Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER FIVE After making my way through his paper, I put Tesla's writings to one side and tried to digest what he had written. I tried to get a feel for what he was attempting, what he had observed and the way he had built up his theory. I looked at the patent which Tesla had filed on May 16, 1900. It concerned the transmission of electrical energy through 'the Natural Mediums' and contained a description of his energy transmitter, 'the generator which produces stationary waves in the earth'. A photograph of the Colorado Springs transmitter, which appeared in another publication, shows a tall mast growing from a scaffolding built on the roof of Tesla's laboratory; on the top of the mast is fixed a metal ball. According to the patent this transmitter was designed to produce oscillations of very high-voltage electric current and was not unlike a giant Tesla coil. High-voltage power was first generated in his laboratory by a 'special transformer' or an 'alternating dynamo' and fed into the primary coil of the transmitter. This primary coil was composed of a few turns of very thick wire and had a low electrical resistance. The Secondary Coil of the apparatus took the form of a spiral of wire, again having low resistance. One end of the wire was earthed and the other attached to the mast with its metal ball. Tesla emphasized that the geometry of the apparatus should be correct so that certain of its dimensions are in exact ratios to each other. They should also involve precise fractions of the wavelengths of the electrical oscillations to be generated. In this way the secondary coil is brought in resonance with the primary coil and magnification of the 'electrical movement' by many thousands of times becomes possible. As far as I could see Tesla had designed an enormous electrical circuit which exploited the principle of resonance to step up an applied voltage 53
