No More Night

“Never more dark night?”

“Never more dark night!”

The wondering questioner and the slender, dark-browed young man who gave the emphatic assurance stared straight ahead intently.

A note of triumphant sense of power sounded in his voice as he proceeded.

“Always there would be in its place a soft radiance and pale glow, as when the moon shines through clouds.”

The audacity of those men who lead where electricity is to conquer and be conquered is superb to minds untutored in the ways of electricity. Nikola Tesla has said that darkness of night may be converted into day by electricity. He will juggle with night and lift more than a corner of the mantle of the creator of day and night.

When Tesla first referred to the idea he himself characterized it as a “dream, nothing more.”

But within the week Tesla has declared in private conversation that it is not a “dream,” as he had been content to believe. He has said it is not only practicable but practical to abolish much of night. Tesla believes that immense areas of upper air may be illuminated so that they will shed a faint moonlight sufficient for ordinary street and town illumination. A distance of a hundred miles might be made luminous. From Philadelphia to New York might be lighted. This change in his views from a “dream” stage to a practical possibility is the result of the developments of Tesla’s vacuum tube system of lighting known as “cold light.” Imagine what this would mean to the country, where darkness hides many dangers. Imagine what it means to the cities, where electric light and gas companies and trusts manipulate the town and rule to their own interests. It seems too wonderful to credit, yet those who place abiding faith in the practical mind of Tesla must accept this in time, as they have his other remarkable wonders.

It seems all very simple when you hear Tesla talking to friends of it. Tesla found out how to produce small clouds of light. A gigantic apparatus of the same kind that did this, he holds, would produce clouds of light miles in extent, instead of only inches and yards. Simply described, the apparatus would consist of two metal uprights extending an immense distance upward into the air, and a machine for developing a powerful electric current passing from upright to upright. That is all. The luminous clouds must be developed at a great height above the ground. Rarefied air is the essential for success in producing the most brilliant light.

Miles above the earth the air is more and more rarefied. So the upper strata would be desirable for the development of perpetual moonlight. Lower strata of air could be used, but the higher ones offer less resistance and would produce more brilliancy than those nearer the earth. To produce a great cloud of light that will illuminate a wide area it is only necessary to bring a powerful current of electricity to act upon these rarefied upper strata of air. If a most brilliant illumination is demanded, a height of nearly ten miles would be necessary to reach air sufficiently rare to secure it. The same effect would be possible, however, at a lower level by using a more powerful current. Or, if the people would be content with something less than the most brilliant illumination, it could be obtained at a still lower level. It would be an illumination. There would be no deep shadows thrown on the earth, for the glow would penetrate everywhere.

Are these dreams of which Tesla is the father? Who knows?

It would be only necessary to erect one upright in Philadelphia and one in New York City. A powerful current of electricity would pass from the top of one to the top of the other. The rarefied air would glow and brighten. Under immense pressure a few thousand horse-power would cause the sky to give off a soft glow that would bathe the earth as the moonlight does on a perfectly clear night. By increasing the current the moonlight glow would be deepened and give way to actual daylight.

Tesla has said these ideas are not dreams. They are possibilities that may be made practical.

And this is the basis for belief in its practicability, after the mechanical difficulties have been overcome. An inventor and discoverer in scientific fields never has a doubt that any mechanical difficulty can be overcome. But Tesla’s part of it is this. Apply the system of vacuum tube lighting. The principle is not complicated. Tesla discovered this form of illumination and carried it to its present state of development. It has been exhibited many times of late in New York and always referred to by electrical experts as “the light of the future.”

A vacuum tube is a simple glass tube from which the air is exhausted, each end of the tube being fitted with electrical connections. When a current of electricity is passed through this chamber of glass at great pressure the tube becomes luminous. The intensity of the luminosity varies with the pressure of the current and the quantity of air left in the tube. In other words, light may be produced without wires or any other visible conductor if an electrical current can be made to act upon a vacuum. It was when Tesla was no further along than this that he told in a London lecture his theory that if the current of electricity could be made to act upon upper strata of air, say at a height of several miles above the earth, it would render large areas more or less luminous. Then Tesla learned how, by passing a current through a broken circuit, clouds of light might be produced in a room and without a vacuum. By varying the form of electrodes the clouds of light vary in shape themselves. Then he began to believe that the “dream” to which he had introduced London engineers was not a dream, after all. Further experiments strengthened the growing belief in a practicable luminous atmosphere-lighting method, and the end is not yet.

D. MCFARLAND MOORE SAYS IT IS NOT IMPROBABLE.

“A dream? To abolish night, to turn it into day, to imitate moonlight, to deepen its glow into daylight? No; that is not all fancy. It is not all a dream.”

And D. McFarland Moore, the young champion and demonstrator of the successful vacuum tube light, assented emphatically.

Daylight is what we all are seeking. Instead of points and dots in a lighting system we are trying to secure an imitation of daylight. As Tesla says it is possible to tamper with the ways of daylight and darkness by means of extended atmospheric illumination of the heavens. The principles involved are only those which I have demonstrated can be successfully and practically applied.

There is nothing improbable in the idea expressed by Tesla when he says that through the application of the principle of cold lighting the heavens may be artificially illuminated sufficiently to turn darkness into light. The principles are those elaborated in the vacuum tube light shown in my laboratory to a hundred people this week. The laboratory was lit entirely by the illumination from the vacuum tubes from which all the air had been exhausted. The current passed through the vacuum tube was of high frequency. In any scheme of elaborate illumination of the heavens, in any attempt to dissipate darkness from large areas, the strata of rarefied air occupy the same position as the interior of these vacuum tubes. The heavier air about the rarefied strata is the glass tube. To pass a current of high frequency and great potential power into these rarefied strata must produce a luminosity. It follows that under these luminous areas of the sky the earth must be relieved from the darkness.

“To those who are investigating vacuum tube lighting the idea presents no difficulties except that of reaching the necessary strata. The wonders that may be developed through application of the exhausted air tube method are not fully comprehended, and this great idea of illuminating the heavens will surely be one of those which will fructify. Even now, to those most familiar with the subject, vacuum tube lighting holds out this certainty of perpetual daylight. These principles are not new with modern investigators. Two hundred years ago it was declared that in the idea of the vacuum lay the great future of electricity. For a century it was dropped, but its revival of late years indicates that in this field the unique marvels of electricity will be discovered and developed.

“Mechanical difficulties are always overcome in time. Meantime the vacuum tube field is most fascinating and promising and offers practical immediate effects. It is sure to come, this idea of converting dark night into moonlight and even daylight, but meantime my most audacious aspiration is to convert dark night in the most wretched homes of poverty into brilliant day. It is my great hope to invade the east side with the sunlight, the daylight radiance of the vacuum tube system and drive darkness out of even the poorest quarters and humblest home.

“I want and I intend to make the vacuum light so cheap that it must be put into the homes of the very poorest people. Electricity is now the light of the rich and well to do. In the houses where hundreds of the most miserable and wretched people live the darkness is accountable for much suffering. This vacuum tube light will cost less than one-fifth what the present systems do. It will give a light that will illuminate every hidden spot and make no dark shadows. It will be possible very shortly to illuminate four miserable rooms such as probably half the population of the east side occupy, at the very small cost of one cent per night.

“The idea of applying vacuum tube cold light principles to a general illumination of the heavens and the utter rout of present street lighting methods is practicable. It is attracting attention, as all vacuum tube experiments are. But I believe I can accomplish most good by bringing cold light within the reach of the very poorest people and so lightening the unhappy conditions under which they are compelled to live.

“In putting the light into tenement houses there need be but one connection to the block. Around the walls of the room, as a picture rail, would extend the glass tubing from which would shine the nearest imitation of daylight yet put on a working basis.

“In still another way it could be used in the poorest of homes.

“A metal plate on the wall, or one set into the ceiling and connected with proper electrical supply sources, would be necessary. Then the housekeeper would only find necessary vacuum tubes that could be placed in candle-sticks or carried about in the hand.

“No connection of any kind between this tube and the plate on the wall is necessary. The tube would light up by induction and several small tubes would give more light than the miserable lamps and bits of candle and gas jets now used in these homes of the poor.

“Everybody knows that the burning lights consume oxygen in the rooms that is needed by the occupants, and so the already vile atmosphere is still further robbed of its life-sustaining qualities. The vacuum tubes do not do this. No matter how extraordinary the idea of invading and illuminating poverty’s quarters may appear it isn’t visionary and it is only a question of a very short time when it will be in operation and not as a philanthropy either.”

Prof. Henry Morton, President of Stevens Institute, in discussing the new light, said to a Sunday World reporter:

“This extraordinary plan for illuminating the heavens seems to me perfectly sound and scientific, in theory at least. I should say the plan ought to work. It is impossible to calculate definitely, of course, how bright a light could be developed in this way, or how large an area might be illuminated, since this may only be ascertained by actual experiment. It seems to me it would be impossible to develop as bright a light as Mr. Tesla has planned over so large an area. The new light might be made, perhaps, as bright as diffused moonlight, but certainly could not be made to rival sunlight. Mr. Tesla has, however, done so many wonderful things with electricity that his theories should always be received with respect.

“The new system of illumination has, by the way, been experimented with already on a large scale with some measure of success. About fifteen years ago a German named Lemström tried to illuminate the sky in this way in the upper part of Norway. The experiment was made to prove the electrical theory of the northern lights. In this experiment the electricity was made to act on the atmosphere near the ground instead of at an immense height in the air. Even under these conditions a faint, glimmering light was produced. I remember that the experiments were favorably commented upon in the German papers at the time. These results had no practical utility, of course, but they go to show that Mr. Tesla’s plan is not all moonshine, to say the least. As far as I can judge, the figures mentioned in the plan are about correct. I should say that a height of ten miles would find the atmosphere sufficiently rarefied for such an experiment, and the distance between the electrodes, that is the wires Mr. Tesla would send up, would not be an objection. A current of electricity could be sent from one wire to another, even if they were separated by a hundred miles of rarefied air. Just what effect such an electrical discharge would have on the atmosphere, of course, remains to be seen.”