News of the Day - Tesla Tower Erected

Of the marvels of electricity there is apparently no end. Every day brings us new applications and developments of the mystic "fluid," which is fast transforming this prosaic, work-a-day world into an enchanted garden like those of Aladdin and Armida, where the prevailing phenomena are of the order that would have been deemed supernatural little more than a generation ago. Since the discovery of wireless telegraphy quite a new vista of scientific possibilities has been opened up to us, and we seem to be only on the threshold of electrical application more wonderful even than the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, or the electric motor. One of the latest of these is an apparatus for the discovery and location by means of electrical waves of subterranean lodes and ore deposits. In other words, what the divining rod is supposed to do for subterranean springs and water deposits, electricity will effect with far more certainty and on a larger scale for gold and other mineral deposits. This afternoon Professor Sylvanus Thomson proposes to describe and exhibit, at the Westminster Palace Hotel, the apparatus in question, which, if it answer all the expectations of the inventor, should add enormously to the mineral wealth of mankind, and supersede the costly, toilsome, and speculative labours of the mineral prospector. Another and yet more striking application of wireless electricity is reported from America, where Mr. Nikola Tesla has devised a means of dispensing with wires for the supply of electricity on a large scale for lighting and power purposes. At Wardenclyffe, Long Island, he has newly erected an enormous mushroom-shaped tower for the collection of electricity through the air from the Falls of Niagara, and its retransmission, also without wires, to various villages, factories, and cities. The inventor contemplates a ceaseless day and night service of millions upon millions of volts from the Canadian Power Company's electric plants at Niagara Falls, and the transmission of the power by his special wireless system to New York City. Here it is expected to supersede the more costly and cumbrous existing system for the illumination of the city, the running of trains and tram cars, the operating of lifts and ferry boats, the supply of heat, and the winding up and regulation of public clocks. According to the "New York American," Mr. Tesla's scheme contemplates the erection of similar towers to the one at Wardenclyffe at convenient places throughout the American Continent, for the distribution of electricity for illuminating, driving, and heating purposes. Only those within a given distance of Niagara will depend on that source for their powers. All the others will derive their own power from generating plant erected alongside them, and each tower, it is calculated, will distribute about 10,000 horsepower of wireless electricity under a tension of 100,000,000 volts. Each tower will be capable of transmitting heat, power, and light to cities, factories, and private houses, within a radius of thirty miles or more. The steel mushroom-shaped tower already erected is 180ft. high, and 97ft. in diameter at the base. It has eight sides, with a staircase and lift for reaching the cupola platform, where the wireless vibrations are received and shot out again. This is no merely paper scheme, we are assured. The tower is already erected, with the pecuniary help of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and experiments extending over four years have convinced Mr. Tesla of the commercial practicability of his invention. Another and no less astonishing application of wireless telegraphy by the same inventor is one by which friends in different parts of the world may instantly communicate with one another, through the instrumentality of little instruments about the size and shape of a watch, which can be carried in the vest pocket, and used to record market quotations, races, and important items of general news, so that the Post Office, newspapers, steam, oil, and fuel of every kind may in the not far distant future come to be numbered with the vanities of the past.