Tesla's Colorado Springs Ground Connection

Just as the monolith remained buried in Tycho crater, so has Tesla left his foot print on a hill in Colorado Springs. Tesla left, for generations to follow, in his notes (1899-1900) (1) clues of his presence and the location of his lab.

Tesla placed a copper plate, 20 inches by 20 inches, at a depth of 12 feet below his lab (2). He saturated the hole for the plate with gammoning coke to increase the conductivity of his ground. But nature dealt Tesla a hard blow with arid soil. Tesla measured 2960 Ohms from the coil ground to the water pipe feeding the lab in the meadow. By running water, Tesla was able to drop the resistance to 14 Ohms. This water pipe ran across the field exactly 550 feet from the ground plate to the big water main underground at Pike's Peak Avenue. Tesla wrote of the matter saying, "This introduced additional length in the secondary wire which became thus too long for the quarter of the wave as calculated" (3). Even an effective ground connection on the water pipe 220 feet away was doubtful. The water faucet outside Tesla's lab was part of the secondary coil and could demonstrate, by arcing, the voltage drop developed across the pipe resistance from the lab to the street connection.

Mr. Jim McGrady from the Department of Utilities, Water Engineering, of the City of Colorado Springs, is credited with dating this 12 inch pipe running from Mesa Reservoir to Prospect Lake. This pipe provided a fixed reference to the maximum distance from and along the pipe. Not said is where the lab connects to the big main water pipe. The big main does have a unique elbow as it turns towards the lake. This elbow is the closest point to the suspected area of the laboratory.

Additional leads from other utility records, deeds, court records, ground core samples, and photogrammetry will form the path to Tesla's door step.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

ELBERT HUBBARD