Science Digest December 1978 Nikola Tesla - II 'Power-Magnifying Transmitter' Still a Mystery Can his untested device finally make a comeback? by Robert J. Schadewald What can be used as a radio transmitter, a wireless electrical power transmission system, a weather control device, a death ray, and an anti-war machine? What did the Russians use to cause the mysterious East Coast booms, to change the weather in Canada, and to scramble the brains of certain Canadian citizens? Some say that the answer to these questions is the magnifying transmitter invented by Nikola Tesla. Tesla built his first magnifying transmitter (so-called because it greatly magnified input voltage) in Colorado Springs in 1899. Most modern transmitters use transistors to amplify the output of a low-powered oscillating circuit. The magnifying transmitter was built long before the tube was invented, let alone the transistor, and its oscillating circuit of tuned coils operated at full power. The primary and secondary coils were wound vertically on a 17-meter circle of poles, and another coil, 2.5 meters in diameter, sat inside the big coil. When pumped up to full power- about 50,000 watts- the output of the coils peaked around 12.5 million volts. Unlike modern transmitters, which do their thing quietly, the magnifying transmitter in action was an awesome sight. Sparks flickered and darted throughout the huge, tent-like building that housed it, and the air filled with ozone. Bolts of artificial lightning flashed dozens of feet, and sometimes ball lightning was formed. Outside, more lightning flashed from a huge copper ball on a mast high above the building. The very ground surrounding the laboratory was electrified. Before examining the claims made for the magnifying transmitter by Tesla and others, it's useful to know something about Tesla himself. In 1899, Nikola Tesla was 43 years old, and he'd already changed the world. He invented our AC power system-polyphase generator, induction motor, oil-filled transformer, etc.- almost singlehanded, and within a few years after its introduction in 1893, it completely supplanted Edison's DC system. By the turn of the century, Tesla had already invented fluorescent lights, the Tesla Coil, various innovations in radio, and a radio-controlled guidance system. Tesla was a vain, intense, secretive man. Though a loner, he liked to perform, and he was known for his spectacular demonstrations of electrical effects. He had several minor eccentricities, was hopeless at managing money, and couldn't work with anyone. Forgotten Backers As the new century opened, Tesla returned to New York with plans for a huge installation that would use a magnifying transmitter to send power through the earth, and also send music, telegrams, facsimiles, photographs, and other information. He "forgot" to tell such backers as J.P. Morgan about the wireless power angle. Soon he had generators and other components on order, and construction of a plant began on Long Island at a site called Wardenclyffe. But the "World Wireless" installation at Wardenclyffe was never completed. Tesla had underestimated the cost, and when he ran out of money in 1904, a recession was in progress and, further, Guglielmo Marconi already had sent signals across the Atlantic with far more modest equipment. So Tesla revealed his actual purpose and appealed for more funds - but it was not to be. To this day, his scheme for the wireless transmission of power has not been publicly tested. Renewed Interest The energy crisis, plus controversies over power ines and power plants, have brought renewed interest in Tesla's idea. Magnifying transmitters have been recently built or are under construction by groups of Tesla admirers in Ontario, Minnesota, Texas, and California. They hope to publicly demonstrate the practicality of Tesla's system soon, but they believe that Tesla himself privately demonstrated it long ago. John J. O'Neill, Tesla's friend and biographer, wrote that, while at Colorado Springs, Tesla succeeded in lighting 100 light bulbs 26 miles away. Not so, according to Leland I. Anderson, an electrical engineer who has the most complete collection of Tesla documents in the U.S. "I've never found any support for that," says Anderson. "I doubt that it's true. O'Neill seems to be the only source for that statement. He notes that apparently nothing about the incident is in Tesla's diary, which is preserved in a museum in Yugoslavia. Electrical engineers almost unanimously doubt that anyone else will succeed either. They note that a large amount of power is inevitably radiated into space, and that the electrical properties of the earth are much more complex than Tesla imagined. Also, his theory depends on his observed resonant frequency of the earth, determined during the Colorado thunderstorm. According to Anderson, that observation was dead wrong. Beginning of the End "At Colorado Springs, in 1899," says Anderson, "Tesla observed lightning storms travelling toward him across the plains which produced maximal and minimal effects on his instruments. He interpreted this effect as standing waves being set up in the earth by the travelling storm, with the crests of the waves passing through his location as the storm advanced. "Most probably, he was observing an interference effect caused by reflections off the mountain range to the west of his station. The results would have been the same on his instruments." It was the failure of his "Wardenclyffe Vision" that marked the beginning of Tesla's decline. Though he never completed a large magnifying transmitter after 1899, the invention became an obsession with him, and he continued to make claims for it. In 1917, only after much persuasion by his friends, Tesla accepted the Edison Medal from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In his acceptance speech, he described how the magnifying transmitter could be used to modify the weather. Soviet Solution? Andrew Michrowski, an official in the Canadian government, believes that the Russians have solved the problems of modifying the weather. He contends that the Russians have used magnifying transmitters to cause a "standing columnar wave" over the northern Pacific. The system involves extremely low frequency magnetic fields and gravitons or tachyons, and somehow alters the flow of arctic air over Canada. Others argue that magnifying transmitters can send signals through the earth, siphoning additional power from the earth's core in the process. By focusing such signals, the power can be dumped into the atmosphere to change the weather at any point. Unfortunately, these explanations rest on unproven assumptions. Existence of gravitons and tachyons (particles which move faster than light) is purely hypothetical, so basing an explanation on them seems premature. And no one has yet demonstrated how radio waves might siphon power out of the earth's core. Electrical engineers point to some additional problems: Magnifying transmitters typically put out very long wave-lengths (about six kilometers for Tesla's Colorado Springs device). The energy transfer between such long waves and individual molecules of the atmosphere is essentially nil, and these long waves can't be effectively focused. In his later years, after Tesla had sunk into obscurity, reporters occasionally would seek him out for an interview. Such attention brought out the showman in him, and he never disappointed. In several interviews, he talked about an anti-war machine that could produce an impenetrable wall of energy around a country. Bob Parker, who is co-author of a book to be called "The Tesla Factor", says that this device is another application of Tesla's favourite invention. "The magnifying transmitter causes a field that disrupts any kind of signal," says Parker, "no matter what it is. It's impenetrable to anything we have. A gyroscope could not get through it. A rocket could not get through it." And Parker believes that the Russians have such a defense system about one-third completed. In the 1930's, Tesla announced that he had found the secret of beaming a death ray with his magnifying transmitter. He gave no details, but, in the past year, two phenomena have been blamed by some on such a weapon; the East Coast booms and some pulsed radio signals detected in Canada. In December 1977 and January 1978, much of the East Coast was periodically shaken by mysterious atmospheric booms which apparently originated over the sea. They were variously explained as sonic booms, exploding garbage gas, meteorites, gravity waves, and several other things. "The explosions were based on Tesla's stuff," says Bob Parker. "I call them heat bombs. They come from the Russians using magnifying transmitters. Incoherent rays are formed onto coherent signals at a given point." The Evening Star, Sat July 14, 1979. 'If we use fuel to get power we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This barbarous method will have to be stopped in the interests of coming generations' The Verdict of this Man in the Year 1900 by Bernard Scott The words quoted at the top were not uttered yesterday, but when the phrase horse-power still meant exactly that. The year was 1900. The prophet was Nikola Tesla, scientific genius and inventor and sometimes called The Man who Invented the 20th Century. It may well be that he will be credited with "inventing" the 21st Century as well. For suddenly in laboratories around the world the ideas of the tall, thin Yugoslav who emigrated to America in 1884 are the subject of intensive and urgent research. He died in 1943, penniless and lonely in a hotel room, considered by the critical scientific fraternity to have been once brilliant, but later insane. His "insane" claims included: - A "death ray" that could destroy planes by the thousand and men by the million, 250 miles away. Today the U.S. and Russia are spending billions developing "particle beam weapons" uncannily similar to Tesla's. - Turning the planet Earth into one complete electrical plug so that power could be drawn from the soil. He demonstrated this by lighting up 200 fifty-watt lamps at a distance of 25 miles without any connecting wires. Today, efforts are being made to recapture this secret. - Harnessing the energy of cosmic rays which constantly bombard the Earth to power motors. Many scientists are working to duplicate this feat, and one says he has succeeded in doing so. - Building a plant to make use of the immesne heat inside the Earth. Scientists are looking closely at this also. The whole planet was Tesla's experimental laboratory. New York City once felt the effects of an experiment into resonance - undetectable vibration. Buildings began to shake in Lower Manhattan. Police found him in the act of destroying a small machine with a sledge hammer. He would not reveal how it worked, but later said: "I could split the Earth like an apple." Many Western scientists now believe the Russians have a device which can induce earthquakes. In 1913 Tesla patented a highly efficient "flat disc" turbine engine and now, 66 years later, intensive work is being carried out to develop and refine it. Scientists believe that a version no bigger than a small sofa could power the QE2. Radar, radio, radio-control, fluorescent and neon lighting, microwaves, X-rays - all were born or benefited from his attention. Tesla's development of fluorescent light tubes came half a century before they became commercially available. His spectacular demonstrations of the high frequency current he discovered involved allowing several hundred thousand volts to pulse through his body to light bulbs he held in his widespread hands, like flaming swords. In 1889 in Colorado Springs he literally electrified the earth - hundreds of bulbs unconnected by wires leapt into life and from the copper sphere atop a 200ft mast specially built for the demonstration leapt monstrous 135ft lightning flashes and thundering roars as 12 million volts pulsed through the equipment. Many of these feats were not duplicated for decades until scientists began to look again at Tesla's work. Throughout his life, Marconi was officially credited with inventing radio, but the pioneering work was largely Tesla's. He is now credited with being the father of radio, and one of his pieces of equipment, the "Tesla coil" is used in one form or another in every radio and television set today. Meanwhile, the future answers to our energy problems seem to lie in Tesla's past. As he wrote in 1895: "We are whirling through 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."