In a pre-hearing interview with his legal counsel in 1916 to protect his radio patents from Guglielmo Marconi, Nikola Tesla explains the similarities and the differences between his wireless system and the systems of today.
Counsel: “Mr. Tesla, at that point, what did you mean by electro-magnetic momentum?”
Tesla: “I mean that you have to have in the circuit, inertia. You have to have a large self-inductance in order that you may accomplish two things: First, a comparatively low frequency, which will reduce the radiation of the electromagnetic waves to a comparatively small value, and second, a great resonant effect. That is not possible in an antenna, for instance, of large capacity and small self-inductance. A large capacity and small self-inductance is the poorest kind of circuit which can be constructed; it gives a very small resonant effect. That was the reason why in my experiments in Colorado, the energies were 1,000 times greater than in the present antennae.”
Counsel: “You say the energy was 1,000 times greater. Do you mean that the voltage was increased, or the current, or both?”
Tesla: “Yes [both]. To be more explicit, I take a very large self-inductance and a comparatively small capacity, which I have constructed in a certain way so that the electricity cannot leak out. I thus obtain a low frequency, but, as you know, the electromagnetic radiation is proportionate to the square root of the capacity divided by the self-induction. I do not permit the energy to go out; I accumulate in that circuit a tremendous energy. When the high potential is attained, if I want to give off electromagnetic waves, I do so, but I prefer to reduce those waves in quantity and pass a current into the earth, because electromagnetic wave energy is not recoverable while that [earth] current is entirely recoverable, being the energy stored in an elastic system.”
Counsel: “What elastic system do you refer to?”
Tesla: “I mean this: If you pass a current into a circuit with large self-induction, and no radiation takes place, and you have a low resistance, there is no possibility of this energy getting out into space; therefore, the impressed impulses accumulate.”
Counsel: “Let’s see if I understand this correctly. If you have radiation or electromagnetic waves going from your system, the energy is wasted?”
Tesla: “Absolutely wasted. From my circuit, you can get either electromagnetic waves, 90 percent of electromagnetic waves if you like, and 10 percent in the current energy that passes through the earth. Or, you can reverse the process and get 10 percent of the energy in electromagnetic waves and 90 percent in energy of the current that passes through the earth.”
“It is just like this: I have invented a knife. The knife can cut with the sharp edge. I tell the man who applies my invention; you must cut with the sharp edge. I know perfectly well you can cut butter with the blunt edge, but my knife is not intended for this. You must not make the antenna give off 90 percent in electromagnetic and 10 percent in current waves, because the electromagnetic waves are lost by the time you are a few arcs around the planet, while the current travels to the uttermost distance of the globe and can be recovered.
"This view, by the way, is now confirmed. Note, for instance, the mathematical treatise of Sommerfeld, who shows that my theory is correct, that I was right in my explanations of the phenomena, and that the profession was completely misled. This is the reason why these followers of mine in high-frequency currents have made a mistake. They wanted to make high-frequency alternators of 200,000 cycles with the idea that they would produce electromagnetic waves, 90 percent in electromagnetic waves, and the rest in current energy. I only used low alternations, and I produced 90 percent in current energy and only 10 percent in electromagnetic waves, which are wasted, and that is why I got my results. You see, the apparatus which I have devised was an apparatus enabling one to produce tremendous differences of potential and currents in an antenna circuit. These requirements must be fulfilled, whether you transmit by currents of conduction or whether you transmit by electromagnetic waves. You want high potential currents; you want a great amount of vibratory energy, but you can graduate this vibratory energy. By proper design and choice of wave lengths, you can arrange it so that you get, for instance, 5 percent in these electromagnetic waves and 95 percent in the current that goes through the earth. That is what I am doing. Or you can get, as these radio men, 95 percent in the energy of electromagnetic waves and only 5 percent in the energy of the current. The apparatus is suitable for one or the other method. I am not producing radiation with my system; I am suppressing electromagnetic waves. In my system, you should free yourself of the idea that there is radiation, that the energy is radiated. It is not radiated; it is conserved…”
(“Nikola Tesla On His Works With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, and Transmission of Power.” Twenty First Century Books, Breckenridge, Colorado, 2002.)
Nikola Tesla in a pre-hearing interview with his legal counsel in 1916 to protect his radio patents from Guglielmo Marconi
Tesla: “This is the transmitter which was already so far developed that I obtained discharges of 16 feet and a tension of 4 million volts. The secondary flat spiral usually connects to the antenna, and this coil on the vertical stand is another tuning coil to adjust the oscillations to a low frequency. Now, it is a mere matter of proportioning this circuit to the antenna in order to transmit, with the same apparatus I built in 1895, 1896, in 1897, messages across the Atlantic with the greatest facility. I will agree at any time to construct an apparatus exactly as I have described at that time and, without the slightest change, I will affect transmission across the Atlantic as easily as rolling off a log.”
Counsel: “Is that a spark apparatus?”
Tesla: “Yes, in this instance it was a spark apparatus; but I operated it also without a spark, with alternating current. I operated it with damped waves or with undamped waves. But remember that I had a system with small capacity, large self induction—no outflow of energy. Energy could not radiate; that is the reason why I got this tremendous pressure which you cannot get in an antenna which radiates too much energy in electromagnetic waves.”
Counsel: “ Mr. Tesla, speaking about that apparatus you said that the energy could not get out. How was the transmission then made, as for instance, across the Atlantic, or elsewhere? Is it through these earth currents that you spoke of?”
Tesla: Yes of course, through the earth currents. If I simply generated electromagnetic waves, I would be in the same box that Marconi is in, or anybody else; I would have to use an awful lot of power and I would not be able to get across. I would have to use a bigger apparatus. But, if I adapt this apparatus to the antenna in the way I want to adapt it, there is no difficult of transmitting across the Atlantic with this very same apparatus.“
Counsel: ” I do not yet get quite clear just what the effect is of keeping the energy from leaking out from the antenna.“
Tesla: "Well, sir, I have given you the simplest mathematical formula which, of course, experts are perfectly familiar with. You are not. Now, let me explain.
"If we put it in an equation, we will have on one side the decrement of the antenna, and on the other the resistance of the antenna multiplied by the square root of the capacity divided by the self-induction…”
(“Nikola Tesla On His Works With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, and Transmission of Power.” Twenty First Century Books, Breckenridge, Colorado, 2002.)
The ether is considered a universal medium consisting of a primary substance, attenuated beyond conception, which fills all space and connects all matter. This medium, or field of force, is responsible for action at a distance—a concept where an object can interact with other objects even though they are separated in space. This idea still baffles today’s physicists, but was understood by Nikola Tesla long before Albert Einstein coined his “spooky action at a distance”.
Before I get into Tesla’s explanation of the ether, I must first recall the famous 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment, because I know some readers will immediately bring it up. The experiment was intended to detect the ether using light beams and mirrors to record the speed of light through the ether relative to the Earth’s movement around the Sun; however, the two scientists failed to detect the ether and it became one of the most famous failed experiments in history. Surprisingly though, the experimenters did not account for the fact that the speed of light was relative to the observer moving with the apparatus, which led to the null effect. What it did, rather, was prove that the average velocity of light for a round trip between a beam splitter and a mirror was independent of motion through space. Either way, physicists agreed that by its nature, the ether cannot be detected and it is unnecessary for explaining how light travels through space.
It was Heinrich Hertz, who during the same time as the Michelson-Morley experiment, demonstrated the notion of action at a distance proving the existence of electromagnetic waves first predicted by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. Since these waves travel across space, there must be a medium carrying the waves. Like Maxwell, Hertz postulated that ether was structureless beyond conception, and yet solid and possessed a rigidity incomparably greater than the hardest steel. Electromagnetic waves were then believed to be transverse waves (waves that vibrate at ninety degrees angles).
In the early 1890s, Nikola Tesla repeated Hertz’s experiments with a much improved and a far more powerful apparatus, coming to the conclusion that what Hertz observed were longitudinal waves in a gaseous medium propagated by alternate compression and expansion. After discovering these results, Tesla declared that light, and other electromagnetic waves, are not transverse waves (a theory still believed today in conventional physics), but instead are a longitudinal disturbance in the ether involving alternate compressions and rarefactions. In his own words, “light can be nothing else than a sound wave in the ether. Since light has such a constancy of velocity, light can only be explained by assuming that it is dependent solely on the physical properties of the medium, especially density and elastic force.” It wasn’t until after Nikola Tesla met with Hertz and explained his results that Hertz then changed his views on the ether and accepted that it was a gaseous medium rather than a stationary one.
Believing that the ether was one of the most important results of modern scientific research, Tesla refused to abandon it because in his mind the ether was an important key to understanding how electrical energy could travel through space without wires. He displayed this phenomenon in numerous experiments and lectures throughout the 1890s.
It wasn’t until 1896 when Tesla finally obtained experimental proof of the ether. He invented a new form of vacuum tube which could be charged to any high potential and operated with pressures up to 4,000,000 volts. In 1929, Tesla spoke of these vacuum tubes saying, “One of the first striking observations made with my tubes was that a purplish glow for several feet around the end of the tube was formed, and I readily ascertained that it was due to the escape of the charges of the particles as soon as they passed out into the air; for it was only in a nearly perfect vacuum that these charges could be confined to them. The coronal discharge proved that there must be a medium besides air in the space, composed of particles immeasurably smaller than those of air, as otherwise such a discharge would not be possible. On further investigation I found that this gas was so light that a volume equal to that of the earth would weigh only about one-twentieth of a pound.”
To explain the density of the ether, Tesla referred to William Thomson’s equations. In 1932, Tesla said, “Its density has been first estimated by Lord Kelvin and conformably to his finding a column of one square centimeter cross section and of a length such that light, traveling at a rate of three hundred thousand kilometers per second, would require one year to transverse it, should weigh 4.8 grams. This is just about the weight of a prism of ordinary glass of the same cross section and two centimeters length which, therefore, may be assumed as the equivalent of the ether column in absorption. A column of the ether one thousand times longer would thus absorb as much light as twenty meters of glass. However, there are suns at distances of many thousands of light years and it is evident that virtually no light from them can reach the earth. But if these suns emit rays immensely more penetrative than those of light they will be slightly dimmed and so the aggregate amount of radiations pouring upon the earth from all sides will be overwhelmingly greater than that supplied to it by our luminary. If light and heat rays would be as penetrative as the cosmic, so fierce would be the perpetual glare and so scorching the heat that life on this and other planets could not exist.”
According to Nikola Tesla’s ether theory, all matter in the universe is metamorphous from the ether. When the ether is set in motion, it becomes gross matter. All matter, then, is merely ether in motion. In 1900, Tesla said, “By being set in movement, ether becomes matter perceptible to our senses; the movement arrested, the primary substance reverts to its normal state and becomes imperceptible. If this theory of the constitution of matter is not merely a beautiful conception, which in its essence is contained in the old philosophy of the Vedas, but a physical truth, then if the ether whirl or atom be shattered by impact or slowed down and arrested by cold, any material, whatever it be, would vanish into seeming nothingness, and, conversely, if the ether be set in movement by some force, matter would again form. Thus, by the help of a refrigerating machine or other means for arresting ether movement and an electrical or other force of great intensity for forming ether whirls, it appears possible for man to annihilate or to create at his will all we are able to perceive by our tactile sense.”
In summary, Tesla experimented, and proved his theories using the scientific method. His methods were far more superior to other physicists of his time, because he had the motors and transformers invented by himself to help with his experiments. These include the induction motor, his Telsa coil, and many more apparatuses. In the future the ether may be referred to as dark matter, the force etc., but Nikola Tesla’s ether theory will surely be proven true in years to come.
