Nikola Tesla - The Founder of High-Frequency and Radio Engineering Page 11

to achieve full resonance, and in that way signals could be received wirelessly over the greatest distances on Earth.

b) Tesla’s Radio Experiments 1894–1897. Realization of Syntonized Wireless Telegraphy

This plan of Tesla for the wireless transmission of electrical energy constitutes the basic plan of today’s radio technology, and the well-known American radio expert Dr. Austin, already at the beginning of this century, stated that Tesla, with this plan and his high-frequency apparatuses, laid the foundations of radio technology and earned the title of the father of Radio. Tesla, however, did not stop there, but in his further work developed all the necessary details for the realization of a perfect system of syntonized wireless telegraphy, with which he conducted many experiments from 1893 to 1897. In 1893 and 1894, in his laboratories in New York, he constructed various automatons that were powered by electromagnetic waves without wires, which proves that he had already created such sensitive electrical circuits that they could respond only to specific wavelengths. In “The Electrical Engineer” of 3 April 1895, as well as in “The Electrical Review” of 20 March of the same year, it was explicitly stated that Tesla had developed his system for the wireless transmission of signals over great distances, and at the beginning of 1897 Tesla erected a small experimental radio station near New York, with which he conducted experiments in wireless telegraphy over distances of 35 kilometers. The aforementioned journal “The Electrical Review,” of 9 July 1897, extensively discusses this Tesla experiment under the title “Tesla’s Wireless Experiment,” in which it is confirmed that after years of experimentation Tesla succeeded in establishing wireless telegraphy on a solid foundation with his high-frequency current apparatuses and with a plan he had already published in 1893. According to the statements in that journal, for his wireless telegraphy experiment over a distance of 35 kilometers Tesla used oscillations of 2 million periods per second, and it is particularly emphasized that the experiment was carried out with very low energy consumption. The article further particularly emphasizes that this Tesla system signifies the possibility of achieving wireless telegraphy over the greatest distances on Earth, because by using Tesla’s high-energy oscillators and utilizing Tesla’s resonant circuits this can be easily achieved, since in Tesla’s system and apparatus distance plays no role.

In the same year, on 2 September, Tesla filed two of his basic