http://consortiumnews.com/2010/071010a.html
Nikola Tesla's Renewable Energy Vision
Lisa Pease
July 10, 2010
We should have listened to Nikola Tesla when we had the chance.
At the height of his popularity as the key inventor who pioneered commercial electricity, Tesla cautioned the world of the inefficiencies of burning substances to generate energy, especially coal, the predominate fuel source of the day.
Not only did the burning process waste most the potential energy of coal, Nikola Tesla argued, but it was a nonrenewable resource that we would eventually run out of. The same arguments could easily be made about oil.
“Whatever our resources of primary energy may be in the future,” Tesla wrote in Century Magazine in 1900, “we must, to be rational, obtain it without consumption of any material.”
Tesla reminded us that a windmill is one of the most efficient energy devices ever devised, and suspected we’d eventually be able to harness the sun’s rays in an efficient way. He also advocated utilizing the heat “in the earth, the water, or the air.”
He proposed, essentially, geothermal energy plants, one capturing the heat of the earth, the other floating on the ocean, using the temperature differential between the surface water temperature and the deeper water temperatures to drive turbines to generate electricity.
One of Tesla’s designs for a floating geothermal plant was published in the pages of the New York Times, complete with pictures and diagrams, in the 1930s. But by the 1930s, oil was being found all over the world in such quantities and with such relatively little output of energy that no one cared much about producing power in other ways.
It wasn’t until the oil shortage in the 1970s that people started taking a serious look at alternative ways of producing energy on a large scale.
Who was Nikola Tesla?
Today, on the 154th anniversary of Tesla's birth, you could ask Europeans who Nikola Tesla was and their eyes will light up as they comment on his remarkable inventions. Over 100 years ago, Nikola Tesla proved the energy establishment wrong by creating something the establishment believed was impossible: a motor driven by alternating current.
Ask most Americans, however, who Tesla was, and you’ll often get a blank stare. Recently, Tesla has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence in visibility, thanks to David Bowie’s portrayal of a highly fictionalized version of him in the film “The Prestige,” as well as through the Tesla Motors company, which markets an ultra-sexy fully electric sports car.
Why do we know so much about Tesla’s contemporaries, such as Edison or Marconi, but so little of Tesla? Tesla’s story is, after all, the quintessential rags to riches story.
As a child, Tesla, a Serb in Croatia, saw a picture of Niagara Falls that gave birth to a passion he would never lose. He vowed to be the first to harness of the power of Niagara Falls, to turn all that natural motion into a way to generate energy.
As a youth, he imagined a simple waterwheel turned by the falls. But as he studied electrical engineering, he realized more efficient ways of using the power of the river to generate electricity by passing water over turbines.
Tesla’s turbines were unique, in that they had no grooves or ridges. They were smooth, so they wore well and had no edges to wear down or break off.
When Tesla first came to America, ironically, he worked for Thomas Edison.
Tesla tried immediately to sell Edison on the notion of using alternating current to generate electricity, but Edison was opposed, claiming it was both too dangerous, due to the high voltages produced, and too difficult to capture.
Those who had tried found motors running forwards and then backwards, making energy capture impractical at best. Tesla wasn’t ready to argue this point, and let it go, for the moment, even though in his head he already knew the solution, having figured it out some years earlier.
Instead, Tesla said he could at least improve the efficiency of Edison’s motor. Edison had told Tesla, essentially, that there’d be several thousand in it for him if he made the improvement. But when Tesla did, and tried to collect, Edison said Tesla didn’t understand the American sense of humor.
Tesla, his pride wounded, quit, and struck out on his own.
In the mid 1880s, a buzz arose in the electrical community when it was learned that Tesla had developed and patented a working alternating current motor. Tesla was pressed into speaking before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College to explain and demonstrate his motor.
The lecture brought Tesla instant fame, and, ultimately, a very serious business partner: George Westinghouse. Westinghouse, himself an inventor, believed, unlike Thomas Edison, that the future of electricity depended on alternating current, not direct current, and moved to purchase the rights to Tesla’s patents.
Tesla had been well on his way to becoming a millionaire when Westinghouse came to him at one point with difficult news. The Westinghouse company was so deep in financial trouble that if Tesla did not relinquish his royalty payments, the Westinghouse company could go under.
Tesla ripped up his contract, saying that Westinghouse believed in him when no one else would, and that the Westinghouse company must survive in order to bring alternating current to the world.
The Falls
As the 1800s were drawing to a close, Niagara Falls was in the forefront of every electrical magnate’s mind. An international group had formed to examine proposals for how best to harness the power of the falls.
Tesla, still clinging to his childhood belief that he would be the first, teamed with Westinghouse to design a plant. Edison, backed financially by J. P. Morgan, proposed a direct current scheme.
The big disadvantage of such a scheme was that direct current didn’t hold up well over transmission. Edison’s plan would have required power stations about a mile apart. Alternating current, on the other hand, could be sent many miles across wires.
You’d think this would have been an easy decision. But as we saw more recently in the VHS-Betamax competition, the best idea doesn’t always win.
Edison launched an all-out campaign to discredit alternating current. He electrocuted first dogs, then horses, and ultimately an elephant on stage in front of audiences to show how dangerous alternating current was.
Edison even pushed for the development of the first electric chair using alternating current to execute humans. Its initial use was, not coincidentally, in Buffalo, just up the river from Niagara Falls.
Westinghouse and Tesla fought back via a different venue: the World’s Fair in Chicago, also known as the Columbian Exposition of 1893. (It was supposed to celebrate the 400-year anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America in 1892, but the fair ended up opening a year late.)
Edison’s company had merged into General Electric, which fought mightily to get the contract to power the fair. Westinghouse, on the other hand, was in financial difficulty, and could not bid on the fair.
But when a tiny local Chicago firm entered a bid that would cost the fair only a fraction of what General Electric was asking, Westinghouse said he would back the small shop, and together, they won the contract for the Fair.
Edison was upset, and tried to block Westinghouse by denying the Fair permission to use his light bulb, as it was still under patent to him. So Westinghouse went out and invented a different kind of light bulb, one that used two filaments, not one, to light the bulb.
The Fair was known as the “White City” due to a budget shortfall which required all buildings to be coated at the last minute with a white plaster-like material. The fortunate accident made the buildings look like classical Greek temples.
President Grover Cleveland pressed a lever to light the Fair on opening night, and the sight was so beautiful that reporters noted men threw hats in the air and women wept openly at the sight. The White City was the first all-electric city anywhere on the planet.
The Niagara Falls commission members were very impressed, and ultimately chose to go forward with an alternating current plan, due in no small part to its successful use at the Fair.
Wireless Energy
The one thing, however, that Edison and Morgan won was the concession to carry the generated power away from the falls. This angered Tesla on a number of levels, not the least of which was the fact that he had become obsessed with the notion that there should be a way to transfer energy wirelessly.
He’d already sent signals wirelessly, in a demonstration that caused the Supreme Court to later rule that Tesla, not Marconi, was the father of radio. But sending power was different than sending a signal.
Still, Tesla had been struck from childhood by the sight of the sky sending power to the ground in the form of lightning. If nature could do it, could not man, as well?
Tesla was offered the use of unlimited power by a friend if he moved to Colorado Springs. So Tesla left New York and set up a lab not far from Pike’s Peak. There, Tesla reportedly found a way to transmit energy wirelessly across a distance of several yards, from a device inside his lab to a small set of light bulbs outside the lab.
Tesla at one point had tried to convince Morgan to invest in his wireless efforts, but Morgan was worried that if you sent energy through the air, there’d be no way to meter it, no way to pull profits from it. Tesla wasn’t concerned about that. He figured if he could get the technology working, that someone would surely devise a way to meter it.
After a year in Colorado, Tesla returned to New York. He bought property on Long Island at Wardenclyffe and began construction of a large tower.
He convinced Morgan that he was building the tower to transmit signals across the Atlantic, the first step in what Tesla envisioned as a worldwide network that could send images and data from any point on the planet to any other point, without wires. In other words, Tesla had envisioned the Internet of today over 100 years before we had it.
When an Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi sent a signal across the Atlantic first, Morgan was upset, and wanted to know why Tesla hadn’t been the first. Tesla then told Morgan he was planning a far grander experiment -- transmitting energy.
Morgan was furious at Tesla for having misled him, and promised he’d never get another cent from him. While that wasn’t entirely true, Morgan never gave Tesla enough to complete his plans.
Having overextended himself for too many years, living in a hotel and having enjoyed a lifestyle beyond his means, Tesla eventually declared bankruptcy.
George Westinghouse had long since died, but his son was appalled that the man who had made the company’s success possible was now penniless. He arranged for the Westinghouse company to pick up Tesla’s hotel bills for the rest of his life.
Eccentric Inventor
In later years, Tesla, who had always been eccentric, became even more so, announcing strange new inventions to the media at annual press conferences he started holding on his birthday in his twilight years. But these inventions were in his head, or only sketchily on paper, since he lacked the financial wherewithal to build them.
Still, he was well known and much respected by fellow engineers in his day. They even awarded him the Edison medal, the electrical engineering profession’s most prestigious award.
Towards the end of his life, Tesla became obsessed with developing a weapon that could end war. He envisioned a huge, stationary device that could project a directed energy beam at inbound ships or planes that could disable them.
Because his own device was so large and had to be stationary, it could be not used, in his mind, as an offensive weapon. When he proposed this to the Pentagon, they brushed him off. But after his death, some of his papers were stolen, and reputable sources have claimed that some of those papers ended up at the Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.
Various mystical and magical properties have been reported of Tesla over the years, some even in his lifetime. He hated this.
One author claimed he was from Venus. Others had claimed he found a way to power a car wirelessly, (A relative insists the car was powered by a zinc battery that Tesla had made.)
He was neither a magical nor mythical creature. He was many things, but all of them real. He was a horrible anti-Semite. He was a brilliant engineer who really knew his math. He was a gentle lover of animals, and obnoxiously rude to overweight women.
He had an obsessive-compulsive disorder, causing him to repeat actions in sets of threes. And yet, he was a loyal and steadfast friend to many.
But most important, Tesla was a dreamer who never let the limitations of the present hamper his ideas of a better future. His vision for our energy future needs to be reexamined.
As Tesla said at his famous lecture in 1891, “We are whirling through endless space with an inconceivable speed; all around us, everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere is energy. There must be some way of availing ourselves of this energy more directly.
“Then, with the light obtained from the medium, with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from the store forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with great strides. The mere contemplation of these magnificent possibilities expands our minds, strengthens our hopes and fills our hearts with supreme delight.”
Happy 154th Birthday, Nikola Tesla.
Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era.
Showing posts with label Nikola Tesla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nikola Tesla. Show all posts
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Inventor Nikola Tesla Is Electrifying Hip Techies
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704362004575000841720318942.html
JANUARY 14, 2010.
Long-Dead Inventor Nikola Tesla Is Electrifying Hip Techies
His Name Is Branding Magic; Thomas Edison Is 'So 20th Century'
By DANIEL MICHAELS
Decades after he died penniless, Nikola Tesla is elbowing aside his old adversary Thomas Edison in the pantheon of geek gods.
When California engineers wanted to brand their new $100,000 electric sports car, one name stood out: Tesla. When circuit designers at microchip producer Nvidia Corp. in 2007 launched a new line of advanced processors, they called them Tesla. And when videogame writers at Capcom Entertainment in Silicon Valley needed a character who could understand alien spaceships for their new Dark Void saga, they found him in Nikola Tesla.
Tesla was a scientist and inventor who achieved fame and fortune in the 1880s for figuring out how to make alternating current work on a grand scale, electrifying the world. He created the first major hydroelectric dam, at Niagara Falls. He thrilled packed theaters with presentations in which he ran high voltage through his body to illuminate a fluorescent light in his hand. His inventions helped Guglielmo Marconi develop radio.
And his rivalry with Edison—called the Battle of the Currents because Edison had bet on direct current—was legendary. Tesla won the contest, when his AC equipment powered an unprecedented display of electric light at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
Fifty years later, the 86-year-old Serbian emigré died in obscurity at a New York hotel, unmarried, childless and bereft of friends. Meanwhile, Edison was lionized for generations as one of America's greatest inventors.
But Tesla has been rediscovered by technophiles, including Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, who frequently cites him as an early inspiration. And Teslamania is going increasingly mainstream.
An early hint was "Tesla Girls," a 1984 single from the British technopop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Performance artist Laurie Anderson has said she was fascinated by Tesla. David Bowie played a fictionalized version of him in the 2006 film "The Prestige," alongside Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. Director Terry Gilliam described Tesla in a recent documentary film as "more of an artist than a scientist in some strange way."
Tesla, in short, is cool.
"He was a kind of crazy, interesting dude," says Melody Pfeiffer, spokeswoman for the Dark Void game's distributor, Capcom Entertainment.
Edison, meanwhile, is less au courant than he used to be, says Paul Israel, director of the Thomas Edison Papers, a scholarly project at Rutgers University, in Piscataway, N.J.
Many significant Edison inventions—including the phonograph and the motion-picture camera—are becoming historical curios. The European Union has banned old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, another Edison innovation. The EU is urging consumers to replace them with more-efficient fluorescent lights descended from those Tesla favored.
"Edison is so 20th century, much like Henry Ford," says Bernie Carlson, a professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Virginia.
Once, Edison was revered as the Wizard of Menlo Park, after the New Jersey town—since renamed Edison—where he built a laboratory and movie studio. But Edison biographies have started focusing on his role in establishing monopolies in the electricity and movie industries.
Recent portrayals of Edison have highlighted his darker side. In the 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," Tom Hanks plays a French filmmaker who was financially ruined when Edison secretly copied and then released his 1902 epic, "A Trip to the Moon," without paying its creator.
The Tesla-Edison rivalry was intense partly because the highly educated young engineer sailed to America in 1884 to work for Edison. But after less than a year in Edison's labs, Tesla quit in a spat over pay.
Tesla-boosters note that in Edison's effort to discredit alternating current a decade later, his staff deliberately electrocuted a murderous circus elephant and profited from a popular film of the killing. To sully Tesla's ideas, Edison's men also helped orchestrate the first execution by electric chair.
"I can't imagine writing a song about Edison…too boringly rich, entrepreneurial and successful!" said Andy McCluskey, a founder of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, in an email. He calls Tesla "a romantic 'failure' figure."
In 1895—after selling his AC patents to industrialist George Westinghouse for a mint and harnessing Niagara Falls—Tesla hobnobbed with Mark Twain, J.P. Morgan and French actress Sarah Bernhardt. But troubles soon began.
Tesla's laboratory in New York was destroyed by fire, along with years of work and notes. The secretive experimenter then burned through much of his fortune testing radio transmissions in Colorado Springs, Colo. In 1898, he demonstrated a pair of small radio-controlled boats—decades before guided torpedoes—but was rebuffed by the U.S. military. When Marconi changed the world with a trans-Atlantic radio transmission in 1901, Tesla wasn't mentioned.
Undaunted, the scientist continued to be far ahead of his time. His papers suggest he stumbled upon—but didn't pursue—lasers and X-rays, years before their recognized discoveries. He proposed transmitting electricity through the upper atmosphere. He sketched out robots and a death ray he hoped would end all wars.
"There's a sort of science-fiction aspect to Tesla," says Prof. Israel at Rutgers.
For marketers at chip makers Nvidia, who were targeting the techno-cognoscenti with a new product line, that aura is priceless.
"A mythology has built up around Tesla that catches people's imagination," says Andy Keane, general manager of Tesla Products at Nvidia.
Tesla's more outlandish pronouncements stoked that mythology. He said he could use electricity to cause earthquakes and control weather. He claimed to have detected signals from Mars while he was in Colorado.
Unlike Edison, who died in 1931 with 1,093 patents to his name, Tesla left few completed blueprints. The shortcoming undercut his legacy but added to the air of mystery surrounding him.
"Tesla's work is incomplete, so people can read into it what they want to," says Prof. Carlson at the University of Virginia.
Christopher Priest did just that in writing "The Prestige," his novel and then movie about rival magicians in Victorian London. In it, one of the magicians visits Tesla in Colorado and pays him to create a machine unlike anything the real Tesla ever mentioned.
"I wanted an ambiguous, mysterious genius," says Mr. Priest. "Tesla was the man for the job."
Creators of the Dark Void videogame needed a mentor for their hero, Will, who falls from our world into a parallel realm ruled by sinister aliens bent on annihilating humans.
"We quickly decided that tapping into the conspiracies and geek mystique built up around Nikola Tesla would be awesome," says senior producer Morgan Gray. "What is cooler than having Tesla reverse-engineer alien technology to build weapons of super science?"
At Tesla Motors, the branding isn't simply an effort to ride the name's nerdy snob appeal, says spokeswoman Rachel Konrad. The Tesla Roadster uses an AC motor descended directly from Tesla's original 1882 design, which he said came to him in a vision.
Still, for all Tesla's cachet, Edison's legacy remains inescapable. Ms. Konrad says customers note with irony that Tesla Motors' main showroom is in Menlo Park, Calif.
To help boost the Tesla name, the automotive start-up has launched a promotional sweepstakes with Capcom around the release of Dark Void. The prize: a Tesla Roadster.
For Nikola Tesla himself, Ms. Konrad says, the prize is overdue recognition.
"You know you've gone into mainstream pop glory when you're in a videogame aimed at 18-year-old boys," she says.
Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com
JANUARY 14, 2010.
Long-Dead Inventor Nikola Tesla Is Electrifying Hip Techies
His Name Is Branding Magic; Thomas Edison Is 'So 20th Century'
By DANIEL MICHAELS
Decades after he died penniless, Nikola Tesla is elbowing aside his old adversary Thomas Edison in the pantheon of geek gods.
When California engineers wanted to brand their new $100,000 electric sports car, one name stood out: Tesla. When circuit designers at microchip producer Nvidia Corp. in 2007 launched a new line of advanced processors, they called them Tesla. And when videogame writers at Capcom Entertainment in Silicon Valley needed a character who could understand alien spaceships for their new Dark Void saga, they found him in Nikola Tesla.
Tesla was a scientist and inventor who achieved fame and fortune in the 1880s for figuring out how to make alternating current work on a grand scale, electrifying the world. He created the first major hydroelectric dam, at Niagara Falls. He thrilled packed theaters with presentations in which he ran high voltage through his body to illuminate a fluorescent light in his hand. His inventions helped Guglielmo Marconi develop radio.
And his rivalry with Edison—called the Battle of the Currents because Edison had bet on direct current—was legendary. Tesla won the contest, when his AC equipment powered an unprecedented display of electric light at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
Fifty years later, the 86-year-old Serbian emigré died in obscurity at a New York hotel, unmarried, childless and bereft of friends. Meanwhile, Edison was lionized for generations as one of America's greatest inventors.
But Tesla has been rediscovered by technophiles, including Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, who frequently cites him as an early inspiration. And Teslamania is going increasingly mainstream.
An early hint was "Tesla Girls," a 1984 single from the British technopop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Performance artist Laurie Anderson has said she was fascinated by Tesla. David Bowie played a fictionalized version of him in the 2006 film "The Prestige," alongside Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. Director Terry Gilliam described Tesla in a recent documentary film as "more of an artist than a scientist in some strange way."
Tesla, in short, is cool.
"He was a kind of crazy, interesting dude," says Melody Pfeiffer, spokeswoman for the Dark Void game's distributor, Capcom Entertainment.
Edison, meanwhile, is less au courant than he used to be, says Paul Israel, director of the Thomas Edison Papers, a scholarly project at Rutgers University, in Piscataway, N.J.
Many significant Edison inventions—including the phonograph and the motion-picture camera—are becoming historical curios. The European Union has banned old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs, another Edison innovation. The EU is urging consumers to replace them with more-efficient fluorescent lights descended from those Tesla favored.
"Edison is so 20th century, much like Henry Ford," says Bernie Carlson, a professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Virginia.
Once, Edison was revered as the Wizard of Menlo Park, after the New Jersey town—since renamed Edison—where he built a laboratory and movie studio. But Edison biographies have started focusing on his role in establishing monopolies in the electricity and movie industries.
Recent portrayals of Edison have highlighted his darker side. In the 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," Tom Hanks plays a French filmmaker who was financially ruined when Edison secretly copied and then released his 1902 epic, "A Trip to the Moon," without paying its creator.
The Tesla-Edison rivalry was intense partly because the highly educated young engineer sailed to America in 1884 to work for Edison. But after less than a year in Edison's labs, Tesla quit in a spat over pay.
Tesla-boosters note that in Edison's effort to discredit alternating current a decade later, his staff deliberately electrocuted a murderous circus elephant and profited from a popular film of the killing. To sully Tesla's ideas, Edison's men also helped orchestrate the first execution by electric chair.
"I can't imagine writing a song about Edison…too boringly rich, entrepreneurial and successful!" said Andy McCluskey, a founder of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, in an email. He calls Tesla "a romantic 'failure' figure."
In 1895—after selling his AC patents to industrialist George Westinghouse for a mint and harnessing Niagara Falls—Tesla hobnobbed with Mark Twain, J.P. Morgan and French actress Sarah Bernhardt. But troubles soon began.
Tesla's laboratory in New York was destroyed by fire, along with years of work and notes. The secretive experimenter then burned through much of his fortune testing radio transmissions in Colorado Springs, Colo. In 1898, he demonstrated a pair of small radio-controlled boats—decades before guided torpedoes—but was rebuffed by the U.S. military. When Marconi changed the world with a trans-Atlantic radio transmission in 1901, Tesla wasn't mentioned.
Undaunted, the scientist continued to be far ahead of his time. His papers suggest he stumbled upon—but didn't pursue—lasers and X-rays, years before their recognized discoveries. He proposed transmitting electricity through the upper atmosphere. He sketched out robots and a death ray he hoped would end all wars.
"There's a sort of science-fiction aspect to Tesla," says Prof. Israel at Rutgers.
For marketers at chip makers Nvidia, who were targeting the techno-cognoscenti with a new product line, that aura is priceless.
"A mythology has built up around Tesla that catches people's imagination," says Andy Keane, general manager of Tesla Products at Nvidia.
Tesla's more outlandish pronouncements stoked that mythology. He said he could use electricity to cause earthquakes and control weather. He claimed to have detected signals from Mars while he was in Colorado.
Unlike Edison, who died in 1931 with 1,093 patents to his name, Tesla left few completed blueprints. The shortcoming undercut his legacy but added to the air of mystery surrounding him.
"Tesla's work is incomplete, so people can read into it what they want to," says Prof. Carlson at the University of Virginia.
Christopher Priest did just that in writing "The Prestige," his novel and then movie about rival magicians in Victorian London. In it, one of the magicians visits Tesla in Colorado and pays him to create a machine unlike anything the real Tesla ever mentioned.
"I wanted an ambiguous, mysterious genius," says Mr. Priest. "Tesla was the man for the job."
Creators of the Dark Void videogame needed a mentor for their hero, Will, who falls from our world into a parallel realm ruled by sinister aliens bent on annihilating humans.
"We quickly decided that tapping into the conspiracies and geek mystique built up around Nikola Tesla would be awesome," says senior producer Morgan Gray. "What is cooler than having Tesla reverse-engineer alien technology to build weapons of super science?"
At Tesla Motors, the branding isn't simply an effort to ride the name's nerdy snob appeal, says spokeswoman Rachel Konrad. The Tesla Roadster uses an AC motor descended directly from Tesla's original 1882 design, which he said came to him in a vision.
Still, for all Tesla's cachet, Edison's legacy remains inescapable. Ms. Konrad says customers note with irony that Tesla Motors' main showroom is in Menlo Park, Calif.
To help boost the Tesla name, the automotive start-up has launched a promotional sweepstakes with Capcom around the release of Dark Void. The prize: a Tesla Roadster.
For Nikola Tesla himself, Ms. Konrad says, the prize is overdue recognition.
"You know you've gone into mainstream pop glory when you're in a videogame aimed at 18-year-old boys," she says.
Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Tesla Wireless and the Tunguska Explosion
http://www.frank.germano.com/tunguska.htmNikola Tesla's writings have many references to the use of his wireless power transmission technology as a directed energy weapon.
These references are examined in their relationship to the Tunguska explosion of 1908 which may have been a test firing of Tesla's energy weapon.
This article was first published in a different form in 1990.
The idea of a Tesla directed energy weapon causing the Tunguska explosion was incorporated in a fictional biography (1994), by another writer, and was the subject of a Sightings television program segment.
Tesla Wireless and the Tunguska Explosion
" The present is theirs; the future, for which I really work, is mine. "
— Nikola Tesla
" If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of a bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. "
— Nikola Tesla - New York Times, October 19, 1931
"As soon as [the Wardenclyffe plant is] completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. . . ." — Nikola Tesla, 1893
" 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. "
— Nikola Tesla ... speaking of his "World Wireless" project on Long Island, 1919
Tesla's Wireless Power Transmitter and the Tunguska Explosion of 1908
The French ship Iena blew up in 1907. Electrical experts were sought by the press for an explanation. Many thought the explosion was caused by an electrical spark and the discussion was about the origin of the ignition. Lee De Forest, inventor of the Audion vacuum tube adopted by many radio broadcasters, pointed out that Nikola Tesla had experimented with a "dirigible torpedo" capable of delivering such destructive power to a ship through remote control. He noted, though, Tesla also claimed that the same technology used for remotely controlling vehicles also could project an electrical wave of "sufficient intensity to cause a spark in a ship's magazine and explode it." (1)
In the summer of 1913, Signor Giulio Ulivi, blew up a gas meter with his "F-Ray" device and destroyed his laboratory. Then, in August of that year, exploded three mines in the port of Trouville for a number of high ranking French naval officers. The following November, he travelled to Splezzia, Italy to repeat the experiments on several old ships and torpedo boats for that country's navy.(2)
In the Spring of 1924 newspapers carried several stories about "death rays" inventions in different parts of the world. The work of Harry Grindell-Matthews, London, was the first reported. The New York Times of May 21st had this one:
Paris, May 20 - If confidence of Grindell Matthews, inventor of the so-called ' diabolical ray,' in his discovery is justified it may become possible to put the whole of an enemy army out of action, destroy any force of airplanes attacking a city or paralyze any fleet venturing within a certain distance of the coast by invisible rays. So much the inventor consented to tell The New York Times correspondent today while continuing to refuse to divulge the exact nature of the rays beyond that they are used to direct an electric current able to perform the program just mentioned.(3)
Grindell-Matthews stated that his destructive rays would operate over a distance of four miles and that the maximum distance for this type of weapon would be seven or eight miles. Asked if it would be possible to destroy an approaching enemy fleet, the inventor said it would not, because "Ships, like land, are in continual contact with the earth, but what I can do is to put the ships out of action by the destruction of vital parts of the machinery, and also by putting the crews temporarily out of action through shock."(4) Airplanes, on the other hand, could be completely destroyed. As soon as his ray touched the plane it would burst into flames and fall to earth.
Grindell-Matthews asserted, "I am convinced the Germans possess the ray." He believed, though, they were carrying out their experiments with high frequencies and at high power, around 200 kilowatts, and could not control the weapon to hit a specific target. So far, said Grindell-Matthews, he had tried tests at 500 watts in his laboratory over a distance of sixty-four feet.
A French company, the Great Rhone Engineering Works of Lyon, had offered Grindell-Matthews extensive financial backing that would allow him to test his device at much higher power levels. He replied that would not undertake such tests "except under conditions of absolute safety on a wide tract of uninhabited land," such was the destructive power of his rays.
Details of the "diabolical rays'" destructive power surfaced that August. "Tests have been reported where the ray has been used to stop the operation of automobiles by arresting the action of the magnetos, and an quantity of gunpowder is said to have been exploded by playing the beams on it from a distance of thirty-six feet."(5)Grindell-Matthews was able, also, to electrocute mice, shrivel plants, and light the wick of an oil lamp from the same distance away.(6)
His own laboratory assistants were themselves became unintentional victims of the ray. When crossing its path during tests they were either knocked unconscious by violent electrical shocks or received intense burns. The inventor stated that though it would be possible to kill enemy infantry with the ray, "it would be quite easy to graduate the electric power used so that hostile troops would only be knocked out long enough to effect their capture."(7)
On May 25th, a second death ray was announced in England. Doctor T.F. Wall, a "lecturer in electrical research in Sheffield University, "applied for a patent for means of transmitting electrical energy in any direction without the use of wires. According to one report. even though he has not made tests on a large scale yet "Dr. Wall expressed the belief that his invention would be capable of destroying life, stopping airplanes in flight and bringing motor cars to a standstill." On a more positive note, he added that his invention would have beneficial applications in surgical and medical operations.(8)
Germany joined the technology race on May 25th when it announced its electrical weapon. As the Chicago Tribune reported:
Berlin - That the German Government has an invention of death rays that will bring down airplanes, halt tanks on the battlefields, ruin automobile motors, and spread a curtain of death like the gas clouds of the recent war was the information given to Reichstag members by Herr Wulle, chief of the militarists in that body. It is learned that three inventions have been perfected in Germany for the same purpose and have been patented.
Sensing something of importance the New York Times copyrighted its story of May 28th on a ray weapon developed by the Soviets. The story opened: "News has leaked out from the Communist circles in Moscow that behind Trotsky's recent war-like utterance lies an electromagnetic invention, by a Russian engineer named Grammachikoff for destroying airplanes."(9)
Tests of the destructive ray, the Times continued, had began the previous August with the aid of German technical experts. A large scale demonstration at Podosinsky Aerodome near Moscow was so successful that the revolutionary Military Council and the Political Bureau decided to fund enough electronic anti-aircraft stations to protect sensitive areas of Russia. Similar, but more powerful, stations were to be constructed to disable the electrical mechanisms of warships. The Commander of the Soviet Air Services, Rosenholtz, was so overwhelmed by the ray weapon demonstration that he proposed "to curtail the activity of the air fleet, because the invention rendered a large air fleet unnecessary for the purpose of defense."
An English engineer, J.H. Hamil, offered the American army plans for producing "an invisible ray capable of stopping airplanes and automobiles in midflight," invented by a German scientist. The ray device was said to have been used the previous summer to bring down French planes over Bavaria. Hamil noted, however, that "the fundamental work was done by Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs about 30 years ago. He built a powerful electrical coil. It was found that the dynamos and other electrical apparatus of a Colorado fuel company within a 100 yards or so were all put out of business.(10)
Hamil believed the Tesla coil scattered rays which short-circuited electrical machinery at close range. Laboratories all over the world, he added, were testing methods of stepping up the Tesla coil to produce its effects at greater distances. "Working on an entirely different principle," Hamil said, "the German scientist has succeeded in projecting and directing electrical power."
Those Colorado Springs tests carried out by Tesla were well remembered by local residents. With a 200 foot pole topped by a large copper sphere rising above his laboratory he generated potentials that discharged lightning bolts up to 135 feet long. Thunder from the released energy could be heard 15 miles away in Cripple Creek. People walking along the streets were amazed to see sparks jumping between their feet and the ground, and flames of electricity would spring from a tap when anyone turned them on for a drink of water. Light bulbs within 100 feet of the experimental tower glowed when they were turned off. Horses at the livery stable received shocks through their metal shoes and bolted from the stalls. Even insects were affected: Butterflies became electrified and "helplessly swirled in circles - their wings spouting blue halos of 'St. Elmo's Fire.'"(11)
The effect that captured the attention of foreign death ray inventors occurred at the Colorado Springs Electric Company powerhouse. One day while Tesla was conducting a high power test, the crackling from inside the laboratory suddenly stopped. Bursting into the lab Tesla demanded to know why his assistant had disconnected the coil. The assistant protested that had not done anything. The power from the city's generator, the assistant said, must have quit. When the angry Tesla telephoned the power company he received an equally angry reply that the power company had not cut the power, but that Tesla's experiment had destroyed the generator!
The inventor explained to The Electrical Experimenter, in August of 1917 what had happened.
As an example of what has been done with several hundred kilowatts of high frequency energy liberated, it was found that the dynamos in a power house six miles away were repeatedly burned out, due to the powerful high frequency currents set up in them, and which caused heavy sparks to jump thru the windings and destroy the insulation! The lightning arresters in the power house showed a stream of blue-white sparks passing between the metal plates to the earth connection.(12)
When questioned about the Ulivi ray that created so much comment a few years earlier, Tesla asserted, in the same interview, that "it was transplanted from this country to Italy." He saw it as simply a modification of his ultra-powerful high frequency coil tested in Colorado. With thousands of horsepower(13)of energy "it would become readily possible to detonate powder and munition magazines by means of the high frequency currents induced in every bit of metal, even when located five to six miles away or more."
With others attributing an energy weapons technology to Tesla's wireless power transmission research, his comments on the destructive capabilities of his system take on a great deal of importance. Writing tersely for Liberty magazine of February 1935 he stated:
My invention requires a large plant, but once it is established it will be 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.(14)
He went on to make a distinction between his invention and those brought forward by others. He claimed that his device did not use any so-called "death rays" because such radiation cannot be produced in large amounts and rapidly become weaker over distance. He likely was making reference to a Grindell-Matthews type of device that, according to contemporary reports, used a powerful ultra-violet beam to make the air conducting so that high energy current could be directed to the target. The range of an ultra-violet searchlight would be much less than what Tesla was claiming. As he put it: "all the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower [1.5 billion watts]) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, would not kill a human being."
Not wanting to give away a potentially valuable creation in an interview, he was intentionally opaque concerning the details of his design. He did clarify how his design differed from the ray type of devices. "My apparatus projects particles which may be 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 be thus transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist."
If Tesla's energy weapon cannot be called a "ray" device, but as one projecting microscopic particles, it would seem that it had to differ from the other designs in one of two ways. Either he was making the distinction between a beam of radiant energy, like a beam from a flashlight that has billions of energy carrying photons, and his own with all of its energy concentrated into a stream a single particle wide, or he was making a distinction about the size of the beam and the method it is used to reach the target.
In a Grindell-Matthews type of beam, the flashlight model, a huge number of high energy particles or photons would have to be sent out from the system so that a large enough area on the target would be covered to disable it. What Tesla seems to have intended was that his energy transmitter would set up a field of force around itself which, when penetrated, would release its energy directly to the target. The effect would be like sending a current of particles through a wire directly to the target. A large area on the target would not have to be "painted" by a beam, so the current reaching the intruder could be very thin and deliver a great deal of energy to a small area.
The Colorado tests that gave rise to the variety of "death ray" inventions in the U.S. and Europe may have lead to the development of a much more powerful weapon.
When Tesla realized that economic forces would not allow the development of a new type of electrical generator that would supply power without burning fuel he "was led to recognize [that] the transmission of electrical energy to any distance through the media as by far the best solution of the great problem of harnessing the sun's energy for the use of man."(15),(16)His idea was that a relatively few generating plants located near waterfalls would supply his very high energy transmitters which, in turn, would send power through the earth to be picked up wherever it was needed.
Receiving energy from this high pressure reservoir only would require a person to put a rod into the ground and connect it to a receiver operating in resonance with the electrical motion in the earth. As Tesla described in 1911, "The entire apparatus for lighting the average country dwelling will contain no moving parts whatever, and could be readily carried about in a small valise."(17)
The difference between a current used to "light the average country dwelling" and a current used as a method of destruction, however, is a matter of timing. If the amount of electricity used to run a television for an hour is released in a millionth of a second, it would have a very different, and negative, effect on the television.
Tesla said his transmitter could produce 100 million volts of pressure and currents up to 1000 amperes, with experimental power levels of billion or tens of billions of watts.(18)If that amount of power were released in "an incomparably small interval of time,"(19)the energy would be equal to the explosion of millions of tons of TNT, that is, a multi-megaton explosion. Such a transmitter would be capable of projecting the force of a nuclear warhead by radio. Any location in the world could be vaporized at the speed of light.
Not unexpectedly, many scientists doubted the technical feasibility of Tesla's wireless power transmission scheme whether for commercial or military purposes. Modern authorities in electronics, even those who express admiration for the Tesla's genius, believe he was mistaken in the interpretation of his experiments when it came to electrical transmission through the earth.(20),(21),(22)
On the other hand, statements from authoritative witnesses who saw Tesla's equipment in operation support his claim about transmission with something other than the radio waves known today. During the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the Westinghouse exhibit set up by Tesla was visited by the Herman von Helmholtz, the first director of the Physico-Technical Institute of Berlin and one of the leading scientists of his time.
When Tesla "asked the celebrated physicist for an expression of opinion on the feasibility of the [transmission] scheme. He stated unhesitatingly that it was practicable."(23) In 1897, Lord Kelvin visited New York and stopped at the Tesla laboratory where Tesla "entertained him with demonstrations in support of my wireless theory."
Suddenly [Kelvin] remarked with evident astonishment: 'Then you are not making use of Hertz waves?' 'Certainly not', I replied, 'these are radiations.' ... I can never forget the magic change that came over the illustrious philosopher the moment he freed himself from that erroneous impression. The skeptic who would not believe was suddenly transformed into the warmest of supporters. He parted from me not only thoroly convinced of the scientific soundness of the idea but strongly exprest his confidence in its success.(24)
A recent analysis of Tesla's wireless transmission method shows that he used an electrostatic transmission technique that did not radiate radio waves as we know them and could sent waves through the earth with little loss of power.(25)The question remains of whether Tesla demonstrated the weapons application of his power transmission system. Circumstantial evidence found in the chronology of Tesla's work and financial fortunes between 1900 and 1908 points to there having been a test of this weapon.
1900: Tesla returned to New York from Colorado Springs after completing the tests of wireless power transmission that destroyed the power company's generator. He received $150,000 from J.P. Morgan to build a transmitter to signal Europe. With the first portion of the money he obtained 200 acres of land at Shoreham, Long Island and built an 187 foot tall tower with a steel shaft running 120 feet into the ground. This tower was topped with a 55 ton, 68 foot diameter metal dome. He called the research site "Wardenclyffe" and envisioned 2000 people eventually working at his global communications center.
A stock offering is made by the Marconi company. Supporters of the Marconi Company include his old adversary Edison and one-time associate Michael Pupin. Investors rushed to buy the Marconi shares. On December 12th, Marconi sent the first transatlantic signal, the letter "S," from Cornwall, England to Newfoundland, Canada. He did this with, as the financiers noted, equipment much less costly than that being built by Tesla.
1902: The Wardenclyffe transmitter nears completion. Marconi is hailed as a hero around the world while Tesla is seen as a shirker by the public for ignoring a call to jury duty in a murder case (he was excused from duty because of his opposition to the death penalty).
1903: When Morgan sent the balance of the $150,000, it would not cover the outstanding balance Tesla owed on the Wardenclyffe construction. To encourage a larger investment in the face of Marconi's success, Tesla revealed to Morgan his real purpose was not to just send radio signals but the wireless transmission of power to any point on the planet. Morgan was uninterested and declined to provide further funding.
A financial panic that Fall put an end to Tesla's hopes for financing by Morgan or other wealthy industrialists. This left Tesla without money even to buy the coal to fire the transmitter's electrical generators.
1904 - 1906: Tesla writes for the Electrical World, "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires," noting that the globe, even with its great size, responds to electrical currents like a small metal ball.
Tesla declares to the press the completion of Wardenclyffe. Marconi is hailed as a world hero.
Tesla subject to multiple law suits over unpaid Colorado Springs expenses. George Westinghouse, who bought Tesla's patents for alternating current motors and generators in the 1880's, turns down the inventor's power transmission business proposal. Workers gradually stop coming to the Wardenclyffe laboratory when there are no funds to pay them. In an article, Tesla comments on Peary's expedition to the North Pole and tells of his, Tesla's, plans for energy transmission to any central point on the ground.
1907: When commenting on the destruction of the French ship Iena, Tesla noted in a letter to the New York Times that he has built and tested dirigible torpedoes (remotely controlled torpedoes), but that electrical waves would be more destructive. "As to projecting wave energy to any particular region of the globe ... this can be done by my devices," he wrote. Further, he claimed that "the spot at which the desired effect is to be produced can be calculated very closely, assuming the accepted terrestrial measurements to be correct."(26)
1908: Tesla repeated the idea of destruction by electrical waves to the newspaper on April 21st. His letter to the editor stated, "When I spoke of future warfare I meant that it should be conducted by direct application of electrical waves without the use of aerial engines or other implements of destruction." He added: "This is not a dream. Even now wireless power plants could be constructed by which any region of the globe might be rendered uninhabitable without subjecting the population of other parts to serious danger or inconvenience."(27)
In the period from 1900 to 1910 Tesla's creative thrust was to establish his plan for wireless transmission of energy. Undercut by Marconi's accomplishment, beset by financial problems, and spurned by the scientific establishment, Tesla was in a desperate situation by mid-decade. The strain became too great by 1906-1907 and, according to Tesla biographers, he suffered an emotional collapse.(28),(29)In order to make a final effort to have his grand scheme recognized, he may have tried one high power test of his transmitter to show off its destructive potential. This would have been in 1908.
The Tunguska event took place on the morning of June 30th, 1908. An explosion estimated to be equivalent to 10-15 megatons of TNT flattened 500,000 acres of pine forest near the Stony Tunguska River in central Siberia. Whole herds of reindeer were destroyed. Several nomadic villages were reported to have vanished. The explosion was heard over a radius of 620 miles. When an expedition was made to the area in 1927 to find evidence of the meteorite presumed to have caused the blast, no impact crater was found. When the ground was drilled for pieces of nickel, iron, or stone, the main constituents of meteorites, none were found down to a depth of 118 feet.
Several explanations have been given for the Tunguska event. The officially accepted version is that a 100,000 ton fragment of Encke's Comet, composed mainly of dust and ice, entered the atmosphere at 62,000 mph, heated up, and exploded over the earth's surface creating a fireball and shock wave but no crater. Alternative explanations of the disaster include a renegade mini-black hole or an alien space ship crashing into the earth with the resulting release of energy.
Associating Tesla with the Tunguska event comes close to putting the inventor's power transmission idea in the same speculative category as ancient astronauts. However, historical facts point to the possibility that this event was caused by a test firing of Tesla's energy weapon.
In 1907 and 1908, Tesla wrote about the destructive effects of his energy transmitter. His Wardenclyffe facility was much larger than the Colorado Springs device that destroyed the power station's generator. Then, in 1915, he stated bluntly:
It is perfectly practical to transmit electrical energy without wires and produce destructive effects at a distance. I have already constructed a wireless transmitter which makes this possible. ... But when unavoidable [it] may be used to destroy property and life. The art is already so far developed that the great destructive effects can be produced at any point on the globe, defined beforehand with great accuracy (emphasis added).(30) Nikola Tesla, 1915
He seems to confess to such a test having taken place before 1915, and, though the evidence is circumstantial, Tesla had the motive and the means to cause the Tunguska event. His transmitter could generate energy levels and frequencies capable of releasing the destructive force of 10 megatons, or more, of TNT. And the overlooked genius was desperate.
The nature of the Tunguska event, also, is consistent with what would happen during the sudden release of wireless power. No fiery object was reported in the skies at that time by professional or amateur astronomers as would be expected when a 200,000,000 pound object enters the atmosphere at tens of thousands miles an hour. Also, the first reporters, from the town of Tomsk, to reach the area judged the stories about a body falling from the sky was the result of the imagination of an impressionable people. He noted there was considerable noise coming from the explosion, but no stones fell. The absence of an impact crater can be explained by there having been no material body to impact. An explosion caused by broadcast power would not leave a crater.
In contrast to the ice comet collision theory, reports of upper atmosphere and magnetic disturbances coming from other parts of the world at the time of and just after the Tunguska event point to massive changes in earth's electrical condition. Baxter and Atkins cite in their study of the explosion, The Fire Came By, that the Times of London editorialized about "slight, but plainly marked, disturbances of ... magnets," which the writer, not knowing then of the explosion, associated with solar prominences.(31)
In Berlin, the New York Times of July 3rd reported unusual colors in the evening skies thought to be Northern Lights: "Remarkable lights were observed in the northern heavens ... bright diffused white and yellow illumination continuing through the night until it disappears at dawn."(32) Massive glowing "silvery clouds" covered Siberia and northern Europe. A scientist in Holland told of an "undulating mass" moving across the northwest horizon. It seemed to him not to be a cloud, but the "sky itself seemed to undulate." A woman north of London wrote the London Times that on midnight of July 1st the sky glowed so brightly it was possible to read large print inside her house. A meteorological observer in England recounted on the nights of June 30th and July 1st:
A strong orange yellow light became visible in the north and northeast... causing an undue prolongation of twilight lasting to daybreak on July 1st...There was a complete absence of scintillation or flickering, and no tendency for the formation of streamers, or a luminous arch, characteristic of auroral phenomena...Twilight on both of these night was prolonged to daybreak, and there was no real darkness.(33)
The report that most closely ties these strange cosmic happenings with Tesla's power transmission scheme is that while the sky was aglow with this eerie light it was possible to clearly see ships at sea for miles in the middle of the night.(34)Tesla specifically claimed this as one of the effects he could achieve with his high power transmitter. Of particular importance is that none of his claims for lighting the ocean appeared before 1908.(35)
A typical statement about the light induced by his transmitter is this from the New York Americanof December 7th, 1914:
The lighting of the ocean ... is only one of the less important results to be achieved by the use of this invention [the transmitter]. I have planned many of the details of a plant which might be erected at the Azores and which would be amply sufficient to illuminate the entire ocean so that such a disaster as that of the Titanic would not be repeated. The light would be soft and of very small intensity, but quite adequate to the purpose.(36) Nikola Tesla, 1914
When Tesla used his high power transmitter as a directed energy weapon he drastically altered the normal electrical condition of the earth. By making the electrical charge of the planet vibrate in tune with his transmitter he was able to build up electric fields that effected compasses and caused the upper atmosphere to behave like the gas filled lamps in his laboratory. He had turned the entire globe into a simple electrical component that he could control.
Given Tesla's general pacifistic nature it is hard to understand why he would carry out a test harmful to both animals and the people who herded the animals even when he was in the grip of financial desperation. The answer is that he probably intended no harm, but was aiming for a publicity coup and, literally, missed his target.
At the end of 1908, the whole world was following the daring attempt of Peary to reach the North Pole which he claimed in the Spring of 1909. If Tesla wanted the attention of the international press, few things would have been more impressive than the Peary expedition sending out word of a cataclysmic explosion on the ice near or at the North Pole.(37) Tesla, then, if he could not be hailed as the master creator that he was, could be seen as the master of a mysterious new force of destruction.
The test, it seems, was not a complete success. It must have been difficult controlling the vast amount of power in transmitter to the exact spot Tesla intended. The North Pole lies close to a great circle line connecting Shoreham, Long Island and the Tunguska region. That path passes close by Alert on Ellesmere Island where Peary spent the winter.(38) The uninhabited region between Alert and the North Pole might have been the intended target for a test firing of the wireless transmission system. However, "the accepted terrestrial measurements" of that day were not precise enough for the task. The destructive electrical wave overshot its target.
Whoever was privy to Tesla's energy weapon demonstration must have been dismayed either because it missed the intended target and would be a threat to inhabited regions of the planet, or because it worked too well in devastating such a large area at the mere throwing of a switch thousands of miles away. Whatever was the case, Tesla never received the notoriety he sought for his power transmitter.
The evidence is only circumstantial. Perhaps Tesla never did achieve wireless power transmission through the earth. Maybe he made a mistake in interpreting the results of his radio tests in Colorado Springs and really saw a low frequency phenomenon, Schumann oscillations, and not an effect engineers believe a scientific impossibility. Perhaps the mental stress he suffered caused him to retreat into a fantasy world from which he would send out preposterous claims to reporters who gathered for his yearly pronouncements on his birthday. Maybe the atomic bomb size explosion in Siberia near the turn of the century was the result of a meteorite nobody saw fall.
Or, perhaps, Nikola Tesla did shake the world in a way that has been kept secret for over 85 years.
Notes
1. New York Times, "Wireless Caused Iena Disaster?", Mar. 19, 1907, p. 4, col. 4.
2. New York Times, "Signor Ulivi First Blew Up Gas Meter," Nov. 2, 1913, III, p. 4, col. 5.
3. New York Times, "Tells Death Power of 'Diabolical Rays'," May 21, 1924, pg.1.
4. Note 3.
5. Popular Mechanics, "'Death Ray' Is Carried by Shafts of Light," Aug. 1924, pgs. 189-192.
6. Current Opinion, "A Violet Ray That Kills," June 1924, pgs. 828-829.
7. Note 6.
8. New York Times, "Second British Inventor Reveals a Death Ray," May 25, 1924, p. 1, col. 2.
9. New York Times, "Suggests Russia Has A 'Ray'," May 28, 1924, pg. 25.
10. Colorado Springs Gazette, "Tesla Discovered 'Death Ray' In Experiments Made Here," May 30, 1924, pg. 1.
11. Goldman, Harry L., "Nikola Tesla's Bold Adventure," The American West, Mar. 1971, pgs. 4-9; Reprinted by Nick Basura, 3414 Alice St., Los Angeles, Ca. 90065, 1974.
12. Tesla, Nikola, "Famous Scientific Illusions," Electrical Experimenter, Feb. 1919, pgs. 692f.
13. One horsepower equals 745.7 watts.
14. Tesla, Nikola, "A Machine to End War," as told to George Sylvester Viereck, Liberty, Feb. 1935, p. 5-7.
15. Tesla, Nikola, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy - Through Use of the Sun's Energy," The Century Illustrated Magazine, reprinted in Lectures, Patents, and Articles, Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade, 1956; reprinted by Health Research (Mokelumme Hill, Calif., 95245), 1973, pg. A-143.
16. Nichelson, Oliver, "Nikola Tesla's Later Energy Generation Designs," IECEC, 1991.
17. American Examiner, Copyright 1911, no date, no pg.
18. Tesla, Nikola, New York Times, "How to Signal Mars," May 23, 1909, pg. 10. He claims to have sent "a current around the globe " on the order of "15,000,000" horsepower or 11 billion watts.
19. Secor, H. Winfield, "The Tesla High Frequency Oscillator," The Electrical Experimenter, March 1916, pg. 615.
20. Wait, James R., "Propagation of ELF Electromagnetic Waves and Project Sanguine/Seafarer," IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, vol. OE-2, no. 2, April 1977, pgs. 161-172.
21. Marinic, Aleksandar, Nikola Tesla, Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900, Nikola Tesla Museum, Published by Nolit, Beograd, Yugoslavia, pg.19.
22. Corum, James F., and Corum, Kenneth L., "Disclosures Concerning the Operation of an ELF Oscillator," Tesla '84: Proceedings of the Tesla Centennial Symposium, Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher and Mr. Toby Grotz, editors, International Tesla Society, Inc., Colorado Springs, 1985, pgs. 41-49.
23. Tesla, Nikola, "Famous Scientific Illusions," Electrical Experimenter, Feb. 1919, pg. 732.
24. Note 22.
25. Nichelson, Oliver, "Tesla's Wireless Transmission Method," 1992.
26. Tesla, Nikola, "Tesla's Wireless Torpedo," New York Times, Mar. 20, 1907, pg. 8.
27. Tesla, Nikola, New York Times, "Mr. Tesla's Vision," April 21, 1908, pg. 5.
28. Seifer, Marc J., "Nikola Tesla: The Lost Wizard," Tesla '84: Proceedings of the Tesla Centennial Symposium, op. cit., pgs. 31-40. Seifer, a psychologist, believes Tesla suffered a nervous breakdown catalyzed by the death of one the partners in the Tesla Electric Company and the shooting of Stanford White, the noted architect, who had designed Wardenclyffe. Seifer places this in 1906 and cites as evidence a letter from George Scherff, Tesla's secretary:
Wardenclyffe, 4/10/1906
Dear Mr. Tesla:
I have received your letter and am glad to know you are vanquishing
your illness. I have scarcely ever seen you so out of sorts
as last Sunday; and I was frightened.
29. Cheney, Margaret, Tesla: Man out of Time, Dell Publishing Co., N.Y., 1983, pg. 187. Cheney sees a mental change taking place about 1907. Having lost most of his money and many of his friends and seeing less talented people praised for achievements based on his inventions "exerted a corrosive and lasting effect on his personality."
30. Tesla, Nikola, "Tesla's New Device Like Bolts of Thor," New York Times, Dec. 8, 1915, pg. 8.
31. Baxter, John and Atkins, Thomas, The Fire Came By, Warner Books, N.Y., 1977, pg. 27.
32. Note 30, pg. 26.
33. Spenser Russell quoted in Baxter and Atkins, The Fire Came By, page 28, from the Royal Meteorological Society Quarterly, 1930.
34. Note 30.
35. The earliest mention of lighting the ocean appears to have been in 1911 in a N.Y. American article (Sept. 3rd by Marcel Roland). Ratzlaff, John and Anderson, Leland, Dr. Nikola Tesla Bibliography, Ragusan Press, 1979, pg. 93.
36. New York American, "Tesla Light to Rob Oceans of Every Danger," Dec. 7, 1914, no pg.
37. Tesla suggested a similar test of his power transmission system aimed at the moon where everyone could see "the splash and volitization of matter." See note 19, pg. 255.
38. Bayshore, L.I. is at 40 N 43, 73 W 13; Alert, Canada (Ellesmere Island) 82 N 31, 62 W 05, and Tunguska at 60 N 55, 101 E 57.
Oliver Nichelson
333 North 760 East
American Fork, Utah 84003
© Copyright 1995; used by permission.
As we began...so shall we end. A few Quotes from Nikola Tesla:
" The last 29 days of the month [are] the toughest "
— Nikola Tesla
" I have fame and untold wealth, more than this, and yet, how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccessful man, and how many poor, struggling writers have called me a visionary. Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world! "
— Nikola Tesla
" Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally.
In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device.
Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.
The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way. "
— Nikola Tesla
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Wireless power system shown off
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8165928.stm
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Wireless power system shown off
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
Electric tech could make plugs obsolete
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.
The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.
Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.
He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.
"There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power," he said.
Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires "to get power from where it is created to where it is used."
"We love this stuff [electricity] so much," he said.
Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system.
Witricity, he said, had managed to pack all the necessary components into the body of the G1 phone, but Apple had made that process slightly harder.
"They don't make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones so we put a little sleeve on the back," he said.
He also showed off a commercially available television using the system.
"Imagine you get one of these things and you want to hang it on the wall," he said. "Think about it, you don't want those ugly cords hanging down."
Good vibrations
The system is based on work by physicist Marin Soljacic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
It exploits "resonance", whereby energy transfer is markedly more efficient when a certain frequency is applied.
When two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy strongly without having an effect on other, surrounding objects.
For example, it is resonance that can cause a wine glass to explode when a singer hits exactly the right tone.
But instead of using acoustic resonance, Witricity's approach exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.
The system uses two coils - one plugged into the mains and the other embedded or attached to the gadget.
Each coil is carefully engineered with the same resonant frequency. When the main coil is connected to an electricity supply, the magnetic field it produces is resonant with that of with the second coil, allowing "tails" of energy to flow between them.
As each "cycle" of energy arrives at the second coil, a voltage begins to build up that can be used to charge the gadget.
Mr Giler said the main coil could be embedded in the "ceiling, in the floor, or underneath your desktop".
Devices using the system would automatically begin to charge as soon as they were within range, he said.
"You'd never have to worry about plugging these things in again."
Safety concerns
Mr Giler was keen to stress the safety of the equipment during the demonstration.
"There's nothing going on - I'm OK," he said walking around a television running on wireless power.
The system is able to operate safely because the energy is largely transferred through magnetic fields.
"Humans and the vast majority of objects around us are non-magnetic in nature," Professor Soljacic, one of the inventors of the system, told BBC News during a visit to Witricity earlier this year.
It is able to do this by exploiting an effect that occurs in a region known as the "far field", the region seen at a distance of more than one wavelength from the device.
In this field, a transmitter would emit mixture of magnetic and potentially dangerous electric fields.
But, crucially, at a distance of less than one wavelength - the "near field" - it is almost entirely magnetic.
Hence, Witricity uses low frequency electromagnetic waves, whose waves are about 30m (100ft) long. Shorter wavelengths would not work.
'Ridiculous technology'
Witricity is not the first jump on the concept of wireless electricity.
For example, the nineteenth century American inventor Thomas Edison and physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla explored the concept.
"In the very early days of electricity before the electric grid was deployed [they] were very interested in developing a scheme to transmit electricity wirelessly over long distances," explained Professor Soljacic.
"They couldn't imagine dragging this vast infrastructure of metallic wires across every continent."
Tesla even went so far as to build a 29m-high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower in New York.
"It ran into some financial troubles and that work was never completed," said Professor Soljacic.
Today, chip-giant Intel has seized on a similar idea to Witricity's, whilst other companies work on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer, such as lasers.
However, unlike Witricity's work, lasers require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.
In contrast, Mr Giler said Witricity's approach could be used for a range of applications from laptops and phones to implanted medical devices and electric cars.
"Imagine driving in the garage and the car charges itself," he said.
He even said he had had interest from a company who proposed to use the system for an "electrically-heated dog bowl".
"You go from the sublime to the ridiculous," he said.
Ted Global is a conference dedicated to "ideas worth spreading". It runs from the 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.
HOW WIRELESS POWER WORKS
1. Magnetic coil (Antenna A) is housed in a box and can be set in wall or ceiling.
2. Antenna A, powered by mains, resonates at a specific frequency.
3. Electromagnetic waves transmitted through the air.
4. Second magnetic coil (Antenna B) fitted in laptop/TV etc resonates at same frequency as first coil and absorbs energy.
5. Energy charges the device.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Wireless power system shown off
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
Electric tech could make plugs obsolete
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference.
The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices over many metres.
Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford.
He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.
"There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power," he said.
Trillions of dollars, he said, had also been invested building an infrastructure of wires "to get power from where it is created to where it is used."
"We love this stuff [electricity] so much," he said.
Mr Giler showed off a Google G1 phone and an Apple iPhone that could be charged using the system.
Witricity, he said, had managed to pack all the necessary components into the body of the G1 phone, but Apple had made that process slightly harder.
"They don't make it easy at Apple to get inside their phones so we put a little sleeve on the back," he said.
He also showed off a commercially available television using the system.
"Imagine you get one of these things and you want to hang it on the wall," he said. "Think about it, you don't want those ugly cords hanging down."
Good vibrations
The system is based on work by physicist Marin Soljacic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
It exploits "resonance", whereby energy transfer is markedly more efficient when a certain frequency is applied.
When two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy strongly without having an effect on other, surrounding objects.
For example, it is resonance that can cause a wine glass to explode when a singer hits exactly the right tone.
But instead of using acoustic resonance, Witricity's approach exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.
The system uses two coils - one plugged into the mains and the other embedded or attached to the gadget.
Each coil is carefully engineered with the same resonant frequency. When the main coil is connected to an electricity supply, the magnetic field it produces is resonant with that of with the second coil, allowing "tails" of energy to flow between them.
As each "cycle" of energy arrives at the second coil, a voltage begins to build up that can be used to charge the gadget.
Mr Giler said the main coil could be embedded in the "ceiling, in the floor, or underneath your desktop".
Devices using the system would automatically begin to charge as soon as they were within range, he said.
"You'd never have to worry about plugging these things in again."
Safety concerns
Mr Giler was keen to stress the safety of the equipment during the demonstration.
"There's nothing going on - I'm OK," he said walking around a television running on wireless power.
The system is able to operate safely because the energy is largely transferred through magnetic fields.
"Humans and the vast majority of objects around us are non-magnetic in nature," Professor Soljacic, one of the inventors of the system, told BBC News during a visit to Witricity earlier this year.
It is able to do this by exploiting an effect that occurs in a region known as the "far field", the region seen at a distance of more than one wavelength from the device.
In this field, a transmitter would emit mixture of magnetic and potentially dangerous electric fields.
But, crucially, at a distance of less than one wavelength - the "near field" - it is almost entirely magnetic.
Hence, Witricity uses low frequency electromagnetic waves, whose waves are about 30m (100ft) long. Shorter wavelengths would not work.
'Ridiculous technology'
Witricity is not the first jump on the concept of wireless electricity.
For example, the nineteenth century American inventor Thomas Edison and physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla explored the concept.
"In the very early days of electricity before the electric grid was deployed [they] were very interested in developing a scheme to transmit electricity wirelessly over long distances," explained Professor Soljacic.
"They couldn't imagine dragging this vast infrastructure of metallic wires across every continent."
Tesla even went so far as to build a 29m-high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower in New York.
"It ran into some financial troubles and that work was never completed," said Professor Soljacic.
Today, chip-giant Intel has seized on a similar idea to Witricity's, whilst other companies work on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer, such as lasers.
However, unlike Witricity's work, lasers require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.
In contrast, Mr Giler said Witricity's approach could be used for a range of applications from laptops and phones to implanted medical devices and electric cars.
"Imagine driving in the garage and the car charges itself," he said.
He even said he had had interest from a company who proposed to use the system for an "electrically-heated dog bowl".
"You go from the sublime to the ridiculous," he said.
Ted Global is a conference dedicated to "ideas worth spreading". It runs from the 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.
HOW WIRELESS POWER WORKS
1. Magnetic coil (Antenna A) is housed in a box and can be set in wall or ceiling.
2. Antenna A, powered by mains, resonates at a specific frequency.
3. Electromagnetic waves transmitted through the air.
4. Second magnetic coil (Antenna B) fitted in laptop/TV etc resonates at same frequency as first coil and absorbs energy.
5. Energy charges the device.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Nikola Tesla still alive after death
http://www.examiner.com/x-11705-NY-Holistic-Body--Spirit-Examiner~y2009m7d15-Nikola-Tesla-still-alive-after-deathNikola Tesla still alive after death
July 15, 2009
Nikola Tesla is the man responsible for every form of modern technology we have available to us today. There would be no Twittering, Googling, BlackBerrys, cell phones, satellites in space, airplanes, x-rays, or physics as we know it.
Did anyone remember Nikola Tesla on his birthday?
Nicolas Tesla was born on July 9th, 1856 at Midnight.
One man certainly remembered Nikola Tesla this week, Dr. Ljubo Vujovic. Dr. Vujovic is nominated this year to receive the American Biographical Institute, Inc. Award: "2009 Man Of The Year in Education" for his work as President and Editor of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York Website which is the main source of information about the famous inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla and other world figures in history.
It’s fascinating that Tesla has more notoriety for the lack of attribution given him than all his works combined. Though great efforts have been made by scholars all over the world, to finally recognize the genius and contributions of this great man, there still remains an air of mystery surrounding his life and works.
Many consider it was the most obvious of reasons: that his inventions were too progressive for the technical resources available and also too far advanced for humanity’s collective psyche at the time. Most theories point to his lack of business sense and a combination of his failed project with J.P. Morgan while building the "The Tower of Dreams,” a World Broadcasting Tower in Long Island that would have broadcast telephone messages across the ocean; broadcast news, music, stock market reports, private messages, secure military communications, and even pictures to any part of the world, had funding not ran out or other more insidious circumstances prevailed at the end.
Tesla told Morgan, "When wireless is fully applied, the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts."
Tesla obviously predicted the WWW and our computers. In 1937, he said, “At this very moment scientists working in the laboratories of American universities are attempting to create what has been described as a "thinking machine." I anticipated this development.”
He also invented our wireless boxes at the turn of the century.
Teleautomaton
The Teleautomaton, was a device Tesla invented in the 1890’s. It has a spooky resemblance to our wireless boxes atop our cable connections that make it possible for us to sit in Starbucks and drink coffee, type on our laptops, talk on our cell phones, fly our airplanes, watch our reality TV, and listen to our radios while waiting in traffic.
The Teleautomaton was simply an apparatus with Tesla coils. These coils, in the initial experiment were inserted into a boat and tuned to resonate with other coils located on shore. By tuning the coils, an operator on shore could remotely control the boat.
His resonance experiments at one point got a little out of hand even here in New York.
"In his lab at 46 E. Houston Street, while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators, he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings but, due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to apply a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived. (Wikipedia: O'Neill, "Prodigal Genius" pp 162-164).
It was probably experiments like those that got Tesla branded as a mad scientist. He has been accredited with experiments in time-travel, alien communication, and machines that record thought among many others. His later experiments, accessing “free energy” most likely got him in even more disfavor. Generally, not being able to “bill” energy, doesn’t go over too well with the “the powers that be.”
We tend to attribute “genius” to spiritual force or a gift from the Divine Spirit. Though Tesla had no gripe with religion; he said, “Religion gave man “ideals” that give significance to his life and most importantly promoted “good conduct,” he surprisingly (though associated with occult activities and so forth), had purely mechanistic views of mankind.
“To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is barn. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call "soul” or "spirit," is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the "soul" or the "spirit" ceases likewise.” (Source)
Most of us consider Tesla a visionary before his time; but surprisingly Tesla says in his own words:
“My enemies have been so successful in portraying me as a poet and a visionary," said Tesla, "that I must put out something commercial without delay." (Source)
Was he joking? Was he truly a pure scientist? Would his experiments eventually lead him to harnessing spiritual force? Would Tesla have found the “God” particle?
The bottom-line is Tesla certainly bridged the gap between science and spirit; whether he acknowledged this or not.
Maybe he didn’t believe in life-after-death, but his inventions surely have kept him very much alive-after-death.
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