To Telegraph Through Earth

Nikola Tesla Announces That He Will Be Able to Dispense with Telegraph Wires.

From Nikola Tesla, an electrical expert, comes the announcement that he has transmitted messages through the earth a distance of twenty miles without the aid of telegraph wires or connecting lines of any description.

Mr. Tesla declares furthermore that his apparatus, when perfected, “will not be hampered or affected by any distance, even though it be half around the globe.”

He has not made public as yet the details of his marvellous invention, but emphatically states that by its means he has held intelligible conversation between Menlo Park and this city, and inasmuch as distance is of no account, he claims that he can with equal ease communicate with the antipodes, forcing his current through the globe.

“I have fully substantiated the principle that it is possible to send electric energy from one point to another without wires,” he said. “I find after thorough investigation that the electrostatic condition of the earth can be disturbed in one place, and the disturbance will be felt all over the earth.

“If this disturbance, then, is created by a machine any similar machine, at any other point, should be susceptible to the disturbance.

“Every city in the world might be a station on an immense ticker circuit, and news from every point be simultaneously flashed without the use of wires.

“This invention makes possible the erection of one central station, from which power can be sent wherever needed at a cost much below the present, for copper feeding wires are now the heaviest items of expense.”

Thomas A. Edison, however, does not look with favor on Tesla’s announcement.

“It might be possible,” he said to me, “to send an electric wave to England without wires, but the power required would be enormous, probably 5,000,000 horse power. The scheme does not strike me as profitable or practicable.”