2-21-18

2-21-18

Is Tesla inventing a radio system:

he is certainly working on sending electricity wirelessly (through the ground with return through the air instead of vice versa)
once you are doing that you could start and stop the electricity and send a morse code message
sending messages takes less power than lighting up a lot of light bulbs, much less running a motor
his long range goal is power, so he designs his system that way
looks down on Marconi's radio tests as very crude, Tesla sees Marconi as just trying to make money, without perfecting a system first (perfecting would be developing tuning to send out one frequency instead of a burst consisting of a mess of different frequencies)
but Marconi, not Tesla, gets the job done
notice Tesla saying "I do not care for practical results in the immediate present." (p. 265)

Tesla is focused back on wireless power, transmitting through the earth with the return part of the circuit through the air via electromagnetic waves
he does also see the potential of communication using the same technology
he heads to Colorado to test on a larger scale

the key question was whether the earth had an electrical potential that would magnify the power Tesla transmitted

Tesla's experiments showed that it did, and also saw effects of resonate frequencies (waves that bounced back and forth and added up to one continuing wave) in the earth
what he thought he saw was actually probably something different, an atmospheric effect
but he concluded it proved he could send power long distances
he also thought he heard signals from Mars

First level explanation:

his circuit is going to be out through the earth, back through the atmosphere
how hard is it going to be to send electricity through the earth?
are there electrical fields in the earth that would resonate with the power he sends out?
if there are, they might boost the power he transmits
he then thinks he discovers the earth will support standing electromagnetic waves that bounce back and forth reinforcing themselves--this allows long distances and the power doesn't diminish rapidly over distance
he doesn't test any of this very carefully

he also worked on how to tune a system using electromagnetic waves for communication with a device called a magnifying transmitter (photo to right, emitting sparks that are actually a waste of energy produced to make a good photo)

this tuning contrasted with Marconi who was just sending out bursts of electromagnetic waves in many different frequencies
Tesla was convinced standing waves would allow his electricity to go anywhere around the globe but did not do careful distance tests

Tesla then returned to New York to write up his patents
he sought publicity in the popular press rather than scientific journals

wrote up a history of human development with a law:
Human energy = mass of humans * velocity of progress squared divided by 2
he believed electricity was key to speeding up progress
scientists felt Tesla was going too far into speculation
electrical engineering was more professionalized and had less room for sensationalism
at the same time Tesla is getting less careful about proving things
Tesla is becoming more of a dreamer of big things, just when the industry is becoming more practical and scientific

Despite this J. P. Morgan provided some funding by buying half of Telsa's patent rights for wireless transmission
(J.P. Mogan's nose)
Tesla then built a new laboratory on Long Island with a tower and a well full of metal pipes to transmit electricity into the ground
he was running out of money to realize his ambitious plans
but he was building a full scale wireless power transmitter in confidence that it would work