The Inventions of Nikola Tesla

While everybody knows that Nikola Tesla is one of the greatest — perhaps the greatest — living discoverer in the field of electricity, not every one knows just what Mr. Tesla has done. It may be said, to start with, that to talk about Tesla's inventions leads one into a maze of electrical terms that defy the understanding of the mind not educated in electricity and anything like a description of the technicalities of his work, his discoveries, and his inventions here would be about as valuable as a column of Hebrew jargon. Hence, all that will be attempted is to tell what he has accomplished. First, take the transmission of power.

When Tesla came into the field in America little was known of the alternating current. The single alternating current was used, but for the purpose of lighting only. The continuous current was used almost exclusively.

The continuous current system is very good for short line work, but with it energy cannot be delivered successfully at any great distance at high pressure. To deliver the continuous current at high pressure at a distance would require the use of wires so heavy that they would be cumbersome and entirely impracticable for use. Tesla made an alternating current motor that permitted the transmission of energy long distances at high pressure over thin wires, the delivery being made at the same pressure or at a lower or a higher pressure, whichever was desired, by means of a transformer. Thus the bridling of the power in Niagara was made possible, and natural forces everywhere can be similarly harnessed and made to do the work that has heretofore been done at great cost by other forms of force and energy. A great many smaller inventions are included in this great one. Its possibilities are just now beginning to be realized. Tesla's discoveries in connection with this motor, it is said, were the prime cause of the recent consolidation of the Edison and the Westinghouse Electric Companies.

In this motor two wires were used for the transmission of the current. Tesla believed that the extra wire was a useless expense; that all the work could be done with one, and no return circuit was necessary. So he set himself about the work of finding a way to accomplish this. He did accomplish it, and now it is possible through his invention to transmit the energy with the aid of only one wire. This invention, however, has not been of the same practical use as the other. It is merely a step in the direction of accomplishing the third thing that Tesla is aiming at. That is the transmission of power and intelligence without any wires, by means of the earth itself. If such a thing can be accomplished the human mind can hardly conceive of the possibilities. Tesla believes that it can be accomplished. The fact that he believes it is proved by the ten years of work he has devoted to experimenting on that line.

Next in order is the perfection of an apparatus for the production of electrical vibrations. Electrostatics is the science of electricity at rest. Tesla demonstrated that for the production of light waves, primarily, electrostatic effects must be brought into play, and he formed the opinion that all electrical and magnetic effects may be referred to electrostatic molecular forces. In a glass bulb filled with electrostatically charged molecules he found that by agitating them, causing them to vibrate, to strike against each other, brilliant light was produced. No carbon was required, such as is used in the ordinary incandescent light. There was nothing but the glass bulb. Tesla's accomplishment was the making of apparatus to stir up the molecules which don't cost anything and are ever present, while the carbon heretofore needed is expensive. This apparatus is nearing perfection now, and lamps which furnish light without carbon are in sight. The saving in the cost of electric lighting will be tremendous, and, as measured by Tesla, 200 times the light can be produced with the same energy that is now used in the production of the ordinary incandescent lights. This will mean more light with less power and less expense, because there will be no expensive carbons required.

Last on Tesla's list is the oscillator, now perfected and ready to be put on the market. It is estimated that nine-tenths of all the dynamos in the world are operated by steam power. Every step in the production of electricity by steam power is attended with waste and loss of force and energy. The problem Tesla set out to solve was the saving of the 95 per cent. of energy that was wasted. Actual tests showed that only 5 per cent. of the energy used in making incandescent lights manifested itself as light. The 95 per cent. was lost. There was loss in every step from the putting of the coal into the furnace to the delivery of the electricity. Tesla has combined an engine and a dynamo. Steam is forced into the engine at high pressure, which produces an extremely rapid vibration of a steel rod, and this rod or piston is so adapted to a set of magnets that the mechanical energy of the vibration is converted into electricity. Fly wheels and governing balls and eccentrics and valves and all the rest of the complicated mechanism required for the purpose of control or regulation are done away with.

The steam cylinder with its piston is the only thing that does the work about a steam engine. All the rest take energy, but produce nothing; so if they can be done away with, the energy that it takes to run them is saved. Tesla's oscillator does away with them. The oscillator converts the energy of steam into electricity directly. It would appear that this invention, if it does all that it promises, will revolutionize all business that requires energy in the form of steam or electric force to operate it. The machine doesn't take up one-tenth of the room needed by an ordinary engine and dynamo.

Probably the oscillator and the new system of lighting would both have been in use long ago had it not been for the destruction of Tesla's laboratory last year. He had these and other inventions very near completion. He had in his workshop the result of years of work. He had many models of machinery that he could not replace. All the work that had been done in making these things had to be done over again. He said himself at the time that a million dollars could not repay the loss.

Regarding the future he has said:

"I expect to live to be able to set a machine in the middle of this room and move it by the energy of no other agency than the medium in motion around us." — N. Y. Sun.