Hi Slider,
That's a handful of different ideas... let me focus on the ones that I see as most valid and "physically realizable".
The positioning of solenoids in parallel is a common feature of many successful designs, like Cook and Hubbard. Both devices were definitely working at the near field as determined by their approximate diameters, and probable frequency ranges.
The reversal of the induction at a certain distance that Henry shows is probably due to a time delay in the inductive waves radiating from the coil. The spark that Henry used to induce in the coils and tin strips probably had very high frequency components whose wavelength was in the range of of his coil distances. So as the magnetic wave moves away from the coil or strip there is a reasonably close location which shows a reverse induction. At this time I think this is an interesting curiosity and not something significant.
The idea of using only the collapse phase to tap excess energy is an old one and has been tried many times. The energy of the source is transferred to the collapsing waveform, and then this energy is tapped for power, so there is just a hand off of energy down the line.
There are plenty of conventional circuits that trap this energy rather than snubbing it. Snubbing is a bad option for energy efficient circuits, and the snubbing of the bulk capacitor in the CMOS logic circuits is what led to adiabatic logic in the first place. Not snubbing is sort of the starting point of energy recycling, but it doesn't deal with the thermal losses that exist in both the charge and collapse phase, that shaping of the input and output waveforms can eliminate.
I've dug deeper in to the wireless circuits, and there are a number of factors that lead me to think that excess energy can be derived from a combination of field coils.
First, the resonant operation of such coils is seen as adiabatic in the sense that the energy is either dissipated in the receiver coil's load, like a handheld device, or is completely returned to the primary to be recycled. A high Q in the primary circuit is the main requirement for this to happen, and without the high Q the efficiency drops off just as with the coupling. With a resonant transmitter, coils a m. apart might be have a coupling of .2 but the efficiency of power transfer can be near 90%. Without the high Q and resonance, the efficiency at that distance would be less than 10% at best.
This is something of an aside, but in my opinion the local power transfer can be raised to closer to 99% by using a pulsed quarter sine waveform in the transmitter, and not letting the field resonate, so all the energy is absorbed in the load-- a technology that was developed for pulse code modulation systems through wires, but will work here as well as anywhere. In this case you are not creating an evanescent field, but delivering an evanescent pulse with no transverse component. (Of course, the energy that is not used for power will be returned to the primary as always).
Second, induction from the tunneling effect has a inverse cube distance dependence, while standard induction has an inverse square dependence. Further the dimensions of the solenoid determine how much of the evanescent field is generated on any particular orientation A large, flat transmitter coil will generate a larger evanescent field, which is why experimenters tend to use this config. On the other hand, a smaller diameter and longer solenoid for the receiver coil will generate a smaller evanescent field in the direction of the transmitter.
Because of the relatively sharp evanescent cutoff, and the difference in field structure with changing coil structures, it should be possible to create a situation where the resonant power transfer goes from primary to secondary, but the secondary's reactive power doesn't go from secondary to primary, but is returned to the secondary for reuse. I feel this may well be what is happening in some devices with different diameter solenoids in parallel, like Hubbard. I'll draw up a basic design once I've looked at the equations for the coil dimensions some more.
As far as Otis Carr is concerned... for what little it's worth, I have it on good authority that for a while Carr had possession of a lost notebook from Tesla describing new aspects of power transmission. The person who told me this had worked with Carr for quite a while on his flying saucer, and had held this small brown notebook in his hand. This associate told me that in this notebook Tesla referred to his article about the Moon's rotation as the key to this 'secret':
http://www.teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla-article-the-moons-rotationMany of these moon rotation concepts seem to have been incorporated into mechanical designs using motors and pulleys by a couple of followers who have patents. This gets more into tapping centrifugal force and the like, and is pretty far away from what we are talking about here...
orthofield