Conquest of Air Just Beginning

MAN WILL YET OUTFLY THE BIRD, NIKOLA TESLA BELIEVES.

Wireless Source of Power — Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of the Future Will Not Be Equipped With Engines, Greatly Reducing Weight.

(McClure’s Magazine.)

In these wonderful days when the conquest of the air is going on before our very eyes, when armies and navies are arming for battles in the sky, when dirigibles are traveling continents, and aeroplanes are braving the width of oceans, it is hard to see how anyone can deny that we are on the threshold of a great new era in human affairs.

“Are we near the end of our aerial progress?” I asked Nikola Tesla, great scientist and original discoverer of wireless, who has always lived in advance of his time.

“The end?” he said. “We are scarcely at the beginning. We have only seen the first glimpse of aeronautical possibilities. The real development of air flight will not come until aeroplanes and dirigibles are driven by motors turned by wireless energy sent from a distance.”

“You mean that aeroplanes and dirigibles will carry no engines?”

“Exactly. They will carry no engines and no fuel. Think of the saving in weight. They will get their power through the ether from great central power transmitting stations. Such a station could be built to-day — it would take about eighteen months to build it — for one-fourth the cost of a single battleship, say $3,000,000.

“The cost of operating this wireless power transmission station will be about the same per horse-power as that of an ordinary electric water power plant, where power is transmitted over wires, as from Niagara. One such station in America will be sufficient to operate a whole fleet of aeroplanes over an unlimited radius.”

“An unlimited radius? How do you mean?”

“I mean that this fleet of wirelessly-driven aeroplanes will be able to fly over the earth’s entire surface. Some can be flying in Europe, some in Asia, some in Africa, all driven from a single wireless station in America. That home station will provide a reservoir of, say, 10,000 horsepower, available anywhere, upon which the whole fleet of aeroplanes can draw according to their needs.”

“How large a fleet could be operated from one station?”

“A fleet of 1,000 aeroplanes, easily. If they all fly at once there will be 10 horsepower for each aeroplane. If only half of them fly at once there will be 20 horsepower for each. If none of them are flying there will be practically no expenditure of power, just as an electric lamp consumes electricity only when it is lighted. The airman of the future, when he wishes to fly, will simply open the power receiver of his aeroplane, exactly as you turn on an electric light, and power will flow to him, perhaps thousands of miles from the home station.”

“How long will these wirelessly driven aeroplanes be able to continue their flights in the air?”

“Indefinitely. They need come down only for supplies. They can stay up for days or weeks, just as electric lamps burn for days or weeks. The home station will send forth its power ceaselessly.”

“What force will operate the generators of these wireless power stations?” I asked.

“Either the power of waterfalls or the wasted heat of iron and steel furnaces, and coke ovens. The amount of such available energy, now wasted, is enormous.”

“Will these power transmission stations be built with great towers, like our present wireless plants?”

“No; there will be no towers. An entirely different method of power transmission will be used, a method that I have worked out through years of study and experiment and recently perfected.

“These power transmission stations of the future will revolutionize human affairs, for this wireless power will operate not only distant aeroplanes and dirigibles, but also distant trolleys, railroad trains, steamboats and all manner of machines, for all kinds of useful work. Countries favored with power-producing facilities will export power through the ether to other less favored countries. This will tend to bring together the whole human race.”