On the Dissipation of the Electrical Energy of the Hertz Resonator - Editorial

It is hard to imagine what a dynamo or an arc lamp would be like if the air, instead of being an insulator, were a conductor; but a moment's thought is enough to show how important the passive properties of air are to electricians. Mr. Tesla, in an article we publish this week, maintains that, under certain exceptional circumstances, the air by no means possesses the convenient properties usually assigned to it. With alternating currents of great rapidity, it appears not only that the distribution of the current is altered in consequence of the "skin effect," but that the air near the conductors receives and dissipates part of the energy of the current. Some of the experiments Mr. Tesla mentions are very remarkable, although none of them are quantitative, and no definite conclusion can be drawn from them. The amount of energy which various air motions actually represent would be an interesting matter to find out, but we are not aware that anyone has yet measured the energy of a musical sound, or of any less regular air disturbance.