Abolishing Electric Light Wires

Mr. Tesla's Wonderful Tower and What It May Accomplish for Cites and Factories.

An enormous mushroom shaped tower, an Illustration of which is reproduced on this page, his just been completed at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, by Mr. Nikola Tesla, the distinguished electric inventor. From this tower Mr. Tesla is now pre paring to put into operation the most daring and amazing scheme ever conceived in the development of wireless telegraphy.

For over four years Mr. Tesla has been hard at work almost day and night experimenting and endeavoring to make his marvelous theory practicable. From time to time during that period he has intimated vaguely the immensity of his plan, and the equally tremendous results that would follow its introduction, and now, at last, he has announced his preparedness to put his theories to their first practical test.

For a large part of the work already done Mr. Tesla is indebted to the generosity of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, who is extremely interested in the scheme.

Briefly explained, Mr. Tesla's assurances of what we may expect in the next few years, are as follows: —

A ceaseless day and night service of millions upon millions of volts of electricity from the Canadian Niagara Power Company's electric power plants at Niagara Falls to the Wardenclyffe tower, the electric power being forwarded from there y Tesla's wireless system to New York City for the purpose of illuminating the entire metropolis, running elevated and underground trains and tramway cars, operating lifts, motor-cars, trucks, and ferry-boats, furnishing heat, and even winding up clocks and making them keep perfect time by a system of half-hourly regulation.

The erection of Tesla towers, similar to he one now at Wardenclyffe, at convenient places everywhere, for the purpose of distributing wireless telegraphy to be used or illumination, power, and heat. Only such towers as are erected within a given distance from Niagara Falls will be supplied from the power plants there with electricity (says the "New York American").

All the other towers will derive their own power from generating plant erected alongside or between the main uprights, and each will distribute about ten thousand horse-power of wireless electricity under a tension of one hundred million volts. Mr. Tesla declares that he is able to produce and handle that much with perfect safety from one tower.

Each tower will be capable of transmit. ting heat, power, and light to cities, factories, and private houses within a radius of thirty miles or more. Eventually Mr. Tesla proposes the extension of this tower system until practically the whole North American continent is dotted over with them, spaced about sixty miles apart, so that practically every inch of ground is covered by the new wireless service.

The Wardenclyffe tower is 185ft. high from the ground to the top of the cupola. The smallest dimension across the base of uprights is 97ft. The height to ledge of cupola is 153ft., while the cupola itself is 65ft. in diameter. The tower, which is to act as a giant receiver, has eight sides, with a staircase and lift for reaching the cupola platform. It is there that the wireless vibrations are received and shot out again in the voltage desired to given points scattered over a very wide radius.

One of the chief uses will be the illumination of residences. It takes very little power to light a dwelling with vacuum tubes operated by high-frequency currents, and in each instance a terminal a little above the roof will be sufficient. Another valuable application will be the driving of clocks and other such apparatus. These clocks will be exceedingly simple, will require absolutely no attention, and will indicate rigorously correct time.

There are innumerable devices of all kinds which are either now employed can be supplied, and by operating them in this way Mr. Tesla may be able to offer a great convenience to the whole world. The introduction of this system will, according to the inventor, give opportunities for invention and manufacture such as have never presented themselves before.

Among his other schemes Mr. Tesla proposes a perfect system of world-wide wireless telegraphy through which widely-separated friends will be able to converse instantaneously and without the slightest danger that their wireless conversations will be overheard by a third person.

Little instruments about the size and shape of a watch will be carried in the vest-pocket and will record market quotations, races, and important news features.

Another little watch-like instrument is one with a dial face by means of which the wearer can transmit and receive wireless messages to and from friends many miles away. Watches of both sender and receiver will be keyed to a certain pitch to prevent their communications from going astray or falling into the watches of disinterested third persons. — "London Mail."