Nikola Tesla U.S. Patent 645,576 - System of Transmission of Electrical Energy Patent Wrapper Page 7

13 sures of the magnitude and character which I have made it possible to produce, the ordinary atmosphere becomes, in a measure, capable of serving as a true conductor for the transmission of the current. Secord, that the conductivity of the air increases so materially with the increase of electrical pressure and degree of rarefaction, that it becomes possible to transmit through even moderately rarefied strata of the atmosphere, electrical energy up to practically any amount and to any distance. The system of transmission comprised in my present invention and which, as above stated, was rendered possible only by the production of apparatus of a character radically new and different from any before known, and which is based upon discoveries made in the investigation of the results produced thereby, consists then in producing at a given point a very high electrical pressure, conducting the current caused thereby to earth and to a terminal at an elevation at which the atmosphere serves as a conductor there for, and collecting the cur rent by a second elevated terminal at a distance from the first In order to at tain this result it is necessary to employ an apparatus capable of generating electrical pressures vastly in excess of any heretofore used, and to lead the current to earth and to a terminal maintained at an elevation where the rarefied atmosphere is capable of conducting freely the particular current produced; then, at a distant point, where the energy is to be utilized, to maintain a terminal at or about the same -3125