“Similar to the sound waves echoing from a distant wall, I have sent electrical vibrations toward the remote boundaries of the earth, and instead of the wall the earth has replied. In place of an echo I have obtained a stationary electrical wave”. These were the quotes of Dr. Nikola Tesla while he was experimenting with wireless electrical energy.
Earlier in this series we have seen Dr. Nikola Tesla successfully carrying experiments on Wireless electricity. With this, the genius of Dr. Tesla was making sure that he could actually make wireless electricity available to the entire world and bring one of his dreams for humanity in reality. The dream of Dr. Tesla that he had cherished would have provided every human-being with ample and actually unlimited amount of electricity that too absolutely for free. It would have been just like sunshine or air that we enjoy and utilize irrespective of caste, creed and financial status for free and that too in adequate quantities. Had the then industry captains not suppressed the success of Dr. Tesla’s experiments, these could have been replicated in the real life. While making the above statement Dr. Tesla stated that to help him achieve his aim, “Mother Earth had replied”.
With respect to the opening statement of this article made by Dr. Nikola Tesla, he further stated that to help him achieve his aim, Mother Earth had indeed replied.
Proceeding ahead let us know about the various experiments that Dr. Nikola Tesla conducted to meet one of his aims of unlimited free wireless electricity transmission.
Laboratory in Colorado Springs and the 142 feet antenna set up by Tesla
For various kinds of experiments Dr. Nikola Tesla had specifically built a very unique laboratory in Colorado Springs. It had a roof that rolled back to prevent it from catching fire, and a wooden tower that soared up eighty feet tall. Above it was a 142 feet metal mast supporting a large copper ball. Inside the strange wooden structure, was assembled an enormous Tesla Coil, specially designed to send powerful electrical impulses right into the earth. Dr. Tesla had tuned this 142 feet antenna setup with the intent to produce the first ever man made lightning-scale electrical discharges, a feat which would allow him to test many of his theories about the conductivity of the Earth and even the sky.
With this setup being ready on one of the nights while actually carrying this experiment, Dr. Tesla told his assistant, Kolman Czito to charge the Tesla Coil with millions of volts but that too only for ‘one second’. With this the secondary coil began to sparkle, crack and an eerie blue corona formed in the air around it. The circuit was closed for only one second, and that one second was the most astounding one. Huge arcs of blue electricity snaked up and down the central coil. Loud crackling bolts of the first man-made lightning strike were shot out for more than a hundred feet in length and they leapt towards the earth’s surface. This was the very famous experiment that burned the dynamos at the El Paso Electric Company miles away from Dr. Tesla’s lab. As a result the entire city had briefly lost power. But, it was due to this experiment that Dr. Tesla confirmed that the Earth itself could be used as an electrical conductor, and verified some of his suspicions regarding the conductivity of the sky (upper layer of atmosphere).
In his later tests, Dr. Nikola Tesla had gained control over the electrical discharge and had successfully illuminated 200 light bulbs at a distance of 42kms from his antenna setup. With this Dr. Tesla himself became convinced and indeed proved his dream of world-wide free wireless electricity is a reality. With this experiment Dr. Tesla had discovered a new phenomenon which would carry electricity around the entire earth. Dr. Tesla had infactused the earth itself as a conductor in this experiment. Along with this Dr. Tesla also discovered that the upper layer of atmosphere i.e. Ionosphere is also conductive and it can actually carry wireless electricity around the entire earth. To explain this Dr. Tesla stated that he had sent out the pulses of high frequency wireless electricity into the atmosphere. These pulses traversed the entire globe and returned with ‘undiminished strength’. He further said that; “It was a result so unbelievable that at first the revelation almost stunned me.”
Dr. Nikola Tesla called this phenomenon as ‘Stationary Waves’ or ‘Standing Waves’. Dr. Tesla was the first scientist to have observed this phenomenon. Dr. Tesla wrote, “Electrical energy can be economically transmitted without wires to any terrestrial distance. I have unmistakably established this in numerous observations, experiments and measurements, qualitative and quantitative. With this I have demonstrated that it is practicable to distribute power from a central plant in unlimited amounts, with a loss not exceeding a small fraction of one percent in the transmission, even to the greatest of the distances even 12000 miles to the opposite end of the globe.”
After returning from his experiments in Colorado Springs in the year 1900, Dr. Nikola Tesla stated: “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interests of coming generations.” Here we can see this visionary highlighting the drawbacks of using fossil fuels almost hundred years back from now. Most importantly he was also ready with the working model of the system that will eliminate the need of fossil fuels.
Dr. Nikola Tesla’s wireless system worked in unique way, ‘when there is no receiver, there is no energy consumption anywhere’. Only when the receiver is put on, does it draw power. That is the exact opposite of the traditional system of electricity distribution. In that case, if you have a plant of thousand horsepower (750kw), it is radiating all the time whether the energy is received or not; but in Dr. Tesla’s system no power is lost. When there are no receivers, that plant consumes only a few horsepower necessary to maintain the vibration”
Dr. Nikola Tesla’s setup for this was also extremely simple. Just like today’s Dish television (DTH) and radio, a single wire electricity receiver is required to be installed on the household rooftops. This wire would receive wireless energy from Tesla tower structure and every appliance in an individual home could run with this electricity. No power cord was necessary. Just think, No power cables, no monthly electricity bills, no high power electricity hazards, no electricity distribution grids, no networks of huge towers supplying electricity, no huge fossil-fuelled electric plants! Just clean and green electricity for every one of us. This was the idea of Dr. Tesla’s ‘Direct to Home wireless electricity’.
However wireless electricity was not the only thing that Dr. Tesla wanted to achieve. Dr. Tesla had other plans in his mind as well. As we already know, it was Dr. Tesla’s habit to accomplish many things from a single device, a perfect Jugaad approach, he had thought of many innovative and out of the box ideas that could be achieved using these experiments and had also prepared a plan to implement them using his system. But for that to happen, Dr. Tesla needed a much bigger and much higher capacity tower. These ideas of Dr. Tesla eventually gave birth to the most famous of his concepts,‘The Wardenclyffe Tower’.
