Tesla Experiments and What They May Lead To

The work done by Mr. Nikola Tesla, whose lecture at Columbia College is well remembered by American electricians, and who last Wednesday delivered a lecture at the rooms of the Royal Institution in London, as mentioned in the cable dispatch in this week’s issue of The Electrical World, has naturally attracted much attention on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. J. J. Carty, electrician of the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company of this city, talking with a reporter, suggests that by the use of a dynamo of sufficient capacity a current might be sent from the shore to a war vessel that would disable her crew and possibly even her machinery. “As a result of his experiments,” added Mr. Carty, “Tesla thinks that there is a possibility of a man visiting the North Pole in perfect comfort and standing there without any clothing on, being warmed by this current of electricity. Now, it does not require any great stretch of the imagination to suppose that this heating influence could be increased so as to produce the most disastrous effects upon the crew of a war ship.

“I sometimes give myself up to the imagination of what the Ericsson monitor of the future may be in the case of a great naval war. If the suggestions which have come to me from the Tesla experiment are developed into practical value as an energy of war, it is possible to conceive of a float constructed with a large plate and a dynamo carried out into the stream or bay or ocean, guided from shore, and waiting for a war ship. When the war ship comes and presents its sides, perhaps a mile or more away, a current is established between the armor and the plate on the float.”

“These waves will pass through fog, or even through a brick wall, and this fact alone would revolutionize the ordinary means of defense. I can give you a simple illustration. These electric waves will go through solid matter without injury, exactly as light goes through a window pane. You know that Prof. Bell sent a current of electricity over a wave of light which carried a telephonic message for a short distance, but the wave that he generated would be useless in case of a fog. In this case a fog or a stone wall would offer no resistance.

“Now, leaving the matter of war out of the consideration, it seems to me that these experiments may develop something of the highest value in the arts of peace. For instance, it would be perfectly feasible to generate a current of electricity which would penetrate a fog, and would be received by an apparatus on a steamship or vessel, and devices might be invented by which the wave would be enabled to communicate intelligence. The enormous factors contained in these suggestions are less appalling than would have been the idea of the construction of the steamship ‘City of Paris‘ to ocean navigators and marine architects of the day of Columbus. There is, therefore, every reason to expect that in the future, and perhaps in the very near future, steamships will be provided with these apparatuses, and will be able to communicate with comparative ease at sea and through a fog. Some of the bottom principles in this suggestion have, in fact, already been made the subject of patents.

“Then again, a besieged garrison might be able to communicate with its army, using the earth as a medium for the electric wave. There is no doubt whatever of the feasibility of this. I can demonstrate it any day. I can give an illustration of something that happened to me in Buffalo which proves it. I was talking over a long distance telephone wire to friends in Cambridge, Mass., and I could hear with perfect distinctness the starting and stopping of the electric railway cars running through the streets of Cambridge. Perhaps a more remarkable illustration occurred in Paris, when certain noises produced in the electric light station in London were heard at the telephone in Paris, having been carried over a circuit through the earth.”