Tesla's Bright Light

Apparently Most Simple in Construction, Yet Its Penetrative Power Is Enormous.

HIS TRIBUTE TO MR. EDISON.

Will Not Make Public the Principles of His Light Until He Is Able to Save More Energy.

NOW HE LOSES NINETY PER CENT.

When He Has Reduced This to Sixty Per Cent He Will Give Away Chunks of the Sun.

How soon Nikola Tesla will consent to make public his new light and give its principles to the world he will not say. He declared yesterday that when it has reached the perfection which he believes it is capable of he will present his discovery before an electrical or other scientific society and demonstrate that not only is it the realization of a principle which he enunciated in St. Louis eight or ten years ago, and so set electricians experimenting along those lines, but that the light may be manufactured cheaper than any other form of electric lighting known. It will be to electric illumination what his oscillator is to the generation of he fluid. With the latter the expensive and elaborate conversion of power is saved and the energy developed almost directly from steam. So with the vacuum light. Without filaments and without their attendant perishable quality, with nothing save a vacuum and an enormous vibratory power of electricity, light will be made as nature makes it, by the vibration of the molecules.

THE RETORT COURTEOUS.

Mr. Edison said yesterday that if Mr. Tesla had invented a light so wonderful, why not show it and demonstrate to the world by action rather than by words that the lamp was a reality and not a theory. Mr. Tesla was shown Mr. Edison's statement, and he smiled as he said: —

"I entirely agree with Mr. Edison that it is much better to act than to talk. I do, however, desire to say this: — Over the head of my bed in the Gilsey House hangs an incandescent lamp. I use it every night before I go to sleep, for I have the bad habit of reading after I have retired. I have never yet turned the current from this lamp without mentally expressing my gratitude to the man who made that method of lighting possible."

With this bucket of hot coals for Mr. Edison Mr. Tesla shut himself up in his workshop.

In that workshop is a little table, by the side of which is Mr. Tesla's place where he does most of his work, with plans for the development of his theories of electricity. On this table stands the wonderful lamp which, with the same number of cubic inches as a 16-candle power incandescent lamp and with the same voltage from the street current as the ordinary lamp has, is able to give forth a light of 250 candle power.

TESLA'S LAMP.

It is a very simple looking contrivance Two brass cylinders, looking for all the world like the empty shells of shot for a rapid fire cannon, stand about six inches apart. A light wire extends between the two, which probably contain coils, but about them Mr. Tesla will not say a word. Directly in the centre of this thin wire is an ordinary electric light bulb used for Incandescent lighting. The little point usually at the bottom of the bulb points upward. There is no filament in the vacuum. It appears merely as an ordinary bulb would appear if the carbon filament had been destroyed, but the interior has been exhausted of air many times more than the incandescent light bulb. When the current is turned into the electrodes and so into the bulb there is no foreign substance to burn. The electric molecules have the vacuum all to themselves. They move at the rate of from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 vibrations a second. No one point gets bright and then seems to ignite the rest, as in the bulb usually seen. There comes a glow, just as there is a glow in the eastern sky at dawn, and then it becomes rapidly intenser, until the whole interior of the bulb sends out light, just as though a piece had been cut out of the edge of the sun and packed into the little glass receptacle.

WITH MORE ENERGY SAVED.

This is what the Tesla light does when it is used now when it loses ninety per cent of energy and only uses ten per cent in light.. The difficulty which the inventor is experlencing in reducing the loss of energy to sixty per cent is the securing of a complete vacuum. This is the greatest problem perhaps which is set before him, but when it is understood that the vacuum which is secured in the Crookes tubes is many times greater than that used so far by Mr. Tesla it may be appreciated that he is not confronted with an insuperable difficulty. Of course the production of tubes or bulbs which are thin enough to permit of the full benefit of the light and are still strong enough to withstand the atmospheric pressure from without is at present very expensive. Mr. Edison, however, has produced a tube for his fluoroscope which is much cheaper and more effective than the Crookes tube. This, it is believed, demonstrates that the commercial difficulty may be readily overcome and Mr. Tesla's light, even with its vastly increased power, will be possible for any one to use. The increase in power, should he reduce the loss of energy to sixty per cent, will enable him to secure a light of nearly one thousand candle power in a bulb of the size of the ones which now give forth sixteen candle power.

SOMETHING LIKE IT ON SHOW.

Some idea may be formed of the Tesla light by an inspection of the tubes which are shown at the Electrical Exhibition by Mr. Farren Moore. They, too, give forth light as a result of the vibrations of electrical energy, but in them the rapidity of the vibrations only amounts to a few hundred a second, whereas in the Tesla bulb they number among the millions. Mr. Moore's lights burn with a bluish flame, which is not divisable with a prism. The Tesla light is as white as sunlight, and the prism shows upon a screen all the colors of a rainbow. It may be believed, therefore, that the Tesla light is the nearest approach yet to natural light, the definite markings of the divisions of the colors of the spectrum proving its clearness. and intensity. Mr. Moore has worked along the same lines as Mr. Tesla and is entitled, electricians say, to great credit in being able to demonstrate the practicability of Mr. Tesla's ideas of elec tric light production by means of vibrations, but the results of his experiments have not yet produced an illuminating power which is practicable in competition with the incandescent light, while Mr. Tesla's friends declare that his light far exceeds it.

PHOTOGRAPHING THE HEART.

The experiments which Mr. Tesla has been making with the Roentgen phenomena and which have been successful in permitting him to photograph tissues of varying density instead of bone, have been made possible by his adaptation of this principle of light generation, by means of vibration. The same principle applied to similar processes make the X rays so penetrating that the most delicate gradations are discernible. It is not outside of the bounds of probability that Mr. Tesla will be able to produce a photograph as the culmination of his efforts which will show the organs of the body and the entire structure of the frame as well. His present ability to see the contraction and expansion of the heart, and the imperfections of the lungs in a living body makes his hopes doubly assured.