Paradigm Lost: Nikola Tesla's True Wireless Page 21

Shoreham, Long Island, whose purpose was to produce a “World Wireless System” that would radiate “several thousands of horsepower” and permit the connectedness of all the telephone and telegraph exchanges in the world by wireless means. The system was to use currents in the earth but was never demonstrated.⁶⁸

Consider his allusion in “The True Wireless” to a speech he gave in 1893 at the Franklin Institute where there is a portion entitled “Electrical Resonance.” He remarks in 1919, “This little salvage from the wreck has earned me the title of ‘Father of Wireless’ from many well-disposed workers …” Perusing the speech, we wonder who these well-disposed workers are.

In his Institute lecture he asserted, “I do firmly believe that it is practicable to disturb by means of powerful machines the electrostatic condition of the earth and thus transmit intelligible signals and perhaps power… We know now that electrical vibration may be transmitted through a single conductor. Why then not try to avail ourselves of the earth for this purpose [italics added]?”⁶⁹ Notice the use of the word electrostatic. His proposal is not based on any use or understanding of electromagnetic waves. As further proof of this, he goes on to wonder what the electrical capacitance of the earth might be and “the quantity of electricity the earth contains.” None of this thinking proved germane to communication by wireless telegraphy nor is his obsession in the article with determining the period of oscillation of currents that might be induced in a resonant earth.

Strengthening Tesla’s Claims

In a further attempt to strengthen his claims to invention in wireless, Tesla lays claim to discovering the forerunner of the Audion in the caption to his Fig. 9 (reproduced here as Fig. 12). The caption reads, “The Forerunner of the Audion — the Most Sensitive Wireless Detector Known, as described by Tesla in His Lectures Before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, February, 1892.” It is instructive to read the text of the talk where he discusses his “forerunner.”⁷⁰ He begins by paying homage to Professor Crookes and his invention, the Crookes tube. Like Crookes, Tesla is not using thermionic emission. He employs a cold evacuated glass bulb, like a lamp bulb, but with no filament. The bulb, which has a “high vacuum,” contains some conducting powder, which in turn is connected by a wire to one terminal of a high frequency, high voltage induction coil. The bulb has a sheet of metal foil on its surface that is also connected to the coil for some experiments, but not others. The