Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER FOUR more accurate by the experiences already gained. I was able to handle my instruments quickly and I was prepared. The recording apparatus being properly adjusted, its indications became fainter and fainter with the increasing distance of the storm, until they ceased altogether. I was watching with eager expectation. Surely enough, in a little while the indications again began, grew stronger and stronger and, after passing through a maximum, gradually decreased and ceased once more. Many times, in regularly recurring intervals, the same actions were repeated until the storm which, as evident from simple computatons, was moving at nearly constant speed had retreated to a distance of three hundred kilometers. Nor did these strange actions stop then, but continued to manifest themselves with undiminished force. What Tesla seems to be saying is that the earth acted as a giant conductor of electrical signals from the storm and that it continued to conduct the electrical disturbances long after the storm had passed into the distance. It must have been an incredible revelation to discover that the globe itself is an electrical conductor and that the effect of a lightning strike at one location would be to create an electrical impulse which would continue to travel around the world. Tesla then argued that, if impulses from an electrical storm could travel long distances through the earth, why should not man-made signals do likewise. Impossible as it seemed, this planet, despite its vast extent, behaved like a conductor of limited dimension. The tremendous significance of this fact in the transmission of energy by my system had already become quite clear to me. Not only was it practicable to send telegraphic messages to any distance without wires, as I recognized long ago, but also to impress upon the entire globe the faint modulations of the human voice, far more still to transmit power, in unlimited amounts to any terrestrial distance and almost without any loss. He poured all his energy into new experiments on the âTransmission of Electric Energy Without Wires' and made plans for a worldwide power sys48
