Tesla's Wireless Telegraphy

Long distance wireless telegraphy, if we may believe the current story of its latest developments, is about to take an enormous stride both in its reach and its rapidity, for we are shortly to be in possession of a means of wireless telegraphic communication across the Atlantic, by which we can send messages at considerably greater speed than is possible by the present cable. The feat is to be accomplished by the assistance of that “oscillator” with which the name of Nikola Tesla is so well identified. We are, all of us, fairly well familiar with the Marconi system in which Hertzian waves are utilized, the transmission of currents being aerial, or to speak more correctly ethereal. Mr. Tesla, however, manipulates his recently discovered “stationary electrical waves in the earth” by setting up “vibratory currents which can be transmitted through the terrestrial globe, just as through a wire, to the greatest distances.”

According to public reports, Mr. Tesla during the past year or so has been devoting his time chiefly to the improvement of his generator and receiver. He claims to have so far perfected the system that by means of proper “tuning” he can direct his messages infallibly to any particular receiver. It seems that the primary purpose of his recent Pike’s Peak experiments was a series of elaborate tests, the result of which satisfied Mr. Tesla that when a suitable plant is built, he can establish wireless electrical communication between the old and the new world. The system, as described in interviews with the author, involves the production of electrical vibrations of enormous frequency, a transmitter which receives the current, intensifies it, and sends it to the earth, through which it flows in every direction. A receiver which is adjusted so that its vibrations are in tune with those of the transmitter is set up, say in London, Paris or Berlin, picks up the vibrations, and intensifies them so that they become decipherable at the receiving station. These electrical vibrations are recoverable at any spot on the surface of the globe, provided that the Tesla receiver be at hand to pick them up, and intensify them to a point at which they may be read.