By the end of the 1890s, Tesla had come to the conclusion that it
might be possible to transmit electrical power without wires at high altitudes. There the
air was thinner, and therefore more conductive.
A friend and patent lawyer, Leonard E. Curtis, on being advised of Tesla's work, offered
to find land and provide power for the research from the El Paso Power Company of Colorado
Springs. The next supporter to come forward was Colonel John Jacob Astor. With $30,000
from Astor, the inventor prepared at once to move to Colorado and begin building a new
experimental station near Pikes Peak. Joining Tesla were several assistants who were not
fully informed of the inventor's plans.
Arriving at Colorado Springs in May 1899, Tesla went to inspect the acreage. It was some
miles out in the prairie. He told reporters that he intended to send a radio signal from
Pikes Peak to Paris, but furnished no details.
In the midst of Colorado's own incredible electrical displays, Tesla would sit taking
measurements. |
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He soon found
the earth to be "literally alive with electrical vibrations." Tesla came to
think that when lightning struck the ground it set up powerful waves that moved from one
side of the earth to the other. If the earth was indeed a great conductor, Tesla
hypothesized that he could transmit unlimited amounts of power to any place on earth with
virtually no loss. But to test this theory, he would have to become the first man to
create electrical effects on the scale of lightning.
The laboratory that rose from the prairie floor was both wired and weird, a contraption
with a roof that rolled back to prevent it from catching fire, and a wooden tower that
soared up eighty feet. Above it was a 142-foot metal mast supporting a large copper ball.
Inside the strange wooden structure, technicians began to assemble an enormous Tesla coil,
specially designed to send powerful electrical impulses into the earth.
On the evening of the experiment, each piece of equipment was first carefully checked.
Then Tesla alerted his mechanic, Czito, to open the switch for only one second. The
secondary coil began to sparkle and crack and an eerie blue corona formed in the air
around it. Satisfied with the result, Tesla ordered Czito to close the switch until told
to cease. Huge arcs of blue electricity snaked up and down the center coil. Bolts of
man-made lightning more than a hundred feet in length shot out from the mast atop the
station. Tesla's experiment burned out the dynamo at the El Paso Electric Company and the
entire city lost power. The power station manager was livid, and insisted that Tesla pay
for and repair the damage.
For nine months Tesla conducted experiments at Colorado Springs. Though he kept a
day-to-day diary that was rich in detail, the results of his experiments are not clear.
One question has never been definitively answered: Did Tesla actually transmit wireless
power at Pikes Peak?
There are some reports that he did transmit a signal several miles powerful enough to
illuminate vacuum tubes planted in the ground. But this can be attributed to conductive
properties in the ground at Colorado Springs.
Another approach pursued by Tesla was to transmit extra-low-frequency signals through the
space between the surface of the earth and the ionosphere. Tesla calculated that the
resonant frequency of this area was approximately 8-hertz. It was not until the 1950s that
this idea was taken seriously and researchers were surprised to discover that the resonant
frequency of this space was indeed in the range of 8-hertz.
A third approach for wireless power transmission was to transmit electrical power to the
area 80-kilometers above the earth known as the ionosphere. Tesla speculated that his
region of the atmosphere would be highly conductive and again his suspicions were correct.
What he needed was the technical means to send electrical power to such a high altitude.
One night in his laboratory, Tesla noticed a repeating signal being picked-up by his
transmitter. To his own amazement, he believed that he was receiving a signal from outer
space. Tesla was widely ridiculed when he announced this discovery, but it is possible
that he was the first man to detect radio waves from space.
A great deal of mystery still surrounds Tesla's work at Colorado Springs. It is not clear
from his notes or his comments exactly how he intended to transmit wireless power. But it
is clear that he returned back to New York City fully convinced that he could accomplish
it. pbs.org/tesla
When Tesla returned from Colorado
Springs to New York, he wrote a sensational article for Century Magazine. In this
detailed, futuristic vision he described a means of tapping the sun's energy with an
antenna. He suggested that it would be possible to control the weather with electrical
energy. He predicted machines that would make war an impossibility. And he proposed a
global system of wireless communications. To most people the ideas were almost
incomprehensible, but Tesla was a man who could not be underestimated.
The article caught the attention of one of the world's most powerful men, J. P. Morgan. A
frequent guest in Morgan's home, Tesla proposed a scheme that must have sounded like
science fiction: a "world system" of wireless communications to relay telephone
messages across the ocean; to broadcast news, music, stock market reports, private
messages, secure military communications, and even pictures to any part of the world.
"When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain,
capable of response in every one of its parts," Tesla told Morgan.
Morgan offered Tesla $150,000 to build a transmission tower and power plant. A more
realistic sum would have been $1,000,000, but Tesla took what was available and went to
work immediately. In spite of what he told his investor, Tesla's actual plan was to make a
large-scale demonstration of electrical power transmission without wires. This turned out
to be a fatal mistake.
For his new construction project, Tesla acquired land on the cliffs of Long Island Sound.
The site was called Wardenclyffe. By 1901 the Wardenclyffe project was under construction,
the most challenging task being the erection of an enormous tower, rising 187 feet in the
air and supporting on its top a fifty-five-ton sphere made of steel. Beneath the tower, a
well-like shaft plunged 120 feet into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were driven three
hundred feet deeper so that currents could pass through them and seize hold of the earth.
"In this system that I have invented," Tesla explained, "it is necessary
for the machine to get a grip of the earth, otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to
have a grip... so that the whole of this globe can quiver."
As the tower construction slowly increased, it became evident that more funds were sorely
needed. But Morgan was not quick to respond. Then on December 12, 1901, the world awoke to
the news that Marconi had signaled the letter "S" across the Atlantic from
Cornwall, England to Newfoundland. Tesla, unruffled by the accomplishment, explained that
the Italian used 17 Tesla patents to accomplish the transmission. But Morgan began to
doubt Tesla. Marconi's system not only worked, it was also inexpensive.
Tesla pleaded with Morgan for more financial support, but the investor soundly refused. To
make matters worse, the stock market crashed and prices for the tower's materials doubled.
High prices combined with Tesla's inability to find enough willing investors eventually
led to the demise of the project.
In 1905, after some amazing electrical displays, Tesla and his team had to abandon the
project forever. The newspapers called it, "Tesla's million dollar folly."
Humiliated and defeated, Tesla experienced a complete nervous breakdown. "It is not a
dream," he protested. "It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering,
only expensive... blind, faint-hearted, doubting world." pbs.org/tesla |
