Nikola Tesla's Engine

He Expects It to Revolutionize Power Making.

ELECTRICITY DIRECT FROM COAL

Most of the Human Miseries May Be Abolished, He Thinks, by the Invention — His Experiments.

Nikola Tesla is giving as much of his time and thought to the steam engine, just now, as he is to electricity.

How best to turn the energy of the sun that is stored up in coal into power has been the study of keen minds since the days of Savery and Newcomen, who were in the field years before James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine as we know it now, had made his momentous discoveries. This problem has necessarily engrossed much of the attention of the Montenegrin wizard, and those who know him and his inventions best believe that his engine, which will undoubtedly soon be in practical operation, will come nearer a perfect solution than any other contrivance that has yet been devised.

It has been the dream of many inventors to discover some way to turn the heat of coal directly into the silent, mysterious current that carries our messages and our news across the land and under the sea, that lights our houses and our workshops, that propels our street cars and operates our machinery. Edison is one of those who have burned the midnight incandescent in the attempt to do this. Professor Thomson is another. Tesla himself, in his younger days, studied this subject intently, and there is probably no electrician who has not worked along these lines. Seebeck, whose name, even, is forgotten by all save those who are students of electricity, discovered the thermopile in 1821, more than seventy years ago. He found that by arranging layers of certain different materials in the proper order, and allowing sunlight to fall upon the pile thus made, a magnetic current could be produced.

The same result could be reached, of course, by applying artificial heat to the thermopile. Ever since Seebeck’s discovery the thermopile has been alluring to scientists and inventors, but none has yet succeeded in developing it sufficiently to produce electricity economically. Vernon Boys, an Englishman, discovered that by combining the two metals, bismuth and antimony, mounting the combination upon a central pivot and allowing light or heat to fall upon it, the whole would be caused to spin around by reason of the unequal contraction and expansion of the two materials. It will be seen that if a machine of this kind, made large enough, were attached to the revolving armatures of a dynamo, the electric current could be produced almost directly from the combustion of coal. But all attempts to perfect this contrivance have been unsuccessful.

TESLA’S STEAM ENGINE.

It was after Tesla had exhausted his ingenuity upon contrivances somewhat of this nature that he decided to turn his attention to the steam engine as the instrument most likely to be capable of yielding the largest amount of power from the least consumption of coal. He thought that, reduced to its utmost simplicity, the steam engine, or an engine run by some expansive gas, similar in certain properties to steam, would be far less complicated than the simplest form of the thermopile or kindred devices. He saw that many parts of the steam engine, as it now stands, must be thrown away before it could be made to do its best work. He decided that the perfect engine must get along without a flywheel, or a connecting rod or slides, and that the power must be carried from it to the machinery without belts or shafting, which, like the flywheel and the connecting rod and the slides, use up much power. In speaking of this he once said:

“I looked at the steam engine and I saw that its only vital part was the little round box which is called the cylinder and the piston within, which, by the pressure of steam, is made to travel ceaselessly back and forth. The little round box and the tireless traveler must be kept. The other parts must be got rid of as useless. The power must be transmitted direct without the use of any clumsy flywheel or flapping belts or heavy shafting which eat up power.”

When Tesla had decided thus he set to work upon his engine. His studies upon this topic extended into weeks, months and years. Little by little the problem at last began to yield, and long before his laboratory on South Fifth avenue was destroyed by fire he had completed and put in operation a small model of his new machine.

NEW POWER PRODUCTION.

It is difficult to explain the workings of this contrivance. Some faint notion may be given of its nature by the statement that in this machine, which has been called the “oscillator,” the piston travels back and forth, or vibrates thousands of times a minute, and by some method of his own Tesla gets rid not only of the flywheel and other clumsy parts of the present steam engine, but of the troublesome packing boxes, also, with their everlasting waste of steam and absorption of power. To get this intensely rapid motion he uses steam of a previously unheard pressure, say 600 or 700 pounds to the square inch. The pressure might as well be 6,000 or 7,000 pounds, so far as the capacity of ordinary boilers of the present time are concerned; for not even the strongest of them could bear it. But Tesla sees no reason why there should be any limit at all to the strength of steam generators, and though some of his earlier and most radical statements used to make conservatives shake their heads, he has succeeded so well in doing other things which he has promised that there is now little demur when the high pressures which he proposes are discussed by steam engineers.

Tesla gets rid of the slides and the flywheel, the connecting rod and the clumsy belts by placing his new engine in what he calls the centre of the electrical field and generating the current directly from the intensely rapid vibration of the piston. Then the current is transmitted, in the usual way (by wire) to the machines which are to be operated, a motor being attached to the shaft of each. The saving of fuel that will be effected by this new machine when it is adopted will be 50 per cent. certainly, and theoretically should be more than 90 per cent.

WHAT TESLA HOPES.

Tesla believes that scientific evolution along the lines of the economical utilization of nature’s forces that are lying all about us in the coal fields, that are going to waste in the waterfalls, that sometime may possibly be got out of the sunshine, will solve all the problems of human misery. It will be possible, when man has made the discoveries that wait for him, to produce so much more than he now can with the same expenditure of energy that poverty and the suffering that goes with it will disappear from the earth. He believes, further, that when that happy time shall come men will have so much more time at their disposal to devote to the arts and sciences and the gentler side of life that civilization and morals and manners will be raised to a higher plane.

He bases his beliefs and hopes upon the advances that have been made in comfort and culture, in courtesies and in morals by the mass of mankind since the present age of industrial and mechanical development was inaugurated by the invention of the steam engine. He sees that material improvement always carries with it improvement of the higher sorts; that the saving of labor brings comfort and culture, and that, although during their youth many new inventions are controlled by individuals and monopolies, so that the mass does not receive the full benefit, yet the time must come, and comparatively soon, in the case of each when these inventions will be common properties. For patents must eventually expire and all monopolies must come to an end at last. At first the steam engine of Watt was controlled and manufactured by one firm only, but long ago this monopoly was ended. Now, whoever likes may build steam engines and the resulting benefit to all mankind has been incalculable.

UTILIZING WATER POWER.

It should not be understood that Mr. Tesla is devoting all his time, or has been, to his new engine. He has many novel electrical contrivances under way. His friends say the problem of economical transmission of power over long distances is solved, and that it will be so demonstrated in a short time at Niagara. Yet a demonstration will be necessary in order to prove success.

A curious chapter might be written descriptive of the various inventions that have been brought forward for the more economical utilization of water power than by the use of water wheels. At Niagara nothing of this sort has been attempted. The weight of the falling water is there transformed into power by passing it through turbines and the turbines are attached directly to powerful dynamos. The first extensive use of turbine wheels under great heads of water in America for the production of electrical current was at Rochester. In passing through that city the Genesee River falls more than 200 feet and is thus capable, if fully utilized, of furnishing many thousand horse power. Until about twenty years ago most of this great water power was allowed to go to waste. To-day the electric light of Rochester is furnished by two comparatively small wheels, running under ninety foot pressure, and in all respects, except magnitude, the plant at Rochester is the equal of the great plant at Niagara.