From Earth to Sun - Tesla's Views and Experiences

What, for example, is the significance of establishing a close connection between the terrestrial phenomenon known as the aurora borealis and the eruptions of the incandescent gases which constitute the photosphere of the sun? The theory is that the electrostatic charge of the earth responds by greatly quickened vibrations to the manifestation of energy on the surface of the sun. But this is simply telegraphy without wires across an interval of 92,000,000 of miles. It is practically instantaneous, too. This fact was recognized years before a ready explanation of it was found in the close correspondence between the velocity of the electric vibration and that of light. Nearly 40 years ago the eruption lasting only 5 minutes of a bright spot on the face of the sun was found to have an almost simultaneous accompaniment of a general disturbance of magnetic needles and of the traveling of electric wires all over the world by so-called “earth currents.” The electrical storm in the sun had an immediate response in a profound disturbance of what is known as the earth’s magnetism.

But if the electrostatic charge of the earth can be disturbed in this elemental way, why not try to set it vibrating by an impulse which human ingenuity could directly apply to its surface, and by the wave of electric energy thus set moving, through earth and ether, transmit intelligence, if not power? If Mr. Nikola Tesla was not the first to formulate this conception he was certainly the first to attack it as a practical problem of electrical engineering. In his celebrated St. Louis address of two years ago he expressed his firm belief that it was practical to disturb by means of powerful machines the electrostatic condition of this earth and thus transmit intelligible signals, if not power. He added these suggestive words: “We need not be frightened by the idea of distance. To the weary wanderer counting the mile posts the earth may appear very large, but to the happiest of all men, the astronomer, who gazes at the heavens and by their standard judges the magnitude of our globe, it appears very small. And so, I think, it seems to the electrician, for when he considers the speed with which an electric disturbance is propagated through the earth all his ideas of distance must completely vanish.”

If Mr. Tesla’s views on this subject have undergone any change in the interval, it is simply in the direction of greater certainty and fuller assurance that the problem which he had attacked was no insoluble one. He began by the preparation of proper apparatus, and his electrical “oscillator,” which has in it such tremendous possibilities in the line of power production, was the result of an inventive faculty acting under the spur of scientific necessity. But even before it has been found possible to make the experiments yield their best results by applying an oscillator of satisfactory power and structure to the disturbance of the earth’s charge, “resonance” has not only been detected but some very brilliant manifestation of its presence have been forthcoming. That is to say, the electrostatic charge of the earth has responded to what may be called the impact of an electric force brought in collision with it. But there could be no meeting between these two allied forces and no “resonance” unless the period of their vibration had something in common, just as the tuning fork that will respond to a note of a certain pitch must be sensitive at least to some of the air waves that carry the note. The more nearly perfect the “resonance” the nearer must the period of the electrical vibration communicated to earth correspond with that of the electrical charge it finds there. What the attainment of even approximately perfect resonance would mean to the future of human progress opens up a dazzling vista of possibilities. The world would stand astounded should that consummation be signalized by the doing of the work of Atlantic cables without their aid; but that, so far from being a dream, is reckoned today by calmly dispassionate observers who have followed the experiments of Tesla as among the assured possibilities of the immediate future. — Journal of Commerce.