To Telegraph Without Wires

Tesla Says He Controls Earth’s Static Electricity.

PROPHECY OF GREAT THINGS

Oscillator’s Wonderful Work May Result Ultimately in the Transmission of Power.

Nicola Tesla believes he has solved the problem of telegraphing without wires. There are inventors and students from whom such a statement would be received with a shrug of the shoulders, but Tesla’s conservatism compels the attention of the scientific world when he speaks. The results which he believes he has gained were achieved largely by the use of some form of his electrical oscillator, which he patented recently.

The famous electrician says he has machines which will carry messages through the earth for a distance of twenty miles. He declares he has sent and received signals with them, and when he says so no one doubts him. That these machines can be perfected so as to enable him to telegraph to any part of the earth as easily as he can now within a limited distance, he professes no doubt. The principle established, the rest is merely the control of power.

DUE TO THE OSCILLATOR.

Tesla has been working at his idea actively since 1893. He exploited it at a meeting of the National Electrical Lighting Association in St. Louis, where he stated boldly his conviction of the possibility of telegraphing all over the earth without wires, if he could devise and perfect a machine which should be able to disturb the static electricity of the earth. Professor Helmholtz, eminent as a scientist, agreed with him, saying the difficulty would be in obtaining the power necessary. Tesla, with his oscillator, had already gone far in solving that end of the difficulty.

In other words, he proposes to set the whole static electricity of the earth in motion for telegraphic purposes by taking advantage of the electricity and the incompressibility of the electric fluid contained within the earth. The energy of the electric current, like that of flowing water, is exhibited only when the current is interrupted.

POWER MAY BE TRANSMITTED.

Tesla’s electrical oscillator will interrupt the current millions of times in a second. In one of his experiments he set a steel ring four inches thick vibrating, and by gentle but continuous vibrations burst it. If the discovery will work out in practice, it will mean much more than mere telegraphing without wires. It will be more than half way toward the transmission of power from place to place, and the transmission of power without wires to considerable distances would solve one of the greatest problems of economy in the use of electricity.