Tesla's Invention - He Has a Machine for Wireless Telegraphy of a Kind Superior to that of Marconi

From the Evening World.

Nikola Tesla, the electrician, announces that he has at last accomplished the great achievement of his life. His discovery, if put into practical use, will revolutionize many things in the world and cause all its intelligent inhabitants to wonder that they have been so slow as not to avail themselves of the forces which nature has put into the earth to help them in the daily problems of life.

Tesla’s latest discovery is a bigger thing than the Klondike gold fields, and will have far more effect in the commercial world, once it is put into practical operation. To put it in a way which every one will understand at once. The earth is full of electrical currents. Tesla has perfected an apparatus which disturbs those currents in exactly the way he wishes to disturb them.

The transmission of the electric waves is instantaneous. They can be recorded on instruments for the purpose. This creates another form of wireless telegraphy, which is superior to that developed by Marconi, the young Italian inventor, who seems to be creating such a furor among scientific men and commercial companies in Europe.

Not only will the electrical disturbances produced by Tesla be felt and recorded here, but all over the world at the same time. It will be possible to send a message to Albany, London, South Africa, Australia and the Yukon River at one and the same time, and with no more expense than is necessary to work the machine which produces the initial disturbance. Such expense, as compared with the results obtained, is nothing.

Tesla has one of the machines completed and has been demonstrating its workings. It consists of a huge disk, almost eight feet in diameter. From the center of the disk there juts out an electrode, full seven inches in diameter.

When the current was turned on the disk began to revolve at marvelous speed and a form of lightning ensued immediately. The long streaks of electricity, which were just the same as the sparks between two poles, shot from the electrode and cracked and snapped in the liveliest manner imaginable. Tesla got sparks in this way that, in some instances, were eight feet long.

Tesla, during the demonstration, said the voltage was so high as to be beyond computation. But the current employed was not heavy, which, interpreted from the commercial standpoint, means that the cost of producing the “disturbance” will not be heavy. The streaks of electricity were thrown out in a wavy, rugged fashion and many of them at a time.

“These sparks,” said Tesla, “are at this moment causing a great disturbance of the electric currents in the earth. With simple instruments the disturbance could be felt everywhere in the world, without the intervention of wires or any other conductor. We use the electricity that is already in the earth.”

Tesla says he is now arranging his data with a view to explaining his invention in detail to the scientific world.