Wireless Transmission of Energy - Dream or Possibility Page 30

he received from Tesla was not only that. Tesla wrote a whole study on the question of energy and human needs for energy. We quote some interesting views from this work of Tesla’s:

“…It is probable that a prototype of a heat engine will soon be constructed which will be able to draw energy from the surrounding space. There is a probability — though small — that we shall obtain energy directly from the Sun. This ought to be so if Maxwell’s theory is correct, according to which the Sun emits radiations of all wavelengths. I am still occupied with this subject. Sir William Crookes has shown, with his extraordinary discovery known as the ‘radiometer,’ that the action of rays can produce mechanical effects, and this may lead to discoveries which will make possible the use of the sun’s rays in a new way. New sources of energy may be found, new ways of using solar energy may be discovered, but none of these, or other similar ways, will be as significant as the transmission of energy over any distance through a medium. I see no other technical solution which would better reconcile the various needs of humanity than this, or a solution which would further increase or better utilize human capabilities.”

Today we have become so accustomed to the transmission of electrical energy by means of electric currents that other ways of indirect transmission of energy escape our notice, such as gas pipelines and oil pipelines. There were once other ideas about the transmission of energy, such as compressed air or traction cables. Thus, at the end of the last century, the transmission of power from the Niagara Falls by means of compressed air was considered. This system was not realized, although this kind of energy transport is used for short distances, in the operation of compressors or pneumatic devices. Tesla viewed the transmission of energy very broadly, foreseeing that for this purpose waves through the earth, created by mechanical vibrators, would be used. We are still far from such forms of energy transmission, but in imagination it is not difficult to conceive a system in which directed mechanical waves transmit energy through the earth’s crust in a desired direction. Since the laws of interference apply to mechanical waves as well, they too, like radio waves, can be directed so that the energy is concentrated in a beam which excites sources with a definite excitation in amplitude and phase.

A new laboratory on Long Island: the realization of a dream?

Besides the general approach to the problem of energy transmission, Tesla also stopped at the wireless transmission of electrical energy. However, there were still plenty of unfinished elements of the system of wireless energy transmission. Especially for readers who sought a clearer answer to the question of how to realize in practice what Tesla spoke of. Tesla did not give details here about the system which he so praised and glorified as something of the greatest importance for humanity. Thus, despite an article which has the bulk of a small book, it remained unexplained how far science was from the solution of the problem of the wireless transmission of electrical energy.

At the beginning of 1900 Tesla returned to New York and set about seeking financiers for a new undertaking: the construction of a world telegraphic radio station. Among those who supported him was the now well-known financier Pierpont Morgan. Tesla explained to Morgan that from the world radio station waves of various lengths would be transmitted, and that it would thus be a center of world radio diffusion. In a letter of 26 November 1900 Tesla described to Morgan what he had done so far and what he offered to do. He proposed to Morgan that the corporation to be formed should bear his name, and according to an estimate the cost of the building would amount to $100,000 for a transatlantic station and $250,000 for a Pacific station. Morgan offered him $150,000, with the condition that this should be all. At the same time he asked for a 51 percent share in the profit from the patents, as security for the loan.

Tesla built the building of the future world radio station and the tower — the antenna — on Long Island. The building was designed by the famous architect Stanford White, and it has been preserved to this day.

The notes which Tesla occasionally kept on Long Island have not been published to this day, not even in parts. They are not as well arranged as the earlier notes from Colorado Springs, and they extend over a considerably longer period of time. They contain no data on activities in private life; they are purely scientific notes, with various calculations, drawings of models, and the like. They are chiefly devoted to the development of models of the transmission of electrical energy in a system whose basic principles he set out in the lecture in Philadelphia in 1893. What he set out there as