Tesla's Conception of the Earth/Atmosphere as a Giant Electrical Capacitor

Inventor as fantastic as his wireless theory

Nikola Tesla - inventor, genius, eccentric. Who was this potential millionaire who died a pauper, the man whose theories and inventions may be the answer to our energy problems, some say?

His long-ignored theory for the wireless transmission of electricity is being revived and will be tested on the Belgrade farm of Virgil Fuchs. Surveying for the experiment begins this weekend, and sometime in June 100 million volts of electricity will be "pumped" into the ground in Timmons, Canada, and sent to Belgrade.

Sheldon Nidle, a New York scientist who is working on the receiver to be built on Fuchs' farm, explains that according to Tesla's theories, that immense electrical charge will go to the opposite end of the world and bounce back, setting off waves of electrical energy. The energy wave, according to Nidle, will spread out throughout the world similar to the waves spreading out from a rock thrown into a still pool.

Nidle said according to Tesla's theories a tuned receiver on the Fuchs farm will convert the energy waves into electricity which will, if it works, run an approximately 75-horsepower motor.

Sound fantastic?

Well, the life of the man who came up with the theory was, by some accounts, fantastic.

Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of iSmiljan in the Croatian province of today's Yugoslavia. His father was a professional soldier turned priest.

Tesla's father urged him to go into theology and as a child, accounts written about him say Tesla experienced strange visions. Tesla himself later wrote:

"I saw new scenes. These were at first blurred and indistinct and would flit away when I tried to concentrate my attention upon them. They gained strength and distinctness and finally assumed the concreteness of real things. I soon discovered that my best comfort was attained if I simply went on in my vision further and further getting new impressions all the time...."

Tesla first began inventing at age 17. He realized then that his visions were a precious gift, allowing him to design in his mind machines he wished to create. His inventions, according to Nidle, always worked the first time.

But the acute sensitivity which allowed Tesla to convert his mental inventions to physical ones plagued him, according to written accounts. In a 1919 biographical account he described his violent aversion to women's earrings and obsession for crystals. He was revolted at the touch of another person's hair, got a fever simply by looking at a peach and became nauseous by glancing at small squares of paper floating in a liquid.