Nikola Tesla Books
IN SEARCH OF NIKOLA TESLA the physical dimensions of the globe, with an efficiency as high as ninety-nine and one-half percent. This was the kernel of Tesla's plan for worldwide energy transmission. Its origin was an experiment performed at the end of the nineteenth century. Could it actually have happened? Had Tesla stumbled upon a hidden quirk of nature, a phenomenon of electromagnetism which had since gone unnoticed? It seemed incredibly far-fetched that such an experiment should have been neglected for the next eighty years. With so many laboratories and scientific installations across the world, with the millions of dollars invested in the electrical industry, surely someone would have taken an interest in Tesla's results and repeated his experiment or, through the very weight of scientific research, have come across the same phenomenon simply by accident. But despite these doubts I could not deny that I was attracted by the audacity of Tesla's claim and I was forced to ask myself, 'What if it were true? What if it had actually happened?" I returned to the manuscript and read to the end of Tesla's lecture. Now I felt he was stretching credibility too far, as he described the manner in which the electrical power was broadcast from his transmitter. Although the text was not always clear he seemed to be saying that the waves of energy left the tower at infinite speed then slowed down until they were travelling at the speed of light. Once they had crossed the equator they speeded up again until they reached the Antipodes at an infinite velocity. Later on he said that this was only an apparent effect for in fact the waves did not travel around the earth. They penetrated deep through the core to reach the receiver by a path directly through the earth. As I put down the pages I realized I was totally confused. Somewhere there must be some more comprehensive explanation of his power transmission, possibly in one of the patents. I made a mental note to track down all his letters patent. It seemed almost too much to take at one sitting. I began to think how we take so much scientific fact 'on trust'. Most of what we know comes out of books and published papers which we assume are basically honest. To reach the pages of a scientific journal each paper must pass through a ref25 15
