Draft Specification: Method of Projecting Energy to a Distance by Means of an Ionizing Beam

Webmaster note: Unpublished manuscript fragment (page 1 only) by Nikola Tesla, stamped by the Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade. The text is an incomplete patent-style draft describing a method of directed energy transmission. Only this single page is presently available.

Be it known that I Nikola Tesla, a citizen of the United States residing in the Borough of Manhattan, City, County and State of New York, have invented a new method of projecting energy to a distance, of which the following is a specification.

In a pending application filed ____ I have described a process of transmitting electrical energy to a distance that consists in energizing a terminal on the elevated capacity of a grounded resonant transmitter to a very high potential, subjecting thereby the ambient medium to great electrostatic stresses, projecting energy as a beam of ionizing rays and thus causing a current of high tension to flow from the terminal along the path of the beam. It has been found indispensable, in the practical application of this invention to employ electrical potentials of many millions of volts, which