Nikola Tesla Books
[Sec. 5.b., cont.] We do not know the pulse repetition rate (PRF) that Tesla used to determine the 1/12 second (-0% +1.8%) value. The difficulty in detecting a return pulse approximately 80 milliseconds following and in the physical vicinity of transient pulse discharges exceeding 50,000 amp peak would be most difficult because of the induced parasitic-oscillation havoc created in hardware, as anyone who has worked with high power discharges realizes.
We do know, however, that Tesla suggested operable frequencies could range up to 20,000 Hz and that most of his experiments were conducted in the range of 50,000 to 150,000 Hz. Thus, the relaxation oscillator operating at a PRF of tens per second may have been used only to ascertain terrestrial parameters and to develop methods for generation of large current pulses for other unrelated applications.
C. Wardenclyffe design to utilize UV rays to stratosphere
If one examines photographs of the Wardenclyffe tower, a hole approximately 5 feet in diameter is seen at the top center of the cupola sphere. In this regard, O'Neill, in his biography of Tesla at page 146, has an interesting note:
"Since completing this volume the author has learned that Tesla planned to install a bank of powerful ultra-violet lamps on top of his tower at Wardencliffe [sic] (cf. p. 205), and had the upper platform designed to receive them."
In an extensive pre-hearing interview of Tesla's work in radio and wireless power transmission conducted by his attorneys in the teens (which this writer intends to publish in the near future) Tesla comments that he was at first confronted by what seemed to be an enormous problem in erecting tall antennae structures or hoisting antennae with balloons to reach conducting air strata levels. However, he found that high structures were not needed--the conducting path to the higher strata initiating itself if sufficiently high potentials were obtained on an elevated terminal sphere of "large radius of curvature."
In this regard, some attention must be given to the location of Tesla's experimental station with respect to its 6,037-foot elevation above sea level. The attainment of glow-sphere effects, possibly enabled because of the rarefied atmospheric conditions, may not have been practically achievable at sea level--the site of the Wardenclyffe plant. James and Kenneth Corum have examined this novel situation in their paper, "Disclosures Concerning the Operation of an ELF Oscillator, presented at the 1984 International Tesla Society Symposium in Colorado Springs and published in its Proceedings.
As late as 1935, Tesla is quoted as employing the ionization of the upper atmospheric strata in his wireless power transmission concept:
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