The Tesla Journal - Number 1 - 1981 Page 17

Even Tesla Had His Troubles With Safety Tesla was one of the first researchers to realize the importance of a good earth ground. For without it, the electrical power mains arced over (not always at the lightning arrestors as expected) producing the following effects: arcs were often obtained to water pipes; light bulbs were damaged 40 feet away; parts of his wooden building were burned as the current found paths to ground; his higher voltage transformer was damaged and a capacitator was shorted. (Often a short in one capacitator damaged all.) In an effort to get good grounding, he tried burying long pipes and sheet metal that had to be watered constantly in order to lower the ground resistance and even use water mains. He also knew the wire leads to the ground had to be very short so he built on the ground floor and experimented with numerous wire connections. In spite of these efforts, there were still problems because of distributed capacity. Some of these arcs set wood afire and a grounded wire mesh on insulated standoffs had to be used. Tesla's apparatus at a distance of several miles could even arc over insulating material sufficiently to make the material capable of conducting electricity on the surface (i.e., operating as a coherer). Can you imagine the damage to your radio, stereo, hearing aid and other electrical appliances if any of them became a coherer, or the damage to a neighbor wearing a pacemaker? Tesla was aware of human safety or else he would not have used a photographic double exposure to avoid being near an operating Tesla Coil. He could not have known about today's safety precautions and rules concerning noise pollution, ozone, nitric oxide and free ion emission, ultraviolet and bright light eye damage, Underwriter Laboratory standards, X-ray exposure limits and the 10 mW/cm² or 1 mW/cm² Russian standard for radiation. The moral implication in all of this is: When even a genius like Tesla has problems with safety then we, the "normal" types, have to be extremely cautious, particularly when using Tesla Coils. Our Society and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the State University of New York at Buffalo have been developing for the past five years a safe and reliable Tesla Coil for demonstration purposes. In order to prevent injury to inexperienced researchers and their family and neighbors, the Society thinks it best not to release technical construction details of Tesla Coils, at least until the demonstration model. is complete. The Society does provide a Bibliography of Tesla's historical purpose. Dr. Richard E. Dollinger Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering State University of New York at Buffalo and Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the Tesla Memorial Society The above material is based upon Nikola Tesla-Colorado Spring Notes 1899-1900, with scientific commentaries by Dr. A. Marinčić, published by Nolit, Beograd, Terazije 27, Yugoslavia. 17