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TESLA WILL DEVELOP NIAGARA'S POWER IN PARIS EXPOSITION.

Will Run the Machinery There and Use No Metallic Conductor for the Electricity — Most Marvelous Discovery of the Age.

Tesla proposes to run the machinery of the Paris Exhibition with electric power sent instantly across the world from Niagara Falls. It is an astounding statement. He has just patented his machine for transmitting electricity without wires. He says he can shoot thousands of millions of volts around and through the globe without metallic conductors. The Electrical Review says “It is like a tale from the ‘Arabian Nights,’” and, if successful, it will open up unlimited resources of practically costless power. If successful, it means that from the great falls of Niagara, of the Yellowstone, of Alaska and of the canyons of Colorado unlimited power of millions of volts can be delivered in New York, London, Paris, St. Petersburg and Pekin in a second of time. Mountains, rivers and oceans would thus be annihilated. Tesla says his machinery works perfectly; that he has demonstrated the seeming miracle beyond all possibility of failure. He said: “I will supply the Paris Exhibition with Niagara’s power. I will send it across the ocean without a wire. My invention is the crowning success of long years of thought and labor.”

Tesla went on to explain how he invents. He first discovers the natural laws governing the secret he is after. Then he can predict just what his mechanism, when constructed in a certain way, will accomplish. When the laws controlling their appointed work in the universe have been once mastered the making of the proper machine to act in harmony with the laws is comparatively an easy task. When Tesla discovered the laws leading up to the invention of his famous oscillator he was convinced that if he made certain wires in the machine exactly of the required length the electricity of the globe would stream forth in flame.

He worked long and persistently, with no satisfactory result. Still, he said, he knew to a mathematical certainty — a certainty on which he would stake his life — that the flames must appear when once he found the right measurements. At last he hit it, and the world now marvels at the results announced. When Lord Kelvin, the Shakespeare of European science, saw this machine in action, its awful flames shooting and exploding in veritable thunderbolts, it is said that his emotion was profound, for above and beyond its spectacular features he realized that it sent its currents around and through our universe of matter. Between each terrifying lightning stroke the globe is penetrated and encircled by the million-volted force. With this seemingly divinely endowed oscillator Tesla, it is declared, instantly brings Paris and Hong Kong within the reach of his hand. I saw the machine recently. At the touch of Tesla’s finger it blossomed into lightning flame. In color and shape it was like a celestial morning glory flower, twenty feet in diameter, fringed with ten thousand purple thunderbolts—shooting into cascades and tongues of fire, continuously exploding with the roar of a cyclone. It was like the spectacle of Sinai. And what is this electric force that moves cars and machinery? “Invisible light,” says Tesla.

A still greater marvel is claimed. Tesla will destroy navies and abolish war. His invention to accomplish this sublime end is the subject of wide discussion. General Grant said: “Make war terrible enough and you will have peace.” This Tesla claims to have accomplished with his astonishing machinery. But it is not by raining artificial thunderbolts on the enemy nor throwing shells by electricity. Tesla’s plan is to steer swift dynamite boats at express train speed along the surface or under water against a ship or a fleet, against a fort or a city, and blow them up — annihilate them. Tesla will handle his destroyers from shore or a distant ship as skillfully as would a captain with a picked crew of experts. By electric devices alone the engines will be controlled and the boat steered and run at any speed, its guns fired or the boat exploded. If a submarine boat it will be made to dive and move below the surface at any depth, coming up at the desired point to blow the enemy out of the water. All this and a hundred other things will be done, he claims, by electricity, without wires or any artificial means of communication.

It is a staggering statement to make. But the electric machinery for doing it is fully described in the twenty-four typewritten pages of specifications covering the patent. There are eight thousand words in the document, showing the invention as a veritable engine of power for peace or war. Its action is largely automatic, and under the manipulation of the operator, stationed a mile or fifty miles away, it would seem almost instinct with human intelligence. Tesla shows that his machine not only has the capacity for executing any number of orders, but it exhibits what practically amounts to intelligence. It distinguishes from any number of signals that particular vital one which it has been previously “instructed” to select and obey. Herein lies the proof of its almost omnipotent power for civilization, for peace or war. By its use war becomes annihilation and peace is the inevitable consequence. Already rivals in electricity are criticising the claims of the patent, calling Tesla a laboratory dreamer. As usual, they say that sending electrical currents without a wire is nothing new in theory; that it will be impossible to achieve anything of a practical character on sea or land with the enemy vigilant, the weather stormy, the sea boisterous and battles raging. They claim that dynamite boats can never be steered and fleets blown up by an operator stationed miles away with no metallic means of communication.

And how does Tesla propose to do this without wire or any artificial means of communication? He uses the earth and the atmosphere as electrical circuit. He has a thunderbolt producing machine, his famous “Oscillator.” Instead of producing the few thousand volts used for electric lighting, propelling trolley cars or killing murderers at Sing Sing, it manufactures millions of volts. But the electricity is of such a character that when the machine fills a room with jagged lightning, flashing and thundering in a tornado of fiery storm, it does not kill anybody, yet it develops a force thousands of times greater than the biggest ordinary dynamo can produce. With this machine creating a pressure of millions of volts, Tesla lashes the vast ocean of electricity of the earth into a cyclonic storm. Instantly the waves spread in all directions through the universe of matter. And this electricity is as rigid as steel. It cannot be compressed nor condensed. Yet it is thousands of millions times lighter than the air of the highest mountain tops.

Now how can he send his message aboard ship from distant lands — reaching one particular vessel? By having two electric circuits, one on shore and one on the vessel, both adjusted to be in exact unison. They may be likened to a pair of violins in perfect accord and tune. You play one and the other takes up the strain of music. One of the most wonderful features of this invention is that the oscillator for producing the tremendous, far reaching electric waves can be almost tucked away in one’s pocket, like a cigarette case. When Tesla on shore wants the ship’s engines to start he touches the code signal, which goes flying on the billows of electric ether through all space. If these duplicate machines were in every city every city would receive the message to start the engine, fire the guns, steer “port” or “starboard,” go ahead or back, or whatsoever the message sent might be. But the machine is deaf and blind to all other messages. Hence the enemy is powerless to thwart an attack. So one ship alone of a fleet receives the electric message, the current “impulse,” or whatever it may be termed. A little armature or lever is released, the electric circuit is complete, the clock starts a more powerful electric machine connecting with the engines, as it does with the steel machinery, and away goes the boat, a load of dynamite, being propelled and steered for the fleet at terrifying speed. Besides ships, Tesla says he can direct balloons, or wagons — steering them in the same way.

Here is a section of his own technical description of how he does it: “In a broad sense, my invention differs from all of those systems which provide for the control of the mechanism carried by a moving object and governing its motion in that I require no intermediate wires, cables or other form of electrical or mechanical connection with the object, save the natural media in space. I accomplish, nevertheless, similar results and in a much more practicable manner by producing waves, impulses or radiations which are received through the earth, water or atmosphere by suitable apparatus on the moving body and cause the desired actions, so long as the body remains within the active region or effective range of such currents, waves, impulses or radiations. These actions necessitated the designing of devices and apparatus of a novel kind, in order to utilize to the best advantage various facts or results which, either through my own investigations or those of others, have been rendered practically available.”