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The 2003 Nikola Tesla Energy Science Conference and Exposition

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Electrician - London
Dec. 17, 1892, p. 391.

THE EWING HIGH-FREQUENCY ALTERNATOR AND PARSONS STEAM ENGINE

In your issue of November 18 I find a description of Prof. Ewing's high-frequency alternator, which has pleased me chiefly because it conveyed to me the knowledge that he, and with him, no doubt, other scientific men, is to investigate the properties of high-frequency currents. With apparatus such as you describe, shortly a number of experimenters, more competent than myself, will be enabled to go over the ground as yet but imperfectly explored, which will undoubtedly result in the observation of novel facts and elimination of eventual errors.

I hope it will not be interpreted as my wishing to detract anything from Prof. Ewing's merit if I state the fact that for a considerable time past I have likewise thought of combining the identical steam turbine with a high-frequency alternator. Anch' io sono pittore. I had a number of designs with such turbines, and would have certainly carried them out had the turbines been here easily and cheaply obtainable, and had my attention not been drawn in a different direction. As to the combination to which you give a rather complicated name, I consider it an excellent one. The advantages of using a high speed are especially great in connection with such alternators. When a belt is used to drive, one must resort to extraordinarily large diameters in order to obtain the necessary speed, and this increases the difficulties and cost of construction in an entirely unreasonable proportion. In the machine used in my recent experiments the weight of the active parts is less than SO pounds, but there is an additional weight of over 100 pounds in the supporting frame, which a very careful constructor would have probably made much heavier. When running at its maximum speed, and with a proper capacity in the armature circuit, two and a one-half horse-power can be performed. The large diameter (30 inches), of course, has the advantage of affording better facility for radiation; but, on the ether hand, it is impossible to work with a very small clearance.

I have observed with interest that Prof. Ewing has used a magnet with alternating cores. In my first trials I expected to obtain the best results with a machine of the Mordey type - that is, with one having pole projections of the same polarity. My idea was to energize the field up to the point of the maximum permeability of the iron and vary the induction around that point. But I found that with a very great number of pole projections such a machine would not give good results, although with few projections, and with an armature without iron, as used by Mordey, the results obtained were excellent. Many experiences of similar nature made in the course of my study demonstrate that the ordinary rules for the magnetic circuit do not hold good with high frequency currents. In ponderable matter magnetic permeability, and also specific inductive capacity, must undergo considerable change when the frequency is varied within wide limits. This would render very difficult the exact determination of the energy dissipated in iron cores by very rapid cycles of magnetization, and of that in conductors and condensers, by very quick reversals of current. Much valuable work remains to be done in these fields, in which it is so easy to observe novel phenomena, but so difficult to make quantitative determinations. The results of Prof. Ewing's systematical research will be awaited with great interest.

It is gratifying to note from his tests that the turbines are being rapidly improved. Though I am aware that the majority of engineers do not favor their adoption. I do not hesitate to say that I believe in their success. I think their principle uses, in no distant future, will be in connection with alternate current motors, by means of which it is easy to obtain a constant and, in any desired ratio, reduced speed. There are objections to their employment for driving direct current generators, as the commutators must be a source of some loss and trouble, on account of the very great speed; but with an alternator there is no objectionable feature whatever. No matter how much one may be opposed to the introduction of the turbine, he must have watched with surprise the development of this curious branch of the industry, in which Mr. Parsons has been a pioneer, and everyone must wish him the success which his skill has deserved.

Nikola Tesla


The Electrical Engineer - London
Dec. 24, 1909, p. 893

NIKOLA TESLA'S NEW WIRELESS

Mr. Nikola Tesla has announced that as the result of experiments conducted at Shoreham, Long Island, he has perfected a new system of wireless telegraphy and telephony in which the principles of transmission are the direct opposite of Hertzian wave transmission. In the latter, he says, the transmission is effected by rays akin to light, which pass through the air and cannot be transmitted through the ground, while in the former the Hertz waves are practically suppressed and the entire energy of the current is transmitted through the ground exactly as though a big wire. Mr. Tesla adds that in his experiments in Colorado it was shown that a very powerful current developed by the transmitter traversed the entire globe and returned to its origin in an interval of 84 one-thousandths of a second, this journey of 24,000 miles being effected almost without any loss of energy.


New York Times
Dec. 8, 1915, p. 8, colt 3

TESLA'S NEW DEVICE LIKE BOLTS OF THOR

He Seeks to Patent Wireless Engine for Destroying Navies by Pulling a Lever.

To Shatter Armies Also.

"Impractical," He Says of Westerner's Plan to Circle Country with Electric Fire.

Nikola Tesla, the inventor, winner of the 1915 Nobel Physics Prize, has filed patent applications on the essential parts of a machine the possibilities of which test a layman's imagination and promise a parallel of Thor's shouting thunderbolts from the sky to punish those who had angered the gods. Dr. Tesla insists there is nothing sensational about it, that it is but the fruition of many years of work and study. He is not yet ready to give the details of the engine which he says will render fruitless any military expedition against a country which possesses it. Suffice to say that the destructive invention will go through space with a speed of 300 miles a second, a manless airship without propelling engine or wings, sent by electricity to any desired point on the globe on its errand of destruction, if destruction its manipulator wishes to effect.

Ten miles or a thousand miles, it will be all the same to the machine, the inventor says. Straight to the point, on land or on sea, it will be able to go with precision, delivering a blow that will paralyze or kill, as is desired. A man in a tower on Long Island could shield New York against ships or army by working a lever, if the inventor's anticipations become realizations.

"It is not the time," said Dr. Tesla yesterday, "to go into the details of this thing. It is founded on a principle that means great things in peace, it can be used for great things in war. But I repeat, this is no time to talk of such things.

"It is perfectly practicable to transmit electrical energy without wires and produce destructive effects at a distance. I have already constructed a wireless transmitter which makes this possible, and have described it in my technical publications, among which I may refer to my patent 1,119,732 recently granted. With transmitters of this kind we are enabled to project electrical energy in any amount to any distance and apply it for innumerable purposes, both in peace and war. Through the universal adoption of this system, ideal conditions for the maintenance of law and order will be realized, for then the energy necessary to the enforcement of right and justice will be normally productive, yet potential, and in any moment available, for attack and defense. The power transmitted need not be necessarily destructive, for, if existence is made to depend upon it, its withdrawal or supply will bring about the same results as those now accomplished by force of arms.

Dr. Tesla then said that it would be possible with his wireless mechanism to direct an ordinary aeroplane, manless, to any point over a ship or an army, and to discharge explosives of great strength from the base of operations.

Asked to express an opinion upon the announcement last Sunday of Charles H. Harris, an electrical engineer of Los Angeles, that he would be able to surround this country with an electrical wall of fire in time of war, Dr. Tesla gave it as his opinion that Mr. Harris was not practical.

"It is hard to stamp as impossible such results as those described in the press dispatches to which you refer. Granted, however, that the project is feasible, it would take more than all the motive power obtainable in the United States to throw a wall of fire around the country. In fact, even the passage of small currents at considerable distances through air consumes a great deal of energy on account of the immense pressure required. So, for instance, in lightning discharges, energy may be delivered at the rate of billions of horsepower, though the currents are of smaller volume than those developed by electrical generators in our power houses."


Electrical Experimenter
April, 1919, pp. 909, 914

TESLA ON HIGH FREQUENCY GENERATORS.

Editor, Electrical Experimenter:

It is to be regretted that a letter address to me by Mr. J. Harris Rogers, in your care, was published in the March number of the Electrical Experimenter, although the concurrence of our views in some wireless features might have made this desirable to so wide-awake and enterprising a periodical as yours.

Mr. Rogers seems to be a very appreciative gentleman and nothing would be farther from my thoughts than to detract anything from his merit, but in a separate contribution, which I expect to prepare for your next issue, I shall express myself on this subject without prejudice and in the interest of truth. However, the article by your Mr. H. Winfield Secor on "America's Greatest War Invention--The Rogers Underground Wireless" contains a reference to "a novel and original high frequency generator" of Mr. Rogers' invention. May I not--to use the President's elegant expression-- call attention to the fact that this device was described by me years ago, as will be evident from the following excerpt of a communication which appeared in the Electrical Review of March 15, 1899. In speaking of circuit controllers, I said: "I may mention here, based on a different principle, which is incomparably more effective, more efficient, and also simpler on the whole. It comprises a fine stream of conducting fluid which is made to issue, with any desired speed, from an orifice connected with one pole of a generator, through the primary of the induction coil, against the other terminal of the generator placed at a small distance. This device gives discharges of a remarkable suddenness, and the frequency may be brought within reasonable limits, almost to anything desired. I have used this device for a long time in connection with ordinary coils and in a form of my own coil with results greatly superior in every respect to those obtainable with the form of your letter, make a few statements referring in such make-and-break devices in general, and various forms based on this new principle."

I may add that a great many forms of this apparatus were constructed and employed by me for a long time, proving very convenient and useful. Water does not give particularly good results, being incapable of causing very abrupt changes, but eletrolytes have the property of diminishing enormously in resistance when they are heated and the effects are much more intense. Salts of lithium are especially efficient.

NIKOLA TESLA.

New York, February 20, 1919.


Albany Telegram
February 25, 1923

A GIANT EYE TO SEE ROUND THE WORLD

How Nikola Tesla's Newest Invention Is to Enable Us to See the Struggles of the Arctic Explorer, the Clash of Battles and the Fantastic Lives of Unknown Millions.

Think of it, a great mechanical eye, created of finest tempered steel, endowed with electric power and seeing to all parts of the earth' "Science, in the person of Nikola Tesla announces it as a realized achievement. It affords a fantastic picture, a superb imaginative flight for the mechanical orb will follow in principle the exquisite and flawless construction of the human eye.

Tesla, the creator, is a Nobel prize winner and the man who harnessed Niagara Falls. He describes his all-seeing eye as follows:

"My electrical eye comes as the result of years of study and experiment. Three stages mark its construction and the first two and most difficult have already been completed. I am certain that Man will soon possess this machine in completed form and will be able to see at will to any part of the earth. In planning its construction I have taken the human eye as a model and have followed the principles which nature used in developing the human eye. My mechanical eye will be one of a group of associated machines, just as the human eye is part of the body and can only function in cooperation with other parts of the body."

Recently wireless telephony became a fact from one side of the Atlantic to the other and soon man will be able to send his voice around the earth by wireless. The arrival of Tesla's mechanical eye will mean that the man in New York can see his business associate in Shanghai as he talks to him by wireless. The eye resting on a pivot, will be swung about and brought to bear on the explorer, fighting his way over the frozen wastes of the Arctic circle; the fiery interior of the earth will give up its secrets to the eye, and the battles of men will be revealed to all other men in their cruelty and savagery.

The eye will teach Man to understand Man. When you hear that your neighbor has been run over and injured by an automobile you express sympathy because you know him. The death of a famous film star touches the hearts of millions because they know him. But 50,000 men, women and children may starve to death in China, while newspaper readers in New York, Youngstown, Ohio, and Phoenix, Arizona, remain unmoved because the victims are only numbers. The advent of the all-seeing eye will change all that, Tesla believes. He has labored in the hope that the revealing of the secret places of the earth will unlock the secret places of the heart and help to bring mankind together in understanding and consideration.

To understand the mechanical eye and the work that has preceded it you must know something of Tesla. This tall, gaunt electrical wizard, who has made so many fantastic dreams come true, is as strange as some of his inventions.

He lives on one of the top floors of the St. Regis, one of New York's most exclusive hotels. There he has his workrooms, mysterious places never visited by outsiders. There the eye machine rests, waiting for the day, soon to come, when Tesla asserts he will vivify it and turn it over to his fellow-men for operation.

Tesla sleeps only two hours a night and eats only two very light meals a day.

Almost all his time and energy go into the creation of electrical
inventions. He has discovered and invented a system of arc lighting, a system of alternating current power transmission, the Tesla coil or transformer, a system of transmission of power without wires, a system of wireless telegraphy and numerous other modern wonders.

Tesla believes absolutely in his mechanical eye and its workability. In planning it he has patented the same methods that have turned out so successfully with other inventions; that is, he has worked out his machine in his mind to the last detail, without planning it on paper or by means of a model.

"As in the case of my other inventions," he explained, "there was a long period of incubation during which I turned over in my mind the idea of creating a mechanical eye. As I came to an obstruction, I would stop, put the idea away in my subconscious mind, and return to it later. Bit by bit ways of reaching the different steps of the solution were reached. They would flash suddenly from my subconscious mind, just as all my ideas for inventions have done.

"It stands to reason that man must create in time some means of seeing through substances and to any distances. He has annihilated distance in other ways and the creation of my eye will be just a part of the large plan for bringing mankind closer together."

It is interesting to note that at about the same time that Dr. Tesla announced his invention of the mechanical eye an electrical engineer in Pasadena, California, asserted that he was able to make metals, rocks, or any opaque material luminous by means of an electrical ray, the most powerful known to man. He made no claims that the ray would penetrate great distances into the earth, but the principle is very similar to the one on which Tesla is working.

The Tesla experiments on the giant mechanical eye are thought to date back to the days when he built his mystery tower and workhouse at Shoreham, Long Island, 60 miles from New York. The tower was constructed about 20 years ago. J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr., backing Tesla in the experiment.

The tower had a circular top and had shafts running 100 feet into the earth. Near it was an experimental station filled with strange machinery. For a long period Tesla visited the station each day and had a small army of workmen at his beck and call. It was whispered that he was struggling with the problem of interplanetary communication, among other things.

This was not verified, however, and scientists and the general public could only guess the reason for the mystery tower. Then Tesla and his workmen departed one day as suddenly as they had come. A watchman stood guard over the tower and workshop for a year, then he, too, went away and the plant became known as "Tesla's million dollar folly." Neighborhood boys played up and down the ladder and steps of the mystery tower and finally it was sold. During the war it was torn down when the government thought there was danger of it being used as a secret wireless station by enemies of the country. Now it is believed the mystery tower not only meant an attempt on Tesla's part to communicate with Mars, but also saw his first experiments with the mechanical eye.

Tesla will not venture to predict whether the mechanical eye will carry sufficient power to pierce the atmosphere so that man can obtain a good view of life on Mars. He believes that Mars is inhabited and that the Martians are struggling desperately to communicate with the earth.

"I have a deep conviction," he said, "that highly intelligent beings exist on Mars. I believe they have reached a mechanical stage of civilization much more advanced than ours. However, it is quite likely that all racial distinctions and ideals have been extinguished there and life has become simply a desperate struggle for existence. The population may have been reduced to a few highly specialized individuals.

"Twenty-two years ago, while experimenting in Colorado with a wireless power plant, I obtained extraordinary experimental evidence of the existence of life on Mars. I had perfected a wireless receiver of extraordinary sensitiveness, far beyond anything known, and I caught signals which I interpreted as meaning 1--2--3--4. I believe the Martians used numbers for communication because numbers are universal.

"My discovery was announced at the time and I am living in the hope that my vision was true and will be confirmed by future generations. The use of the mechanical eye to pierce matter and distance may hasten that day."

Dr. Tesla believes that man has stored within him the creative genius for anything he requires and that after a certain period of incubation and when the need is great enough the invention for a given need suddenly appears.

"I know," he explained, "that I can create any machine necessary for my needs simply by putting my mind to the problem. It is easy once Nature has given you the gift for creative work. I have been able to create a system of wireless telegraphy, and wireless telephony is now a fact."

It is also his belief, and the belief of many other famous scientists, that the sources of electrical power and light have been only scratched so far. Not only light to pierce the earth, but wireless power to govern agriculture and to obtain chemicals and even food from the air will come in the future, he predicts.

"The human being is an automatic heat machine," he explains, "requiring for its daily functioning a supply of fuel which it takes in the form of animal and vegetable food. Now all plants and animals are directly or indirectly nourished by the soil; hence man draws his energy from the soil.

"As population increases more and more of the fuel must be supplied. And we may therefore conclude with certitude that as time goes on this precious supply will be steadily increased by intensive cultivation of every available spot. Electricity will be instrumental in this development in many ways, and power will be transmitted for tilling the ground and performing all sorts of agricultural work. Man when he goes to far corners of the earth will carry compact instruments to provide him with heat and power and with telegraphic communication.

"Electrical power will be used for accelerating many things on which we are more or less dependent; fertilizers will be obtained from the atmosphere in great quantities and all sorts of chemicals will be manufactured electrically from primary elements. But some time, after a lapse of years, a limit may be reached.

"Artificial food, manufactured by the sun's power, may then afford relief, but it is difficult to foresee just how far the human race can make itself independent of the products of the soil. We are the results of ages of adaptation to the environment and our organs would have to be profoundly changed to enable us to exist on artificial food alone.

"However, that is a problem for the distant future. At present man has enough to do in unveiling nature's mysteries so he can transmit power by wireless and communicate swiftly with distant parts of the earth by voice, eye and written word."


New York American
July 6, 1930

Man's Greatest Achievement - by Nikola Tesla

When a child is born its sense-organs are brought in contact with the outer world.

The waves of sound, heat, and light beat upon its feeble body, its sensitive nerve-fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience: a gasp, a breath, and in this act a marvelous little engine, of inconceivable delicacy and complexity of construction, unlike any on earth, is hitched to the wheel-work of the Universe.

The little engine labors and grows, performs more and more involved operations, becomes sensitive to ever subtler influences and now there manifests itself in the fully developed being - Man -a desire mysterious, inscrutable and irresistible: to imitate nature, to create, to work himself the wonders he perceives.

* * *

Inspired in this task he searches, discovers and invents, designs and constructs, and enriches with monuments of beauty, grandeur and awe, the star of his birth.

He descends into the bowels of the globe to bring forth its hidden treasures and to unlock its immense imprisoned energies for its use.

He invades the dark depths of the ocean and the azure regions of the sky.

He peers into the innermost nooks and recesses of molecular structure and lays bare to his gaze worlds infinitely remote. He subdues and puts to his service the fierce, devastating spark of Prometheus, the titanic forces of the waterfall, the wind and the tide.

He tames the thundering bolt of Jove and annihilates time and space. He makes the great Sun itself his obedient toiling slave.

Such is the power and might that the heavens reverberate and the whole earth trembles by the mere sound of his voice.

* * *

What has the future in store for this strange being, born of a breath, of perishable tissue, yet immortal, with his powers fearful and divine? What magic will be wrought by him in the end? What is to be his greatest deed, his crowning achievement?

Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, of a tenuity beyond conception and filling all space - the Akasa or luminiferous ether - which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena.

The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.

* * *

Can Man control this grandest, most awe-inspiring of all processes in nature? Can he harness her inexhaustible energies to perform all their functions at his bidding, more still - can he so refine his means of control as to put them in operation simply by the force of his will?

* * *

If he could do this he would have powers almost unlimited and supernatural. At his command, with but a slight effort on his part, old worlds would disappear and new ones of his planning would spring into being.

He could fix, solidify and preserve the ethereal shapes of his imagining, the fleeting visions of his dreams. He could express all the creations of his mind, on any scale, in forms concrete and imperishable.

He could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, guide it along any path he might choose through the depths of the Universe.

He could make planets collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light. He could originate and develop life in all its infinite forms.

* * *

To create and annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world, his crowning achievement which would place him beside his Creator and fulfill his ultimate destiny.


Time
July 20, 1931, pp. 27, 28

TESLA AT 75.

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, Tesla talked about new developments.

"I am working now upon two things," he said. "First, an explanation based upon pure mathematics of certain things which Professor Einstein has also attempted to explain. My conclusions in certain respects differ from and to that extent tend to disprove the Einstein Theory . . . My explanations of natural phenomena are not so involved as his. They are simpler, and when I am ready to make a full announcement it will be seen that I have proved my conclusions.

"Secondly, I am working to develop a new source of power. When I say a new source, I mean that I have turned for power to a source which no previous scientist has turned, to the best of my knowledge. The conception, the idea when it first burst upon me was a tremendous shock.

"It will throw light on many puzzling phenomena of the cosmos, and may prove also of great industrial value, particularly in creating a new and virtually unlimited market for steel.

Tesla said it will come from an entirely new and unsuspected source, and will be for all practical purposes constant day and night, and at all times of the year. The apparatus for capturing the energy and transforming it will partake both of mechanical and electrical features, and will be of ideal simplicity.

Tesla has already conceived a means that will make it possible for man to transmit energy in large amounts, thousands of horsepower, from one planet to another, absolutely regardless of distance.

He considered that nothing can be more important than interplanetary communication. It will certainly come some day, and the certitude that there are other human beings in the universe, working, suffering, struggling, like ourselves, will produce a magic effect on mankind and will form the foundation of a universal brotherhood that will last as long as humanity itself.

He received birthday greetings from Sir Oliver Lodge, Ernst Frederik Werner Alex-Anderson, Lee De Forest, John Hays Hammond, Jr., Robert Andrews Millikan, Secretary of Commerce Robert Patterson Lamond, Henry Herman Westinghouse, and many another. Their greetings indicated the hope if not the confidence that "in a few months" or "a few years" the flame of Nikola Tesla's genius would weld one more astounding new device for mankind.


The Literary Digest
Nov. 7, 1931

No High-Speed Limit, Says Tesla

Dr. Nikola Tesla asserted in an interview with Hugo Gernsback that speeds greater than that of light, which are considered impossible by the Einstein theory of relativity, have been produced.

Stating that the Einstein theory is erroneous in many respects, Dr. Tesla stated as early as 1900, in his patent 787,412, that the current of his radio-power transmitter passed over the surface of the earth with a speed of 292,830 miles a second. According to the Einstein theory, the highest possible speed is 186,300 miles a second.

Tesla indicated knowledge of speeds several times greater than light, and had apparatus designed to project so-called electrons with a speed equal to twice that of light.

Tesla disagreed with the part of the Einstein theory which states that the mass of an object increases with its speed. The mass of a body is unalterable, contended Dr. Tesla, According to the article, "otherwise energy could be produced from nothing, since the kinetic energy acquired in the fall of a body would be greater than that necessary to lift it at a small velocity."


Brooklyn Eagle
July 10, 1932

Tesla Cosmic Ray Motor May Transmit Power 'Round Earth

Famed Scientist, on Eve of 76th Birthday, Says He Has Succeeded in Harnessing 'Penetrating Rays' to Operate Small Motive Device

by John J. A. O'Neill, Science Editor of the Eagle

"I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device," declared Nikola Tesla, famous scientist, in an interview last evening on the eve of his 76th birthday...

Tesla, who all his life has worked in seclusion and struggles to avoid publicity with all the vigor with which movie stars court it, permits a handful of "science writers" to violate the rules as a sort of birthday party.

It is very much of an ordeal to the tall, straight, meticulously attired gentleman whose inventions have been epoch-making and who is unable to understand why the public should be interested in him.

"Cosmic ray investigation is a subject that is very close to me. I was the first to discover these rays and I naturally feel toward them as I would toward my own flesh and blood," said Dr. Tesla.

His statement is borne out by reference to clippings of interviews with him more than a quarter of a century ago in which he discussed "penetrating rays" and to which not much attention was given as no one was able to comprehend the nature of them as he discussed them.

"I have advanced a theory of the cosmic rays and at every step of my investigations I have found it completely justified." said Dr. Tesla.

Not Much Power Yet

Dr. Tesla stated that the amount of power he was able to develop in the device was insignificant.

I asked him if its power output was of the same magnitude as that of Crookes' radiometer, the device with four vanes in a glass tube that are rotated by sunlight, and which is often seen in jewelers' windows. He stated that the power output was many thousand times that of a Crookes' radiometer.

"The attractive features of the Cosmic rays is their constancy. They shower down on us throughout the whole 24 hours, and if a plant is developed to use their power it will not require devices for storing energy as would be necessary with devices using wind, tide or sunlight."

Exceed Velocity of Light

"All of my investigations seem to point to the conclusion that they are small particles, each carrying so small a charge that we are justified in calling them neutrons. They move with great velocity, exceeding that of light.

"More than 25 years ago I began my efforts to harness the cosmic rays and I can now state that I have succeeded in operating a motive device by means of them."

I was able to prevail upon Dr. Tesla to give me some idea of the principle upon which his cosmic ray motor works.

"I will tell you in the most general way," he said. "The cosmic ray ionizes the air, setting free many charges - ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor.

Hopes to Build Large Motor

"I have hopes of building my motor on a large scale, but circumstances have not been favorable to carrying out my plan."

I asked Dr. Tesla if his plan for transmission of power between planets involved the use of cosmic rays, and he stated that the two projects have no connection whatever. He stated that he has continued his experimental work in the laboratory on the interplanetary power transmission project and is certain of its feasibility.

I also asked him if he is still at work on the project which he inaugurated in the '90's of transmitting power wirelessly anywhere on earth. He is at work on it, he said, and it could be put into operation.

Cited Two Principles

He at that time announced two principles which could be used in this project. In one the ionizing of the upper air would make it as good a conductor of electricity as a metal.

In the other the power would be transmitted by creating "standing waves" in the earth by charging the earth with a giant electrical oscillator that would make the earth vibrate electrically in the same way a bell vibrates mechanically when it is struck with a hammer.

"I do not use the plan involving the conductivity of the upper strata of the air," he said, "but I use the conductivity of the earth itself, and in this I need no wires to send electrical energy to any part of the globe."


New York Times
July 10, 1932, p. 19, c. 1

Tesla, 76, Reports His Talents at Peak. Says His New Invention, Almost Done, Will Come as "100,000 Trumpets of Apocalypse" Will Benefit Steel Trade.

Second Discovery Would Knock Down "Walls of Jericho" - Holds Interplanetary Contact Near

Nikola Tesla, dean of American Inventors, either was 76 years old yesterday or will be today (he does not know which because he was born on the stroke of midnight), and in a self-deprecatory interview last night at a midtown hotel, where he lives, he told a little of his activities of the last year and his hopes for the future.

He expects that future to be long and productive, because it is no uncommon thing for the countrymen of his birthplace, Smiljan, in the mountains of Czechoslovakia, to live to 110 or 120, and he believes that he has more energy and alertness than ever before in his life.

"I have had a very successful year," he said with the enthusiasm of one a third of his years. "I have made two inventions, among the most important of my life.

"When they are announced, one will be like the 100,000 trumpets of the Apocalypse. The other will be less sensational, but it, too, will be important. It will be like the shout with which Joseph's army brought down the walls of Jericho.

"I am elated. The practical success of these inventions is almost achieved. I hope to be able to make them known within the next year."

Invention Would Aid Steel Trade

Dr. Tesla would not disclose the nature of these inventions in detail. He intimated that the more important of them had to do with molecular physics and that it would be of the utmost benefit to the steel industry.

"When applied in certain ways," he said, "it will yield greatly improved products and obviate much waste."

The other invention would result in a saving of energy, he said. It had nothing to do, he explained, with the problem on which he has long been working - the

tapping of a tremendous and thus far unused source of energy. He has been working on that during the last year, he said, and has made great advances both in its practical application and in the theory underlying it. As to this new source of power, he said;

"When the time is ripe I propose first to announce the scientific principles underlying it only. Later I shall show its practical application through the forms of power generating apparatus. If I succeed, the world will see machines against which the largest turbo-dynamos of today will be mere playthings."

In response to questioning, Dr. Tesla said that one invention on which he had been working recently would permit the generation of all kinds of rays of almost unlimited intensities, and would afford a check on whether the present theories of atomic structure are true and workable or merely a fabric of the imagination.

Recalls His Youth

The inventor of the arc lighting system, of the system of alternating current power transmission, the Tesla coil, of a system of wireless communication and of wireless power transmission systems, allowed his thoughts to rove back over the beginning of his career and when he was a small boy on the Austro-Hungarian border. Then he allowed them to look into the future, in which, within the lifetime of the younger generation he is convinced there will be communication among the planets.

"When I was 9 years old," he related, "I built a turbine in a mountain stream on my father's land and connected it up with bolts to all sorts of machinery. I told my uncle, 'Some day I'm going to America and I will run a big wheel at Niagara Falls.' I had read about Niagara Falls and it fascinated me. My uncle didn't take it seriously. 'You'll never see Niagara Falls,' he told me.

"But I did come to America, and I did put a big wheel in Niagara Falls."

Dr. Tesla, at the height of his career, designed the great power system at Niagara, and perhaps no boyhood dream ever was more tremendously filled than his.

The inventor's conviction of many years' standing that there is life on other planets in the solar system and that some day we will communicate with other planets has not lessened. Means of communication will readily be found, he said, and there will be no difficulty in establishing an intelligent exchange of ideas. He indicated that this might be done through some sort of television which would transmit ideas much as moving pictures tell their stories to races of diverse languages.....

"I have a sense that we are on the eve of a great revelation," he said, speaking of the possibility of interplanetary communication. "Whether I will live to see it is a question, but you, as a younger man, will see it. And the news of it will be the greatest sensation in the world's history..


New York Herald Tribune
September 11, 1932

Pioneer Radio Engineer Gives Views on Power Tesla Says Wireless Waves Are Not Electromagnetic, but Sound in Nature Holds Space Not Curved Predicts Power Transmission to Other Planets

by Nikola Tesla

The assumption of the Maxwellian ether was thought necessary to explain the propagation of light by transverse vibrations, which can only occur in a solid. So fascinating was this theory that even at present it has many supporters, despite the manifest impossibility of a medium, perfectly mobile and tenuous to a degree inconceivable, and yet extremely rigid, like steel. As a result some illusionary ideas have been formed and various phenomena erroneously interpreted. The so-called Hertz waves are still considered a reality proving that light is electrical in its nature, and also that the ether is capable of transmitting transverse vibration of frequencies however low. This view has become untenable since I showed that the universal medium is a gaseous body in which only longitudinal pulses can be propagated, involving alternating compressions and expansions similar to those produced by sound waves in the air. Thus, a wireless transmitter does not emit Hertz waves which are a myth, but sound waves in the ether, behaving in every respect like those in the air, except that, owing to the great elastic force and extremely small density of the medium, their speed is that of light.

Suggested Short Waves Early

Since waves of this kind are all the more penetrating, the shorter they are, I have urged the experts engaged in the commercial application of the wireless art to employ very short waves, but for a long time my suggestions were not heeded. Eventually, though, this was done, and gradually the wave lengths were reduced to but a few meters. Invariably it was found that these waves, just as those in the air, follow the curvature of the earth and bend around obstacles, a peculiarity exhibited to a much lesser degree by transverse vibrations in a solid. Recently, however, ultrashort waves have been experimented with and the fact that they also have the same property was hailed as a great discovery, offering the stupendous promise to make wireless transmission infinitely simpler and cheaper.

It is of interest to know what wireless experts have expected, knowing that wave. a few meters long are transmitted clear to the antipodes. Is there any reason that they would behave radically different when their length is reduced to about half of one meter?

Waves Go Around World

As the general knowledge of this subject seems very limited, I may state that even waves only one or two millimeters long, which I produced thirty-three years ago, provided that they carry sufficient energy, can be transmitted around the globe. This is not so much due to refraction and reflection as to the properties of a gaseous medium and certain peculiar action which I shall explain some time in the future. At present it may be sufficient to call attention to an important fact in this connection, namely, that this bending of the beam projected from a reflector does not affect in the least its behavior in other respects. As regards deflection in a horizontal plane, it acts just as though it were straight. To be explicit the horizontal deviations are comparatively slight. In a proposed ultrashort wave transmission, the vertical bending, far from being an advantage, is a serious drawback, as it increases greatly the liability of disturbance by obstacles at the earth's surface. The downward deflection always occurs, irrespective of wave length, and also if the beam is thrown upward at an angle to the horizontal, and this tendency is, according to my finding, all the more pronounced the bigger the planet. On a body as large as the sun, it would be impossible to project a disturbance of this kind to any considerable distance except along the surface.

It might be inferred that I am alluding to the curvature of space supposed to exist according to the teachings of relativity, but nothing could be further from my mind. I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties.

It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved, is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.

Need Radio Channels

The chief object of employing very short waves is to provide an increased number of channels required to satisfy the ever-growing demand for wireless appliances. But this is only because the transmitting and receiving apparatus, as generally employed, is ill-conceived and not well adapted for selection. The transmitter generates several systems of waves, all of which, except one, are useless. As a consequence, only an infinitesimal amount of energy reaches the receiver and dependence is placed on extreme amplification, which can be easily affected by the use of the so-called three-electrode tubes. This invention has been credited to others, but as a matter of fact, it was brought out by me in 1892, the principle being described and illustrated in my lecture before the Franklin Institute and National Electric Light Association. In my original device I put around the incandescent filament a conducting member, which I called a "sieve." This device is connected to a wire leading outside of the bulb and serves to modify the stream of particles projected from the filament according to the charge imparted to it. In this manner a new kind of detector, rectifier and -amplifier was provided. Many forms of tubes on this principle were constructed by me and various interesting effects obtained by their means shown to visitors in my laboratory from 1893 to 1899, when I undertook the erection of an experimental world-system wireless plant at Colorado Springs.

During the last thirty-two years these tubes have been made veritable marvels of mechanical perfection, but while helpful in many ways they have drawn the experts away from the simpler and much superior arrangement which I attempted to introduce in 1901. My plans involved the use of a highly effective and efficient transmitter conveying to any receiver at whatever distance, a relatively large amount of energy. The receiver is itself a device of elementary simplicity partaking of the characteristics of the ear, except that it is immensely more sensitive. In such a system resonant amplification is the only one necessary and the selectivity is so great that any desired number of separate channels can be provided without going to waves shorter than a few meters.

For this reason, and because of other shortcomings, I do not attach much importance to the employment of waves which are now being experimented with. Besides, I am contemplating the practical use of another principle, which I have discovered and which is almost unlimited in the number of channels and in the energy three-electrode tubes. This invention has been credited to others, but as a matter of fact it was brought out by me in 1892 the principle being transmitted. It should enable us to obtain many important results heretofore considered impossible. With the knowledge of the facts before me, I do not think it hazardous to predict that we will be enabled to illuminate the whole sky at night and that eventually we will flash power in virtually unlimited amounts to planets. It would not surprise me at all if an experiment to transmit thousands of horsepower to the moon by this new method were made in a few years from now.


Kansas City Journal-Post
September 10, 1933

TREMENDOUS NEW POWER SOON TO BE UNLEASHED

Nikola Tesla, Starting His 78th Year, Works on Revolutionary Power Project and Also is Completing Process for Photographing Thought

by Carol Bird

Proving his theory that a man's efficiency and accomplishments should increase, and not diminish with mellow age, Nikola Tesla, inventor, physicist, and one of the world's leading electrical technicians, enters his seventy-eighth year busily engaged on three or four great scientific projects.

Several of these inventions or discoveries will be looked upon as "miracles" by many people, for Mr. Tesla has long been a scientist years ahead of his time, one whose advanced theories have alternately stamped him a "madman" and a wizard.

Just as people ridiculed Copernicus' theory of the planetary system, the unenlightened jeered Tesla's accomplishment, years ago, regarding cosmic rays. The pathfinder and the pioneer - and Mr. Tesla is both - are always condemned by the masses.

Nikola Tesla, tall, lean, with the face of an esthetic and deep-dash set eyes, whose expression denotes concentration on a canvas of work too big for most people's comprehension, partially described a new and inexhaustible source of power he has discovered after years of research, revolutionizing modern physical science. At the same time he touched on his own reservoir of energy which makes such monumental discoveries possible at his advanced age.

How does he tap both these deep wells? What is the secret of fine health, keen mind, unusual vitality and mental force at 77, the time of life when most men are sitting in the sun with shawls over their knees or, alas' lying beneath the sod?

Mr. Tesla is the father of the alternating system of power transmission and radio, the induction motor and Tesla coil.

Asked about his startling new scientific discoveries, one of which concerns the "photographing of thought," which will, he maintains, bring about a tremendous social revolution, he said:

"My first and most important discovery concerns the harnessing of a new source of power, hitherto unavailable, to be developed through fundamentally novel machines of my invention.

"I am not yet prepared to dwell on the details of the project, for they must be checked before my findings can be formally announced. I have worked on the development of the underlying principles for many years. From the practical point of view of the engineer engaged in power development, the first investment will be relatively very great, but once a machine is installed it may be depended on to function indefinitely, and the cost of operation will be next to nothing.

"My power generator will be of the simplest kind - just a big mass of steel, copper and aluminum, comprising a stationary and rotating part, peculiarly assembled. I am planning to develop electricity and transmit it to a distance by my alternating system now universally established. The direct current system could also be employed if the heretofore insuperable difficulties of insulating the transmission lines can be overcome.

"Such a source of power obtainable everywhere will solve many problems with which the human race is confronted. My alternating system has been the means of harnessing 30,000,000 horsepower of waterpower, and there are projects now going on all over the world which will eventually double that amount. But, unfortunately, there is not enough water power to satisfy the present needs, and everywhere inventors and engineers are endeavoring to unlock some additional store of energy."

Beyond adding that the new form of energy which he has been investigating many years would be available at any place in the world in unlimited quantities, and that the machinery for harnessing it would last more than 5,000 years. Mr. Tesla would say little more on the subject. Just when the power will become available for practical purposes he could not predict with any degree of precision. In a few years, perhaps, he ventured to say.

Mr. Tesla then talked of several projects on which he has been working by way of relief from too much concentration on the main piece of work. He described one of his other interests, one highly dramatic, which stirs the imagination and which, doubtless, will sound too revolutionary to most people. But it must not be forgotten, as Mr. Tesla points out, that the ideas of television and radio and airplane were scoffed at in their infancy.

"I expect to photograph thoughts," announced Mr. Tesla calmly, in the same tone of voice that a person occupied with some trivial things in the scheme of life might announce that it was going to rain.

Continued Mr. Tesla: "In 1893, while engaged in certain investigations, I became convinced that a definite image formed in thought must, by reflex action, produce a corresponding image on the retina, which might possibly be read by suitable apparatus. This brought me to my system of television, which I announced at that time.

"My idea was to employ an artificial retina receiving the image of the object seen, an 'optic nerve' and another such retina at the place of reproduction. These two retinas were to be constructed after the fashion of a checkerboard with many separate little sections, and the so-called optic nerve was nothing more than a part of the earth.

"An invention of mine enables me to transmit simultaneously, and without any interference whatsoever, hundreds of thousands of distinct impulses through the ground just as though I had so many separate wires. I did not contemplate using any moving part - a scanning apparatus or a cathodic ray, which is a sort of moving device, the use of which I suggested in one of my lectures.

"Now if it be true that a thought reflects an image on the retina, it is a mere question of illuminating the same property and taking photographs, and then using the ordinary methods which are available to project the image on a screen.

"If this can be done successfully, then the objects imagined by a person would be clearly reflected on the screen as they are formed, and in this way every thought of the individual could be read. Our minds would then, indeed, be like open books..

Besides his discoveries concerning the harnessing of the new energy, television and thought photography, Mr. Tesla is working to produce a type of radio transmitter which will insure the strictest privacy in wireless communication regardless of the number of subscribers, and he is developing some important discoveries in molecular physics which will revolutionize the science of metallurgy and greatly improve metals.

After a discussion of his new scientific findings, Mr. Tesla turned to the subject of his personal source of energy and what he considers the real values of life.

"One of the most fundamental and also one of the saddest facts in human life is well brought out in a French proverb which, freely translated, means: 'If youth had the knowledge and age the power of doing,"' said Mr. Tesla "our condition of body and mind in old age if merely a certificate of how we have spent our youth. The secret of my own strength and vitality today is that in my youth I led what you might call a virtuous life.

"I have never dissipated. When I was a young man I understood well the significance of that old French proverb, although I doubt that I had even heard it then. But I seem to have a clear understanding while still young that I must control my passions and appetites if I wanted to make some of my dreams come true.

"So with this in vie