Teslaic Transmissions

The best criticism we have seen of the enormous potentialities claimed by the daily Press, both here and in the States, for Tesla’s latest development in electric works, is contained in the Electrical World. Our contemporary, in a leader headed “Boundless Space a ’Bus Bar,” states that at least one of the American electrical journals has taken Mr. Nikola Tesla’s patents more seriously than the inventor intended them. The idea proposed comprises nothing more nor less than a high-tension step-up transformer feeding into a vertical conductor with a terminal at such an elevation above the earth as to reach a strata of rarefied atmosphere which has a comparatively low electrical resistance, a similar step-down transformer to be connected at any desired point with the same conducting strata by means of any suitable device, such as that used by the illustrious Benjamin Franklin, or, preferably, as stated in the patent, by means of a balloon, the earth being utilised as a ground return. The fact is set forth that the atmosphere at 15lb. to the square inch, or other pressures common near the surface of this mundane sphere, is a good insulator, while at lower pressures, as is well known by manufacturers of 200-volt lamps, it becomes quite a fair conductor. By a rigid suppression of the reasoning faculties, and a little freedom of the imagination, fancy pictures a conductor poked up through the insulating sheath at Niagara, establishing an alternating difference of potential between the superincumbent ether and this ball of solid matter below protected by an atmospheric dielectric, which difference of potential can be tapped, so to speak, at any desired location, such as the large cities, or by express trains with electric locomotive towing balloon trolleys, making contact with an overhead conductor, from which they cannot readily slip off. The use of several great sources of natural power will, of course, necessitate generators of the same frequency running in synchronism with each other, as they are all, so to speak, connected across the same ’bus bars, and lacking the third ’bus bar, multiphase systems will go out of fashion. The system might, however, give other results more valuable than those of power transmission. With transmitting and receiving stations at Niagara Falls and New York City respectively, the State of New York would possibly be illuminated by a gigantic Geissler tube overhead that would turn night into day, put to shame the aurora borealis, and make the advocates of diffused illumination shout for joy. (The writer reserves all rights to the use of interplanetary space as a vacuum tube for lighting purposes.) Mr. Tesla should certainly be enjoined from putting his polished ball terminals too high, or a Crookes tube effect might be obtained, emitting a profusion of X-rays which would disclose altogether too much to anyone with fluorescent spectacles, and might make it necessary for mortals to carry leaden umbrellas to prevent the skin being burned from the tops of their heads.