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By way of introduction let me say I have only been looking at alternative energy for a little over a year and a half. I have no formal training in electronic or electrical engineering but have designed and built some low power digital circuits for my own use.
Having been sidetracked into many of the various projects that have yet to yield usable power of any quantity I went back to the source - Nikola Tesla. There are two major problems in dealing with Dr. Tesla's work. One is comprehending how little was known in the late 19th century that we take for granted today. The other is the enormous volume of work he produced.
The keys to his devices are spread out amoung many patents, lectures, and magazine articles over a long period of time - decades, in fact. As with all fundamental development, progress is gradual and one idea leads to another, it is made workable and in doing so other ideas occur. So too was Dr. Tesla's work.
The details of his Magnifying Transmitter project are spread out through many patents. The basic patent, US 1,119,732 is the familiar tower with a torus shaped top from which the Wardencliffe project was developed. That patent references two other patents that were filed earlier and which hold key details: US 645,576 and US 649,621. These two patents are referenced by several of his other patents, another of which holds other key information - Canadian patent 0142352. All of these patents need to be read and pondered in their entirety.
I have been wondering of late if the 'magnifying' and 'transmitter' parts could be separated so have done a more thoughtful examination of the patents. What I found is disappointing but, never the less, enlightening.
A few things to realise up front: the magnifying transmitter and the radiant enrgy concepts are two different things - they are not related although they could be used together; Dr. Tesla was thinking on planetary scales, not in the sense of planetary distribution, although he did that too, but in the sense that the entire planet, taken as a whole, was but one of the components of his circuits. It's not that his systems will work on a planetary scale but that his systems require the use of the whole globe to work at all.
This latter is why today's Tesla coils are little more than entertainments. They do not use the entire globe as a component of the circuit. Nor can they in today's infrastructure.
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Wireless Transmission of Power Through the Atmosphere
This method would transmit millions of watts of power by conductance at fifteen or twenty million volts established by ionizing the air between balloons held at thirty thousand feet or lower to support the elevated terminals. The balloons’ altitude was to be maintained by reservoirs of hydrogen or helium gas pumped to the balloons. The lower the elevation of the balloons, the higher the required voltage would be. He states many times in interviews, articles, and patents that the power distribution is accomplished by conductance. So how do you achieve conductance at thirty thousand feet? High voltage, high frequency impulses through the rarified atmosphere which is also very cold at that altitude which reduces resistance. If this sounds too fantastic, read the patents US 645,576 and US 649,621.
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Wireless Transmission of Power Through the Crust of the Earth
Dr. Tesla used resonant, parametric oscillation to amplify the natural electrical currents of the earth, now called Telluric currents, to produce roughly 300:1 energy gain where the energy induced was required to travel to the opposite side of the planet and return, at which time the amplifying pulse would be emitted again to enhance the returned pulse. The point here is that the entire globe must be pulsed such that a return pulse can be amplified. Dr. Tesla states he accomplished this with a “few hundred horsepower”. If we take “a few hundred” to mean three hundred, the output power was around 224kW. The process most likely does not scale downward.
In a section subtitled “Signaling at 1,000,000 miles!” Dr. Tesla states: “…succeeded in producing a machine which, to explain its operation in plain language, resembled a pump in its action, drawing electricity from the earth and driving it back into the same at an enormous rate.” [Collier’s Weekly ,Talking With Planets, February 9, 1901
In a section subtitled “Experiments in Colorado” he states: “The rates of electrical movement involved in strong induction apparatus had measured but a few hundred horse-power, and I produced electrical movements of rates of one hundred and ten thousand horsepower.” [Collier’s Weekly ,Talking With Planets, February 9, 1901
The most essential requirement is, however, that irrespective of frequency the wave or wave-train should continue for a certain interval of time, which I have estimated to be not less than one-twelfth or probably 0.08484 of a second and which is taken in passing to and returning from the region diametrically opposite the pole over the earth's surface with a mean velocity of about four hundred and seventy-one thousand two hundred and forty kilometers per second. [U.S. PATENT 787,412]
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So we can see from this that the magnifying and transmitting parts cannot be separated. The entire globe must be used to accomplish the magnification of the Telluric currents and it is not scalable downwards.
More important to us today is that these methods are impossible to implement. If they had been established in his day the world may have evolved around his concepts but that did no happen and the prospect that we may today transmit exawatts of power conductively through either the atmosphere or the crust of the earth is nil. The one thing that Dr. Tesla had that no longer exists is a world unsullied by the global infrastructure that has been built in the last one hundred years or so. While his systems could be used by the entire planet, they are also required the use of the entire planet as a part of his system. Attempting to implement his methods today would require scrapping the last hundred years of development and starting over. The two systems, Dr. Tesla's and today's infrastructure, cannot coexist.
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Considering the power levels that Dr. Tesla proposed to transmit, these methods are "green" in no way. Environmentalism did not exist in his day, but consider the impact on the atmospheric chemistry if transmitted through the air and the impact on wildlife in the air, on the land, and in the ocean if millions or billions of watts of power are transmitted by conductance around the globe. At those scales these methods could, and probably would, impact the magnetic field that protects us from the solar wind. Also consider that the world of today consumes exawatt hours of electricity every year and how little of that is used for transportation.
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The use of radiant energy, on the other hand, still is feasible but will very limited. I contend that radiant energy collection is best accomplished at high altitudes above sea level at the ground surface but that one requirement then also requires the distribution of the power and Dr. Tesla was thinking of using the above system for distribution. Keep in mind that Dr. Tesla was always working towards distribution of industrial quantities of power. While radiant energy may be of use on an inidivual basis today, it will require that the individual live and work at a high altitude for radiant energy to be of use.
Radiant energy is not, however, the topic of this thread so I will leave it at that for the time being. I have more details on the magnifying transmitter but this post is getting long so reply here if you want clarifications on this post.
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Topic: Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter (Read 151281 times)
