Tesla's Promise

Wireless Telegraphy to Connect Continents — To Supersede Cables — Cheaper and Effective — General Details.

New York, Feb. 15. — Nikola Tesla yesterday announced that the wireless telegraph — his system of the wireless telegraph — would be at the world's service in about eight months. By this system messages are to be transmitted to any distance on the earth's surface. Some of the machinery is now being constructed, and for the rest of it contracts will soon be awarded.

Earth is Connecting Medium.

The chief essentials of Tesla's system are a transmitter and a receiver, with the earth, rather than wires, as the connecting medium. Both transmitter and receiver are rather simple machines, or, at any rate, look so on his patents. The transmitter, which is set up at one point, receives the electrical energy from the source of power, intensifies it and sends it through a wire Into the earth, through which it passes away in all directions.

Currents Caught in London.

At a distant point from the transmitter, say in London, for instance, a receiver is set up. This is adjusted so that its vibrations are in unison with the vibrations of the transmitter. Being "in tune," as Tesla calls it, the receiver catches up from the earth the currents from the particular transmitter on the opposite side of the Atlantic, magnifying them many thousand times.

Cost Less Than Cable.

The cost of telegraphing by the wireless system will, Tesla says, be much less than by the cable system and messages may be sent much more quickly.

Through the use of certain artifices it will be made impossible for a receiver in Calcutta, for instance, to take up the currents carrying a mesage from New York to London, and in time of war one belligerent will not be able to interfere with, or take advantage of, the messages of the other belligerent.