Reading Nikola Tesla – part 13: Discovery of unexpected properties of the atmosphere

Here we are in 2018, over a hundred years later speculating about what could have been Nikola Tesla’s secret. I then think to myself: if only I could show you what I read, you would understand that there is no secret. When I read his articles and patents from 1900 onward, what I see is a man desperately trying to get his views across. He tries again and again in many different ways, but no-one seems to see what I see.

(Some internet fools say that Tesla is reading Boskovich here. As anyone can read in the article of May 20th, 1896 “Tesla’s Important advances”, he was reading one of the "Scientific Papers" of Maxwell)

It is my sincere wish that one day people will read Tesla’s articles and really understand what he is saying.
So… Let me take you by the hand an walk you through his most famous article: “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy”, published in Century Illustrated Magazine of June 1900.

After having explained everything there is to know, Tesla now proceeds with telling about his practical work of late.

Previous parts can be found here:
Part 1: Laying a foundation
Part 2: What is electricity?
Part 3: Burning Nitrogen...
Part 4: How to overcome natural resistance
Part 5: Telautomatics
Part 6: Introduction to Harnessing the Sun’s Energy
Part 7: The Manufacture of Iron? Or ...
Part 8: The coming age of aluminium
Part 9: The cold-coal battery
Part 10: Energy from the medium
Part 11: A departure from known methods
Part 12: The self-acting engine

We continue in the main article where we’d left off.

DISCOVERY OF UNEXPECTED PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE
—STRANGE EXPERIMENTS—TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY THROUGH ONE WIRE WITHOUT RETURN—TRANSMISSION THROUGH THE EARTH WITHOUT ANY WIRE.
Another of these reasons was that I was led to recognize 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 uses of man. For a long time I was convinced that such a transmission on an industrial scale, could never be realized, but a discovery which I made changed my view. I observed that under certain conditions the atmosphere, which is normally a high insulator, assumes conducting properties, and so becomes capable of conveying any amount of electrical energy. But the difficulties in the way of a practical utilization of this discovery for the purpose of transmitting electrical energy without wires were seemingly insuperable. Electrical pressures of many millions of volts had to be produced and handled; generating apparatus of a novel kind, capable of withstanding the immense electrical stresses, had to be invented and perfected, and a complete safety against the dangers of the high-tension currents had to be attained in the system before its practical introduction could be even thought of. All this could not be done in a few weeks or months, or even years. The work required patience and constant application, but the improvements came, though slowly. Other valuable results were, however, arrived at in the course of this long-continued work, of which I shall endeavour to give a brief account, enumerating the chief advances as they were successively effected.

There is a strange twist in this paragraph: “For a long time I was convinced that such a transmission on an industrial scale, could never be realized, but a discovery which I made changed my view.” This, as I have already mentioned, was the discovery of standing waves in the Earth. But now Tesla continues “I observed that under certain conditions the atmosphere, which is normally a high insulator, assumes conducting properties, and so becomes capable of conveying any amount of electrical energy.” That would lead you to believe that Tesla intended to use the air as a distribution medium for electrical energy. But that is not the case. We read in this article of July 10th, 1932: “Tesla Cosmic Ray Motor May Transmit Power ‘Round Earth”:

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.”

But this is confusing because in some other instances Tesla clearly states that he intends to use the conductivity of the air to convey electrical power to different places. This is also one of the most misunderstood facts about Tesla’s plans. Reading the pre-hearing interview, we find the solution:

Up to the end of 1896, I had been developing the wireless system along the lines set forth in my lecture which is in the Martin book, particularly in the chapter on Electrical Resonance, pages 340-349.

We look up that lecture of February 24th, 1893; “On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena”:

We now know that electric vibration may be transmitted through a single conductor. Why then not try to avail ourselves of the earth for this purpose?

This is scheme A which Tesla was researching until the end of 1896, and apparently Tesla found this not suitable for transmission of power. Then the conductivity of air was discovered and Tesla changed to plan B, transmission through the conductive layers of the atmosphere. Later again, one night in Colorado Springs (July 3rd, 1899) Tesla discovered stationary waves in the Earth and changed to plan C, which was the final scheme for transmission of messages and energy.

We continue in the main article.

The discovery of the conducting properties of the air, though unexpected, was only a natural result of experiments in a special field which I had carried on for some years before. It was, I believe, during 1889 that certain possibilities offered by extremely rapid electrical oscillations determined me to design a number of special machines adapted for their investigation. Owing to the peculiar requirements, the construction of these machines was very difficult, and consumed much time and effort; but my work on them was generously rewarded, for I reached by their means several novel and important results. One of the earliest observations I made with these new machines was that electrical oscillations of an extremely high rate act in an extraordinary manner upon the human organism. Thus, for instance, I demonstrated that powerful electrical discharges of several hundred thousand volts, which at that time were considered absolutely deadly, could be passed through the body without inconvenience or hurtful consequences. These oscillations produced other specific physiological effects, which, upon my announcement, were eagerly taken up by skilled physicians and further investigated. This new field has proved itself fruitful beyond expectation, and in the few years which have passed since, it has been developed to such an extent that it now forms a legitimate and important department of medical science. Many results, thought impossible at that time, are now readily obtainable with these oscillations, and many experiments undreamed of then can now be readily performed by their means. I still remember with pleasure how, nine years ago, I passed the discharge of a powerful induction-coil through my body to demonstrate before a scientific society the comparative harmlessness of very rapidly vibrating electric currents, and I can still recall the astonishment of my audience. I would now undertake, with much less apprehension than I had in that experiment, to transmit through my body with such currents the entire electrical energy of the dynamos now working at Niagara—forty or fifty thousand horse-power. I have produced electrical oscillations which were of such intensity that when circulating through my arms and chest they have melted wires which joined my hands, and still I felt no inconvenience. I have energized with such oscillations a loop of heavy copper wire so powerfully that masses of metal, and even objects of an electrical resistance specifically greater than that of human tissue brought close to or placed within the loop, were heated to a high temperature and melted, often with the violence of an explosion, and yet into this very space in which this terribly-destructive turmoil was going on I have repeatedly thrust my head without feeling anything or experiencing injurious after-effects.
Another observation was that by means of such oscillations light could be produced in a novel and more economical manner, which promised to lead to an ideal system of electric illumination by vacuum-tubes, dispensing with the necessity of renewal of lamps or incandescent filaments, and possibly also with the use of wires in the interior of buildings. The efficiency of this light increases in proportion to the rate of the oscillations, and its commercial success is, therefore, dependent on the economical production of electrical vibrations of transcending rates. In this direction I have met with gratifying success of late, and the practical introduction of this new system of illumination is not far off.
The investigations led to many other valuable observations and results, one of the more important of which was the demonstration of the practicability of supplying electrical energy through one wire without return. At first I was able to transmit in this novel manner only very small amounts of electrical energy, but in this line also my efforts have been rewarded with similar success.

An ordinary incandescent lamp, connected with one or both of its terminals to the wire forming the upper free end of the coil shown in the photograph, is lighted by electrical vibrations conveyed to it through the coil from an electrical oscillator, which is worked only to one fifth of one per cent. of its full capacity.

The photograph shown in Fig. 3 illustrates, as its title explains, an actual transmission of this kind effected with apparatus used in other experiments here described. To what a degree the appliances have been perfected since my first demonstrations early in 1891 before a scientific society, when my apparatus was barely capable of lighting one lamp (which result was considered wonderful), will appear when I state that I have now no difficulty in lighting in this manner four or five hundred lamps, and could light many more. In fact, there is no limit to the amount of energy which may in this way be supplied to operate any kind of electrical device.

So Tesla tells us of some discoveries: the conductivity of air which led to researching transmission of power, the effect of high frequency currents on living beings, the production of light with electrode-less tubes and finally the transmission of electrical power in a novel way where there seems to be no limit in the amount of energy that can be supplied. This is explained in the pre-hearing interview:

I have an idea that [you] will get the best picture of the process in my system of transmission if you will imagine that the earth is a reservoir, say, of fluid under pressure -- that is the potential energy -- and at my plant, operating a distant tuned circuit, I must open a valve and enable that energy to flow in. It is exactly that way. The energy is all conserved, whether it is vibrating or purely potential. Whatever the transmitter does in the receiver, the effect is simply to open a valve, as it were, and permit energy to flow in.

Here we read about another important feature of this scheme; the transmitted energy is not used directly but it is used to collect energy and it is this energy that is being used. Very much like in the diagram of iron production, only instead of water power, we now use the vibrational energy in the Earth's electricity. This in fact completes the plan that Tesla had in mind.

After demonstrating the practicability of this method of transmission, the thought naturally occurred to me to use the earth as a conductor, thus dispensing with all wires. Whatever electricity may be, it is a fact that it behaves like an incompressible fluid, and the earth may be looked upon as an immense reservoir of electricity, which, I thought, could be disturbed effectively by a properly designed electrical machine. Accordingly, my next efforts were directed toward perfecting a special apparatus which would be highly effective in creating a disturbance of electricity in the earth. The progress in this new direction was necessarily very slow and the work discouraging, until I finally succeeded in perfecting a novel kind of transformer or induction-coil, particularly suited for this special purpose. That it is practicable, in this manner, not only to transmit minute amounts of electrical energy for operating delicate electrical devices, as I contemplated at first, but also electrical energy in appreciable quantities, will appear from an inspection of Fig. 4, which illustrates an actual experiment of this kind performed with the same apparatus. The result obtained was all the more remarkable as the top end of the coil was not connected to a wire or plate for magnifying the effect.

The coil shown in the photograph has its lower end or terminal connected to the ground, and is exactly attuned to the vibrations of a distant electrical oscillator. The lamp lighted is in an independent wire loop, energized by induction from the coil excited by the electrical vibrations transmitted to it through the ground from the oscillator, which is worked only to five per cent. of its full capacity.

To be continued.....

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