Finds Nature's Secret

Has Mrs. Benedict Solved Tesla's Great Problem?

ATOMIC SHEATH BROKEN.

Research Reveals the Force Long Sought by Scientists.

VIBRATION'S POWER FREED.

Claim That Electricity May Be Supplanted.

EFFECT ON AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Discoverer Believes That Human Life Will Be Prolonged Through. Its Agency.

Detroit, Mich., Oct. 24. Nikola Tesla: — I have discovered the hiding place of universal force, of that most vital and terrible thing. the fountain of pure electrical fluld.

Universal force is in the inter-atomic atmosphere and cannot be brought into open demonstration except by disrupting the atomic sheath, which has never been accomplished, except under velled conditions, and then unwittingly and without recognition.

The phenomenon of the dynamite explosion when it takes place in open air apparently disrupts or disentangles or destroys every vestige of material substance included within a certain radius, from the apex of Its prime energy, but I understand the methods by which these disruptions may be produced both in the air and upon the earth.

If the great master, Nikola Tesla, may think what I have said worth his attention I would be pleased to give him my plans.

With such power released and under control. I can see no reason why aerial navigation is not within easy reach, or why, with this most intense of all motor concept. the free activity of fluid electricity in its primal strength and vitality may not be app:led to human life in its greatest complex and most extreme and minute extremities, why human life may be. not one freed from depleted Aber and tissue, but profuged for great periods of time. I give these suggestions, fully realizing what I say, and also understanding methods by which far more can be accomplished. I know there are countless discreet movements in the human body merging their energies Into the complex and continuous.Also that they lose energy or that the atomic piston rods fall or move with much less rapidity from lack of the supply of pure electric energy.

Nikola Tesla has seen the inconceivable rapidity of the atomic movements in the human body, the fierce flames and vibration giving and receiving the 'lectric atomic energies and vitalities in every most minute viscera of every structure, and I am also conscious that he understands far more than I am able to express of this motor power of the universe alike in atom or whole, and of the infinite possibilities yet to be revealed to the world.

I am a woman past the meridian of physical years, but I have given all the best energy of the years I have had searching for the unseen, and at last I have been rewarded. I have just returned to Detroit from a four years' sojourn on the deserts of Colorado, away from books and papers, and I have known but very little of what has been done in the world during that time. Since my return it has been suggested that I write to you, giving my theories.

I believe I outlined my discovery and have given some suggestion of the magnitude of Its possibilities, if such a discovery is developed.

That I am a woman does not exclude me from understanding so great a wonder.

Hoping I may hear from you, I subscribe myself, respectfully,

MRS. RENEW BENEDICT, Detroit, Mich.

This is a copy of a letter which Mrs. Renew Benedict, a lineal descendent of Benjamin Franklin, has written to Nikola Tesla, the great electrician. Tesla has been seeking for years to discover the solution of the problem Mrs. Benedict claims that she has solved. Mrs. Benedict had determined to mail the letter to Tesla, but finally changed her intentions, believing that if the announcement was made through The Times-Herald Mr. Tesla would be certain to see it, and would consider her discoveries more carefully than if he first learned of them through an unknown source.

If anyone should have been predestined to make a discovery which would revolutionize electrical science no better person could be found than Mrs. Benedict. She is a lineal descendant of Benjamin Franklin, the philosopher who discovered the identity of lightning and electricity. When less than a day old she was carried by her mother to the roof in deference to an old-time custom, and there above the flooded valleys of the keystone state was told to look up and be "high minded."

As if to verify the custom, the child began life as a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams. Before she could speak strange and marvelous revelations came to her which so impressed themselves on her infant mind that her first spoken syllables were themes of a world unknown, and on subjects since revealed through the interpretation of science.

When grown to womanhood Renew Daniels became a teacher in the romantic community of New Bergon, that ideal wild of Pennsylvania, over which Ole Bull presided, a dreamer at the feet of the master and a teacher in a log schoolhouse, whence the strains of the magic violin had power to lure every pupil, leaving the youthful instructor free to close the temple of learning and follow the vagaries of genius.

These scenes passed like a dream, and Renew Daniels became Renew Benedict and was lost sight of in the retirement of domestic life. After that season of blessedness came widowhood, and years of sorrow and research. The strange doctrine of theosophy attracted her, and she studied it until she became an adept, reaching the highest circles, a member of the "king's chamber."

It was then that an inspiration seized Renew Benedict to go into the desert and learn the law of vibration. She purchased a ranch at Colorado Junction, and for the past four years has labored with pick and shovel on a fruit farm planted by her own hands. Suddenly she believed that she was enlightened and found herself on the verge of a great discovery, which even the latest disciple of science, Nikola Tesla. has not as fully developed, although working on the same lines.

Scientific men, not only Nikola Tesla but others in America as well as German and French physicists, have been struggling with the problem of force. Electricity as known to-day is unknown. Although it has been made the servant of man, no man knows its nature. But slight advance has been made to the real knowledge of it since Franklin, Benedict's ancestor, discovered its positive and negative conditions. For some time it was regarded as imponderable, as a tangible thing, an indivisible mass, but with the light shed by the latter experiments of science, the conclusion has been reached that it is a composition of something else as yet unknown. This may be what Mrs. Benedict has discovered.

The theory that light and heat was imponderable was held for years, as it has been held that electricity was an imponderable. But the world of science now believes that "imponderable" is only a word employed to mask ignorance of causes. Science discovered that light was a vibratory motion in the ether, while heat was a vibratory motion of atoms and molecules. This has engendered various theories as to the nature of electricity, and by some it bas been though to be due to rotations cf matter.

Vibratory motion has been guessed to be the cause of electricity. Scientists have held that theory, but none have been able to prove it conclusively. Vibratory motion is the cause of the great phenomena of natural science, light, heat and electricity. Mrs. Benedict believes she has found a new force, perhaps akin to electricity, for which the scientists have been blindly groping, and which, like light and heat and what we call electricity, is due to vibrations.

Empty space is a perfect nonconductor of electricity. Tesla and Bell have proved this. It has been discovered that an electric spark would not pass through a vacuum, but that it would jump three feet in the air rather than bridge the eighth of an inch, where there was no conducting material. It is therefore apparent that electricity or the force imperfectly known by that name exists in the air.

As the electro-magnetic theory is now well established, it implies that ether waves, either long or short, have their origin in the movements of matter of one size or another. The forces in electricity are the result of two effects. As light is an effect of forces in ether, and heat is an effect of forces in matters, so electricity, as it is known, is the result of an effect in matter and an effect in ether, the second being caused by the first.

Scientists have made sure of one thing. This is that electricity never manifests itself, except when there is some mechanical disturbance, which is termed vibration, in ordinary matter, and every exhibition of electricity may always be traced back to a mass of matter. Some of the electricians have confined themselves to a study of that which takes place in matter, others to that which takes place in ether. The confusion of scientists has been due to this divided experimental condition.

On the other hand, it has been the belief of Tesla and his followers, as well as scientists in France and Germany, that there is some latent force as yet unknown at work behind this, and they have believed that it the energy stored in each individual atom of matter could be released it would result in the securing of tremendous force with little waste.

Tesla believes that this can be secured by rapid vibrations. His theory is that all manifestations of energy are but the different tangible or apparent evidences of one force, and he has set himself to discover that force. All energy, whatever its form or manifestation, is, according to him, simply molecular agitation of greater or less degree. If that be true, then, heat and light are merely the results of molecular agitation, and could this agitation be set up by purely mechanical means, heat or light would result. Then all forces would be found to be one.

It is the bold idea of Tesla that by causing matter to pass to the stage of luminous vibration, without remaining, for any appreciable time, in the stage of heat vibration, he could produce light without heat, and he has come very near success. Thus proving the kinship of the phenomena.

Tesla started with the idea of setting matter into vibration at a rate approximating that of light, which is at the rate of 2,500,000 vibrations a second. He expected that under such violent agitation it would emit light. But he has not succeeded in producing so great a vibration, although wonderful luminous effects produced at a lower rate foretell his success. His discoveries have astonished the scientific world, and have paved the way for Mrs. Benedict's discovery.

The vibratory theory of a universal force is not new. It was surmised by ancient philosophers, and Pythagoras taught his pupils that the same forces underlaid both the harmonies of music, which are the result of vibrations, and the motion of the heavenly bodies. Leucippus belleved, as Tesla has believed, and as Mrs. Benedict has discovered, that atoms possess within themselves a principle of energy. This belief extended so far as to enter upon the range of natural theology, and the theory of Democritus, was that the soul's construction approached the hypotheses of vibratory physics. The mystics believed that matter is latent force, and force free matter. To liberate the force contained in the matter was their aim, but this was abandoned as impossible by the scientists of a century ago, although the realization of the ideas of the ancients now seems at hand.

Sound, the result of vibration of the waves of the air, enters into Mrs. Benedict's ideas. The explosion of dynamite or electricity in a vacuum would not be audible to our imperfect sense of hearing, and no man can see an atom, yet it is believed that it is there and that the laws governing nature's world may be revealed, as the telescope and microscope, have daily revealed the existence of things hitherto unknown.

No man can see an atom. It is the indivisible substance of which everything is composed. Innumerable atoms being required to make the mass. Electricity is the result of atomic friction, light and heat are have been found to be due to the same causes. Natural forces of heat, light and electricity are due to a disturbance of harmony, caused by the effort of each atom to assert its power over its neighbor — to separate itself from the average harmony of the mass and become independent. The individual atoms are each sustained by life, or in other words, the vibrations. The atoms independently separate from the light rays, and restored to the average harmony of the mass after absorbing vibration of the mass is the new condition of energy called electricity.

"I do not believe," says Edison, "that matter is inert; to me it seems that every atom is possessed of a certain amount of intelligence."

Mrs. Benedict, the descendant of Franklin, seems to have succeeded in releasing the atom from its sheath, giving it the ability to accomplish almost everything that is now done by other forces, while its possibilities for the future surpass the dreams of the wildest romancers.

Mrs. Benedict is now in Detroit. She is not a woman of fashion, for she has lived out of the world and has not even heard of balloon sleeves. In answer to a leading question she said:

"Yes, I believe that I have discovered the hiding place of universal force, of that most terrible and subtle thing, the fountain of pure electric fluid, not a highly impregnated substance in which electricity may be engendered or collected, but the fountain of the eternal and endless force itself. I believe that I have not only discovered its hiding place, but a means by which it can be liberated."

"Are you willing to give it to the world?"

"I am willing to give suggestive propositions to the world through the press of what this force is and where it can be found, and how it may be seized upon and brought into submission, but my actual method must remain my secret in the cause of science until I am fully prepared to demonstrate it to scientists. My secret is the disruption of the atomic sheath. I know Tesla is working on the same lines, but he has not accomplished that result. I believe that I have solved the problem, and when this great power is released and conserved in the interests of mankind, I can see no reason why aerial navigation will not be a result. Human life can also be indefinitely prolonged by the renewal of the vital functions by use of the energizing power now wasted. This elixir of life will be produced when the vibratory force is released from its atomic sheath."

"Will you explain the method?"

"Yes. When dynamite explosions take place in the open air, they apparently disrupt or destroy every vestige of material substance included within a certain radius from the apex of its prime energy. But the power of the explosion is not contained within the dynamite, but the force generated by the gunpowder explosion is held in concentric waves, by Its compact in the etheric glycerin envelope, which compact so intensifies the blow struck upon the air as to cause the air to retrovert upon itself with such intense vibration as to disrupt the atomic sheath and liberate the terrible force secreted within."

"Why has this never been discovered before?"

"The world has not been ready for a discovery of such godlike proportions. The atomic world is waiting for a Columbus — a liberator. It has never been compelled to yield its terrible and all-powerful secret to the grasp of science."

Then this strange woman told of long walks by the railroad tracks, where, with her ear to the wheels of flying trains, she studied the secrets and learned the law of vibration. Of experiments so daring she ventured her life in return, and of a certain knowledge which she hopes will revolutionize the world.

Apropos of Mrs. Benedict's relation to Benjamin Franklin, some years ago she was a guest of Senator Conger at Washington, and in passing with Mr. and Mrs. Conger through the capitol buildings her attention was called to a statue of Franklin standing by the stump of a tree that had been stricken by lightning.

"My ancestor," said Renew, "bequeathed to me the power to conserve a greater force than electricity. Somewhere in the future it is waiting for me."

She affirms that she has not been conscious of speaking until her friends repeated her words.

Mrs. Benedict is at present with friends in Detroit, Mich., where she will remain until she hears from Tesla. When in Chicago she is the guest of her brother, S. H. Benedict, of Auburn Park. The success of her discovery will be eagerly looked for — Tesla himself having stopped short of its fulfillment.

M. L. R.