Tesla and His Oscillator

Nikola Tesla’s marvelous “oscillator” and his astounding claims as to what he can achieve with it still continue to excite the wonder of readers and scientists all over the world. He is claiming so much for his invention that if he can realize his claims he will revolutionize affairs. Three things he says he can do with his machine — annihilate space by sending unlimited electric power to any part of the world without wires, blow up the world’s navies by guiding dynamite boats against them without shore connections, and change electricity into brilliant light without any accompanying heat.

The first, it is claimed, will make natural forces do all the world’s work, the second will abolish war by making it too terrible to engage in, and the third will change the existing methods of illumination all over the world. All these achievements depend upon one thing — the changing of an ordinary electric current into one of tremendous voltage or intensity — and this Tesla claims to have actually accomplished by the machine that he calls an “oscillator.”

What is this marvelous little machine which will almost go into an ordinary pocket, yet which can hurl the power of Niagara across to Paris and run the machinery of the coming exposition in that city? To electricians must be left the technical description of it, but to the general observer it appears, when at rest, as consisting mainly of two coils of copper wire, one thick and short, the other fine and long, the one being inside the other. When ordinary electricity is passed through this machine, it is mysteriously changed from a gentle current that one might receive harmlessly through one’s hand, into a current of 800,000 volts, beside which a live electric light wire, or the current in the executing chair at Sing Sing Prison, is a feeble flicker — a candle beside a thunderbolt.

Here is a reporter’s description of the oscillator in action: “I saw the machine yesterday. At the touch of Tesla’s finger it blossomed into lightning flame. In color and shape it was like a celestial morning-glory flower, 20 feet in diameter, fringed with 10,000 purple thunderbolts — shooting into daggers and tongues of fire, continuously exploding with the roar of a cyclone. It was like the spectacle on Sinai. And what is this electric force that moves cars and machinery? ‘Invisible light,’ says Tesla.”

Yet this machine is only a working model, and Tesla says he can as easily make one that will create a voltage running into the millions. It is upon this hitherto undreamed of intensity or voltage that Tesla bases all his claims and hopes. Whether or not he succeeds in doing all the marvels he thinks he can do, the fact remains that his machine for creating a voltage equal to that of lightning is an accomplished and patented achievement. It of itself marks a revolution in electrical science. One may be pardoned for maintaining a non-committal attitude with regard to Tesla’s marvelous claims until he has actually put them into practice.