Daylight Rivalled by Tesla

Photos Taken at Midnight by His New Vacuum Tube Perfect as at Noon.

NO FLASH IS NECESSARY.

Inconveniences to Sitter Are Banished and Pictures Are Wonderfully Vivid.

RAYS USEFUL IN LIGHTHOUSES.

The doom of flashlight photographs has been decreed by Nikola Tesla, the Servian wizard, who is about to show to New York, and the world at large, another wonderful triumph of electricity. He announces to-day that he has perfected vacuum tubes of such high illuminating power that they may serve the greatest lighthouses of the future, piercing even the densest fog, while night will be made as daylight to the photographer.

Even the painter may be able to distinguish colors after the gloaming as well as in the clear light of noonday.

The patient work of several years, interrupted for a time by the burning of his laboratory in West Broadway in 1895, has been required to perfect the invention. He is not yet ready to describe it in detail, but its success is beyond mere possibility.

Mr. Tesla announces the result of his investigations to-day in the Electrical Review, which also reproduces two of the photographs obtained.

His Wonderful Photos.

Mr. Tesla’s vacuum tubes and oscillator have united to produce the light by which the remarkable photographs now completed were produced. Every line of the objects photographed shows out with great distinctness.

A picture of a man, made under the light of a single vacuum tube at a five-feet range, with an exposure, reveals every fine wrinkle in the man’s face, while the hairs of the beard and the eyelashes stand out distinctly. And the taking of this photo did not subject the sitter to any of the inconveniences attending the use of flashlight.

Another remarkable photograph, that of the hand of Tesla, was made by the light of a single improved vacuum tube of one thousand candle power, at a distance of four feet, after an exposure of two seconds. The lines of the hand stand forth so clearly that the palmist may read them as well as with the living subject. The veins of the wrists and the fine lines upon the cuticle are faithfully shown. The texture of the inventor’s coat is shown, the linen several inches of the sleeve and the linen threads of the cuff are almost distinct.

Another photograph is that of an open book upon electricity, supported by two hands. This was done by a vacuum tube, at a distance of four feet, with an exposure of two seconds.

Tesla’s Explanation.

Mr. Tesla to-day made this statement of his discoveries:

“The photographs shown were taken by a tube having a radiating surface of about two hundred square inches. The frequency of the oscillations, which were obtained from an Edison direct-current supply circuit, I estimated to be about two million a second. The illuminating power of the tube approximated about one thousand candles, and the exposure ranged from two to five seconds, the distance of the object being four to five feet from the tube.

“It might be asked why, with so high an illuminating power, the exposure should not be instantaneous. I would not undertake to satisfactorily answer this question, which was put to me recently by a scientific man, whose visit to my laboratory I still vividly recollect.”

Length of Exposure.

“Likenesses can, of course, be obtained with instantaneous exposures, but it has been found in photography, not only because the artist will be able to exactly adjust the conditions in every experiment so as to secure the best results, which is impossible with ordinary light.

“He will thus be made entirely independent of daylight, and will be able to carry on his work at any hour, night or day. It might also be of value to the painter, though its use for such purposes I still consider problematical.”

Its Use in Lighthouses.

“By producing tubes of much greater candle power a notable improvement in this respect was effected, and this advance prompted me to further efforts in this direction, which finally resulted in the production of a tube of an illuminating power equal to that of hundreds, and even thousands, of ordinary vacuum tubes.

“What is more, I believe that I am far from having attained the limit in the amount of light producible, and believe that this method of illumination will be eventually employed for light house purposes. This probably will be considered the oddest and most unlooked for development of the vacuum tube.”