Tesla's Latest Discovery - Electrical Fertilization

Fertilizing Impoverished Land by Electricity

Explained by Garrett P. Serviss After a Talk with the Inventor.

Practical Application of Nikola Tesla’s Ingenious Plan for Electrical Fertilization.

Nikola Tesla’s latest contribution to science opens up one of the most surprising visions of man’s future control over nature that the nineteenth century has produced. It shows that not only may the earth be made more productive, but that out of the circumambient air may be drawn an element which can restore the exhausted energies of the soil and increase the fertility of even the most richly favored lands. Mr. Tesla is not fond of publicity, and when I met him the other day I found that, while he was willing to discuss the bearings of his discovery with me privately, he professed to confine his public statements concerning it to the bare presentation of the scientific facts which will be quoted further on.

As the earth fills with inhabitants and more and more of its arable soil is placed under cultivation to supply the necessities of life the greater becomes the need to make every square foot of land contribute its utmost quota of vegetable products. Yet, as everybody knows, the elements in the soil that make it fertile are not inexhaustible. On the contrary, they can easily be drained off by too prodigal cultivation, and then the jaded land lies almost powerless to nourish vegetation until either through the operation of slow natural processes or by the application of artificial stimulants its potency is restored. Many worn out farms exist all over the country, and frequently their owners find the expense of applying fertilizing agents in proper quantities too great for their resources, and so the land continues, like a weary and overworked animal, a burden to its possessor and to itself.

In the neighborhood of large cities the soil, plied with powerful stimulants, is driven like an engine with safety valve tied down, in order to supply the pressing and ceaseless demands that are made upon it. In many places it becomes practically an artificial soil, and, although its productiveness is maintained, yet the cost is great.

Now it so happens that while at present we must go to various and more or less remote parts of the world to find natural deposits of those compounds which are able to refertilize exhausted soil or must incur much expense in manufacturing them at home, the chief element in their composition, nitrogen, exists in abundance, suspended over every acre of land. One-fifth of the volume of the atmosphere consists of nitrogen. If that nitrogen thus placed by nature at our doors could be induced easily and cheaply to enter into the combinations essential to the growth of vegetation the result would be an immense boon to mankind and an enormous increase of the productive power of the earth.

TO REFRESH THE SOIL.

Well, it would appear that this great boon may be actually at hand. The experiments and discoveries on which this statement is based are due to Mr. Tesla. That he should have followed up an investigation of this kind is in itself a guarantee of the scientific value of the results attained. Mr. Tesla has the dislike of premature conclusions which is characteristic of all great original minds in science, and the only utterance which he has made on the subject is contained in a contribution to the Electrical Review, in which, speaking of the effects produced with his electrical oscillators, he says:

“With currents produced by perfected electrical oscillators, the production of ozone is so abundant that it is sufficient to merely turn on the current for a few seconds and ozonize strongly the atmosphere of a large hall. These currents are also capable of bringing about chemical combinations of which the chief is that of the nitrogen with the oxygen of the atmosphere, and an immense possibility, which I have been following up for a long time, is opened up, namely, the combination of the nitrogen of the atmosphere on an industrial scale by practically no other means than mechanical power. If merely fertilizers of the soil would be manufactured in this manner, the benefits to humanity derived therefrom would be incalculable.”

The power of an electric current of great pressure to produce ozone has long been known. Every lightning stroke produces ozone. But Mr. Tesla has discovered that such currents are also capable of producing compounds of atmospheric nitrogen, and such compounds in turn can be directly applied to the fertilization of the soil. A current of about two million vibrations per second suffices to cause such results. It only remains to construct a machine with whose aid the farmer and the gardener can draw nitrogen from its exhaustless source in the atmosphere and transform it into the required compounds. This has not yet been done, but it should present no great difficulty now that the principle on which it is to act has been demonstrated. I understand that Mr. Tesla’s idea is to employ an oscillator which converts mechanical energy directly into electricity, while the air to be acted upon is confined in a tube through which the current can pass. The result of the process will be a combination of the nitrogen with the oxygen, from which a nitric acid salt can be obtained for application to the soil.

In this manner electricity can be caused to achieve almost instantaneously what the slow action of the sun’s rays, falling upon the soil of a worn-out farm, requires years to accomplish. Moreover, there is reason to believe that increased fecundity can thus be imparted to the soil. The value of every fertilizer is measured by the amount of nitrogen it contains. But by the use of the new process pure nitrogen can be applied to the soil, and in this way the most refractory land may be rendered productive, while that which is already fertile may have its productive capacity immensely increased.

NO CORNER IN NITROGEN.

No one can doubt that by the use of electricity as a fertilizing agent the cost and difficulty of restoring exhausted land, and stimulating all kinds of soil, would be greatly reduced. Very little energy would be required in order to fertilize extensive tracts of land. The small farmer would feel that an almost magical power had been placed in his hands. Any little waterfall or swift-running stream or mill race would supply all the energy needed to operate an oscillator, which, drawing upon the invisible stores of the atmosphere, would cause the grass to grow greener, the golden grain to produce a richer harvest, the garden to bloom more brilliantly, the cattle to become sleeker, feeding upon finer pastures than they had ever known, and the farmer to rejoice in the sunshine of unexpected prosperity.

Nobody can put an embargo on the nitrogen of the air. No “trust” can get its clutches upon it. It is free and without cost to everybody. And the atmosphere contains not less than a quadrillion and a half of tons of it. If every desert on the face of the earth were made to bloom through its influence there would be no danger of exhausting the supply.

It is discoveries like this that constitute the real glory of science. When man shows that he can make the planet he dwells on nourish more inhabitants and do it more abundantly than would be possible without his interference, when from the air he breathes he is able to draw sustenance for the plants he feeds upon, then he comes near to justifying his boast that he was cast in the image of his Maker.

GARRETT P. SERVISS.