Tesla's Electric Oscillator - Improved Apparatus for Exciting Waves of High Frequency

It is now four or five years since Nikola Tesla startled the electricians of the world by allowing a current of 200,000 volts to pass through his body. And it was nearly or quite as long ago that he produced a beautiful effulgence in a sealed glass tube by electrical means, yet without connecting the tube with a wire. These and other wonderful achievements of that eminent investigator have been the outgrowth of his study of "high frequency" and "high potential" currents. In fact, his most brilliant and original experiments for several years I have been conducted in this, his favorite, department of research, and he has contributed greatly to the general stock of knowledge on this subject.

Every schoolboy, nowadays, knows the difference between a direct and an alternating current; and the practical electrician, if not the schoolboy, is aware that an alternating current may have oscillations of almost any frequency. The waves may number only twenty-five to the second, as in the great Niagara dynamos, or they may occur several thousand times as frequently. It is only the low-frequency current that is used commercially at present; but Mr. Tesla has repeatedly expressed his belief that practical results of great importance ought to be developed out of the use of high-frequency currents.

Few readers of The Tribune need to be reminded of the difference between the volume and the pressure or potential of an electric current. The one is expressed in "amperes," and the other in "volts." When, for any reason, you transform a ourrent so as to raise the voltage, you correspondingly reduce the amperage. You cannot by any such operation increase the total energy, which is calculated by multiplying the number of volts by the number of amperes.

Reference is here made to these elementary principles of electrical science in order to render more intelligible the announcement, that Mr. Tesla has nearly perfected a new plece of apparatus, which is designed to transform both the frequency and the potential of an alternating current, and do so very economically. It frequently happens that pioneers in scientific investigation find It necessary to make a special tool before they can manufacture the article they have in view. Perhaps that tool is a new mathematical formula or a novel chemical process, or a bit of electrical apparatus. In any case, it is a means to an end. This latest invention, or improvement on old devices, with which Mr. Tesla is to be credited, is to be regarded in the same light. His goal is the production of cheap, cold light in vacuum tubes; and the new instrument is designed to help him and others in attaining that object. Mr. Tesla has imitators, and there are people audacious enough to think of themselves as his rivals. But, after all, the great number and broad scope of his experiments and their character place him distinctly at the front in this magnificent field of inquiry. The public grows impatient at times because Mr. Tesla does not occasionally report progress," like a Congressional committee; but, as The Tribune has often remarked, it is the privilege of genius to take its own time and work in Its own way.

Already Mr. Tesla has given to science many useful hints and suggestions as to the arrangement of well-known pieces of apparatus in electrical work. His famous "disruptive discharge coil," designed to excite subordinate waves of enormous frequency (millions to the second) in an electric circuit, may be cited by way of illustration. The instance also serves to show that the new apparatus is not the first of its kind which he has originated for the same purpose. As yet Mr. Tesla does not want to furnish details regarding his latest advance in this direction. But it seems probable that it will replace the costly. "Induction coils" now extensively used in much laboratory work. Such coils costs hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. In Röntgen-ray photography, as well as the production of "the light of the future," the new apparatus is likely to prove exceedingly useful. The author of it calls it an "electrical oscillator," but is careful to explain that it is a very different sort of a contrivance from his well-known "mechanical oscillator," which exercises the functions of a steam engine and a dynamo combined.