Nikola Tesla Books
[Sec. 4., cont.] c. Attempts to duplicate the Tesla Colorado Springs experiments
Robert Golka and Will Mische are the only researchers that have attempted to duplicate the Tesla Colorado Springs experiments by reconstructing the Magnifying Transmitter. What is troubling about these attempts, in trying to understand exactly what Tesla did and how he did it, is that none of the high-power effects described by Tesla and quoted above were reported even though comparable power inputs were used. The effect of special importance is the lateral ground current at hundreds of feet from the experimental station. In order to achieve such ground currents, the antenna current in the Magnifying Transmitter mast must have been thousands of amperes at frequencies of 50kHz to 150 kHz. This has not been achieved since Tesla accomplished it 90 years ago.
How do we account for this inability to reproduce the magnitude of effects? One explanation is that Tesla's experimental station was located sufficiently close to the Pikes Peak range front to cause unrecognized reinforcement effects in the production of localized standing waves--a sympathetic resonance zone. A paper by Wait and Anabeth Murphy, "Influence of a Ridge on the Low-Frequency Ground Wave," and a follow-up paper by Wait and Murphy, "Further Studies of the Influence of a Ridge on the Low-Frequency Ground Wave," (J. Research NBS, Jan. 1957, pp. 1-5, and Jul. 1958, pp. 57-60, respectively) clearly show the accentuating effect of a standing wave in front of a mountain-like obstacle on an otherwise flat ground plane.
5. Mixture of stratospheric conduction and earth standing-wave techniques
On January 18, 1902, Tesla filed for his famous patent on "Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy," which was granted on December 1, 1914 (just shy of 13 years later!), as No. 1,110,732. The patent drawing at resembles Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower. In this patent, Tesla makes reference to his two earlier patents on transmission of energy, No. 645,575 (utilizing the conduction through rarefied air strata) and No. 649,621 (utilizing the establishment of stationary waves on/in the earth).
Some confusion has occurred in attempting to understand exactly how Tesla intended to accomplish a test of his transmission of power concept at Wardenclyffe with respect to whether he was utilizing the 'conduction' technique or the 'stationary wave' technique. My interpretation is that both were involved. Tesla did not published anything that describes in detail how these techniques would interact. Only in articles for public consumption and in interviews, in addition to the dual reference in Patent No. 1,110,732, did he mention that both techniques would be utilized. (See Sec. 5.c.)
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