Power Over Seas if Tesla's Dream Comes True

Soft Coal May Then Become a Drug in the Market.

Soft coal as a drug in the market, displaced by falling water as a generator of power — this is a possibility of the future according to Nikola Tesla’s prophecy, that a method will shortly be perfected for transmitting electrical energy infinite distances without loss.

Such a discovery, it is predicted, would at once make available the power of all the waterfalls of the world, some of the greatest of which, like the Victoria in Africa and the Iguazu in South America, are remote from civilization.

Since the introduction of steam, manufacturing has been largely dependent upon soft coal. Modern electrical progress has been rehabilitating water power, but loss of electric energy in transmission has been a handicap. Power is now sent 200 miles from Niagara Falls, and it is said that inventions already demonstrated make twice that distance possible. It would seem a possible step, therefore, to the distance-defying transmission which Tesla predicts, although he gives no details as to transferring electrical energy from one continent to another, whether by cable or some method akin to wireless telegraphy.

The power possibilities behind such invention are stupendous. It is estimated that the Victoria Falls in Rhodesia, a mile wide and almost 400 feet high, has energy to the amount of 35,000,000 horsepower. This is more than the estimated total stationary power generated in the United States, by steam, water or gas.

Even more out of the way is the falls of Iguazu in South America, near where Argentine, Brazil and Paraguay meet. It is two miles wide and falls 210 feet, with a force of possibly 16,000,000 horsepower. Not an ounce of this energy is in use, as the falls are in a wilderness 200 miles from even a frontier town.

Niagara Falls, third largest in the world, has a possibility of at least 5,000,000 horsepower, due to its volume of about 250,000 cubic feet a second and a drop of 160 feet.