Nikola Tesla Books
stupidity and ignorance; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. Thus do we get our light. So too, all that as great in the past was rediculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed only to emerge all the more powerful, all the more triumphantly from the struggle."
Many years passed by, during which time Dr. Tesla tried desperately to put his power system into operation. During World War I, he constructed a large mushroom-capped tower at Wardenclyff, Long Island, New York, where he had hoped to prove that electric power could be transmitted on a vast industrial scale WITHOUT WIRES. This expensive tower, and all of his equipment, were mysteriously destroyed by fire before he was ever able to complete his demonstration: He was never again able to obtain financial assistance to complete this discovery.
As late as October, 1927, the magazine "Telegraph and Telephone Age" printed a story by Dr. Tesla entitled "World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy". The following paragraphs are quoted from this article.
Quote: "The transmission of power without wires is not a theory or a mere possibility, as it appears to most people, but a fact demonstrated by me in experiments which have extended for years. Nor did the idea present itself to me all of a sudden, but was the result of a very slow or gradual development and a logical consequence of my investigations which were earnestly undertaken in 1893. Then I gave the world the first outline of my system of broadcasting wireless energy for all purposes.
"Since I began the construction of the first power plant in 1899, I have expressed myself repeatedly in regard to it and the plans I had previously formed, through the medium of the Electrical Review, Electrical World, Electrical Experimenter, Science and Invention and other periodicals, notably the Century Magazine of June, 1900, to which I contributed a lengthy article on the Problem of Increasing Human Energy, but certain facts must still be told. In the first place, the fundamental difference between the broadcasting system as now practiced and the one I expected to inaugurate is that at present, the transmitter emits energy in all directions, while in the system I have devised, only force is conveyed to all points of the earth, the energy itself traveling in definite orthordromic lines, that is, the shortest distance between two points at the surface of the globe, and reaches the receiver without the slightest dispersion, so then an incomparably greater amount is collected than is possible by radiation."
"While I was perfectly convinced from the outset, that success would be ultimately achieved, it was not until by slow improvement, I evolved the so-called "magnifying transmitter" from which I obtained convincing evidence of the feasibility of wireless power transmission on a vast industrial scale for all purposes."
He went on to say, "the chief discovery, which satisfied me thoroughly as to the practicability of my Ian, was made in 1899, at Colorado Springs, Colorado, where I carried on tests with a generator of fifteen hundred kilowatt capacity and ascertained that under certain conditions, the current was capable of passing across the entire globe and returning from the antipodes to its origin with undiminished strength. It was a result so unbelievable, that the revelation at first almost stunned me. I saw in a flash, that by properly organizing apparatus at sending and receiving stations, power virtually in unlimited amounts could be conveyed through the earth at
