Without Wires - The Startling Claims of a Young Electrician

Says He Can Transmit Electricity Without Wires — The Masters of the Science Bewildered — He Recognizes That Niagara is to Be a Marvelous Center — Enough Force for All the World.

Electricity traveling without wires, riding the heavens and the earth in response to the conquering will of man, carrying its winged messages over land and sea by means simply of the mighty power now slumbering in earth and space — such is the majestic, the overwhelming vision of Nikola Tesla, the young Hungarian who opened a wonderland in electrical science at the Franklin Institute Friday night. He would set the whole solid earth to vibrating, awaking tremendous world forces hitherto beyond the wildest dreams of the electricians, and by wonderful, delicate machines bridle this globe thrilling, pulsing force for the benefit of mankind. Before this young wizard of electricity the masters of the great science have bowed. He has completely bewildered them and revolutionized their ideas.

"I have already proved the contrary to what everybody believed," he explained in an interview at the Stratford last evening. "I have proved that it is not necessary to have two wires to establish an electrical current. In my Westinghouse machine I have but one wire. I utilize the air as the other. But as I now get a return through the air, I believe that I can also transmit through the earth, thus doing away with even the one wire. The earth is a great insulated globe filled with electricity, or the capability of electrical vibration. The only problem is to awaken this electricity, to shake this immense earth so as to set this mighty world force swinging or wagging. 0f course it will take a great force to start this motion. but we will get this great force then. There is no doubt we can get it. Electricians thought 10,000 volts was a wonderful pressure. I have already stirred up hundreds of thousands, and the limit is far off. Instead of 300 vibrations I have already secured 8,000,000 a second. Give me the machine, and I will make a spark half a mile long. Now, at Niagara, for instance, which is destined to be a marvelous center of electrical force for America, enough force can be secured to supply all the needs of the human race twice over. By shaking the entire earth with the mighty power to be obtained there, this earth electricity could be started. With this earth force in vibration, the next problem would be to build machines able to catch and respond to this earth motion. There would have to be a synchronism between the electrical swinging of the earth and the machine. For example, I hold a glass to my mouth, and speak; the glass is shattered. My voice, to do this, must have the same resonance as the glass. Such I conceive to be the secret of all nature, resonance. Then setting this machine at any point in the world, the message transmit ed through the earth can be received and read at Paris, at Hong Kong, anywhere. Distance no longer exists. I am convinced that I today can send a message to a ship at sea and that those on board can understand it. If I cannot I am willing to lay my head on the guillotine."

Nikola Tesla is only about 35 years old today, but he has devoted his life to thought upon electricity. Inheriting an eager inventive genius from his mother and a fortune from his father, he has given his whole energy to the science of electricity as a labor of love. He has no commercial connections whatsoever, and his lectures are given purely to stir up interest in his loved study. When only about 21 years old he came to America and worked under Edison at Menlo Park.

The lecturer stated that he was sure the time would come when the Niagara Falls would supply electric motive power for New York and Philadelphia without the aid of a connecting wire. — Philadelphia corr. Globe-Democrat.