produce
sparks of thousands of feet in this manner." The engineering
challenge of the magnifying transmitter, then, becomes one of
containing and properly radiating its "immense electrical
activities, measured in the tens and even hundreds of thousands
of horsepower," as Tesla put it. Containment and effective
radiation of this power is the whole point of the design shown,
for which Tesla applied for patent in 1902. The heavy primary
is wound on top of the secondary at the base of the tower. The
extra coil extends upward through a hooded connection to a conductive
cylinder. The antenna is a toroid, a donut-shaped geometry that
allows for a maximum of surface area with a comparative minimum
of electrical capacity. Since this is a high-frequency device,
a relatively low capacity is desirable. To increase the area
of the radiating surface, the outside of the toroid is covered
with half-spherical metal plates. A subtlety of the design is
that the conductive cylinder is of larger radius than the radius
of curvature of these plates, since a tighter curve would allow
escape of energy. The cylinder is polished to minimize losses
through irregularities in the surface. At the center of the top
surface sits a pointy plate that serves as a safety valve for
overloads so "the powerful discharge may dart out there
and lose itself harmlessly in the air." Tesla advises bringing
the power up slowly and carefully so pressure does not build
at some point below the antenna, in which case "a ball of
fire might break out and destroy the support or anything else
in the way," an event that "may take place with inconceivable
violence." Current in the antenna could build to an incredible
4000 amperes. a.c./d.c.
Wireless power transmission via the magnifying transmitter was
the ultimate development of the inventor who had earlier brought
alternating-current power to the world with his polyphase system.
The predecessor of a.c. was a direct-current system developed,
manufactured, and marketed chiefly by Thomas Edison. Direct current
was adequate for serving small areas but was unworkable for long
distance transmission. By contrast, a.c. could be transmitted
for long distances over lighter wires and its voltage could be
stepped up for transmission and down for consumption by means
of transformers. Tesla invented from scratch a new kind of motor
(polyphase) that could utilize a.c., and he greatly evolved earlier
concepts of dynamos to generate a.c. as well as transformers
to step voltage up and down. Whereas Edison's d.c. would have
been suitable for a society of small, autonomous communities,
the evolving system of industrial rule wanted centralized power
and needed a.c.'s long distance capability to serve huge sprawling
populations. George Westinghouse, an inventor (the airbrake)
who, like Edison, turned industrialist (having found that to
profit from an invention one must undertake manufacturing and
marketing as well) saw the promise in Tesla's polyphase inventions
and formed an alliance with the young prodigy. Westinghouse paid
Tesla one million dollars and contracted to pay a royalty of
one dollar per horsepower for the polyphase inventions. Later
Westinghouse was forced to renege on the royalty. Together, Westinghouse
and Tesla triumphed over Edison's d.c. system and installed the
first a.c. power facilities, the most notable being the hydro
plant at Niagara Falls. Tesla believed in hydro power. His ultimate
energy-magnifying, wireless power system would have been hydro-based.
The centralized a.c. electric power system we have today was
forced into existence on a colossal scale by utility magnates
of that era, the most prominent being Samuel Insull, who became
infamous in some circles for his massive bilking of the investing
public and famous in others for hammering together the electric
power complex now in place. This complex has developed into a
federally protected monopoly with greater capital wealth than
any other industry in the U. S. In the order of energy sources
used, Tesla's hydro power has been left well behind the burning
of fossil fuels, a process that dumps 24 million tons of pollutants
into the nation's air supply each year. Hydro power even runs
way behind the nukes in kilowatt hours produced. So went another
Tesla dream. Tesla was a celebrity in his polyphase heyday, but
today his celebrity is as an underground cult figure known for
his radically progressive energy-magnifying, free-energy, and
wireless power inventions, which, of course, have no place in
the established system. power by wire
Prior to his wireless power inventions, Tesla patented in 1897
a high frequency system that transmitted power by wire. The system
used previously unheard of levels of electric potential. He notes
that at these voltages, conventional power would destroy the
equipment, but that his system not only contains this energy
but is harmless to handle while in use. This system is not a
circuit in the usual sense but a single wire without return.
It employs the familiar tesla-coil configurations at both sending
and receiving ends. The primary circuit (power source, capacitor,
spark gap) is represented in the drawing by the generator symbol.
The secondary coil is a flat spiral. An advantage in this coil
design is that the voltage adjacent to the primary, where arcing
across could occur, is at zero and soars to high values as the
coil spirals inward. The same patent also shows a cone-shaped
secondary in which the primary is at the base of the cone, which
is at zero potential. 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 rarified 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. Reception of power could be achieved
just by raising an antenna, planting a ground, and connecting
simple tesla-coil circuitry in between. 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 hydro 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 fencelike 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 as I write, 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 was
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. 5. Magnifying Transmitter II Grounded Radio
With the backing of J. P. Morgan, Tesla began, soon after
returning from Colorado Springs, the construction of a magnifying
transmitter tower at Wardencliff, near Shoreham, Long Island.
Though closely related to a wireless power propagator and intended
for further experimentation in that area, the tower was built
specifically as the first station in Tesla's proposed World System
of broadcasting. The system was to carry programming for the
general public as well as private communications. Tesla was the
first to suggest the broadcasting of news and entertainment to
the public; only point-to-point signalling had been experimented
with up to then. The fully realized World System was to serve
as a multi-frequency wireless interconnect for all existing telephone,
telegraph, and stock ticker services around the planet. Exclusivity
and noninterference of priority private communications was to
be assured by multiplex techniques. The giant transmitter was
also to carry a universal time register, navigation beacons,
and facsimile transmissions. This was in 1902. As we shall see,
Tesla's massive contribution to radio is still largely unrecognized.
The Wardencliff tower's rugged wooden structure, designed by
Stanford White, stood at 187 feet. It was topped by a mushroom-like
terminal 68 feet in diameter. A separate brick building at the
foot housed generating and other equipment. The entire project
was to cover 200 acres and include housing for 2,000 employees
of the facility. Tesla estimated that the tower would "emit
a wave complex of a total maximum activity of 10 million horsepower."
The top of the tower was outfitted with a platform that may have
been intended to accommodate powerful ultraviolet lamps which
Tesla could have used for an experimental beam system of electric
power transmission that was on his mind. The tower structure
and building beneath were built and partially equipped, but they
never saw operation. father of radio?
As we have seen, Tesla's earliest oscillators were dynamos, but,
having determined that he could not reach the higher frequencies
by this means, he went on to develop the spark gap oscillator,
the tesla coil, and the magnifying transmitter. But did any of
these devices become the first to be used for overseas radio
transmission? No. Ironically, the first commercial overseas transmitter
was a 21.8 kilocycle GE Alexanderson alternator operated by RCA,
a design evolved straight out of Tesla's early dynamos. Such
was Tesla's luck in radio. Official histories often credit Tesla
with the polyphase system and either ignore his later inventions
altogether or dismiss them as the work of. a crackpot. But among
those who have published honest research on the subject, there
is one hundred percent consensus that Tesla was cheated out of
his rightful place in history, particularly his status as the
leading inventor of radio technology. radio simplified
Early radio devices are fascinating and worthy of study if only
because they remind us that powerful radio technologies can be
so simple and accessible to anyone, the present-day microcomplexity
notwithstanding. As we have seen, the earliest transmitters in
wide use by amateurs were not alternators but spark-gap oscillators.
To get on the air all you needed was a battery, a telegraph key,
an induction coil, a spark gap, a length of wire as an antenna,
and a ground. Of course, the addition of a capacitor juiced it
up considerably. The very earliest experiments in radio receiving
used spark gaps as receivers. When you saw an arc across the
gap, this was the detection of a disturbance in the medium. This
evolved into a detector called a coherer. This is just a horizontal
glass tube loosely filled with metal chips (iron, nickel). It
is placed in series with a battery and a telegraph sounder, and
one side of the coherer goes to the antenna, the other to ground.
The coherer is a switch (a semiconductor, really) that conducts
when there is a disturbance of the medium. The more easily conducted
radio-frequency energy triggers conduction of this almost conductive
material. To get the coherer back to a nonconducting state requires
a tap that can be accomplished manually or by mechanical linkage
to the telegraph sounder. Tesla comes into the technology about
here. He improves the coherer by putting it into continual rotation
(rotating coherer) so it didn't need a tap to reset. tuned radio
The spark gap transmitter was indiscriminate as to the frequency
of the disturbance. It put out a dirty complex of frequencies
consisting of a rough fundamental determined by width of gap,
together with parasitic oscillations, harmonics, splatter what-have-you.
The coherer was set off by any disturbance. In Colorado Springs,
Tesla used a rotating coherer to track electrical storms. The
celebrated Marconi employed nothing more evolved than this crash
method of signalling. So why is Marconi so famous? Because, like
Edison and Westinghouse, he built up an industry around the invention
and made himself famous in the course of promoting his enterprise.
Marconi's company was ultimately incorporated into RCA (now incorporated
into General Electric). It owed much of its technological development
to ideas lifted from the likes of Tesla. Tesla's contribution
was nothing less than selective tuning. He set forth the principle
of resonantly tuned circuits in his tesla coil patent of 1896,
and the principles of transmitter-receiver tuned circuits a year
later in his wireless power patent. The tesla coil is a powerful
and simple radio transmitter. If the primary circuit is smoothly
vibrating well above the audio range, its signal can even be
modulated for voice transmission by varying some circuit element.
Tesla's few published notes on modulation describe crude ways
of varying spark gaps, but, conceivably, an inductance core mechanically
linked to a loudspeaker transducer might modulate the signal
with some fidelity. Tesla and his supporters waged a fight for
recognition of Tesla as the founder of radio. The struggle was
finally won in the Supreme Court, but this did not happen until
shortly after Tesla's death. Tesla vs Hertz
Tesla was not a theoretician by calling, but he made plenty of
observations on the electrical nature of the universe that put
him at odds with of official theory. In fashion then (and even
now) was the theory of Heinrich Hertz, an interpreter of the
physics of James Maxwell. Hertz explained radio propagation as
transverse waves akin to light. Tesla was convinced that radio
disturbances were standing waves in the ether akin to sound.
When you drop a pebble into water, the disturbances you see in
the form of concentric circles are standing waves. Both Tesla
and Hertz assumed the existence of an etheric medium, but differed
as to its energy transmitting properties. Tesla believed that
the ether was a gaslike medium, that electric propagation was
very much like that of sounds in air, "alternate compressions
and rarefactions of the medium," and that Hertzian waves
could only take place in a solid medium. Tesla once said that
Hertz waves are "radiations" and that "no energy
could be economically transmitted to a distance by any such agency."
He said, "In my system, the process is one of true conduction
which can be effected at the greatest distance without appreciable
loss." When quantum physics and particle theory came into
vogue, the etheric medium was dropped out of electric theory
altogether, but Hertz's theory was more compatible with the new
concepts of propagation and therefore survived. By way of rubbing
this in, the unit of frequency, formerly cycles per second (cps),
was renamed in honor of Hertz (hz), while Tesla is remembered
only by an obscure unit of magnetic flux density. It is in respect
to Tesla that I have reverted to the old unit in this book. Hertzian
radio is straight-line, light-like radiations that bounce off
hills and mountains. Long distance Hertzian transmissions are
explained in terms of radiations bouncing off a radio reflective
upper layer called the ionosphere. Tesla thought this was all
nonsense and declared in 1919 that Hertzian thinking "has
stifled creative effort in the wireless art and retarded it for
25 years." Hertzian radio is aerial. Most of us are conditioned
to thinking in terms of aerial radio; "the air waves,"
"on the air." Tesla's radio is grounded; the lower
end of the energized coil is rooted in the earth. Pure Hertzian
radio has no such natural load. Tesla doesn't speak of antennas
as such; the element he places aloft is an "elevated capacity."
Tesla said radio devices "should be designed with due regard
to the physical properties of this planet and the electrical
conditions obtaining in same." Grounded radio is indeed
more powerful than the Hertzian aerial. But this is true particularly
for the. frequencies Tesla was using. The higher frequencies
do behave in a Hertzian manner. Yet grounding is all but a lost
concept in consumer electronics. Up through the 1940's, AM radio
receivers customarily had a terminal one was encouraged to connect
to a cold water pipe or other deep earth connection. Ground the
chassis of any of today's receivers, and, unless there is some
kind of interference coming up through the ground (from fluorescent
circuits, light dimmers, which are oscillators, or from the local
tesla coil), you will usually improve signal strength and range.
Among Tesla's contributions to radio was remote control. Tesla
demonstrated a radio-controlled boat before crowds at Madison
Square Gardens and sent another robot craft 25 miles up the Hudson
River. Grounded radio works particularly well through water.
Tesla's basic radio tuning "tank" circuit for receiving
(coil plus capacitor between antenna and ground) is, all by itself,
a powerful signal amplifier and a beautifully simple one. But
as radio developed over the years, the tank circuit shrank in
size and the result was a loss in gain. This was compensated
for by the addition of stage upon stage of complex amplification
circuitry. Tesla watched this development with bewilderment.
Tesla knew that the most efficient long-distance radio took place
in the lower frequencies, especially those close to the earth-resonant
frequency. Frequencies well below the AM broadcast band were
the favored ham frequencies in the early days prior to World
War I. In fact, waves of 600 meters (500 kc) were considered
"short" while considered "fairly long" were
the waves of 1200 meters (25 kc). Like a lot of good real estate,
many of these more radio-effective frequencies below the AM broadcast
band have been appropriated for military use, but also for navigation
beacons, weather stations, and time registers. underground radio
The mind conditioned by Hertzian aerial radio concepts has trouble
grasping the idea that signalling can take place without any
above-surface antenna, totally through the ground. James Harris
Rogers, taking a cue from Tesla, circa World War I, built a radio
system in which both sending and receiving antennas were sunk
completely into the ground or submerged in bodies of water. He
found this system far more effective and far less vulnerable
to interference than any aerial radio Signal strength has been
said to be 5,000 times stronger. The military is on to this,
as evidenced in the Navy's ELF and by a U. S. Air Force project
underway called Ground Wave Emergency Network. GWEN is a low-frequency
communications system designed for used during a nuclear war.
The network will have a cross-continent series of 600-foot diameter
underground copper screens connected to 300-foot towers reminiscent
of Tesla's Wardencliff. Among the advantages of the system is
its invulnerability to the effects of the electric pulse sent
out by nuclear blasts. Such a pulse fries at one stroke any and
all solid-state electronics within its extensive range. (Strong
electric vibrations from a tesla coil or magnifying transmitter
have a similar effect on solid state and will scramble or disable
such circuitry temporarily or even dud it permanently.) It's
revealing that for last-ditch doomsday communications, the government
reverts to Tesla's grounded radio. 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 polyphase.
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 Wardencliff, 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 start-up funding into Wardencliff. 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 Wardencliff 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.
6. Lighting
In 1891 Tesla said that existing methods of lighting were
"very wasteful," that "some better methods must
be invented, some more perfect apparatus devised." Tesla
went and did just that, yet here we are today in a world lit
predominantly by the same Edison bulb. Edison's bulb burns with
six percent efficiency, the rest going off as heat, while the
high resistance filament cooks at 4,000 degrees and eventually
breaks without warning. Today's fluorescent tube, though inspired
by Tesla, is no model of efficiency either. Its inner surfaces
are stimulated to phosphorescence by energy-consuming filament-like
cathodes that also burn out, and the lit-up tube would present
a dead short to the current if it were not for the so-called
"ballast transformer," an inductance placed in the
circuit to oppose and thus eat up yet more current. What sent
Tesla into an exploration of high frequency phenomena was his
conviction that these rapid vibrations held the key to a superior
mode of lighting. The explorations were not Tesla's first venture
into lighting. His very first U. S. patent (1885) is for an improvement
in the arc lamp. He used an electromagnet to feed carbons to
the arc at a uniform rate to produce a steadier light (No. 335,785).
Early arc lamps produced a brilliant blue-white light, good for
street lighting but not for the home, and they emitted noxious
fumes. Home lighting was by gas. Street arc lighting used series
circuits. Edison introduced the parallel circuit, and designed
his lamp for such a circuit. Edison introduced the bigscale production
and sale of electric power itself on the model of gas lighting,
a major industry at the time. He wanted to be first in the business
and announced to the press that he had an operable bulb before
he actually had a bulb that worked. When Tesla's a.c. system
was established, it was grafted on to Edison's, greatly extending
its range and efficiency. But, essentially, it was still Edison's
parallel circuit, high consumption, incandescent lighting system,
and this is what we have to live with today. 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. It 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" (filamentless)
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. "pure
light"
Tesla invented a variety of lamps, not all of which show up in
his patents. He lit up solid bodies like carbon rods in vacuum
bulbs, or in bulbs containing various inert gases at low pressure
(rarefied). He noted that "tubes devoid of any electrodes
may be used, and there is no difficulty in producing by their
means light to read by." But he noted that the effect is
"considerably increased by the use of phosphorescent bodies,
such as yttria, uranium glass, etc." Here Tesla lays the
foundation for fluorescent lighting. Applied to such lamps were
currents at potentials ranging from a lower limit of 20,000 volts
up to voltages in the millions and vibrations of 15,000 cycles
per second and up. Tesla dreamed of creating what he called "pure
light" or "cold light" by generating electric
vibrations at frequencies that equalled those of visible light
itself. Light produced by this direct and efficient means would
require vibrations of 350 to 750 billion cycles, but Tesla believed
such oscillations, far above those attainable by his coils, would
someday be achieved. Even so, his rarefied gas-tube lamps produced
a light that more closely approximated natural daylight than
any other artificial source Tesla's light is like the "full-spectrum"
light that is coming to be recognized as far more healthful than
Edison incandescent and particularly more healthful than conventional
fluorescent. Full-spectrum lighting is believed by some health
practitioners actually to have healing properties. no sudden
burn-out
Tesla's gas tube lamps burn indefinitely, as do today's neon
tubes, for there is nothing within to be consumed. Tesla's lamps
that contain electrodes like carbon rods, however, do undergo
some deterioration. In Tesla's words, "a very slow destruction
and gradual diminution in size always occurs, as in incandescent
filaments; but there is no possibility of sudden and premature
disabling which occurs in the latter by the breaking of the filament,
especially when incandescent bodies are in the shape of blocks."
In vacuum lamps, the life of the bulb depends upon the degree
of exhaustion, which can never be made perfect. Also, the higher
the frequency applied to such a lamp the slower the deterioration.
Electrodes glow at high temperatures, and this raises the problem
of how to conduct energy to them since wires or other metallic
elements will melt. The problem must be addressed in lamp design.
For example, in the incandescent lamp shown at the opening of
this chapter, the lead-in wires connect to the hot electrodes
via bronze powder contained in a refractory cup. Tesla may have
designed his capacitor-base bulbs to help address this same problem.
high heat
Tesla's search for the ideal electrode is reminiscent of Edison's
search for the long-lasting filament: "The production of
a small electrode capable of withstanding enormous temperatures,"
said Tesla, "I regard as the greatest importance in the
manufacture of light." One of the electrodes he tried was
a small "button" of carbon which he placed in a near
vacuum. Tesla regarded the high incandescence of the button to
be a "necessary evil." For lighting purposes, it was
the incandescence of the gas remaining in the mostly evacuated
chamber that was important. But the carbon-button lamp proved
to have some remarkable properties beyond its use for illumination.
When the voltage was turned up, the lamp produced such tremendous
heat that the carbon button rapidly vaporized. Tesla experimented
extensively with this fascinating phenomenon. For the button
of carbon he substituted zirconia, the most refractory substance
available at the time. It fused instantly. Even rubies vaporized.
Diamonds, and, to a greater degree, carborundum, endured the
best, but these could also be vaporized at high potentials. Tesla
worked on the problem of heating. I have read that he contributed
to the development of a high-frequency induction heating. Did
Tesla work on the problem of space heating? Certainly the huge
current draw of conventional electric heaters which use resistive
elements argues for some inventiveness in this area. Tesla did
observe that the discharges from a tesla coil resembled "flames
escaping under pressure" and were indeed hot. He reflected
that a similar process must take place in the ordinary flame,
that this might be an electric phenomenon. He said that electric
discharges might be "a possible way of producing by other
than chemical means a veritable flame which would give light
and heat without material consumed." The behavior of the
carbon-button lamp suggests that a new heating mode might be
found in the effects of high-frequency currents in a vacuum.
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
bulb's 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.
Skylighting, 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. 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, "an 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. 7. Transport
Tesla speculated,"Perhaps the most valuable application
of wireless energy, will be the propulsion of the flying machine,
which will carry no fuel and be free from any limitations of
the present airplanes and dirigibles." The possibility of
electric flight intrigued Tesla, though he never did patent an
electric aircraft. But he did patent an electric railway using
his high-frequency, high-potential electricity in a by-wire mode,
and also patented a radical aircraft that, while not electric,
did have an advanced power plant: his disk turbine. Tesla's railway
and aircraft can be numbered among the lost inventions. The closest
transport technology has come to putting any of Tesla into actual
practice is with diesel-electric power using Tesla polyphase
motors, an early and notable example of which was the ocean liner
Normandie. In the field of transport Tesla is more commonly identified
with antigravity flight and UFO's. Although this identification
is based upon nothing more than a few public utterances, his
suggestions charge the imagination with possibilities. high-frequency
railway
Tesla's high-frequency, high-potential railway picks up its power
inductively without the use of the rolling or sliding contacts
used in conventional trolley or third-rail systems. A pick-up
bar travels near a cable carrying the oscillating energy. This
cable, which Tesla specifically invented to carry such currents,
is the precursor of the grounded shielded cable used today to
carry TV and other high-frequency signals. But unlike today's
cables, which carry energy only of signal strength and shield
by means of a continuous grounded static screen of fine braided
copper wire, Tesla's high voltage cable uses metal pipe or screen
that is broken up into short lengths, "very much shorter,"
says Tesla in his patent, "than the wave lengths of the
current used." This feature reduces loss. Since the shielding
must not be interrupted, the short sections are made to overlap
but are insulated from one another. To further reduce loss to
ground, an inductance of high ohmic resistance or a small capacity
is placed in the ground line. motor mystery
A conundrum raised by Tesla's railway patent is that the vehicle
is powered by an electric motor, but nowhere among Tesla's inventions
is to be found an electric motor that runs off of high-frequency
currents. Was Tesla planning to use a lower frequency here, something
under 1,000 cycles? Did he have a converter in mind that could
bring the frequency down? Or did Tesla invent a high-frequency
motor that never made it into patent, an invention that may be
among his unpublished notes? Anyway, Tesla proceeds in many of
his discussions of high-frequency power as if this problem were
solved. I've seen references post-Tesla to the existence of such
a motor. Free-energy inventor, Hermann Plauson, (next chapter)
refers to high-frequency motors. These motors have magnetic cores
made of very thin laminations insulated from each other, a design
that would limit damping effects. turbine aircraft
Tesla's only patented aircraft is a vertical take-off and landing
(VTOL) plane that he intended as an improvement upon the helicopter,
already invented at this time (1921): "The helicopter type
of flying machine, especially with large inclination angle of
the propeller axis to the horizontal, at which it is generally
expected to operate, is quite unsuitable for speedy aerial transport;
it is incapable of proceeding horizontally along a straight line
under prevailing air conditions; it is subject to dangerous plunges
and oscillations ... and it is almost certainly doomed to destruction
in case the motive power gives out." Advances in helicopter
design may have mitigated some of these problems, but at least
the last one still holds true. Tesla's craft, which has a large
wing area, is powered by two disk turbines. The engineering problem
of swinging the pilot and passengers around 90 degrees after
take-off is solved at least to Tesla's satisfaction. There have
been some experimental VTOL's but nothing in production. electric
flight
Tesla's dream electric aircraft would be powered by means of
magnifying transmitters: "Aerial machines will be propelled
around the earth without a stop." Also, in 1900, he predicted
a "cold coal" battery with such output that "a
practical flying machine" would be possible. Such a battery
also "would enormously enhance the introduction of the automobile."
Tesla fantasized a personal "aerial taxi" which could
be folded into a six-foot cube, and would weigh under 250 lbs:
"It can be run through the streets and put in a garage,
if desired, just like an automobile." Explaining how his
earth-resonant wireless-power system could energize vehicles
aloft, he said, "power can be readily supplied without ground
connection, for, although the flow is confined to earth, an electromagnetic
field is created in the atmosphere surrounding it." Tesla
believed such a system to be the ultimate method of man-made
flight: "With an industrial plant of great capacity, sufficient
power can be derived in this manner to propel any kind of aerial
machine. This I have always considered the best and permanent
solution to the problems of flight. No fuel of any kind will
be required as the propulsion will be accomplished by light electric
motors operated at great speed." antigravity
Tesla wrote in 1900 of an antigravity motor: "Imagine a
disk of some homogeneous material turned perfectly true and arranged
to turn in frictionless bearings on a horizontal shaft above
the ground. Now, it is possible that we may learn how to make
such a disk rotate continuously and perform work by the force
of gravity." To do so, he said, "we have only to invent
a screen against this force. By such a screen we could prevent
this force from acting on one-half of the disk, and rotation
of the latter would follow." Does it not follow then, that
such a gravity screen could also be used to levitate a vehicle?
Tesla held no patent on such a device or on any other antigravity
device, and there are no published notes on experimentation in
the area. Nevertheless,
Tesla inevitably pops up in the literature of antigravity and
UFO's. This may be because Tesla was a prominent exponent of
a physics in which antigravity seems more feasible because gravity
is better explained. A researcher-theorist of today, Thomas Bearden,
allows for gravity control in the physics he calls "the
new Tesla electromagnetics." Scaler (standing) waves "in
time itself can be produced electrically" and this becomes
"a magic tool capable of directly affecting and altering
anything that exists in time, including gravitational fields,"
says Bearden. In 1931 the editor of Science & Mechanics,
Hugo Gernsback reported, "It is believed by many scientists
today that the force of gravitation is merely another manifestation
of electromagnetic waves." Edward Farrow, a New York inventor,
reported in 1911 an antigravity effect produced by a ring of
spark gaps. When the gaps were fired, the device, called a "condensing
dynamo," lost one-sixth of its weight. T. Henry Moray wrote
that "Frequencies may be developed which will balance the
force of gravity to a point of neutralization." Antigravity
researcher Richard Lefors Clark places the frequency of gravity's
vibrations right at "Nature's neutral center in the radiant
energy spectrum," above radar and below infrared, at l0^12
cycles per second. 8. Free-Energy
Receiver
For starters, think of this as a solar-electric panel. Tesla's
invention is very different, but the closest thing to it in conventional
tech-nology is in photovoltaics. One radical difference is that
conventional solar-electric panels consist of a substrate coated
with crystalline silicon; the latest use amorphous silicon. Conventional
solar panels are expensive, and, whatever the coating, they are
manufactured by esoteric processes. But Tesla's"solar panel"
is just a shiny metal plate with a transparent coating of some
insulating material which today could be a spray plastic. Stick
one of these antenna-like panels up in the air, the higher the
better, and wire it to one side of a capacitor, the other going
to a good earth ground.Now the energy from the sun is charging
that capacitor. Connect across the capacitor some sort of switching
device so that it can be discharged arrhythmic intervals, and
you have an electric output. Tesla's patent is telling us that
it is that simple to get electric energy. The bigger the area
of the insulated plate, the more energy you get. But this is
more than a "solar panel" because it does not necessarily
need sunshine to operate. It also produces power at night Of
course, this is impossible according to official science. For
this reason, you could not get a patent on such an invention
today. Many an inventor has learned this the hard way. Tesla
had his problems with the patent examiners, but today's free-energy
inventor has it much tougher. At the time of this writing, the
U. S. Patent Office is headed by a Reagan appointee who came
to the office straight from a top executive position with Phillips
Petroleum. Tesla's free-energy receiver was patented in 1901
as An Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy. The patent
refers to "the sun, as well as other sources of radiant
energy, like cosmic rays." That the device works at night
is explained in terms of the night-time availability of cosmic
rays. Tesla also refers to the ground as "a vast reservoir
of negative electricity." Tesla was fascinated by radiant
energy and its free-energy possibilities. He called the Crooke's
radiometer (a device which has vanes that spin in a vacuum when
exposed to radiant energy) "a beautiful invention."
He believed that it would become possible to harness energy directly
by "connecting to the very wheelwork of nature." His
free-energy receiver is as close as he ever came to such a device
in his patented work. But on his 76th birthday at the ritual
press conference, Tesla (who was without the financial wherewithal
to patent but went on inventing in his head) announced a "cosmic-ray
motor." When asked if it was more powerful than the Crooke's
radiometer, he answered, "thousands of times more powerful."
how it works
From the electric potential that exists between the elevated
plate (plus) and the ground (minus), energy builds in the capacitor,
and, after "a suitable time interval," the accumulated
energy will "manifest itself in a powerful discharge"
which can do work. The capacitor, says Tesla should be "of
considerable electrostatic capacity" and its dielectric
made of "the best quality mica," for it has to with
stand potentials that could rupture a weaker dielectric. Tesla
gives various options for the switching device. One is a rotary
switch that resembles a Tesla circuit controller. Another is
an electrostatic device consisting of two very light, membranous
conductors suspended in a vacuum. These sense the energy build-up
in the capacitor, one going positive, the other negative, and,
at a certain charge level, are attracted, touch, and thus fire
the capacitor. Tesla also mentions another switching device consisting
of a minute air gap or weak dielectric film which breaks down
suddenly when a certain potential is reached. The above is about
all the technical detail you get in the patent. Although I've
seen a few cursory references to Tesla's invention in my sampling
of the literature of free-energy, I am not aware of any attempts
to verify it experimentally. Plauson's converter
Tesla's invention may have helped to inspire the many other inventors
who have worked in the field of free energy. At least a dozen
are on record. Let's look at one in particular. In 1921 Hermann
Plauson, a German experimenter, succeeded in obtaining patents,
including one in the U. S., for Conversion of Atmospheric Electric
Energy. In school, every introduction to electricity touches
on the phenomenon of so-called "static" (or electrostatic)
electricity, and this is what Plauson means by "atmospheric."
Static electricity is built-up charge, electricity in a raw state,
and it comes easy in Nature, as evidenced by lightning and the
aurora borealis. If you have ever seen a frictional static machine
in operation, it's not difficult to imagine the tremendous potential
in artificially produced static. A rotating disk type of static
machine or the silk belt type, as in the Van de Graff generator,
produces discharges like those from a tesla coil. Unfortunately,
in school, the subject of static electricity is briefly touched
upon and then abruptly dropped, never to be mentioned again.
Electrical power sources thereafter are limited to the battery
or the wall socket. how it works
In the Plauson drawing the free energy converter on the left
interfaces with a disk type static machine via special pick up
"combs." When the static collecting disk is rotated,
the combs pick up the charge, one comb going positive, the other
negative. The combs, in turn, charge up their respective capacitors
until sufficiently high potential builds to jump the spark gap.
The oscillatory discharge is induced into the transformer primary.
This is high-voltage, high-frequency electric energy. The familiar
spark-gap oscillator has turned charge into dynamic energy. The
transformer steps down the vibrating high voltage to practical
levels to power lighting, heating, and special high-frequency
motors. The Plauson patent drawing to the right shows a device
that works on the same principle but collects energy by means
of an antenna, as does Tesla's receiver. Since the higher the
antenna the better, and the more area the better, Plauson favors
big metallic helium balloons. Plauson says the safety gap, which
has three times the resistance of the working gap, is absolutely
necessary for collecting large quantities of charge. The capacitors
across the gaps in the series safety gap allow for uniform sparking.
Plauson's device suggests that Tesla's might be explained in
terms of electrostatics. Tesla, at the press conference honoring
his 77th birthday in 1933 declared that electric power was everywhere
present in unlimited quantities "and could drive the world's
machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other fuels."
A reporter asked if the sudden introduction of his principle
wouldn't "upset the present economic system." Tesla
replied, "It is badly upset already."
Nikola Tesla
Science
& Mathematics
The
Uncle Taz Library