Wireless Aerial Navigation - Mr. Tesla's Experiments Antedating Those of Professor Bell

To the editor of the Sun — Sir: I am an assiduous reader of the Sun, but somehow I overlooked a report contained in a recent number, which has just been forwarded to me through the courtesy of the Electrical Review and interests me keenly. During the last few days I have run across a number of newspaper comments and was wondering what had called them forth, until the clipping received enabled me to understand and trace to your columns of August 27 the origin of the disturbance.

I refer to an experiment supposed to have been performed by Professor Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, which consisted in propelling an aerial vessel by power transmitted without wire. This could have been practically accomplished only by the use of some of my inventions, and should have been forestalled in this one of their many applications I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that it is by a man whose name is already linked with an immortal achievement. But if Professor Bell has undertaken this just to satisfy the world that an airship can be operated by power transmitted without wires he has gone to quite unnecessary trouble, for long ago I made a much better and further reaching demonstration. His experiment would only show that such can be done close to the source of electrical energy, but my experiments have established the fact that an aerial vessel or flying machine can be propelled with the same facility and efficiency either near the transmitter or at the antipodes.

The problem of aerial navigation was solved in the most satisfactory manner imaginable when, in the fall of 1899, I produced stationary terrestrial waves and passed a current equivalent to that of several hundred incandescent lamps around the globe. In a carefully prepared statement, which appeared in the Century Magazine of June, 1900, I have announced this advance in popular language, but clear and unmistakable. In my patents and technical articles, however, I have fully exposed my methods and appliances and given an account of my experiments: and the transmission of electrical energy without wires is no longer a secret to electricians.

Nikola Tesla.
New York, September 3.