Nikola Tesla Promises us a Wonderful Achievement by Aid of Niagara's Power

Proposes to Send a Message to Mars That Will Have the Strength of 800,000,000 Horse Power to Cross Intervening Gulf of 100,000,000 Miles

Why the Martians Will Answer Our Signals

A s the Martians are probably more advanced and skilled than us, their first readable message to this earth will undoubtedly be, "We have been calling you for the last ten thousand years."

Once communication is established, the Martians will gradually take our code and language and learn it first, and then teach us theirs in plain English. Difficult as this fact would seem. It in reality would not be comparable with the achievement of teaching a deaf, dumb and blind child to understand. To talk to Mars is only a matter of patience now.

Nikola Tesla proposes to talk with Mars with the co-operation of the Niagara power companies. Just how he proposes to do it is explained in the article below, which appeared in Sunday's issue of the New York World:

When Sir Hiram S. Maxim, the distinguished inventor and scientist, made his recent announcement to Peter Cooper Hewitt that the next great achievement of science would be the harnessing of the whole energy of Niagara and the sending of a message to Mars, he hit the nail, in the opinion of Nikola Tesla, squarely on the head.

Mr. Tesla announces today that with the co-operation of power producing companies at Niagara Falls he is preparing to hail Mars with Niagara’s voice. A way has been found at last for transmitting a wireless message across the gulf, varying from 40,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 miles, which separates this earth from Mars. Once that has been accomplished and Mars, which is considerably older and supposedly more advanced in science than us, has acknowledged the receipt of our signal and sent back flash for flash, it will remain to devise an interplanetary code through the medium of which the scientists of this world and of Mars will be able to understand each other.

Mr. Tesla has been quietly working for several years on a wireless power plant capable of transmitting 10,000 horsepower to any part of the world, or to any of our neighboring planets, for that matter. The mere matter of distance between dispatching and receiving points is absolutely no object whatever. Wireless power, Mr. Tesla says, may be sent one million or more miles just as easily as one mile.

Several of the electric power companies with immense generating plants at Niagara Falls have agreed to co-operate with Mr. Tesla in an effort to reach Mars by wireless.

These Niagara power companies, Mr. Tesla declares, are now capable of producing electrical vibrations of such intensity that if measured according to ordinary standards, the rate at which their energy is delivered could readily be advanced to a billion horsepower. But no such performance is necessary to produce strong electrical impulses on Mars. Mr. Tesla has estimated that a rate of a few hundred million horse-power is quite sufficient to establish wireless communication with the planet.

Mr. Tesla’s wireless plant, which he has already equipped at Wardenclyffe, L. I., for the sending of long distance electric waves, will enable him to attain a rate of 800,000,000 horsepower — much more than is necessary to bridge the gulf of from 40,000,000 to 100,000,000 miles between this earth and Mars.

Now, it was explained by Mr. Tesla, if his magnifying wireless transmitter and corresponding receiver, or a somewhat similar apparatus, were installed on Mars it would be a very simple matter for the Martians to receive wireless flashes from the earth and send others in reply. And in sending messages to this earth the Martians would not have to use more than one-sixteenth the electrical energy needed to send flashes from the earth to Mars.

“It should be borne in mind,” Mr. Tesla wrote, “that many Martian tasks in mechanical engineering are much easier than the terrestrial, on account of the smaller mass of the planet and lesser density, which in the superficial layers may be considerably below the mean. To a still greater degree this is true of electrical engineering. Taking into account the space encompassed by Mars, a system of wireless transmission of energy such as I have perfected, would be there much more advantageously applied, for, under similar conditions a receiving circuit would collect sixteen times as much energy as on the earth.

“The astounding evidences furnished by Lowell are not only indicative of organic life, but they make it appear very probable that Mars is still populated; and furthermore, its inhabitants are highly developed, intelligent beings.”

“Is there any other proof of such existence?”

“I answer, emphatically, yes, prompted both by an instinct, which has never yet deceived me, and observation. I refer to the strange electrical disturbances, the discovery of which I announced six years ago. At that time I was only certain they were of planetary origin. Now, after mature thought and study I have come to the positive conclusion that they must have emanated from Mars.

“Such colossal transformation as is observable on the face of Mars could not have been wrought except by beings ahead of us in development.

“What wonder if they are signalling to us. We are sufficiently advanced in electrical science to know that their task is easier than ours. The question is—can we transmit electrical energy to that immense distance? This I think myself competent to answer in the affirmative.”

If any reasonable doubt yet exists as to the existence of life on Mars the announcement of that very conservative astronomer, Prof. David P. Todd, of Amherst, that there is something like human life on Mars, may be taken as conclusive. During six weeks’ observation this spring with a specially constructed photographic telescope set up in the Andes Mountains, in Northern Chili, Prof. Todd took more than 7,000 remarkable photographs of Mars.

The pictures constitute a complete series of surface photographs of Mars, from pole to pole, from side to side, the enlargements of which will enable a new sphere to be made. To this sphere the lines and cross lines of the planet will be attached in raised edges so that in three months’ time we shall have an entirely new and most complete globe of the planet.

“Of course, the difficulty has been to trust the observations of the naked eye through the telescope,” said Prof. Todd. “Prof. Lowell has made photographs of Mars, but the aerial and atmospheric conditions at Flagstaff have not been so advantageous as to secure so thorough an examination as the one we have made.

“During the six weeks that we observed Mars the planet exposed its spherical surface completely, and although I base my conclusions that there is something like human intelligence at work up there purely upon inferential indications, I was much impressed with the possibility.

“Among the six or seven thousand photographs, however, which I was fortunate enough to obtain, there is no illusive line, no questionable do. What the camera saw is there, and what these pictures will reveal when they have been carefully examined I am sure will add a great deal to our knowledge of Mars.”