Nikola Tesla U.S. Patent 645,576 - System of Transmission of Electrical Energy Patent Wrapper Page 29

) pressure. Now, I would emphatically point out that this is not so. To be sure there may be accidentally a similarity between the drawings shown in former records and those presented by me. So false coins may resemble a genuine one, but they do not possess the value of the latter. That the air at a considerably greater pressure than 75 millimeters may be made to behave like a true conductor is entirely novel to scientific men, and was a revelation to myself, although I was the first to familiarize myself with and call attention in my writings to the importance, in certain electrical phenomena of the presence of the air, and to point out its action which before, was entirely ignored by physicists. But even at a pressure of 75 millimeters, at which an air stratum is known to conduct the current of an ordinary induction coil, it still behaves radically different with the currents produced by me, inasmuch as it offers to the currents an incomparably small resistance. The practical importance of this new fact is self-evident. Now, if I am permitted to ask, what have my results to do with previous experiments of little or no practical value and based on an entirely different action? The references cited might have been as well replaced by older records of this kind, of which, to my recollection, a number exist. It was long known that by static induction certain feeble electrical effects may be transmitted through a thick air stratum from one terminal to another one at some distance, but it is absolutely essential for such action that the air stratum behave like an insulator, for, if it is rendered (5) This page retyped from microfilm for better readability - Ed.] 147