Works in Telegeodynamics

Tesla’s Ideas Today

The art of transmitting the Earth’s energy over a distance

On the twentieth floor of the New York “New Yorker” hotel, on June 12, 1940, an aged, lonely and already somewhat forgotten scientist and researcher wrote a letter to the president of the Westinghouse company, Andrew Robertson, announcing a new and epoch-making discovery.

The eighty-four-year-old inventor of the polyphase system, the man who, together with George Westinghouse, had established the revolutionary system for the utilization and transmission of alternating currents which in those days had made him wealthy and famous, offered his former employer a scientific and prestigious deal in exchange for a huge profit, immortal fame and prestige throughout the world. He offered him a new, previously unknown art of transmitting the Earth’s energy over a distance. He called it telegeodynamics.

Of course, he was speaking of Nikola Tesla. Although already in a difficult material situation, at a time when help was being extended to him by the Yugoslav government, he was still convinced that he would live long enough and that he would not weaken his creative and research abilities even in his eighties.

What was this new epoch-making discovery that Tesla offered this time? For those who know little of Tesla’s life’s work, telegeodynamics may seem quite different from his earlier and better-known work.

It must immediately be said that Tesla’s telegeodynamic theory is essentially very similar (according to Tesla!) to the one he had conceived at the beginning of the twentieth century and attempted to carry out on Long Island. According to that theory, by creating isochronous, periodic vibrations over the Earth, rhythmic disturbances are created in the Earth itself which are transmitted without weakening and with great efficiency. The energy thus transmitted is proportional to the density of the medium, the speed of propagation of the wave raised to the third power, the square of the amplitude and inversely proportional to the square of the wavelength. The ratio which Tesla gives to show that in denser media more energy is transmitted, and that the energy transmitted through the Earth is about 20 million times greater than through air.

The means that Tesla needed to realize this theory are confirmed by a long series of years and we have little data about them, as we have very little data about any experiments which he conducted in that sense. In fact, the only data on his telegeodynamic transmitters, or at least on their essence, are provided by two of Tesla’s patents from 1894.

The first, serial number 514,169, under the title “Clipper machine,” was filed on August 19, 1893, and patented on February 6, 1894, and the second, serial number 517,900, “Steam machine,” filed on December 29, 1893, and granted patent rights on April 10, 1894. From Tesla’s very important article “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” which he published in the magazine “Century Magazine” in 1900, we learn that the mechanical oscillator in fact constitutes part of the so-called “self-acting machines” and was intended to be connected to a dynamo-machine and an electric generator of exceptional power. Tesla proposed the use of the mechanical oscillator in therapeutic purposes as well, claiming that the mechanical oscillator in certain situations has a favorable effect on human organisms. From the further testimonies which we have, the interesting is the article “What Nikola Tesla Says He Could Do with a Municipal Building” published in the “New York Evening News” on March 4, 1912. Speaking in general about his oscillators and the possibility of increasing the resonance of oscillations, he claimed that with one pressure on the first building in New York he would first set his vibrator in motion so that after a certain time the building would begin to vibrate, and that he would leave the apparatus running for only another ten minutes – it would demolish the entire building.

Let us now consider Tesla’s mechanical oscillators as telegeodynamic transmitters. The purpose of the inventor is shown in the cross-section on the left. It was to ensure, with the help of a pair of gas under pressure, oscillatory, continuous and unchanging periods of oscillation, independent of loading, loss due to friction and other unfavorable conditions, and all this in the most economical manner.

The main part of the oscillator is cylinder A, in which slide clip B is located. There are inlet channels CC and outlets for steam or gas DD, which were to be somewhat larger in order to better drain the working medium. Depressions F and E in clip B which communicate with opening G serve, in fact, to drain the working fluid to outlet DD. Clip B is attached to shaft H, which has a corresponding wedge bed V. The shaft is produced both from one and from the other side and at its upper end is attached to clip J, which freely oscillates in cylinder I, into which air enters under atmospheric pressure. The main supply of steam or gas is through pipe L, attached to the carrier cylinder of the mechanical oscillator. Reservoirs for oil MM are open from the bottom and serve to lubricate clip B during its oscillation. The carrier cylinder K has an extension N in which “wound” cylinder A with PP openings for the supply of air and QQ outlets for the discharged oil.

The principle of operation is as follows: In the position shown, when clip B is in the middle position, and clips J also, if we let steam or gas under pressure through the cross-section C to clip B and if this sudden and light impact brings it out of the equilibrium position, oscillation will begin. Some working medium, first of all, enters the chamber F. The clip under pressure moves downward and simultaneously closes the passage from the chamber F, and opens the entrance to chamber E. Until the working medium exits through the opening G, the new pair of gas enters chamber E, the pressure of the clip increases, and the whole operation is extremely repeatable. An important role in the operation of the machine is played by the clips, or better said the amplifier J, which during its movement in cylinder I has a task of air springs. Very rapid oscillation of clip J has as a consequence extremely rapid compression, that is, rarefaction of air on one or the other side of the clip. When the clip moves downward, the collected air below it tends to lift it upward, and the same action, only in the opposite direction, has the air during the movement of the clip upward. Thus these two air chambers, one below and one above the clip, have the role of springs, amplify the oscillation of the clip and have an important role in balancing the operation of the machine as a whole.

The oscillation of the amplifier J has another important consequence – the heating of cylinder I. But Tesla is also the problem of how to elegantly solve it. The heat which would otherwise continuously leave Tesla is, by building the pipe for the supply of the working medium into the material from which the assembled cylinder I, and precisely that method of heat transfer transfers heat to the working medium, significantly increasing the efficiency of the machine.

The machine shown in Fig. 2 has, similar to the previous case, cylinder A with clip B' placed on shaft C, with passages FF'. For the supply and exhaust of steam, channels DD' serve, and the supply of steam through pipe G'. Through the relatively large outlet opening E, the discharge of the exhausted steam takes place, and the novelty is represented by valve G, which oscillates and is extremely directed into channel DD and serves as an automatic regulator of the period of oscillation of the main clip A. Valve G is placed on the shaft of one clip machine, as in the previous one shown, and is supplied with steam through pipe c and in everything else with the already described devices. And here Tesla applied some improvements, as in the example of water cooling of the chambers in which the air spring a' is located and the variable loading h' for regulating the stiffness of the air spring.

The described patents represent the essence of the device which Tesla thought would speak of the possibilities of transmitting energy through the Earth over a great distance. But as we know only Tesla’s electric oscillator, it is not enough for us to understand the wireless transmission of energy, for sure that Tesla did not think that only with the help of the mechanical oscillator and the transmission of vibrations to the Earth’s surface he would succeed in transmitting energy over a distance without weakening, for already he had a far more complex idea, which is unfortunately completely unknown to us and whose only parts, that is the thick outline we can extract here.

The available parts of Tesla’s theory further tell us about such means (telegeodynamic transmitters), energy can be transferred in the following way: By setting the device into operation, the moving part of the machine divides into a stationary one, and this one on the surrounding space of the Earth’s surface occupies from the beginning one quarter of the wavelength. If the Earth’s area is very large, the movement inward is not – represented by the smallest resistance and weakening – very insignificant and under such conditions the induced disturbances in the Earth are so small that they divide the Earth’s carriers of energy which is communicated to them.

One of the main problems in the use of this method, unlimited spreading of the initial vibrations by resonance, Tesla solved by associating the moving part of the machine with its air spring, whose principle of operation has already been described with the original mechanical oscillators.

During his telegeodynamic research Tesla developed several types of apparatus for this purpose and in principle divided them into three groups: purely mechanical, electric and mixed. While with the electric apparatus, Tesla’s high-frequency oscillators, for which he says they have certain advantages but are very complicated and unsuitable for precise matching, we know quite a bit – about the mixed ones, which represent a combination of electric and mechanical and which according to Tesla’s words surpass the electric ones in simplicity

in some arbitrary production price, we know almost nothing. However, Tesla says that the third group is made up of mechanical oscillators superior in every respect.

These last devices, used as transmitters, are set vertically and firmly on a rocky base and are fixed with wedges or supports. The lower part of the oscillator can be connected and to be such, easily and quickly, setting and removing from the other connector which is located on top of one pipe set deeply into the Earth’s interior and even better cemented, works for the better transmission of vibrations.

At a certain distance, which according to Tesla is not important, receivers of similar construction and such design can be from the first received wave energy, amplify and convert again into vibrations of the clip of the receiver. And in the receiving and in the transmitting devices it is important that the impulses of the moving clip are in exact resonance with the natural vibrations of the loaded spring, so the moving part of the machine receives, every time the passages pass through the central position, one additional impulse in the direction of movement.

The assessment of the accuracy of this Tesla theory we can leave to the experts who wish and can engage in its research, but we remain with the statement of some facts which can facilitate the understanding of the problem. For example, the fact that Tesla had more than eighty years when he wrote about this problem (it does not matter that he did not work on it) is in itself a reduced value of what he said and wrote, but it must always be taken into account. On the other hand, it is known that the foundations of Tesla’s theory of wireless transmission of energy, which he set at the beginning of this century, confirmed only sixty years later, and so on and similar facts show that we are thinking more carefully about everything. We keep one wise saying “Never do not be able,” which is our contemporary civilization close to any idea, it remains for us to conclude that some useful knowledge, times and news which would eventually enter into it.

The application which was most promised, according to Tesla’s words, was the transmission of understandable signals, messages and forces in general, with great advantage completely resistant to all kinds of weather adversities and interference. With the application of the developed Tesla methods the complete secrecy and security of all kinds of communication would be ensured. Further application is for the discovery of deposits, underwater ships, determination of the shape of the bottom of the sea and the ocean and in geodynamics for the determination of deposits of ore, oil and other. In wartime purposes (war was already then), telegeodynamics can be used for great destruction in every sense, because with the use of the oscillator, the resonance which it creates, vibrations on certain parts of the Earth’s surface can increase to unheard-of dimensions.

Especially important and scientifically interesting application would be for better determination of the composition and physical properties of our planet, by emitting terrestrial waves, which according to Tesla’s words, move at a speed between four and thirteen kilometers per second.

Branimir JOVANOVIĆ