Tesla's Giant Plans

The famous inventor Nikola Tesla has in these days at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, erected a colossal tower. With the aid of this tower he intends to put into execution the most magnificent plan that has been conceived in the domain of wireless telegraphy.

For over four years the inventor has both day and night striven and experimented to make his plan practically feasible. Now and then he has let fall some vague statements about the plan's great significance and about the changes its practical execution would bring about, but only now is he ready to carry out the first practical test.

For a large part of the work that has already been performed, Tesla has Pierpont Morgan, who cherishes great interest in the plan, to thank.

To a collaborator in the Daily Mail the inventor has briefly explained what surprises the Americans can expect when the plan becomes a reality.

First and foremost electric power of several million volts from the Canadian Niagara Power Company's electric power station at Niagara will day and night be transmitted by means of Tesla's wireless system to the Wardenclyffe tower and New York city. The intention with this is to illuminate the entire city, to provide motive power for railways, streetcars, elevators, motor cars, freight cars and ferries, to heat public and private buildings as well as to wind up and every half hour strike all the city's clocks.

Furthermore towers will be built at all possible suitable places for the transmission of power and the procurement of lighting, motive power and heat. Only the towers which are built within a certain distance from Niagara will receive their power from the station there. All the other towers will receive their power from generators erected between the main towers, and from each one will wireless electricity be sent out at ten thousand horsepower and with a tension of one hundred million volts. Tesla declares that he with certainty can produce and transmit so much from each tower.

Each tower shall be able to transmit heat, motive power and light to cities, factories and private houses within a radius of thirty English miles. Eventually the inventor proposes to extend this tower system so that it encompasses the whole of North America and to place the towers at sixty English miles' distance from each other.

The Wardenclyffe tower is 185 feet high and 97 feet thick at the base. The dome itself is 65 feet in diameter. The tower functions as a colossal receiving apparatus and has eight sides and is equipped with elevators so that one can come up to the platform. Up there the wireless vibrations are received and shot out to various points in all directions.

Particularly useful will the new system become for the heating of private residences and for the driving of clockworks, which latter will not require any supervision. Also in countless other respects will the new system become usable, and the inventor believes that it will cause a complete revolution in many respects.

Among other things Tesla proposes a new wireless world telegraphy whereby one communicates with each other at any distances and instantaneously. A small instrument, which resembles a clock and which is carried in the vest pocket, can enable the owner to give and receive messages from far-away living friends. Both the sender's and the receiver's instruments have their determined keys, so that the messages cannot go astray.