Maybe We Can Talk to Mars

Tesla and Serviss Hold Out Hope.

Colorado Springs, Colo., May 17. - Nikola Tesla arrived in the city this afternoon from Chicago. He will carry on extensive investigations in wireless telegraphy on the top of Pike’s Peak at an elevation of 14,000 feet.

“I am here to work out a system of transmission at a distance,” he said. “I propose to propagate electrical disturbances without wires. I shall attempt to design an apparatus to use in wireless telegraphy everywhere. Everything is crude yet. I will go to the top of the Peak to-morrow. I have many experiments to make, which will take several months. The electrical conditions at high levels are more active than at lower. I hope to be able to send a message from New York to Paris.”

Tesla purposes to establish communication between the earth and Mars. This is to be done by an instrument so sensitive that it will feel disturbances created anywhere on the globe.

Mr. Tesla said: “One of the most wonderful things I have discovered is this instrument. With it I purpose to communicate with Mars.

“The coming century,” he continued, elaborating on his lecture before the Commercial Club, “will be the era of atmosphere. From the moment I discovered that air under certain conditions was a better conductor than a brass rod I saw possibilities which made me grow fairly dizzy at their extent.

“The transmission of force and influence to any distance; the use of the sun’s energy for all the needs of man, the possibility of controlling things with which there is no visible connection - these and an endless number of smaller achievements have become facts that in a short time will have their practical demonstrations.

“I am going on to perfect the ideas of the transmission of energy which I have found in the new and measureless ocean of the atmosphere about us. The sun has furnished us everything, yet the energy it has to give is not used in the smallest part. The earth itself can be restored to the condition it was when the ferns grew as large as trees.

“Distance, in the new method of transmission, amounts to little or nothing. The idea of wireless telegraphy which arouses such interest now because it is developed to a new basis is not wonderful at all compared to the principle of which it is one application.”