As I review the events of my past
life I realise how subtle are the influences
that shape our destinies. An incident of my
youth may serve to illustrate. One
winter's day I managed to climb a steep
mountain, in company with other boys.
The snow was quite deep and a warm
southerly wind made it just suitable for our
purpose. We amused ourselves by throwing
balls which would roll down a certain
distance, gathering more or less snow, and
we tried to out-do one another in
this sport. Suddenly a ball was seen to go
beyond the limit, swelling to
enormous proportions until it became as big
as a house and plunged thundering
into the valley below with a force that
made the ground tremble. I looked on
spell-bound incapable of understanding what
had happened. For weeks afterward
the picture of the avalanche was before my
eyes and I wondered how anything so
small could grow to such an immense
size.
Ever since that time the
magnification of feeble actions fascinated me, and
when, years later, I took up the
experimental study of mechanical and electrical
resonance, I was keenly interested from the
very start. Possibly, had it not
been for that early powerful impression I
might not have followed up the little
spark I obtained with my coil and never
developed my best invention, the true
history of which I will
tell.
Many technical men, very able in
their special departments, but dominated by a
pedantic spirit and near-sighted, have
asserted that excepting the induction
motor, I have given the world little of
practical use. This is a grievous
mistake. A new idea must not be judged by
its immediate results. My alternating
system of power transmission came at a
psychological moment, as a long sought
answer to pressing industrial questions,
and although considerable resistance
had to be overcome and opposing interests
reconciled, as usual, the commercial
introduction could not be long delayed.
Now, compare this situation with that
confronting my turbines, for example. One
should think that so simple and
beautiful an invention, possessing many
features of an ideal motor, should be
adopted at once and, undoubtedly, it would
under similar conditions. But the
prospective effect of the rotating field
was not to render worthless existing
machinery; on the contrary, it was to give
it additional value. The system lent
itself to new enterprise as well as to
improvement of the old. My turbine is an
advance of a character entirely different.
It is a radical departure in the
sense that its success would mean the
abandonment of the antiquated types of
prime movers on which billions of dollars
have been spent. Under such
circumstances, the progress must needs be slow and perhaps the
greatest
impediment
is encountered in the prejudicial opinions created in the minds
of
experts by
organised opposition.
Only the other day, I had a
disheartening experience when I met my friend and
former assistant, Charles F. Scott, now
professor of Electric Engineering at
Yale. I had not seen him for a long time
and was glad to have an opportunity for
a little chat at my office. Our
conversation, naturally enough, drifted on my
turbine and I became heated to a high
degree. "Scott," I exclaimed, carried away
by the vision of a glorious future, "My
turbine will scrap all the heat engines
in the world." Scott stroked his chin and
looked away thoughtfully, as though
making a mental calculation. "That will
make quite a pile of scrap," he said,
and left without another
word!
These and other inventions of
mine, however, were nothing more than steps
forward in a certain directions. In
evolving them, I simply followed the inborn
instinct to improve the present devices
without any special thought of our far
more imperative necessities. The
"Magnifying Transmitter" was the product of
labours extending through years, having for
their chief object, the solution of
problems which are infinitely more
important to mankind than mere industrial
development.
If my memory serves me right, it
was in November, 1890, that I performed a
laboratory experiment which was one of the
most extraordinary and spectacular
ever recorded in the annal of Science. In
investigating the behaviour of high
frequency currents, I had satisfied myself
that an electric field of sufficient
intensity could be produced in a room to
light up electrodeless vacuum tubes.
Accordingly, a transformer was built to
test the theory and the first trial
proved a marvellous success. It is
difficult to appreciate what those strange
phenomena meant at the time. We crave for
new sensations, but soon become
indifferent to them. The wonders of
yesterday are today common occurrences. When
my tubes were first publicly exhibited,
they were viewed with amazement
impossible to describe. From all parts of
the world, I received urgent
invitations and numerous honours and other
flattering inducements were offered
to me, which I declined. But in 1892 the
demand became irresistible and I went
to London where I delivered a lecture
before the institution of Electrical
Engineers.
It has been my intention to leave
immediately for Paris in compliance with a
similar obligation, but Sir James Dewar
insisted on my appearing before the
Royal Institution. I was a man of firm
resolve, but succumbed easily to the
forceful arguments of the great Scotchman.
He pushed me into a chair and poured
out half a glass of a wonderful brown fluid
which sparkled in all sorts of
iridescent colours and tasted like nectar.
"Now," said he, "you are sitting in
Faraday's chair and you are enjoying
whiskey he used to drink." (Which did not
interest me very much, as I had altered my
opinion concerning strong drink). The
next evening I have a demonstration before
the Royal Institution, at the
termination of which, Lord Rayleigh
addressed the audience and his generous
words gave me the first start in these
endeavours. I fled from London and later
from Paris, to escape favours showered upon
me, and journeyed to my home, where
I passed through a most painful ordeal and
illness.
Upon regaining my health, I began
to formulate plans for the resumption of work
in America. Up to that time I never
realised that I possessed any particular
gift of discovery, but Lord Rayleigh, whom
I always considered as an ideal man
of science, had said so and if that was the
case, I felt that I should
concentrate on some big idea.
At this time, as at many other
times in the past, my thoughts turned towards my
Mother's teaching. The gift of mental power
comes from God, Divine Being, and if
we concentrate our minds on that truth, we
become in tune with this great power.
My Mother had taught me to seek all truth
in the Bible; therefore I devoted the
next few months to the study of this
work.
One day, as I was roaming the
mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching
storm. The sky became overhung with heavy
clouds, but somehow the rain was
delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a
lightening flash and a few moments
after, a deluge. This observation set me
thinking. It was manifest that the two
phenomena were closely related, as cause
and effect, and a little reflection led
me to the conclusion that the electrical
energy involved in the precipitation of
the water was inconsiderable, the function
of the lightening being much like
that of a sensitive trigger. Here was a
stupendous possibility of achievement.
If we could produce electric effects of the
required quality, this whole planet
and the conditions of existence on it could
be transformed. The sun raises the
water of the oceans and winds drive it to
distant regions where it remains in a
state of most delicate balance. If it were
in our power to upset it when and
wherever desired, this might life
sustaining stream could be at will controlled.
We could irrigate arid deserts, create
lakes and rivers, and provide motive
power in unlimited amounts. This would be
the most efficient way of harnessing
the sun to the uses of man. The
consummation depended on our ability to develop
electric forces of the order of those in
nature.
It seemed a hopeless undertaking,
but I made up my mind to try it and
immediately on my return to the United
States in the summer of 1892, after a
short visit to my friends in Watford,
England; work was begun which was to me
all the more attractive, because a means of
the same kind was necessary for the
successful transmission of energy without
wires.
At this time I made a further
careful study of the Bible, and discovered the key
in Revelation. The first gratifying result
was obtained in the spring of the
succeeding year, when I reaching a tension
of about 100,000,000 volts -- one
hundred million volts -- with my conical
coil, which I figured was the voltage
of a flash of lightening. Steady progress
was made until the destruction of my
laboratory by fire, in 1895, as may be
judged from an article by T.C. Martin
which appeared in the April number of the
Century Magazine. This calamity set me
back in many ways and most of that year had
to be devoted to planning and
reconstruction. However, as soon as
circumstances permitted, I returned to the
task.
Although I knew that higher
electric-motive forces were attainable with
apparatus of larger dimensions, I had an
instinctive perception that the object
could be accomplished by the proper design
of a comparatively small and compact
transformer. In carrying on tests with a
secondary in the form of flat spiral,
as illustrated in my patents, the absence
of streamers surprised me, and it was
not long before I discovered that this was
due to the position of the turns and
their mutual action. Profiting from this
observation, I resorted to the use of a
high tension conductor with turns of
considerable diameter, sufficiently
separated to keep down the distributed
capacity, while at the same time
preventing undue accumulation of the charge
at any point. The application of
this principle enabled me to produce
pressures of over 100,000,000 volts, which
was about the limit obtainable without risk
of accident. A photograph of my
transmitter built in my laboratory at
Houston Street, was published in the
Electrical Review of November,
1898.
In order to advance further along
this line, I had to go into the open, and in
the spring of 1899, having completed
preparations for the erection of a wireless
plant, I went to Colorado where I remained
for more than one year. Here I
introduced other improvements and
refinements which made it possible to generate
currents of any tension that may be
desired. Those who are interested will find
some information in regard to the
experiments I conducted there in my article,
"The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,"
in the Century Magazine of June 1900,
to which I have referred on a previous
occasion.
I will be quite explicit on the
subject of my magnifying transformer so that it
will be clearly understood. In the first
place, it is a resonant transformer,
with a secondary in which the parts,
charged to a high potential, are of
considerable area and arranged in space
along ideal enveloping surfaces of very
large radii of curvature, and at proper
distances from one another, thereby
insuring a small electric surface density
everywhere, so that no leak can occur
even if the conductor is bare. It is
suitable for any frequency, from a few to
many thousands of cycles per second, and
can be used in the production of
currents of tremendous volume and moderate
pressure, or of smaller amperage and
immense electromotive force. The maximum
electric tension is merely dependent on
the curvature of the surfaces on which the
charged elements are situated and the
area of the latter. Judging from my past
experience there is no limit to the
possible voltage developed; any amount is
practicable. On the other hand,
currents of many thousands of amperes may
be obtained in the antenna. A plant of
but very moderate dimensions is required
for such performances. Theoretically, a
terminal of less than 90 feet in diameter
is sufficient to develop an
electromotive force of that magnitude, while for antenna currents of
from 2,000-
4,000
amperes at the usual frequencies, it need not be larger than 30 feet
in
diameter. In a
more restricted meaning, this wireless transmitter is one in
which the Hertzwave radiation is
an entirely negligible quantity as compared
with the whole energy, under which
condition the damping factor is extremely
small and an enormous charge is stored in
the elevated capacity. Such a circuit
may then be excited with impulses of any
kind, even of low frequency and it will
yield sinusoidal and continuous
oscillations like those of an alternator. Taken
in the narrowest significance of the term,
however, it is a resonant transformer
which, besides possessing these qualities,
is accurately proportioned to fit the
globe and its electrical constants and
properties, by virtue of which design it
becomes highly efficient and effective in
the wireless transmission of energy.
Distance is then ABSOLUTELY ELIMINATED,
THERE BEING NO DIMINUATION IN THE
INTENSITY of the transmitted impulses. It
is even possible to make the actions
increase with the distance from the plane,
according to an exact mathematical
law. This invention was one of a number
comprised in my "World System" of
wireless transmission which I undertook to
commercialise on my return to New
York in 1900.
As to the immediate purposes of my
enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a
technical statement of that period from
which I quote, "The world system has
resulted from a combination of several
original discoveries made by the inventor
in the course of long continued research
and experimentation. It makes possible
not only the instantaneous and precise
wireless transmission of any kind of
signals, messages or characters, to all
parts of the world, but also the inter-
connection of the existing telegraph,
telephone, and other signal stations
without any change in their present
equipment. By its means, for instance, a
telephone subscriber here may call up and
talk to any other subscriber on the
Earth. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger
than a watch, will enable him to
listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a
speech delivered or music played in some
other place, however
distant."
These examples are cited merely to
give an idea of the possibilities of this
great scientific advance, which annihilates
distance and makes that perfect
natural conductor, the Earth, available for
all the innumerable purposes which
human ingenuity has found for a line-wire.
One far-reaching result of this is
that any device capable of being operated
through one or more wires (at a
distance obviously restricted) can likewise
be actuated, without artificial
conductors and with the same facility and
accuracy, at distances to which there
are no limits other than those imposed by
the physical dimensions of the earth.
Thus, not only will entirely new fields for
commercial exploitation be opened up
by this ideal method of transmission, but
the old ones vastly extended.
