Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856–January 7, 1943) was a Serbian inventor, electrical engineer, and futurist. As the holder of nearly 300 patents, Tesla is best known for his role in developing the modern three-phase alternating current (AC) electric power supply system and for his invention of the Tesla coil, an early advancement in the field of radio transmission.

During the 1880s, Tesla and Thomas Edison, inventor and champion of direct electrical current (DC), would become embattled in the “War of the Currents” over whether Tesla’s AC or Edison’s DC would become the standard current used in long-distance transmission of electrical power.

Nikola Tesla Biography

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Lika, which was then part of the Austo-Hungarian Empire, and today is a region of Croatia. He comes from an Orthodox family, where his father, Milutin Tesla, was an Orthodox priest. His mother, Djuka Mandic, was very intelligent and supported his life in his younger days. He had four siblings: three sisters, Angelina, Milka, Marica, and a brother named Dane. Unfortunately, his childhood was marred by the death of his older brother, a difficult relationship with his parents, and a serious illness at age 12.

Already at an early age, Tesla shows insight and ambition. There is an anecdote from his life related to his first sight of Niagara Falls, where he announced to his uncle Josip that one day, he would put a big wheel there and use the potential of the falls. This was his childhood dream.

Tesla started school in Smiljan, where he learned German, mathematics, and religion. After moving to Gospic, he carried forward with elementary school finishing Preparatory Elementary School and Lower Real Gymnasium. From Gospic, he left for Rakovac, located near Karlovac, and finished Higher Real Gymnasium.

Photo: The Nikola Tesla Memorial Center in Smiljan, Croatia includes his birth house, an Eastern Orthodox church, and a statue of Tesla.

When Tesla completed high school, he avoided forced enlistment in an ongoing war, and went to study physics and other disciplines at the Polytechnic School in Graz, located south of Vienna. However, he did not stay to complete his degree. Still, he later enrolled at the University of Prague, where he advanced his knowledge of wave mechanics (and indirectly AC), working with Professor Ernst Mach.

After his studies, Tesla began his career as an electrical engineer with a telephone company in Budapest in 1881. Tinkering with equipment as a telephone line repairman, he created a kind of amplifier, a forerunner of loudspeakers, which he never filed as his own patent.

Before leaving for America, Tesla got a job at the Continental Edison company in Paris, where he designed a dynamo. While in Strassbourg in 1883, he privately built a prototype of an induction motor and successfully started it. The impossibility of anyone in Europe recognizing the potential of his invention induced him to accept Thomas Edison’s offer and go to work in New York. He gets there in 1884 with an introduction letter from Charles Batchelor to Thomas Edison: “I know two great men,” wrote Batchelor, “one is you and the other is this young man.”.

Tesla started to work in Edison’s lab in New Jersey, where he began to improve Edison’s line of dynamos. This is the point where his divergence of opinion with Edison over direct current versus alternating current began. Due to disagreements with Edison, he decides to found his own company.

In 1885, he founded a company called the Tesla Electric and Manufacturing Company, which went bankrupt a year later. After that, Tesla is forced to finance himself through hard manual work. Two years later, he founded a new company called Tesla Electric Company. That same year, 1887, Tesla decided to register his patents, which included a multi-phase electric power transmission motor system, an induction motor, generators and transformers. A year later, in partnership with George Westinghouse, Tesla sold his alternating current patents for $1 million (some sources claim he received only $60,000).

After going to Europe and visiting Lika, Tesla’s birthplace, in 1890, he began researching high-frequency current, where after a year, he constructed the first transformer, the so-called Tesla coil. In 1892, he returned to Lika for his mother’s funeral.

As part of the world exhibition of electrical engineering held in Chicago in 1893, Tesla presented the advantages of alternating current. Unfortunately, in 1895, his famous work on electrons and x-rays was destroyed in a fire in his laboratory, which is why it was never published.

In 1896 the first hydroelectric plant was commissioned at the foot of Niagara Falls and used Tesla’s alternating current patents. In 1899, Tesla built an experimental station in Colorado Springs to experiment with high voltage, high-frequency electricity and other phenomena. There he worked for one year, and after that, he moved to Long Island, where he never had a chance to finish his research on wireless transmission of electricity because J.P. Morgan stopped to finance him.

Photo: A dazzling night view of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. 

From 1910 to 1922, Tesla continued with his engineering inventions, where 1919, Tesla’s autobiography „My inventions” was first published. He was awarded the Edison medal in 1917 and, in 1926, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zagreb. In 1937 he earned two honorary doctorates from the Polytechnic University in Graz and the University of Paris.

Tesla spent his life in hotels, and he lived in the Hotel New Yorker for the last ten years. He died there on January 7th, 1943, in his apartment on the 33rd floor. A state funeral was held at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City. He was cremated, and his ashes were interned in a golden sphere, Tesla’s favorite shape, which was handed over to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

The Path to Alternating Current

In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary, where he gained practical experience as the chief electrician at the Central Telephone Exchange. In 1882, Tesla was hired by the Continental Edison Company in Paris where he worked in the emerging industry of installing the direct current-powered indoor incandescent lighting system patented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Impressed by Tesla’s mastery of engineering and physics, the company’s management soon had him designing improved versions of generating dynamos and motors and fixing problems at other Edison facilities throughout France and Germany.

In June 1884, Tesla emigrated to the United States and went to work at the Edison Machine Works in New York City, where Edison’s DC-based electrical lighting system was fast becoming the standard. Just six months later, Tesla quit Edison after a heated dispute over unpaid wages and bonuses.

In his diary, Notebook from the Edison Machine Works: 1884-1885, Tesla marked the end of the amicable relationship between the two great inventors. Across two pages, Tesla wrote in large letters, “Good Bye to the Edison Machine Works.”

Photo: Nikola Tesla first came to the U.S. in 1884 and worked at the Edison Machine Works in New York City.

By March 1885, Tesla, with the financial backing of businessmen Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, started his own lighting utility company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. Instead of Edison’s incandescent lamp bulbs, Tesla’s company installed a DC-powered arc lighting system he had designed while working at Edison Machine Works. While Tesla’s arc light system was praised for its advanced features, his investors, Lane and Vail, had little interest in his ideas for perfecting and harnessing alternating current. In 1886, they abandoned Tesla’s company to start their own company. The move left Tesla penniless, forcing him to survive by taking electrical repair jobs and digging ditches for $2.00 per day. Of this period of hardship, Tesla would later recall, “My high education in various branches of science, mechanics, and literature seemed to me like a mockery.”

During his time of near destitution, Tesla’s resolve to prove the superiority of alternating current over Edison’s direct current grew even stronger.

Alternating Current and the Induction Motor

In April 1887, Tesla, along with his investors, Western Union telegraph superintendent Alfred S. Brown and attorney Charles F. Peck, founded the Tesla Electric Company in New York City for the purpose of developing new types of electric motors and generators.

Tesla soon developed a new type of electromagnetic induction motor that ran on alternating current. Patented in May 1888, Tesla’s motor proved to be simple, dependable, and not subject to the constant need for repairs that plagued direct current-driven motors at the time.

In July 1888, Tesla sold his patent for AC-powered motors to Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owned by electrical industry pioneer George Westinghouse. In the deal, which proved financially lucrative for Tesla, Westinghouse Electric got the rights to market Tesla’s AC motor and agreed to hire Tesla as a consultant.

With Westinghouse now backing AC and Edison backing DC, the stage was set for what would become known as “The War of the Currents.”

The War of the Currents: Tesla vs. Edison

Recognizing the economic and technical superiority of alternating current to his direct current for long-distance power distribution, Edison undertook an unprecedently aggressive public relations campaign to discredit AC as posing a deadly threat to the public—a force should never allow in their homes. Edison and his associates toured the U.S. presenting grizzly public demonstrations of animals being electrocuted with AC electricity. When New York State sought a faster, “more humane” alternative to hanging for executing condemned prisoners, Edison, though once a vocal opponent of capital punishment, recommended using AC-powered electrocution. In 1890, murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in a Westinghouse AC generator-powered electric chair that had been secretly designed by one of Edison’s salesmen.

Despite his best efforts, Edison failed to discredit alternating current. In 1892, Westinghouse and Edison’s new company General Electric, competed head-to-head for the contract to supply electricity to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. When Westinghouse ultimately won the contract, the fair served as a dazzling public display of Tesla’s AC system.

On the tails of their success at the World’s Fair, Tesla and Westinghouse won a historic contract to build the generators for a new hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. In 1896, the power plant began delivering AC electricity to Buffalo, New York, 26 miles away. In his speech at the opening ceremony of the power plant, Tesla said of the accomplishment, “It signifies the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man, the discontinuance of barbarous methods, the relieving of millions from want and suffering.”

The success of the Niagara Falls power plant firmly established Tesla’s AC as the standard for the electric power industry, effectively ending the War of the Currents.

Photo: Nikola Tesla’s alternating current electromagnetic induction motor was patented in 1888.

The Tesla Coil

In 1891, Tesla patented the Tesla coil, an electrical transformer circuit capable of producing high-voltage, low-current AC electricity. Though best-known today for its use in spectacular, lightening-spitting demonstrations of electricity, the Tesla coil was fundamental to the development of wireless communications. Still used in modern radio technology, the Tesla coil inductor was an essential part of many early radio transmission antennas.

Tesla would go on to use his Tesla coil in experiments with radio remote control, fluorescent lighting, x-rays, electromagnetism, and universal wireless power transmission. 

On July 30, 1891, the same year he patented his coil, the 35-year-old Tesla was sworn in as a naturalized United States citizen.

Photo: Nikola Tesla demonstrates his Tesla coil “Magnifying Transmitter”

Radio Remote Control

At the 1898 Electrical Exposition in Boston’s Madison Square Gardens, Tesla demonstrated an invention he called a “telautomaton,” a three-foot-long, radio-controlled boat propelled by a small battery-powered motor and rudder. Members of the amazed crowd accused Tesla of using telepathy, a trained monkey, or pure magic to steer the boat.

Finding little consumer interest in radio-controlled devices, Tesla tried unsuccessfully to sell his “Teleautomatics” idea to the US Navy as a type of radio-controlled torpedo. However, during and after World War I (1914-1918), the militaries of many countries, including the United States incorporated it.

Wireless Power Transmission

From 1901 through 1906, Tesla spent most of his time and savings working on arguably his most ambitious, if a far-fetched, project—an electrical transmission system he believed could provide free energy and communications throughout the world without the need for wires. 

In 1901, with the backing of investors headed by financial giant J. P. Morgan, Tesla began building a power plant and massive power transmission tower at his Wardenclyffe laboratory on Long Island, New York. Seizing on the then commonly-held belief that the Earth’s atmosphere conducted electricity, Tesla envisioned a globe-spanning network of power transmitting and receiving antennas suspended by balloons 30,000 feet (9,100 m) in the air. 

However, as Tesla’s project drug on, its sheer enormity caused his investors to doubt its plausibility and withdraw their support. With his rival, Guglielmo Marconi—enjoying the substantial financial support of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison—was making great advances in his own radio transmission developments, Tesla was forced to abandon his wireless power project in 1906

.Photo: Nikola Tesla’s Wardenclyffe wireless electricity transmitting tower

Later Life and Death

In 1922, Tesla, deeply in debt from his failed wireless power project, was forced to leave the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City where he had been living since 1900, and move into the more-affordable St. Regis Hotel. While living at the St. Regis, Tesla took to feeding pigeons on the windowsill of his room, often bringing weak or injured birds into his room to nurse them back to health.

Of his love for one particular injured pigeon, Tesla would write, “I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”

By late 1923, the St. Regis evicted Tesla because of unpaid bills and complaints about the smell from keeping pigeons in his room. For the next decade, he would live in a series of hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills at each. Finally, in 1934, his former employer, Westinghouse Electric Company, began paying Tesla $125 per month as a “consulting fee,” as well as paying his rent at the Hotel New Yorker.

In 1937, at age 81, Tesla was knocked to the ground by a taxicab while crossing a street a few blocks from the New Yorker. Though he suffered a severely wrenched back and broken ribs, Tesla characteristically refused extended medical attention. While he survived the incident, the full extent of his injuries, from which he never fully recovered, was never known.

On January 7, 1943, Tesla died alone in his room at the New Yorker Hotel at the age of 86. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as coronary thrombosis, a heart attack.

On January 10, 1943, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia delivered a eulogy to Tesla broadcast live over WNYC radio. On January 12, over 2,000 people attended Tesla’s funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Following the funeral, Tesla’s body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York.

With the United States then fully engaged in World War II., fears that the Austrian-born inventor might have been in possession of devices or designs helpful to Nazi Germany, drove the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seize Tesla’s possessions after his death. However, the FBI reported finding nothing of interest, concluding that since about 1928, Tesla’s work had been “primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”

In his 1944 book, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, journalist, and historian John Joseph O’Neill wrote that Tesla claimed to have never slept more than two hours per night, “dozing” during the day instead to “recharge his batteries.” He was reported to have once spent 84 straight hours without sleep working in his laboratory.

Legacy

It is believed that Tesla was granted around 300 patents worldwide for his inventions during his lifetime. While several of his patents remain unaccounted for or archived, he holds at least 278 known patents in 26 countries, mostly in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Tesla never attempted to patent many of his other inventions and ideas. Full list of his patents you can find it HERE

Today, Tesla’s legacy can be seen in multiple forms of popular culture, including movies, TV, video games and several genres of science fiction. For example, in the 2006 movie The Prestige, David Bowie portrays Tesla developing an amazing electro-replicating device for a magician. In Disney’s 2015 film Tomorrowland: A World Beyond, Tesla helps Thomas Edison, Gustave Eiffel, and Jules Verne discover a better future in an alternate dimension. And in the 2019 film The Current War, Tesla, played by Nicholas Hoult, squares off with Thomas Edison, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, in a history-based depiction of the war of the currents.

In 1917, Tesla was awarded the Edison Medal, the most coveted electrical prize in the United States, and in 1975, Tesla was inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame. In 1983, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Tesla.

The Mystery of Nikola Tesla’s Missing Files

The FBI declassified its files on Nikola Tesla on September 21st, 2016, but some uncertainties persist. Following Tesla’s death in a New York City hotel room in 1943, the U.S. government’s Office of Alien Property obtained many documents related to his work as an inventor. ALL FBI FILES ARE AVAILABLE HERE.

During the peak of World War II, Tesla claimed to have created a formidable particle-beam weapon referred to as the “Death Ray.” Fearing the technology could fall into the hands of America’s foes, the government swiftly took control of all of Tesla’s property and documents from his room at the New Yorker Hotel to prevent any risks.

The fate of Tesla’s files and their contents remain a mystery and a source of conspiracy theories. After facing questions about potential cover-ups, the FBI released 250 pages of Tesla-related documents through the Freedom of Information Act in 2016 and added two more releases in 2018, but many questions still remain unanswered, and some of Tesla’s files are yet to be found.

Three weeks after Tesla’s death, an electrical engineer from MIT, Dr. John G. Trump, was assigned to assess his papers to see if they held “any ideas of significant value.” According to the declassified files, Dr. Trump reported that his analysis found Tesla’s efforts to be “primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and promotional nature” and stated that the papers “did not contain new practical, feasible principles or methods for achieving results.”

The name John G. Trump is likely familiar as he was the uncle of the 45th U.S. President, Donald J. Trump. He was the younger brother of Fred, Donald’s father, and was involved in designing X-ray machines that greatly aided cancer patients and radar research for the Allies during World War II. During his presidential campaign, Donald often referenced his uncle’s credentials, stating in an interview, “My uncle used to tell me about nuclear before nuclear was nuclear.”

At the time, the FBI used Dr. Trump’s report to argue that Tesla’s claimed “Death Ray” particle beam weapon was nothing more than rumors and speculation. However, the U.S. government’s response was divided. According to Marc Seifer, author of the biography “Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla,” a group of military personnel at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, led by Brigadier General L.C. Craigee, had a contrasting view of Tesla’s technology.

“Craigee was the first person to ever fly a jet plane for the military, so he was like the John Glenn of the day,” Seifer says. “He said, ‘there’s something to this—the particle beam weapon is real.’ So you have two different groups, one group dismissing Tesla’s invention, and another group saying there’s really something to it.”

Additionally, the absence of some of Tesla’s files raises concerns. After his passing, Tesla’s belongings were supposed to be passed down to his nephew Sava Kosanovic, who was serving as the Yugoslav ambassador to the U.S. at the time. According to recently disclosed documents, some in the FBI were worried that Kosanovic might try to gain control of Tesla’s technology and provide it to the enemy, even going as far as to consider his arrest to prevent it.

In 1952, a U.S. court ruled that Tesla’s nephew Sava Kosanovic was the rightful heir to his uncle’s estate, and the inventor’s files and other belongings were sent to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. However, the FBI’s initial records show 80 trunks among Tesla’s possessions, but only 60 arrived in Belgrade. There is speculation that the 20 missing trunks could have been kept by the government.

For the HISTORY series “The Tesla Files,” Marc Seifer teamed up with Dr. Travis Taylor, an astrophysicist, and Jason Stapleton, an investigative reporter, to uncover the truth about the missing files and the government’s views on Tesla’s “Death Ray” particle-beam weapon and other inventions. Despite Dr. John G. Trump’s initial negation of Tesla’s ideas, the military attempted to develop particle-beam weapons in the years after World War II, says Seifer. The “Death Ray” concept even influenced Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” in the 1980s. If the government continues to utilize Tesla’s ideas in its technology, the classification of some of Tesla’s files may be the reason, suggests Seifer.

The 2016 release of FBI documents showed that Henry Wallace, Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt, talked about Tesla’s work, particularly on wireless energy transmission and the “Death Ray,” with his advisors. In The Tesla Files, Marc Seifer and his team investigated the involvement of Vannevar Bush, who was appointed head of the Manhattan Project by FDR, in evaluating Tesla’s papers. They also explored the possibility of FDR potentially seeking a meeting with Tesla before his death.

In the series “The Tesla Files,” Seifer, Taylor, and Stapleton explored key locations in Tesla’s life, including his laboratory in Colorado Springs, his last dwelling at the Hotel New Yorker, and the enigmatic wireless tower he constructed at Wardenclyffe, Long Island. They also journeyed to California, where some of Tesla’s innovative ideas, once deemed unrealistic or even fanciful, now drive some of the most thriving industries in Silicon Valley.

The impact of Tesla’s innovations is still felt today in the devices we use and the technologies that will shape our future. Tesla is credited with inventing wireless technology and the ability to create numerous wireless channels. As a result, radio guidance systems, encryption, and remote control robots all stem from Tesla’s technology, as noted by Seifer.

TESLA RADIO-CONTROLLED BOAT FIRST DEMONSTRATED IN 1898, MADISON SQUARE GARDENS

NIKOLA TESLA U.S. PATENT 613809

RADIO-CONTROLLED BOAT was unveiled by Tesla in 1898. The next year he demonstrated to the Chicago Commercial Club that he could run a boat (view from above) without touching it, making it turn, accelerate and flash its lights whenever he sent signals to it. Some experts regard the boat’s circuitry as a progenitor of the basic AND logic used in modern computers.

NIKOLA TESLA U.S. PATENT 613809

“NIKOLA TESLA U.S. PATENT 613,809 – METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING MECHANISM OF MOVING VEHICLE OR VEHICLES”

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

NIKOLA TESLA, OF NEW YORK, N. Y. 1898

METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING MECHANISM OF MOVING VESSELS OR VEHICLES.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 613,809, dated November 8, 1898.

Application filed July 1, 1898. Serial No. 684,934. (No model.)

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a citizen of the United States, residing at New York, in the county and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful improvements in methods of and apparatus for controlling from a distance the operation of the propelling-engines, the steering apparatus, and other mechanism carried by moving bodies or floating vessels, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the drawings accompanying and forming a part of the same.

The problem for which the invention forming the subject of my present application affords a complete and practicable solution is that of controlling from a given point the operation of the propelling-engines, the steering apparatus, and other mechanism carried by a moving object, such as a boat or any floating vessel, whereby the movements and course of such body or vessel may be directed and controlled from a distance and any device carried by the same brought into action at any desired time. So far as I am aware the only attempts to solve this problem which have heretofore met with any measure of success have been made in connection with a certain class of vessels the machinery of which was governed by electric currents conveyed to the controlling apparatus through a flexible conductor; but this system is subject to such obvious limitations as are imposed by the length, weight, and strength of the conductor which can be practically used, by the difficulty of maintaining with safety a high speed of the vessel or changing the direction of movement of the same with the desired rapidity, by the necessity for effecting the control from a point which is practically fixed, and by many well-understood drawbacks inseparably connected with such a system. The plan which I have perfected involves none of these objections, for I am enabled by the use of my invention to employ any means of propulsion, to impart to the moving body or vessel the highest possible speed, to control the operation of its machinery and to direct its movements from either a fixed point or from a body moving and changing its direction however rapidly, and to maintain this control over great distances without any artificial connections between the vessel and the apparatus governing its movements and without such restrictions as these must necessarily impose.

In a broad sense, then, my invention differs from all of those systems which provide for the control of the mechanism carried by a moving object and governing its motion in that I require no intermediate wires, cables, or other form of electrical or mechanical connection with the object save the natural media in space. I accomplish, nevertheless, similar results and in a much more practicable manner by producing waves, impulses, or radiations which are received through the earth, water, or atmosphere by suitable apparatus on the moving body and cause the desired actions so long as the body remains within the active region or effective range of such currents, waves, impulses, or radiations.

The many and difficult requirements of the object here contemplated, involving peculiar means for transmitting to a considerable distance an influence capable of causing in a positive and reliable manner these actions, necessitated the designing of devices and apparatus of a novel kind in order to utilize to the best advantage various facts or results, which, either through my own investigations or those of others, have been rendered practically available.

As to the part of my invention which involves the production of suitable waves or variations and the conveying of the same to a remote receiving apparatus capable of being operated or controlled by their influence, it may be carried out in various ways, which are at the present time more or less understood. For example, I may pass through a conducting-path, preferably enclosing a large area, a rapidly-varying current and by electromagnetic induction of the same affect a circuit carried by the moving body. In this case the action at a given distance will be the stronger the larger the area enclosed by the conductor and the greater the rate of change of the current. If the latter were generated in the ordinary ways, the rate of change, and consequently the distance at which the action would be practically available for the present purpose, would be very small; but by adopting such means as I have devised—that is, either by passing through the conducting-path currents of a specially-designed high-frequency alternator or, better still, those of a strongly-charged condenser—a very high rate of change may be obtained and the effective range of the influence thus extended over a vast area, and by carefully adjusting the circuit on the moving body so as to be in exact electromagnetic synchronism with the primary disturbances this influence may be utilized at great distances.

Another way to carry out my invention is to direct the currents or discharges of a high-frequency machine or condenser through a circuit one terminal of which is connected directly, or inductively with the ground and the other to a body, preferably of large surface and at an elevation. In this case if the circuit on the moving body be similarly arranged or connected differences of potential on the terminals of the circuit either by conduction or electrostatic induction are produced and the same object is attained. Again, to secure the best action the receiving-circuit should be adjusted so as to be in electromagnetic synchronism with the primary source, as before; but in this instance it will be understood by those skilled in the art that if the number of vibrations per unit of time be the same the circuit should now have a length of conductor only one-half of that used in the former case.

Still another way is to pass the currents simply through the ground by connecting both the terminals of the source of high-frequency currents to earth at different and remote points and to utilize the currents spreading through the ground for affecting a receiving-circuit properly placed and adjusted. Again, in this instance if only one of the terminals of the receiving-circuit be connected to the ground, the other terminal being insulated, the adjustment as to synchronism with the source will require that under otherwise equal conditions the length of wire be half of that which would be used if both the terminals be connected or, generally, if the circuit be in the form of a closed loop or coil. Obviously also in the latter case the relative position of the receiving and transmitting circuits is of importance, whereas if the circuit be of the former kind—that is, open—the relative position of the circuits is, as a rule, of little or no consequence.

Finally, I may avail myself, in carrying out my invention, of electrical oscillations which do not follow any particular conducting-path, but propagate in straight lines through space, of rays, waves, pulses, or disturbances of any kind capable of bringing the mechanism of the moving body into action from a distance and at the will of the operator by their effect upon suitable controlling devices.

In the following detailed description I shall confine myself to an explanation of that method and apparatus only which I have found to be most practical and effectual; but obviously my invention in its broad features is not limited to the special mode and appliances which I have devised and shall here describe.

In any event—that is to say, whichever of the above or similar plans I may adopt—and particularly when the influence exerted from a distance upon the receiving-circuit be too small to directly and reliably affect and actuate the controlling apparatus I employ auxiliary sensitive relays or, generally speaking, means capable of being brought into action by the feeblest influences in order to effect the control of the movements of the distant body with the least possible expenditure of energy and at the greatest practicable distance, thus extending the range and usefulness of my invention.

A great variety of electrical and other devices more or less suitable for the purpose of detecting and utilizing feeble actions are now well known to scientific men and artisans and need not be all enumerated here. Confining myself merely to the electrical as the most practicable of such means and referring only to those which, while not the most sensitive, are perhaps more readily available from the more general knowledge which exists regarding them, I may state that a contrivance may be used which has long been known and used as a lightning-arrester in connection with telephone-switch boards for operating annunciators and like devices, comprising a battery the poles of which are connected to two conducting-terminals separated by a minute thickness of dielectric.

The electromotive force of the battery should be such as to strain the thin dielectric layer very nearly to the point of breaking down in order to increase the sensitiveness. When an electrical disturbance reaches a circuit so arranged and adjusted, additional strain is put upon the insulating-film, which gives way and allows the passage of a current which can be utilized to operate any form of circuit-controlling apparatus.

Read the Full Patent Text HERE

Source: https://www.nikolateslalegend.com and https://www.thoughtco.com/nikola-tesla-1779840 and https://teslauniverse.com/

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