Savants Await Test of Wireless Power

Other Scientists Eager to Have Tesla Build Plant to Try Out His Invention

DR. DE FOREST HAILS IDEA

Announcement that Nikola Tesla has perfected a system for transmitting power without wires was greeted today by scientists and engineers with expressions of hope that he would go ahead with the construction of a plant to put his theory to a practical test. Dr. Tesla explained his theory in an exclusive interview Saturday.

His plan is to use the earth itself as a huge reservoir in which electrical energy can be stored, this reservoir to be tapped by ships, planes or factories equipped with "key" mechanisms.

Dr. Lee De Forest, one of the foremost inventors in the development of radio, said he hoped that Dr. Tesla would soon bring forward apparatus that would demonstrate the practicality of his theories.

"It has generally been considered," he said, "that the only way power could be transmitted without wires was by Hertzian waves. This has been attempted by sending at as low a frequency as possible and yet with high enough frequency to transmit. The result has been that the amount of power was infinitesimal when compared with the amount sent."

Dr. Tesla says his invention does not use this system. Almost twenty years ago he built an experimental station on Long Island with a heavy steel tower more than 100 feet high and a shaft going down 100 feet into the earth. At the bottom of the shaft was a power plant.