Electric Dream

Can Electricity be Transmitted Without Wires?

YOUNG TESLA THINKS SO

Says He Can Telegraph Messages to a Ship at Sea — Distance Will be Annihilated by the Mysterious Force.

Philadelphia Corr. Globe-Democrat.

Electricity travelling without wires, riding the heavens and the earth in response to the conquering will of man, carrying its winged messages over land and sea by means simply of the mighty power now slumbering in earth and space — such is the majestic, the overwhelming vision of Nikola Tesla, the young Hungarian who opened a wonderland in electrical science at the Franklin Institute Friday night. He would set the whole solid earth to vibrating, awaking tremendous world forces hitherto beyond the wildest dreams of the electricians, and by wonderful, delicate machines bridle this globe-thrilling, pulsing force for the benefit of mankind. Before this young wizard of electricity the masters of the great science have bowed. He has completely bewildered them and revolutionized their ideas.

“I have already proved the contrary to what everybody believed,” he explained in an interview at the Stratford last evening. “I have proved that it is not necessary to have two wires to establish an electrical current. In my Westinghouse machine I have but one wire. I utilize the air as the other. But as I now get a return through the air, I believe that I can also transmit through the earth, thus doing away with even the one wire. The earth is a great insulated globe filled with electricity, or the capability of electrical vibration. The only problem is to awaken this electricity, to shake this immense earth so as to set this mighty world force swinging or wagging. Of course it will take a great force to start this motion, but we will get this great force then. There is no doubt we can get it. Electricians thought 10,000 volts was a wonderful pressure. I have already stirred up hundreds of thousands, and the limit is far off. Instead of 300 vibrations I have already secured 3,000,000 a second. Give me the machine, and I will make a spark half a mile long. Now, at Niagara, for instance, which is destined to be a marvelous center of electrical force for America, enough force can be secured to supply all the needs of the human race twice over. By shaking the entire earth with the mighty power to be obtained there, this earth electricity could be started. With this earth force in vibration, the next problem would be to build machines able to catch and respond to this earth motion. There would have to be a synchronism between the electrical swinging of the earth and the machine. For example, I hold a glass to my mouth, and speak; the glass is shattered. My voice, to do this, must have the same resonance as the glass. Such I conceive to be the secret of all nature, resonance. Then setting this machine at any point in the world, the message transmitted through the earth can be received and read at Paris, at Hong Kong, anywhere. Distance no longer exists. I am convinced that I to-day can send a message to a ship at sea and that those on board can understand it. If I cannot I am willing to lay my head on the guillotine.”

Nikola Tesla is only about 35 years old to-day, but he has devoted his life to thought upon electricity. Inheriting an eager inventive genius from his mother and a fortune from his father, he has given his whole energy to the science of electricity as a labor of love. He has no commercial connections whatsoever, and his lectures are given purely to stir up interest in his loved study. When only about 21 years old he came to America and worked under Edison at Menlo Park.

Tesla appeared before the famous old Franklin Institute last night and astonished a large gathering of members with the exhibition he made. To make good his claim that he has discovered means to harness electric force so that it will serve man without injuring him, he allowed a force of 200,000 volts to pass through him and illuminate a bulb containing sulphate of calcium which he held in his hand. The bulb was made to glow with a light so intense as to fill the room with brightness and to disclose the great electrician holding it aloft unharmed and smiling, bowing in acknowledgment of the wild applause of the audience.

“I am getting some 200,000 volts through me now,” said he, “at the rate of millions of vibrations a second, enough to satisfy the most obstinate criminal, if travelling by the ordinary method. Thank heavens, though, I am not a condenser. But, gentlemen, this is nothing,” enthusiastically continued the inventor, and the audience fully agreed before the lecture was over that, comparatively speaking, the words were true.

The great effort of the evening was his feat of producing an illumination in a glass bulb, in which a vacuum had been procured by passing a powerfully and rapidly-alternating current through it. The bulb was hung from a wire stretched across the operating desk and connected with the terminals of the condenser. The current was turned on and, taking a pair of forceps in his hand, Tesla applied them to the bulb. In an instant it was aglow with an intense yellow light and flashes of electricity leaped across from one side of the bulb to the other and played all over its surface. This phosphorescence of the bulb set the audience wild with delight and Tesla was obliged to acknowledge the ovation again and again. The experiment, “phantom streams,” was one of the most beautiful of the many with which Tesla fairly bewildered his audience. Two heavily-insulated conductors were adjusted about eight inches from one another and the alternating current turned on, when the interval was filled with a column of purple haze and the scent of ozone and nitric acid filled the air. Another wonderful exhibition was the incandescence of a rarefied gas in long glass tubes, making the connection with one of the terminals and grasping it in one hand and the tube in the other, the latter was in an instant transformed into a wand of soft opalescent light. The magician, for such he seemed to all who witnessed his exploits, then began to twirl the bulb rapidly, producing a startling effect, not unlike that of a pinwheel, but infinitely more beautiful.

The lecturer stated that he was sure the time would come when the Niagara Falls would supply electric motive power for New-York and Philadelphia without the aid of a connecting wire.