Nikola Tesla Books
IN SEARCH OF NIKOLA TESLA I decided to go home early. I had become fascinated by the project and wanted a little time to myself, free from the telephone and good natured interruptions. I walked out of the building and across the snow to the bus stop. An hour later I was at home and hard at work, the Tesla documents in my hand. I began with the story of the Russian radio interference. According to the newspaper report it had been bad enough to disrupt short wave communications at repeated intervals. Protests had been sent to the Russian Government by a number of European countries. But did this interference have anything to do with Tesla transmission? It seemed clear that something along the lines of an enormous Tesla coil would interfere with radio reception but was a Tesla coil the only possibility? I could think of other experimental electrical devices which might have similar effects. There did not seem to be much point in speculating and I decided to call a couple of colleagues next morning who might be able to help me track down some hard facts about radio interference. I began to read through a lecture Tesla had given in 1927. As I absorbed his words I began to see what had fired the members of PACE. Tesla seemed to radiate an immense confidence in the significance of his discoveries. There was no trace of that caution and qualification which was found in the average scientific lecture. Tesla was bold and determined when he wrote: The transmission of power without wires is not a theory or a mere possibility, as it appears to most people, but a fact demonstrated to 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 and gradual development and a logical consequence of my investigations which were earnestly undertaken in 1893 when I gave the world the first outline of my system of broadcasting wireless energy for all purposes. In several demonstrative lectures before scientific societies during the preceding three years, I showed that it was not necessary to use two wires in transmitting electrical energy, but that one only might be employed equally well. My experiments with currents of high frequencies were the first ever performed in public and elicited the keenest 23
