Tesla's Aerial Power Transmission

TO THE EDITOR OF ELECTRICAL REVIEW:

This end of the century has been so replete with scientific discoveries, both electrical and otherwise, that the old motto, nil admirari, becomes revivified, and truly we wonder at nothing.

When one reads the account of Mr. Tesla's latest work in electric power transmission the mental question arises, and why not ?" Once he had accomplished wireless telegraphy, to his restless activity it was but a step to wireless transmission, merely devising ways and means for transmitting wagonloads instead of thimblefuls.

Nature herself has done this in what is probably her most awe-inspiring manifestation of power, the lightning. Who has not seen the tremendous bolt dart from one end of a long cloud to earth and at the other end flash back from earth as the "return stroke?" And who will say the cloud, though many miles in length, has not constituted an aerial circuit in such case?

It is my belief that the upper strata are constantly carrying electrical currents of high potential.

An old-fashioned apparatus for the study of electrical phenomena was a globe of sulphur or glass, which, when rotated under slight friction of the dry hands, produced the desired effect in the shape of a snappy spark. Such a globe was about one foot diameter. What, then, should be the effect of the earth rotating at its enormous speed under the friction of the atmosphere - a globe billions of times the surface of the archaic electric machine?

It is no wonder that our most advanced meteorologists go astray in their forecasts, when they have no means of learning what is going on in the upper strata.

Tesla's balloon terminals may prove a boon to meteorology, while serving their own purpose also; for they can be used as a source of information of the various phenomena continually taking place above us. And, as the Electrical Review has often pointed out, meteorology will never reach the pedestal of an exact science till observations are regularly conducted at an elevation consistent with the conditions.

There is nothing inconceivable in Tesla's transmission scheme, wonderful as it may seem; on the contrary, it is consistent with all that has gone before. He has simply gone after tarpon when others have been content with sprats.

T. J. M.
New York, October 29.