An Electric Current of 200,000 Volts

The February "Century" contains an article by Mr. T. C. Martin, editor of the "Electrical Engineer," on the work of the Serbian-American electrician, Nikola Tesla. The writer says:

"Mr. Tesla has advanced the opinion, and sustained it by brilliant experiments, of startling beauty and grandeur, that light and heat are produced by electrostatic forces acting between charged molecules or atoms. Perfecting a generator that would give him currents of several thousand alternations per second, and inventing his disruptive discharge coil, he has created electrostatic conditions that have already modified not a few of the accepted notions about electricity.

It has been supposed that ordinary currents of one or two thousand volts' potential would surely kill, but Mr. Tesla has been seen receiving through his hands currents at a potential of more than 200,000 volts, vibrating a million times per second, and manifesting themselves in dazzling streams of light. This is not a mere tour de force, but illustrates the principle that while currents of lower frequency destroy life, these are harmless. After such a striking test, which, by the way, no one has displayed a hurried Inclination to repeat, Mr. Tesla's body and clothing have continued for some time to emit fine glimmers or halos of splintered light. In fact, an actual flame is produced by this agitation of electrostratically charged molecules, and the curious spectacle can be seen of puissant, white, athereal flames, that do not consume anything, bursting from the ends of an induction coil as though it were the bush on holy ground.

With such vibrations as can be maintained by a potential of 3,000,000 volts, Mr. Tesla expects some day to envelop himself in a complete sheet of lambent fire that will leave him quite uninjured. Such currents as he now uses would, he says, keep a naked man warm at the North Pole, and their use in the therapeutics is but one of the practical possibilities that has been taken up.