Wireless Transmission of Electrical Power

"When the great truth, accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed, is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by virtue of this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere...on sea, or land, or high in the air...humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming!"

Tesla's "Magnifying Transmitter"

Article: "The New York Times"...27 March, 1904

To gather in the latent electricity in the clouds and with the globe itself as a medium of transmission to convey telegraphic messages, power for commercial purposes, or even the sound of the human voice to the utmost confines of the earth is the latest dream of Nikola Tesla. In an article which appeared recently in The Electrical World Mr. Tesla explains the theories on which the world telegraphy system is founded and what he expects to accomplish by it.

His plans involve the establishment of stations for the transmission of messages and power, "preferably near important centers of civilization." Oddly enough, what Mr. Tesla proudly designates as the first of his commercial "world telegraphy" stations has been established at Wardenclyffe, L.I., which is not in any sense an important "centre of civilization," but a place described by train hands of the Long Island Railroad as a way station where "a passenger alights occasionally."

Tesla's "Magnifying Transmitter", at Wardenclyffe, Shoreham, LI (New York). The transmitting station is an octagonal tower, pyramidal in shape, and some 187 feet in height. It consists of huge wooden stilts, heavily braced, and reinforced, and surmounted by a cupola of interlaced steel wires, bent so as to form an arc. In the cupola there is a wooden platform occupying its entire width. Mr. Tesla began work on his transmitting station about eighteen months ago.

When he first came there, and it was understood that J. Pierpont Morgan had become interested in his odd enterprise and furnished him with financial assistance, a thrill of vague expectancy ran through the little settlement, The Wardenclyffe Land Company, which owns practically all the available ground in the vicinity, gave the inventor a free grant of some 175 acres of fine land, and then settled down to wait for the day when Wardenclyffe would become the centre of the universe.

Some of the farmers who come to Wardenclyffe to send their products to this city look at Mr. Tesla's tower, which is situated directly opposite the railroad station, and shake their heads sadly. They are inclined to take a skeptical view regarding the feasibility of the wireless "world telegraphy" idea, but yet Tesla's transmitting tower as it stands in lonely grandeur and boldly silhouetted against the sky on a wide clearing on the concession is a source or great satisfaction and of some mystification to them all.

"It is a mighty fine tower," said one food farmer to a visitor last week. "The breeze up there is something grand on a Summer evening, and you can see the Sound and all the steamers that go by. We are tired, though, trying to figure out why he put it here instead of at Coney Island. " While the tower itself is very "stagy" and picturesque, it is the wonders that are supposed to be hidden in the earth underneath it that excite the curiosity of the population in the little settlement.

In the centre of the wide concrete platform which serves as a base for the structure there is a wooden affair very much like the companionway on an ocean steamer. The tower and the enclosure in which it has been built are being carefully guarded these days, and no one except Mr. Tesla's own men are allowed to approach it. Only they have been allowed as much as the briefest peep down the companionway. Mr. Scherff, the private secretary of the inventor, told an inquirer that the companionway led to a small drainage passage built for the purpose of keeping the ground about the tower dry.

But such of the villagers as saw the tower constructed tell a different story. They declare that it leads to a well-like excavation as deep as the tower is high with walls of mason work and a circular stairway leading to the bottom.

From there, they say, tunnels have been built in all directions, until the entire ground below the little plain on which the tower is raised has been honeycombed with subterranean passages.

They tell with awe how Mr. Tesla, on his weekly visits to Wardenclyffe, spends as much time in the underground passages as he does on the tower or in the handsome laboratory and workshop erected beside it, and where the power plant for the world telegraph has been installed.

No instruments have been installed as yet in the transmitter, nor has Mr. Tesla given any description of what they will be like. But in his article he announces that he will transmit from the tower an electric wave of a total maximum activity of ten million horse power. This, he says, will be possible with a plant of but 100 horse power, by the use of a magnifying transmitter of his own invention and certain artifices which he promises to make known in due course. What he expects to accomplish is summed up in the closing paragraph as follows:

"When the great truth, accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed, is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by virtue of this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere...on sea, or land, or high in the air...humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming!" "Cloud born Electric Wavelets To Encircle the Globe: This Is Nicola Tesla's Latest Dream, and the Long Island Hamlet of Wardenclyffe Marvels Thereat," New York Times, 27 March 1904.

Let's continue:
As a young man, Nikola Tesla talked often of the possibility of interplanetary communication. Influenced by Buddhist philosophy and the thinking of Ernst Mach, Tesla began to develop a cosmology that tried to get at the heart of what life was and simultaneously discover electricity's role in the process. He believed in the concept of an all-pervasive aether and also believed that machines could be developed that would have the capability of thinking for themselves.

"The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", which was published 100 years ago (as of June 2000) in Century Magazine spells out Tesla's thoughts and visions for the future of mankind. This was written at the pinnacle of Tesla's life, when he was full of vigor, fresh from his startling accomplishments with the complete victory of his alternating current system over Edison's direct current system. In a radical departure from his previous writings which were of a technical nature, Tesla reveals his philosophy and hopes for humankind. In the article, Tesla expressed his belief that all of us are responsible for increasing the human mass, morally, intellectually, and physically. It was a radical article then... and in some circles... still be considered radical. Nonetheless it caught the eye of JP Morgan who financed Tesla's biggest dream... and most devastating disappointment.. Wardenclyffe! With the tower he had planned for the site, Tesla was going to power the world and light the oceans...A Fascinating Vision...However, powerful economic roadblocks stood in the way that drove Tesla deep into bankruptcy and culminated in the mindless destruction of the tower at Wardenclyffe.
CREDIT: The Electrical Experimenter, Dec. 1917.

Tesla's World Of Tomorrow

Tesla's life changed dramatically after Wardenclyffe. Initially his focus was on developing his bladeless turbine; but always his thoughts turned towards the revival of Wardenclyffe and his beloved Magnifying Transmitter. In 1925, his ideas on the wireless transmission of power were briefly entertained by the Bureau of Standards, but were abruptly rejected out of hand... due to the ignorance of how Tesla's system worked.

As an elderly man, Tesla discussed controversial topics such as free energy, particle beam weapons, cosmic rays that travel faster than light speed, a new magnifying transmitter which could harness these cosmic rays, interplanetary communication and also the claim that he could transmit energy at twice the speed of light. The identification of each separate invention became a somewhat confusing task for journalists and researchers because each of these ideas involve the transmission of energy to distant places: and the so called “death ray” apparently, in its final form, comprised features from some, if not all of the other inventions above.

It is these exotic inventions that interest and fuels the free energy researchers imagination. It was Tesla's claim that he could transmit energy at twice the speed of light that brought Tesla in direct conflict with Einstein's suggestion that space was curved--the conventional mode of thought at the time. Tesla's unique views on the nature of radioactivity also placed him out of the mainstream scientific world. Was Tesla simply delusional ... or did he indeed have a keen insight into the wheel work of Nature? Time will tell.

Tesla's World of Tomorrow :

We are an the threshold of a gigantic revolution, based on the commercialization of the wireless transmission of power.

Motion pictures will be flashed across limitless spaces.

The same energy (wireless transmission of power) will drive airplanes and dirigibles from one central base.

In rocket-propelled machines... it will be practicable to attain speeds of nearly a mile a second (3600 m.p.h.) through the rarefied medium above the stratosphere.

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

We will be enabled to illuminate the whole sky at night...Eventually we will flash power in virtually unlimited amounts to planets... Nikola Tesla.

CREDIT: The Electrical Experimenter, Dec. 1917.

 THE WIRELESS TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL POWER

It is possible that Nikola Tesla is best known for his remarkable statements regarding the wireless transmission of electrical power. His first efforts towards this end started in 1891 and were intended to simply "disturb the electrical equilibrium in the nearby portions of the earth... to bring into operation in any way some instrument." In other words the object of his experiments was simply to produce effects locally and detect them at a distance.

By 1899 the electrical potential of his transmitter had increased to the point that more room was needed for the sake of safety. This and other considerations led him to temporarily shift his wireless experiments to a location just outside of Colorado Springs. At this Colorado "Experimental Station" Tesla had some early success in wireless power transmission.

One photograph shows that "a small incandescent lamp was lighted by means of a resonant circuit grounded on one end, all the energy being drawn through the earth [from a nearby transmitter]."

In 1907 he even went as far as to make this statement: "... to make the little filament glow, the entire surface of the planet, two hundred million square miles, must be strongly electrified. This calls for peculiar electrical activities, hundreds of times greater than those involved in the lighting of an arc lamp through the human body [a far more spectacular demonstration]. What impresses him most, however, is the knowledge that the little lamp will spring into the same brilliancy anywhere on the globe, there being no appreciable diminution of the effect with the increase of distance from the transmitter." (One of Tesla's favorite pictures of himself- above, Left)

It is not at all clear that Tesla was referring to effects produced by his large Colorado transmitter. It is quite possible that he was writing about what could be done with an even bigger transmitter such as the one that he was developing in New York. If the Wardenclyffe communications facility had been finished, the 187 foot tall mushroom-shaped tower would have permanently housed a set of large coils including an immense helical resonator that would have served as the main transmitting element. Directly below the wooden tower there was a 120 foot shaft where deep underground Tesla had installed a radial array of iron pipes that served as a connection between the oscillator and the earth.

The Wardenclyffe plant was a major milestone in Tesla's researches into the application of alternating electrical currents to wireless communications and power transmission, an effort which drew a considerable amount of Tesla's attention during the period between 1891 and 1912. In the article "The Future of the Wireless Art" which appeared in Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, 1908, Tesla made the following statement regarding the Wardenclyffe project on which he was then working: "As soon as 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. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.

These few indications will be sufficient to show that the wireless art offers greater possibilities than any invention or discovery heretofore made, and if the conditions are favorable, we can expect with certitude that in the next few years wonders will be wrought by its application."

In the end, Tesla was never able to complete the Wardenclyffe plant, although he was able to conduct some performance tests. Nevertheless, if the above stated predictions were to be true, an interesting feature of Tesla's World System for global communications, had it gone into full operation, would have been its capacity to provide small but usable quantities of electrical power at the location of the receiving circuits.

A MUSEUM AT WARDENCLYFFE - THE CREATION OF A MONUMENT TO NIKOLA TESLA

The year was 1900 and following 9 productive months of wireless propagation research in Colorado, Nikola Tesla was anxious to put a mass of new found knowledge to work.  His vision focused on the development of a prototype wireless communications station and research facility and he needed a site on which to build.  In 1901 he cast his eyes some 60 miles eastward to the north shore village of Woodville Landing.  Only six years before the north branch of the Long Island Railroad had opened, reducing travel time to the locality from a horse drawn five hours to less than two.  Seeing an opportunity in land development a western lawyer and banker by the name of James S. Warden had purchased 1400 acres in the area and started building an exclusive summer resort community known as Wardenclyffe-On-Sound.  With an opportunity for further development in mind, Warden offered Tesla a 200 acre section of this parcel lying directly to the south of the newly laid track.  It was anticipated that implementation of Tesla's system would eventually lead to the establishment of a "Radio City" to house the thousands of employees needed for operation of the facility.  The proximity to Manhattan and the fairly short travel time between the two, along with the site's closeness to a railway line must surely have been attractive features and Tesla accepted the offer.

The Wardenclyffe World Wireless facility as envisioned by Tesla was to have been quite different from present day radio broadcasting stations.  While there was to be a great similarity in the apparatus employed, the method in which it was to be utilized would have been radically different.  Conventional transmitters are designed so as to maximize the amount of power radiated from the antenna structure.  Such equipment must process tremendous amounts of power in order to counteract the loss in field strength encountered as the signal radiates out from its point of origin. The transmitter at Wardenclyffe was being configured so as to minimize the radiated power.  The energy of Tesla's steam driven Westinghouse 200 kW alternator was to be channeled instead into an extensive underground radial structure of iron pipe installed 120 feet beneath the tower's base.  This was to be accomplished by superposing a low frequency baseband signal on the higher frequency signal coursing through the transmitter's helical resonator.  The low frequency current in the presence of an enveloping corona-induced plasma of free charge carriers would have pumped the earth's charge.  It is believed the resulting ground current and its associated wave complex would have allowed the propagation of wireless transmissions to any distance on the earth's surface with as little as 5% loss due to radiation.  The terrestrial transmission line modes so excited would have supported a system with the following technical capabilities:

1. Establishment of a multi-channel global broadcasting system with programming including news, music, etc;
2. Interconnection of the world's telephone and telegraph exchanges, and stock tickers;
3. Transmission of written and printed matter, and data;
4. World wide reproduction of photographic images;
5.  Establishment of a universal marine navigation and location system, including a means for the synchronization of precision timepieces;
6. Establishment of secure wireless communications services.

The plan was to build the first of many installations to be located near major population centers around the world.  If the program had moved forward without interruption, the Long Island prototype would have been followed by additional units the first of which being built somewhere along the coast of England.  By the Summer of 1902 Tesla had shifted his laboratory operations from the Houston Street Laboratory to the rural Long Island setting and work began in earnest on development of the station and furthering of the propagation research.  Construction had been made possible largely through the backing of financier J. Pierpont Morgan who had offered Tesla $150,000 towards the end of 1900.  By July 1904, however, this support had run out and with a subsequent major down turn in the financial markets Tesla was compelled to pursue alternative methods of financing.  With funds raised through an unrecorded mortgage against the property, additional venture capital, and the sale of X-ray tube power supplies to the medical profession he was able to make ends meet for another couple of years.  In spite of valiant efforts to maintain the operation, income dwindled and his employees were eventually dropped from the payroll.   Still, Tesla was certain that his wireless system would yield handsome rewards if it could only be set into operation and so the work continued as he was able.  A second mortgage in 1908 acquired again from the Waldorf-Astoria proprietor George C. Boldt allowed some additional bills to be paid, but debt continued to mount and between 1912 and 1915 Tesla's financial condition disintegrated.  The loss of ability to make additional payments was accompanied by the collapse of his plan for high capacity trans-Atlantic wireless communications.  The property was foreclosed, Nikola Tesla honored the agreement with his debtor and title on the property was signed over to Mr. Boldt.  The plant's abandonment sometime around 1911-1912 followed by demolition and salvaging of the tower in 1917 essentially brought an end to this era.  Tesla's April 20, 1922 loss on appeal of the judgment completely closed the door to any further chance of his developing the site.

Note: Tesla had predicted that further advances would have permitted the wireless transmission of industrial amounts of electrical energy with minimal losses to any point on the earth's surface. Had he been able to complete the prototype station on Long Island and use it to demonstrate the feasibility of wireless power transmission then a plan would have been implemented for the construction of a pilot plant for this larger system at Niagara Falls, site of the world's first commercial three phase AC power plant.

Tesla reveals his philosophy and hopes for humankind. . .

Tesla expressed his belief that all of us are responsible for increasing the human mass, morally, intellectually, and physically. It was a radical article then... and in some circles... still be considered radical.