In the Footsteps of Genius Page 14

meters around was better lit than in the middle of the day.

Erotic portraits

For the first time Tesla recorded in his diary everything he observed in the course of his investigations. Since the visual effects were equally interesting and significant, he spent a great part of his time in photographing the experiments.

Tesla hoped that the apparatuses which he was daily perfecting would one day be able to be adapted for commercial use. But, before that, it was necessary to complete thousands of smaller and larger modifications. In order to preserve such an abundance of new information, Tesla no longer had confidence in his legendary memory.

In Colorado his visual experiences began to fade. The images and flashes of light which had once appeared on his “mental screen,” in the experiments, began to come alive and take on a different form, in descriptions, mathematical formulas, detailed, beautiful, almost erotic portraits of electrical lightnings.²⁵

Hertz’s investigations of 1888, which confirmed Maxwell’s dynamic theory of the electromagnetic field, convinced the scientists that electromagnetic waves propagate in a straight line, like light waves. For that reason there prevailed a general conviction that the emission of radio waves was impossible, for, if they too travel in a straight line, they will not follow the curvature of the terrestrial globe. Tesla, as is known, believed that the Earth is an excellent conductor and that in this a significant role is played by the “upper layers of the atmosphere, which, according to the experiments, contain a very stable line of conductivity.”

Until recently the theory of the propagation of waves was not seriously considered. In the fifties, however, numerous scientists who worked on the introduction of very low (3 to 30 kHz) and extremely low (1 to 3000 Hz) electromagnetic waves confirmed Tesla’s principles, to the extent that they relate to the transmission of low-frequency waves.

According to James R. Wait, the best-known expert on the theory of electromagnetic waves, Tesla’s experiments have quite a few similarities with later investigations of super-low frequencies (SLF) in communications.²⁶ In fact, Tesla’s great transmitter was the first in the world sufficiently powerful to create SLF resonance in the terrestrial ionosphere.

He also quite precisely established that the Earth resonates at 6, 18 and 30 Hz. He himself intended to build devices with which he would precisely establish the resonance; the experimental data, however, were obtained only in 1960. Only then was it established that Tesla was very close: the Earth resonates at 8, 14 and 20 Hz.

Einstein’s washing machine

In Colorado Tesla occupied himself with various investigations, but he devoted the most attention to the testing of powerful oscillators, the wireless transmission of energy, the reception and transmission of messages