Wardenclyffe Tower

China Product


History

Construction

Tesla's Wardenclyffe plant on Long Island in partial stage of completion. Work on the 55-foot diameter cupola had not yet begun. Note the coal car parked next to the building. From this facility, Tesla hoped to demonstrate wireless transmission of electrical energy across the Atlantic. Circa 1902. tanning lotion samples

Nikola Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility ca. 1898, and in 1901, construction began on the land near Long Island Sound. Architect Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main building. The tower was designed by W.D. Crow, an associate of White. Funding for Tesla's project was provided by influential industrialists and other venture capitalists. The project was initially backed by the wealthy J. P. Morgan who had invested $150,000 in the facility, (more than $3 million in 2009 dollars). atm neon sign

In June 1902, Tesla moved his laboratory operations from his Houston Street laboratory to Wardenclyffe. However, in 1903, when the tower structure was near completion, it was still not yet functional due to last-minute design changes. Tesla intended for the tower to demonstrate how electrical energy could be transmitted without the need for power lines. A story has arisen that the power consumption could not be metered and Morgan, who could not foresee any financial gain from providing free electricity to everyone, balked. Construction costs eventually exceeded the money provided by Morgan, and additional financiers were reluctant to come forward. (Tesla's other major financier was John Jacob Astor.) By July 1904, Morgan (and the other investors) finally decided they would not provide any additional financing. Morgan also discouraged other investors from backing the project. In May 1905, Tesla's patents on alternating current motors and other methods of power transmission expired, halting royalty payments and causing a severe reduction of funding to the Wardenclyffe Tower. In an attempt to find alternative funding, Tesla advertised the services of the Wardenclyffe facility, but he met with little success. By this time, Tesla had also designed the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and produced Tesla coils for sale to various businesses. custom made neon signs

By 1905, since Tesla could not find any more backers, most of the site's activity had to be shut down. Employees were laid off in 1906, but parts of the building remained in use until 1907. In 1908, the property was foreclosed for the first time. Tesla procured a new mortgage from George C. Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, and the tower structure deteriorated. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla's finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recapture their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers. Newspaper headlines of the time labeled it "Tesla's million-dollar folly." The facility's main building was breached and vandalized around this time. Collapse of the Wardenclyffe project may have contributed to the mental breakdown Tesla experienced during this period. Coupled to the personal tragedy of Wardenclyffe was the 1895 fire at 35 South 5th Avenue, New York, in the building which housed Tesla's laboratory. In this fire, he lost much of his equipment, notes and documents. This produced a state of severe depression for Tesla.

Post-Tesla Era

In 1915, legal ownership of the Wardenclyffe property was transferred to George Boldt of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a $20,000 debt (about $400,000 in 2009 dollars). In September 1917 during World War I, the tower was blown up with dynamite on orders of the United States Government which feared German spies were using it and that it could be used as a landmark for German submarines. Tesla was not in New York during the tower's destruction.

George Boldt wished to make the property available for sale. On April 20, 1922 Tesla lost an appeal of judgment versus his backers in the second foreclosure. This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility. In 1925, the property ownership was transferred to Walter L. Johnson of Brooklyn. On March 6, 1939, Plantacres, Inc. purchased the facility's land and subsequently leased it to Peerless Photo Products, Inc. AGFA Corporation bought the property from Peerless and is the current owner. The main building remains standing to this day. Agfa used the site from 1969 to 1992 then closed the facility. The site has undergone a final cleanup of waste produced during its Photo Products era. The clean up was conducted under the scrutiny of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and paid for by AGFA. In 2009 they put the property up for sale for $1,650,000. Agfa has advertised that the land can e delivered fully cleared and level. It says it spent $5 million through September 2008 cleaning up silver and cadmium.

Commemoration efforts

Ruins of the administration building at the corner of Tesla Street and New York Route 25A in July 2009

On February 14, 1967, the nonprofit public benefit corporation Brookhaven Town Historical Trust was established. It selected the Wardenclyffe facility to be designated as a historic site and as the first site to be preserved by the Trust on March 3, 1967. The Brookhaven Town Historic Trust was rescinded by resolution on Feb 1, 1972. There were never any appointments made after a legal opinion was received; it was never set up properly. On 7 July 1976, a plaque from Yugoslavia was installed by representatives from Brookhaven National Laboratory near the entrance of the building. It reads:

IN THIS BUILDING

DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE, ARCHITECT

NIKOLA TESLA

BORN SMILJAN, YUGOSLAVIA 1856IED NEW YORK, U.S.A. 1943

CONSTRUCTED IN 1901-1905 WARDENCLYFFE

HUGE RADIO STATION WITH ANTENNA TOWER

187 FEET HIGH /DESTROYED 1917/, WHICH

WAS TO HAVE SERVED AS HIS FIRST WORLD

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM.

IN MEMORY OF 120TH ANNIVERSARY OF TESLA'S BIRTH

AND 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE U.S.A. INDEPENDENCE

July 10, 1976

The sign was stolen from the property in November 2009. An anonymous benefactor is offering a $2000 reward if it is returned to the property.

National landmarking of the structure is awaiting completion of plant decommissioning activities by its present owner.

In 1976, an application was filed to nominate the main building for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It failed to get approval. In 1994, the campaign for placement of the Wardenclyffe facility on the National Register of Historic Places of New York was renewed. In October 1994 a second Application for formal nomination was filed. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation conducted inspections and determined the facility meets New York State criteria for historic designation. A second visit was made on February 25, 2009.

Facility grounds

Artistic representation of the station completed, including the tower structure.

Wardenclyffe is located near the Shoreham Post Office and Shoreham Fire House on Route 25A in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. Wardenclyffe was divided into two main sections. The tower, which was located in the back, and the main building compose the entire facility grounds. At one time the property was about 200 acres. Now it consists of slightly less than 16 acres.

The tower was 187 feet (57 meters) tall and 68 feet (20.7 m) in diameter. It had a supporting structure that was built of wood. It had a 55-ton steel (some report it was a better conducting material, such as copper) hemispherical structure at the top (referred to as a cupola). The tower was designed by one of Stanford White's associates. The design of this structure was such as to allow each piece to be taken out if needed and replaced as necessary. Beneath the tower, a shaft sank 120 feet (36.6 m) into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were placed one length after another 300 additional feet (94.4 m) in order for the machine, in Tesla's words, "to have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver." At this depth, telluric currents of the Earth could be transceived.

The main building occupied the rest of the facility grounds. It included a laboratory area, instrument room, boiler room, generator room and machine shop. Inside the main building, there were electromechanical devices, electrical generators, electrical transformers, glass blowing equipment, X-ray devices, Tesla coils, a remote controlled boat, cases with bulbs and tubes, wires, cables, a library, and an office. It was constructed in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

Theories of operation

The transmission of electrical energy

In 1891 and 1892, Tesla had used an oscillatory transformer that bears his name in demonstration lectures delivered before meetings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in New York City" and the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in London. Of two striking results that Tesla demonstrated, one was that the wireless transmission of electrical energy was possible. A later presentation, titled "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena" (Philadelphia/St. Louis; Franklin Institute in 1893), was a key event in the invention of radio and could also be said to have begun the development of Wardenclyffe.

One-wire transmission

In the early presentations, the first experiment to be demonstrated was the operation of light and motive devices connected by a single wire to only one terminal of a high frequency induction coil, presented during the 1891 New York City lecture at Columbia University. While a single terminal incandescent lamp connected to one of an induction coil secondary terminals does not form a closed circuit n the ordinary acceptance of the term, the circuit is closed in the sense that a return path is established back to the secondary by what Tesla called lectrostatic induction (or 'displacement currents'). This is due to the fact that the lamp filament or refractory button has capacitance relative to the coil free terminal and environment and the secondary free terminal also has capacitance relative to the lamp and environment. At high frequencies, the displacement current required to charge these capacitances becomes sufficient to light the lamp.

Wireless transmission

The Tesla effect. A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity was proposed by Tesla. Through longitudinal waves, an operator uses the Tesla effect in the wireless transfer of energy to a receiving device. (Please note that the above image is rotated 90deg counterclockwise.)

The second result demonstrated how energy could be made to go through space without any connecting wires. This was the first step towards a practical wireless system. The wireless energy transmission effect involved the creation of an electric field between two metal plates, each being connected to one terminal of an induction coil secondary winding. Once again, a light-producing device (in this case a gas discharge tube) was used as a means of detecting the presence of the transmitted energy. "The most striking result obtained" involved the lighting of two partially evacuated tubes in an alternating electrostatic field while held in the hand of the experimenter. In Tesla's words,

... I suspend a sheet of metal a distance from the ceiling on insulating cords and connect it to one terminal of the induction coil, the other terminal being preferably connected to the ground. Or else I suspend two sheets as illustrated in Fig. 29 / 125, each sheet being connected with one of the terminals of the coil, and their size being carefully determined. An exhausted tube may then be carried in the hand anywhere between the sheets or placed anywhere, even a certain distance beyond them; it remains always luminous.

Here Tesla describes two different types of wireless transmitters, both employing a high-tension induction coil. The first, referred to here as the type-one transmitter, had a sheet of metal suspended from the ceiling and connected to one of the induction coil terminals. The other terminal was connected to ground. The second, referred to here as the type-two transmitter, had two sheets of metal suspended from the ceiling, each being connected with one of the coil terminals.

Theory of wireless transmission

While working to develop an explanation for the two observed effects mentioned above, Tesla recognized that electrical energy could be projected outward into space and detected by a receiving instrument in the general vicinity of the source without the need for any interconnecting wires. He went on to develop two theories related to these observations, which are:

By using two type-one sources positioned at distant points on the Earth surface, it is possible to induce a flow of electrical current between them.

By incorporating a portion of the Earth as part of a powerful type-two oscillator the disturbance can be impressed upon the Earth and detected t great distance, or even all over the surface of the globe.22]

Tesla also made the assumption that the Earth is a charged body floating in space.

A point of great importance would be first to know what is the capacity of the Earth? and what charge does it contain if electrified? Though we have no positive evidence of a charged body existing in space without other oppositely electrified bodies being near, there is a fair probability that the Earth is such a body, for by whatever process it was separated from other bodiesnd this is the accepted view of its origint must have retained a charge, as occurs in all processes of mechanical separation.

Tesla was familiar with demonstrations that involved the charging of Leyden jar capacitors and isolated metal spheres with electrostatic influence machines (in modern terms, high-voltage (kV), low-current(A) electrostatic generators). By bringing these elements into close proximity with each other, and also by making direct contact followed by their separation the charge can be manipulated. He surely had this in mind in the creation of his mental image, not being able to know that the model of Earth origin was inaccurate. The presently accepted model of planetary origin is one of accretion and collision.

If it be a charged body insulated in space its capacity should be extremely small, less than one-thousandth of a farad.

We now know that the Earth is, in fact, a charged body, made so by processest least in partelated to the interaction between the continuous stream of charged particles called the solar wind that flows outward from the center of our solar system and Earth magnetosphere. And we also know that Tesla's capacitance estimate was correct: Earth's self-capacitance is about 710 microfarads.

But the upper strata of the air are conducting, and so, perhaps, is the medium in free space beyond the atmosphere, and these may contain an opposite charge. Then the capacity might be incomparably greater.

We now also know that Earth's upper atmospheric strata are conducting, or can be made so.

In any case it is of the greatest importance to get an idea of what quantity of electricity the Earth contains.

An additional condition of which we are now aware is that the Earth possesses a naturally existing negative charge with respect to the conducting region of the atmosphere beginning at an elevation of about 50 km. The potential difference between the Earth and this region is on the order of 400,000 volts. Near the Earth's surface there is a ubiquitous downward directed E-field of about 100 V/m. Tesla referred to this charge as the lectric niveau or electric level.

It is difficult to say whether we shall ever acquire this necessary knowledge, but there is hope that we may, and that is, by means of electrical resonance. If ever we can ascertain at what period the Earth's charge, when disturbed, oscillates with respect to an oppositely electrified system or known circuit, we shall know a fact possibly of the greatest importance to the welfare of the human race. I propose to seek for the period by means of an electrical oscillator, or a source of alternating electric currents...

Some maintain the 200 kW wireless facility would have functioned by the propagation of electromagnetic radiation, or radio waves, then called Hertzian radiation.

By Tesla's own account, his earth resonance system works by the creation of powerful disturbances in Earth's natural electric charge. The Wardenclyffe facility had a dual purpose. In addition to point-to-point telecommunications and broadcasting it was also intended to demonstrate the transmission of electrical power on a reduced scale. He stated,

It is intended to give practical demonstrations of these principles with the plant illustrated. As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.

Wardenclyffe was the first of many installations to be constructed near major population centers around the world. If Tesla's plans had moved forward without interruption the Long Island prototype would have been followed by a second plant built somewhere along the southwest coast of England, perhaps in Cornwall. Each of these towers would have been a large magnifying transmitter of a design loosely based upon the apparatus which Tesla assembled at the Colorado Springs Experimental Station in 1899.

"... The plant in Colorado was merely designed in the same sense as a naval constructor designs first a small model to ascertain all the quantities before he embarks on the construction of a big vessel. I had already planned most of the details of the commercial plant, subsequently put up at Long Island, except that at that time the location was not settled upon. The Colorado plant I have used in determining the construction of the various parts, and the experiments which were carried on there were for the practical purpose of enabling me to design the transmitters and receivers which I was to employ in the large commercial plant subsequently erected..."

Using a global array of these magnifying transmitters, it was Tesla's plan to establish what he called the "World System," providing multi-channel global broadcasting, an array of secure wireless telecommunications services, and a long range aid to navigation, including means for the precise synchronization of clocks. In a more highly developed state he envisioned the World System would expand to include the wireless industrial transmission of electric power.

The installation was also used by Tesla as a laboratory for designing a power distribution system that would allow electricity to be transmitted over great distances without wires. This cannot be accomplished with what Tesla called "Hertz waves," which explains why Wardenclyffe was designed in a different manner than modern radio transmitters. Instead of distributing electricity through copper wire, remote users would be able to "receive" power through a buried ground connection, along with a spherical antenna terminal mounted just above their roof. At the time the power grid was quite limited in terms of who it reached and the Wardenclyffe prototype represented a way in which to significantly reduce the cost of "electrifying" the countryside. Tesla called his wireless technique the "disturbed charge of ground and air method".

The prototype facility was also meant to serve as a reduced-scale model for a global system of towers to transmit electrical energy to users in the form of earth currents and magnetohydrodynamic waves. There is evidence that Wardenclyffe would have used extremely low frequency signals combined with higher frequency signals. In practice, the transmitter electrically influences both the Earth and the space above it. He made a point of describing the process as being essentially the same as transmitting electricity by conduction through a wire. Tesla stated that electrical energy can be efficiently transmitted back and forth between World System transmitter / receiver facilities via electrical conduction through the ground. To accommodate this plan each facility includes one or two elevated terminal connections and one or two ground terminal connections.

Tesla clearly specified the Earth as being one of the conducting media involved in ground and air system technology. The other specified medium is the atmosphere above 5 miles (8.0 km) elevation. While not an ohmic conductor, in this region of the troposphere and upwards, the density or pressure is sufficiently reduced to so that, according to Tesla theory, the atmosphere insulating properties can be easily impaired, allowing an electric current to flow. His theory further states that the conducting region is developed through the process of atmospheric ionization, in which the effected portions thereof are changed to plasma. The presence of the magnetic fields developed by each plant helical resonator suggests that an embedded magnetic field and flux linkage is also involved. Flux linkage with Earth natural magnetic field is also a possibility, especially in the case of an earth resonance transmission system.

The atmosphere below 5 miles (8.0 km) is also viewed as a propagating medium for a portion of the above-ground circuit, and, being an insulating medium, electrostatic induction would be involved rather than true electrical conduction. Tesla felt that with a sufficiently high electrical potential on the elevated terminal the practical limitation imposed upon its height could be overcome. He anticipated that a highly energetic transmitter, as was intended at Wardenclyffe, would charge the elevated terminal to the point where the atmosphere around and above the facility would break down and become ionized, leading to a flow of true conduction currents between the two terminals by a path up to and through the troposphere, and back down to the other facility. The ionization of the atmosphere directly above the elevated terminals would be facilitated by the use of an ionizing beam of ultraviolet radiation to form what might be called a high-voltage plasma transmission line. [ed. see maxwellian waves and waves in plasmas] Powered by an industrial alternator, a generator facility's tower was intended to inject large amounts of energy into a natural Earth circuit, using the Earth-Ionosphere network as the transmission circuit.

In various writings, Tesla explained that the Earth itself behaves as a resonant LC circuit when it is electrically excited at certain frequencies. At Wardenclyffe he operated at frequencies ranging from 1,000 Hz to 100 kHz. Tesla found the frequency range up to 30 35 kHz o be most economical. Excitation of earth resonance at or near a fundamental frequency of about 11.7 Hz suggests energy transmission by means of a spherical conductor ingle-wire surface wave transmission line mode. A Schumann resonance mode (the fundamental frequency being about 7.5 to 7.9 Hz) is probably not involved. The entire Earth can be electrically resonated with a single type-two source, so an earth-resonance based system would require, at a minimum, that only one generating facility be constructed. Alternatively, two distantly spaced type-one generating facilities could be constructed. Such a system would not be so dependent upon the excitation of an earth-resonance mode. In either case a surface or ground wave, similar to the Zenneck wave would be utilized. Artificially induced earth currents would be utilized. According to Tesla, the planet's large cross-sectional area provides a low resistance path for the flow of earth currents. The greatest losses are apt to occur at the points where the transmitting / receiving plants and dedicated receiving stations are connected with the ground. This is why Tesla stated,

You see the underground work is one of the most expensive parts of the tower. In this system that I have invented 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 on the Earth so that the whole of this globe can quiver, and to do that it is necessary to carry out a very expensive construction.

To close the circuit a second path would be established between the two type-one plants' elevated high-voltage terminals through the rarefied atmospheric strata above five miles (8 km). The connection would be made by some combination of electrostatic induction and electrical conduction through plasma. While a number of his wireless patents, including "Apparatus for transmitting electrical energy", U.S. Patent No. 1,119,732, December 1, 1914, describe a system which uses the plasma-conduction scheme, his "Art of transmitting electrical energy through the natural mediums", U.S. Patent No. 787,412, April 18, 1905 and some of his Wardenclyffe design notes from 1901 show that he also had a plan to electrostatically induce oscillations in the potential associated with Earth's self-capacitance by rapidly transferring large amounts of electrical charge between the large topload capacitance and the self-capacitance of the whole Earth. The type-two transmitter is especially designed for this purpose. Tesla wrote,

The specific plan of producing the stationary waves, here-in described, might be departed from. For example, the circuit which impresses the powerful oscillations upon the earth might be connected to the latter at two points.

Tesla believed that a fully developed system with transmission-reception stations based upon the Wardenclyffe prototype would permit wireless transmission and reception across large distances with negligible losses. According to Dennis Papadopoulos, professor of physics at the University of Maryland, Tesla was incorrect. He stated that although wireless power transfer through the Earth and the ionosphere is possible, not enough power can be transmitted to turn on light bulbs for example, because the current would need to be sufficiently high and power would be dissipated due to thermal losses. Tesla stated that wireless transmission of power could be achieved using a high voltage and a low current.[citation needed]

In the course of this work, I mastered the technique of high potentials sufficiently for enabling me to construct and operate, in 1899, a wireless transmitter developing up to twenty million volts. Some time before I contemplated the possibility of transmitting such high tension currents over a narrow beam of radiant energy ionizing the air and rendering it, in measure, conductive. After preliminary laboratory experiments, I made tests on a large scale with the transmitter referred to and a beam of ultra-violet rays of great energy in an attempt to conduct the current to the high rarefied strata of the air and thus create an auroral such as might be utilized for illumination, especially of oceans at night. I found that there was some virtue in the principal but the results did not justify the hope of important practical applications. . . .

Despite the ridicule he has been subjected to by scientists for many years, many of Tesla's ideas are being demonstrated to be essentially correct. For example he correctly predicted the existence of the ionosphere and electrical resonance of the Earth-atmosphere system. Resonance of the earth-ionosphere cavity with a fundamental frequency in the vicinity of 7.3 Hz was demonstrated in the 1950s as the Schumann resonance. The latter phenomenon was named after Schumann, for although Tesla had detected a resonance of the Earth-atmosphere system, he was not taken seriously in his time. Furthermore, Tesla appears to have excited a different terrestrial resonance mode with a fundamental frequency of 11.78 Hz.

Electrical transmission and reception

Variants were suggested by Tesla for receiving power from electromagnetic radiation, or alternating electric near fields, of practicable frequency, and for exploiting the vertical voltage gradient in the Earth's atmosphere. Tesla performed experiments of the former type with some success, particularly in the area of receiving what was probably the near electric field of a large transmitting Tesla coil some distance away. He recognized that his early experiments involved the propagation of ordinary radio waves, that is to say Hertzian waves, electromagnetic waves propagated in space without artificial guide.

In 1919 Nikola Tesla wrote,

The popular impression is that my wireless work was begun in 1893, but as a matter of fact I spent the two preceding years in investigations, employing forms of apparatus, some of which were almost like those of today. It was clear to me from the very start that the successful consummation could only be brought about by a number of radical improvements. Suitable high frequency generators and electrical oscillators had first to be produced. The energy of these had to be transformed in effective transmitters and collected at a distance in proper receivers. Such a system would be manifestly circumscribed in its usefulness if all extraneous interference were not prevented and exclusiveness secured. In time, however, I recognized that devices of this kind, to be most effective and efficient, should be designed with due regard to the physical properties of this planet and the electrical conditions obtaining on the same.

Tesla stated that one of the requirements of the world wireless system was the construction of resonant receivers. The helical resonator of a Tesla Coil and its elevated terminal can be used in receive mode. Tesla himself demonstrated wireless transmission of electrical energy from his transmitter to his receiver. These concepts and methods are part of his wireless transmission system (US1119732 Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy 1902 January 18). Tesla made a proposal that there needed to be many more than thirty transmission-reception stations worldwide. In one form of receiving circuit the two input terminals are connected each to a device adapted to reverse polarity at predetermined intervals of time and charge a capacitor. This form of Tesla system receiver has means for commutating the current impulses in the charging circuit so as to render them suitable for charging the storage device, a device for closing the receiving-circuit, and means for causing the receiver to be operated by the energy accumulated.

Tesla coil in one experiment of many conducted in Colorado Springs. This is a grounded tuned coil in resonance with a distant transmitter; Light is glowing near the bottom.

In another form of Tesla system receiver, a Tesla receiving transformer acts as a step-down transformer with high current output. The parameters of a Tesla Coil transmitter are identically applicable to it being a receiver (e.g., an antenna circuit), due to reciprocity. Impedance, generally though, is not applied in an obvious way; for electrical impedance, the impedance at the load (e.g., where the power is consumed) is most critical and, for a Tesla Coil receiver, this is at the point of utilization (such as at an induction motor) rather than at the receiving node. Complex impedance of an antenna is related to the electrical length of the antenna at the wavelength in use. Commonly, impedance is adjusted at the load with a tuner or a matching networks composed of inductors and capacitors.

A Tesla Coil can receive electromagnetic impulses from atmospheric electricity and radiant energy, besides normal wireless transmissions. Radiant energy throws off with great velocity minute particles which are strongly electrified and other rays falling on the insulated-conductor connected to a condenser (i.e., a capacitor) can cause the condenser to indefinitely charge electrically. The helical resonator can be "shock excited" due to radiant energy disturbances not only at the fundamental wave at one-quarter wave-length but also is excited at its harmonics. Hertzian methods can be used to excite the Tesla Antenna with limitations that result in great disadvantages for utilization, though. The methods of ground conduction and the various induction methods can also be used to excite the Tesla Antenna, but are again at a disadvantages for utilization. The charging-circuit can be adapted to be energized by the action of various other disturbances and effects at a distance. Arbitrary and intermittent oscillations that are propagated via conduction to the receiving resonator will charge the receiver's capacitor and utilize the potential energy to greater effect. Various radiations can be used to charge and discharge conductors, with the radiations considered electromagnetic vibrations of various wavelengths and ionizing potential. The Tesla Antenna utilizes the effects or disturbances to charge a storage device with energy from an external source (natural or man-made) and controls the charging of said device by the actions of the effects or disturbances (during succeeding intervals of time determined by means of such effects and disturbances corresponding in succession and duration of the effects and disturbances). The stored energy can also be used to operate the receiving device. The accumulated energy can, for example, operate a transformer by discharging through a primary circuit at predetermined times which, from the secondary currents, operate the receiving device.

While Tesla Coils can be used for these purposes, much of the public and media attention is toward the transmitting applications of the Tesla Coil since the plasma discharges are fascinating to most people. Regardless of this fact, Tesla did suggest that this variation of the Tesla coil could utilize the phantom loop effect to form a circuit to induct energy from the Earth's magnetic field and other radiant energy sources (including, but not limited to, electrostatics). With regard to Tesla's statements on the harnessing of natural phenomena to obtain electric power, he stated:

Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. "Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency" (February 1892)

Tesla stated that the output power from these devices, attained from Hertzian methods of charging, was low, but alternative charging means are available. Tesla receivers operated correctly act as a step-down transformer with high current output. There are, to date, no commercial power generation entities or businesses that have utilized this technology to full effect. The power levels achieved by Tesla Coil receivers have, thus far, been a fraction of the output power of the transmitters.[citation needed]

Tesla's ray

Main articles: Teleforce, Particle beam weapon, and Directed-energy weapon

Related to the operation and utilization of Wardenclyffe Tower was Nikola Tesla's work on a macroscopic particle beam weapon called Teleforce in the 1930s. A Wardenclyffe styled facility which included the weapon was contemplated by Tesla. He offered it to Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in early 1934. It was also offered to the US War Department, Great Britain, and Yugoslavia. A descriptive 17-page type-written document on Tesla's office letterhead titled, "New Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through Natural Media," which presently exists in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade, shows that his macroscopic particle beam, also dubbed the "Peace Ray" or the "death ray" by contemporary media, was a narrow stream of charged clusters of mercury or tungsten accelerated by high voltage, produced by either a huge Van de Graaff generator or Tesla Coil. Immediately after his death, a component of the particle beam projector that may have been found among Tesla's possessions is said to have disappeared. Russian spies reportedly raided the room and the safe containing the schematics of the "death ray". The FBI never found any of the important parts of the schematics nor the trunk with the prototype, as far as existing public records show.[citation needed]

Telefunken Station

This section requires expansion.

After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless on the South Shore of Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was achieved with the Telefunken Wireless. In West Sayville, Long Island, New York, Tesla assisted in the building of three 600-foot (180 m) radio towers, creating the western wireless communication station in a North America and Europe network.

Quotes

"As soon as [the Wardenclyffe facility is] completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place ..." - Nikola Tesla, "The Future of the Wireless Art", Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, 1908, pg. 67-71.

"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle." Nikola Tesla (at the end of his dream for Wardenclyffe) [Wardenclyffe A Forfeited Dream]

Related patents

Nikola Tesla's patents

"Means for Generating Electric Currents," U.S. Patent 514,168, February 6, 1894

"Electrical Transformer," U.S. Patent 593,138, November 2, 1897

"Method Of Utilizing Radiant Energy," U.S. Patent 685,958 November 5, 1901

"Method of Signaling," U.S. Patent 723,188, March 17, 1903

"System of Signaling," U.S. Patent 725,605, April 14, 1903

"Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums," U.S. Patent 787,412, April 18, 1905

"Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy," January 18, 1902, U.S. Patent 1,119,732, December 1, 1914

See also: List of Tesla patents

Other patents

Hansell, U.S. Patent 2,389,432, Communication system by pulses through the Earth.

Leydorf, G. F., U.S. Patent 3,278,937, "Antenna near field coupling system". 1966.

See also

Electro-mechanical oscillator

Transceiver: transmitter and receiver

Devices: Tesla coil and Magnifying Transmitter

Notes

^ Anderson, Leland I., Nikola Tesla On His Work with Alternating Currents and Their Application to wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power, Twenty First Century Books, 2002, pp. 106, 153, 170.; Councel, "This Wardenclyffe station was that -- experimental?" Tesla, "No, it was a commercial undertaking. . . ."

^ "The Future of the Wireless Art," Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, Van Nostrand, 1908

^ Cheney, Margaret(1999), Tesla Master of Lightning, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 0-7607-1005-8, pp. 107.; nable to overcome his financial burdens, he was forced to close the laboratory in 1905.

^ a b c "A Battle to Preserve a Visionary Bold Failure". New York Times. May 4, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tesla.html?hp. Retrieved 2009-05-05. "Today, a fight is looming over the ghostly remains of that site, called Wardenclyffe what Tesla authorities call the only surviving workplace of the eccentric genius who dreamed countless big dreams while pioneering wireless communication and alternating current. The disagreement began recently after the property went up for sale in Shoreham, N.Y." 

^ See http://earlyradiohistory.us/1917tes.htm (citing page 293 of the September, 1917 issue of The Electrical Experimenter): "SUSPECTING that German spies were using the big wireless tower erected at Shoreham, L. I., about twenty years ago by Nikola Tesla, the Federal Government ordered the tower destroyed and it was recently demolished with dynamite."

^ A Battle to Preserve a Visionary Bold Failure - New York Times - May 4, 2009

^ "Tesla Lab: $1,650,000". New York Times. May 4, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05teslabox.html?ref=science. Retrieved 2009-05-05. "5 Randall Road, Shoreham, N.Y., between Tesla Court and Randall Road" 

^ Email from Brookhaven Town Historian, Barbara Russell, Mon, 30 Mar 2009

^ Brookhaven Bulletin, Vol. 30 No. 27, July 16, 1976

^ This plaque is located near the entrance to the building, not the entrance to the site, and as such is not accessible by the public in any way.

^ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}". http://assets.mediaspanonline.com/prod/3777889/168314_w407.jpg. Retrieved 2010-02-01. 

^ "Valuable Plaque Stolen From Tesla Laboratory"

^ Tesla, a Little-Recognized Genius, Left Mark in Shoreham - New York Times - November 10, 2002

^ Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power, ISBN 1-893817-01-6, p. 203

^ "Experiments With Alternating Currents of Very High Frequency, and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination," AIEE, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891

^ xperiments With Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency," IEE Address, London, February 3, 1892 (Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla).

^ "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena," February 24, 1893, before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, March 1893, before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis.

^ Norrie, H. S., "Induction Coils: How to make, use, and repair them". Norman H. Schneider, 1907, New York. 4th edition.

^ Electrical experimenter, January 1919. pg. 615

^ Tesla: Man Out of Time By Margaret Cheney. Page 174

^ "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires," Electrical World, March 5, 1904

^ a b c d e f "Experiments With Alternating Currents of Very High Frequency, and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination," AIEE, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891

^ "Episode 126: Capacitance and the equation C =Q/V", Institute of Physics website > Schools and Colleges > Projects > Teaching Advanced Physics > Electricity > Capacitors, accessed 2008-09-25

^ As noted by James Corum, et al. in the paper "Concerning Cavity Q", Proceedings of the 1988 International Tesla Symposium. (ed. along with other sources)

^ "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena," February 24, 1893, before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, March 1893, before the National Electric Light Association, St. Louis.

^ "The Future of the Wireless Art," Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, Walter W. Massie & Charles R. Underhill, 1908, pp. 67-71

^ Anderson, Leland, Nikola Tesla On His Work with Alternating Currents and Their Application to wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power, Twenty First Century Books, 2002, p. 170.

^ "U.S. Blows Up Tesla Radio Tower," Electrical Experimenter, September 1917, p. 293.

^ Peterson, Gary, "Rediscovering the Zenneck Surface Wave," Feed Line No. 4.

^ Anderson, Leland, Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power, p. 203

^ U.S. Patent No. 787,412, April 18, 1905 and some of his Wardenclyffe design notes

^ Peterson, Gary, "Nikola Tesla's Wireless Work: The development of a ground-based system for wireless transmission"

^ Peterson, Gary, "Comparative Study of the Hertz, Marconi and Tesla Low-Frequency Wireless Systems"

^ Peterson, Gary, "Tesla Coils & the World System: Nikola Tesla's Engineering Legacy"

^ Peterson, Gary, "A Museum at Wardenclyffe: The Creation of a Monument to Nikola Tesla".

^ http://www.pbs.org/tesla/dis/papad.html

^ THE NEW ART OF PROJECTING CONCENTRATED NON-DISPERSIVE ENERGY THROUGH NATURAL MEDIA, System of Particle Acceleration for Use in National Defense

^ http://amasci.com/tesla/tmistk.html

^ http://www.earthbreathing.co.uk/sr.htm

^ Definition of "Hertzian"

^ Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla. Page 228.

^ Tesla, Nikola, "The True Wireless". Electrical Experimenter, May 1919. (Available at pbs.org)

^ U.S. Patent 645,576

^ U.S. Patent 725,605

^ a b U.S. Patent 685,957, Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy, N. Tesla

^ U.S. Patent 685,958, Method of utilizing of radiant energy, N. Tesla

^ "Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy", Jan. 18, 1902, U.S. Patent 1,119,732, December 1, 1914 (available at U.S. Patent 1,119,732 and 21st Century Books' Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy)

^ Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla. Page 472. (cf. "Each tower could act as a sender or a receiver. In a letter to Katherine Johnson, Tesla explains the need for well over thirty such towers".)

^ U.S. Patent 0685956

^ U.S. Patent 0685955 Apparatus for Utilizing Effects Transmitted From A Distance To A Receiving Device Through Natural Media

^ G. L. Peterson, Rediscovering the Zenneck Surface Wave.

^ 'Energy-sucking' Radio Antennas, N. Tesla's Power Receiver.

^ William Beaty, "Tesla invented radio?". 1992.

^ Nikola Tesla's Contributions to Radio Developments. www.tesla-symp06.org.

^ A. H. Taylor, "Resonance in Arial Systems". American Physical Society. Physical review. New York, N.Y.: Published for the American Physical Society by the American Institute of Physics. (cf. The Tesla coil in the receiver acts as a step-down transformer, and hence the current is greater than in the aerial itself.)

^ This would include being able to be "shock excited" by all electrical phenomena of transverse waves (those with vibrations perpendicular to the direction of the propagation) and longitudinal waves (those with vibrations parallel to the direction of the propagation). Further information can be found in U.S. Patent 685,953, U.S. Patent 685,954, U.S. Patent 685,955, U.S. Patent 685,956, U.S. Patent 685,957 and U.S. Patent 685,958.

^ Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla. Page 221 (cf. "The inventor had tuned his equipment so carefully that n one instance the devices recorded effects of lightning discharges fully 500 miles away []"

^ Hermann Plauson, U.S. Patent 1,540,998, "Conversion of atmospheric electric energy". Jun. 1925.

^ Nikola Tesla, "Tuned Lightning", English Mechanic and World of Science, March 8, 1907.

^ U.S. Patent 685,958, Method of utilizing of radiant energy, N. Tesla

^ U.S. Patent 685,957 Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy, N. Tesla

^ a b c U.S. Patent 0685953 Apparatus for Utilizing Effects Transmitted from a Distance to a Receiving Device through Natural Media

^ US685957 Utilization of Radiant Energy

^ a b U.S. Patent 0685954 Method of Utilizing Effects Transmitted through Natural Media

^ Bell, Louis (1901). Electric Power Transmission; a Practical Treatise for Practical Men. p. 10. http://books.google.com/books?id=hSYKAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA3-PA110&lpg=RA3-PA110&dq=%22electric+power+transmission+a+practical+treatise+for+practical+men%22&source=web&ots=FTKTW8smJm&sig=8kcwxaAWKmm5-1ysBFR52oQiRik#PRA1-PA10,M1. Retrieved 2007-02-15.  "Both kinds of strains exist in radiant energy, [] The stresses in electro-magnetic energy are at right angles both to the electrostatic stresses and to the direction of their motion or flow."

^ U.S. Patent 0685953 "Apparatus for Utilizing Effects Transmitted from a Distance to a Receiving Device through Natural Media"

^ A. H. Taylor, "Resonance in Arial Systems". American Physical Society. Physical review. New York, N.Y.: Published for the American Physical Society by the American Institute of Physics. (cf. The Tesla coil in the receiver act as a step-down transformer, and hence the current is greater than in the aerial itself.)

Further reading

Anderson, Leland, "Rare Notes from Tesla on Wardenclyffe", in Electric Spacecraft - A journal of Interactive Research, Issue 26, September 14, 1998. Contains copies of rare documents from the Tesla Museum in Belgrade including Tesla's notes and sketches from 1901

Bass, Robert W., "Self-Sustained Non-Hertzian Longitudal Wave Oscillations as a Rigorous Solution of Maxwell's Equations for Electromagnetic Radiation". Inventek Enterprises, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada.

"Boundless Space: A Bus Bar". The Electrical World, Vol 32, No. 19.

Massie, Walter Wentworth, "Wireless telegraphy and telephony popularly explained ". New York, Van Nostrand. 1908.

Rather, John, "Tesla, a Little-Recognized Genius, Left Mark in Shoreham". The New York Times. Long Island Weekly Desk.

Tesla, Nikola, "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires", Electrical World and Engineer, March 5, 1904.

Tesla, Nikola, "World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy", Telegraph and Telegraph Age, October 16, 1927.

External links

Facility details:Interior view (a) -- Interior view (b) -- Interior view (c) -- Facility front view --Facility side view -- Facility large front view -- Tower alone

Facilities assembled; Colorado Springs, Long Island, and Lac Edouard (near Sanford, Quebec).

PBS Tower of Dreams

The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project

Tesla's vision of the wireless global communications

Tesla Radio: A Wireless Telecommunications System for the Post Modern Age

Creation of a Monument to Nikola Tesla

The Real Science of "Non-Hertzian" Waves (ed. Reportedly focuses on Tesla's wireless energy transmission ideas; the main focus is on transverse wave, i.e. "Hertz waves". Plasma wave physics, longitudinal waves, and telluric currents not considered).

The Basic Tesla Transmitter Apparatus with Passive Receiver.

The Basic Dual-tower ("type two") Tesla Transmitter Configuration. A receiver is standing out to the right.

Simplified Schematic of the Dual-tower Earth Resonance Tesla Transmitter.

Cooper, John. F., "Modified Type 2 Magnifying Transmitter circuit diagram; alternate circuit diagram." Both designs are deemed to be unusable.

The Finalized Magnifying Transmitter Design of 1914, patented by Nikola Tesla.

Wardenclyffe Tower at Structurae

Bird's Eye view of the Wardenclyffe laboratory and power plant building as it exists today (from Live maps).

Wardenclyffe Tower video.

Utilization of Radiant Energy 1901 Nikola Tesla, My test, My setup 1, My setup 2, My setup 3, My test 2, My test 3, My test 4, My test 5, My test 6, My test 7, My test 8. youtube.com

Wardenclyffe Tower is at coordinates 405651 725354 / 40.94759700N 72.89820700W / 40.94759700; -72.89820700 (Wardenclyffe Tower)Coordinates: 405651 725354 / 40.94759700N 72.89820700W / 40.94759700; -72.89820700 (Wardenclyffe Tower)

Tesla's Wardenclyffe Science Center Plaque

Designated Superfun Site

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