Electric Possibilities - Light from Air

Sequel to Recent Discoveries of Nikola Tesla.

SURPRISING EXPERIMENT.

Perhaps We Are on the Verge of Finding a Way to Produce Artificial Sunlight — What Prof. Pupin Can Do with the Current.

Holland in the Philadelphia Press.

Prof. Pupin of Columbia College on Saturday afternoon made some experiments which seemed to experts present quite as interesting and important, although not so brilliant to the eyes, as were those of Nikola Tesla. It was before an assemblage of Columbia College students and experts that Tesla made those experiments a year ago which have given him fame. Prof. Pupin was present and was very greatly impressed by the demonstration which Mr. Tesla made.

Purely in the interests of science and in pursuance of his duties as instructor of the students, Prof. Pupin continued certain investigations and experiments upon which he had been occupied for some time before Tesla revealed that it was possible to procure an electric glow or faint light without any such medium as incandescent lamps. Tesla was able to procure an alternating current of vibration sufficient to produce a glow, and, in fact, to create a light in an electric lamp when he held it in his hand and yet without any communication by wire or otherwise with the electric dynamo. It seemed to those who saw this that possibly Tesla was on the verge of a discovery of great importance. If he was able to produce vibration of an electric nature in ether sufficient to develop light, artificial light, without the common agents such as lamps or chandeliers or even elaborate electrical machinery, might result.

Tesla went to Europe soon after and his experiments created great interest among scientists. What Mr. Tesla is waiting for now is the discovery and control of such forces of nature as would make it possible for those who are sitting in a room after twilight or dark to produce in the room a light sufficiently strong to make the use of gas, kerosene or even incandescent lamps unnecessary. These experts are satisfied that if the secrets of the vibrations in ether by which sunlight illuminates the earth when the sun arises can be discovered and similar vibrations produced by electricity, then all that will be necessary to do will be to perfect machinery by which it will be possible in the darkness to set such vibrations going as will give a brilliant and glorious light.

Faraday suggested many years ago that if the secret of the glow-worm could be discovered and there could be concentration of rays of light effected by means of that discovery, then we might have light out of darkness in the night without the waste entailed by heat. The wastage caused by heat in the use of the common incandescent lamp is very great. The Tesla experiments indicated that it might be possible to produce a light without heat, and Prof. Pupin in the remarkable discovery which was revealed to the scientists on Saturday has gone a step further.

Prof. Pupin took an ordinary condenser, which is practically a Leyden jar, and connected it by wire with a dynamo. The condenser was capable of furnishing a certain amount of electric energy, as of course the dynamo was. At first the Professor, by a plug, prevented any energy from the jar or condenser from being carried to the wire, using in the wire only the energy created by the dynamo with results with which every electrician is familiar. Then he permitted the energy from the condenser to enter the wire, so that passing through the wire there were the electrical vibrations from the dynamo and from the condenser.

While the results were not so spectacularly brilliant as was the case in the Tesla experiments, it seemed to the spectators that perhaps they were more important. It indicated that the energy passing through the wire, measured by volts, was very much greater than the energy transmitted by the condenser and the dynamo. Pickersgill, a very able expert, who was present, said that it could be described to laymen in this way: Supposing a powerful influence created great waves of the sea from the east and another influence created similarly large waves from the west, and that these waves should meet; there would then occur one of those mountainous waves by reason of the impact. So the force of electricity developed by these experiments of Prof. Pupin created a mighty vibration. If it was developed in a reactionary way, the result would have been precisely similar to that produced by a force operating upon sea waves antagonistic to their general currents which would have neutralized their power and produced calm.

But the most extraordinary of Prof. Pupin’s experiments was his illustration of the fact that he had discovered how to create by electricity waves of vibrations precisely similar to those created by blows struck upon musical instruments and which produce the various sounds in the chromatic scale. Musical vibrations have been analyzed so that a certain number of them produce a sound which makes the standard pitch. The number of vibrations in England is greater than those adopted by the French musicians so that the English pitch is a trifle higher than that of France and American instrument makers have been adopting the French standard.

It had also been discovered that if a tuning fork was struck, while the vibrations were exactly the same as those produced by striking a key upon the piano corresponding to that of the tuning fork, yet there will be a variation in one respect; the curve representing the vibratory force as it would be placed upon a sheet of paper is exactly the same in each case, but the piano note produces waving lines, frill-like in shape, while that of the tuning fork is a line without such irregularities.

The recorder attached to the experimental instruments of Prof. Pupin traced perfectly harmonic curves, like those of the piano, and the electricians said that this was the great discovery; that the Professor had at last shown how to develop vibrations which were exactly identical with those produced by musical blows and of harmonic nature. As an experiment, this, of course, was exceedingly interesting to the electricians, since the discovery ranks with some of those which Faraday has made, among them those which, subsequently utilized, have given us the electric light. But looking at these experiments from the commercial point of view it seemed as though they might have far greater importance than that which attaches to their purely scientific character. If Tesla and Pupin together have been able to produce electric vibrations which in one case cause a glow of light and in the other are equivalent to those revealed to the sense of hearing, it may be that by a combination of these two discoveries we are really upon the edge of a revolution of one of the profoundest secrets of nature, which will enable us to produce artificially such vibrations in ether (using the word ether as distinguished from the atmosphere which surrounds the earth) as will enable us to command at will, in our houses or upon the public streets, artificial sunlight, entirely different in its production from that which now enables us to light up the darkness of the night. This will be light without heat.

In talking with a number of electrical experts today I found that they were very greatly interested by these discoveries, and some of them went so far as to say that it seemed to them as though we were upon the threshold of the second epoch in electrical development.

“The fortunes which have been made in the past 17 years by the commercial development of electricity will not compare, in my opinion, with those which await other discoverers, inventors and scientists.” So spoke an electrician of world wide repute to me today. He said that the first stage of electrical development, leaving out the telegraph, was practically ended, and that investigations and study had been sufficiently great to enable the scientists to see that we are now upon the edge of new and more important developments than we have even yet had. There are hints that in a certain laboratory in this city one of the most successful and now most wealthy of those who have made fame by these electrical developments believes that he has practically solved one of the greatest mysteries, and one which, being solved, may revolutionize civilization itself. Only vague hints of this man’s discoveries have reached the electricians, and, profiting by Edison’s experience and that of some other electric scientists, he has said but little about his investigations. But it is not at all unlikely that before the end of this year a discovery may be given to the world which can be compared only with those great mysteries of the laws of nature which have given to us the steamboat, the railway and the electric telegraph.