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- Ljiljana Trajković
- Communication Networks Laboratory
- http://www.ensc.sfu.ca/research/cnl
- School of Engineering Science
- Simon Fraser University
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- Tesla in 1890’s
- First wireless experiments
- Colorado Springs laboratory
- Wardenclyffe tower
- Worldwide radio and wireless transmissions
- End of a dream
- Legacy
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- Tesla left Edison in 1885.
- He formed his own laboratory “Tesla Electric Company” in 1887 on Grand
street in New York.
- He built single-phase and several poly-phase systems.
- On May 16 1888, at an AIEE meeting in New York, Tesla presented a
lecture entitled “A New System of
Alternate Current Motors and Transformers.”
- Shortly after, G. Westinghouse employed Tesla as a consultant.
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- Independently wealthy, in 1889 Tesla returned to his New York laboratory
to pursue his interest in high-frequency currents.
- At an AIEE meeting in May 1891, Tesla gave his first public lecture and
demonstrations of his high-frequency work.
- He created sheets of flame and caused sealed tubes of gas (Geissler
tubes) to glow without a direct electrical connection to them.
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- At the Spring meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St.
Louis, Tesla gave his first public demonstration of the wireless
transmission of electrical energy.
- Transmitter:
- tuned circuit with a bank of Leyden jar capacitors and a coil
- spark gap
- 5 kVA power-distribution transformer
- antenna extending from the coil to the ceiling.
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- Receiver:
- identical tuned circuits
- antenna extending to the ceiling
- gas-filled Geissler tube (in place of the spark gap used in the
transmitter).
- The Geissler tube glowed.
- During 1894-95 Tesla built a
transmitter together with a portable receiver and demonstrated wireless
transmission of electrical energy.
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- Tesla's wireless house lighting scheme:
- two high voltage AC plates fill the room with a fairly uniform electric
field.
- the bulbs are vertically oriented to align with the electric field.
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla
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- After the fire that destroyed his New York laboratory, Tesla resumed
wireless transmission tests.
- The receiver was operated on a boat traveling up the Hudson River.
- Two fundamental wireless patents were issued:
- In 1943, U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this work, together with works of
Oliver Lodge and John Stone, anticipated Marconi’s work.
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- Remotely Controlled Apparatus
- A boat could move and turn remotely without any wires. Inside the
vessel, there were Tesla transformers tuned to other transformers
controlled by Tesla on the shore.
- Patent No. 613,809.
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- Tesla received a request from the U.S. Government to develop a wireless
communications system.
- Tesla moved to high plateau near Colorado Springs.
- There, he constructed a large experimental radio station unlike anything
the world had ever seen before.
- His plan was to study the characteristics of high voltage, high
frequency alternating electrical currents.
- The goal was to test "the
laws of propagation of currents through the earth and the atmosphere."
- His first task was to develop an extremely powerful transmitter and
perfect a method to channel, “individualize,” the transmitted energy.
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- Tesla developed:
- a number of sophisticated receivers “for individualizing and isolating
the energy transmitted” that
would allow a transmitter's signals to be selectively tuned in.
- a series of experiments contributing to the understanding of radio propagation and
earth resonance, and culminating nearly a decade of work related to the
study of synchronized electrical
tuned circuits.
- Tesla's was convinced that wireless communication to any point
- on the globe was possible by the help of devices he had perfected.
- This set the stage for Tesla's next grand project:
- establishment of an international wireless broadcasting facility
- that was to become known as Wardenclyffe.
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- 200 feet tower
- 3 foot copper sphere
- giant high-frequency oscillator “magnifying transmitter”
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- Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs seating under his large
transformer.
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- Tesla transformer, also known as the Tesla coil, produces high voltage
at high frequency currents.
- It was used by Tesla in several sizes and variations for his
experiments.
- It is used today in various applications in radio and television.
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- Stanford White:
- an important American architect
- with lavish Italian Renaissance style (Shingle style)
- his firm (est. 1880) was one of the best-known of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries
- He designed a wide variety of public, institutional, and religious
buildings:
- Washington Square Arch (1889)
- The first Madison Square Garden (1890)
- New York Herald Building (1894)
- Vanderbilt family residence (1905)
- Now, only Washington Square Arch still stands.
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- White and Tesla meet at the Players Club in New York's Gramercy Park.
- White was thrilled to meet Tesla, whose plan for a world broadcasting
system had recently been extensively covered in Century magazine.
- White offered to create the design of the laboratory and tower for the
Wardenclyffe laboratory.
- Over the following months he finished the design, corresponding
regularly with Tesla on the specifications.
- In June, 1906, while attending the opening of Madison Square
- Garden's roof show in the building he had designed, White
- was shot and killed, leaving Wardenclyffe as his final creation.
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- 187 feet high
- 68 feet in diameter
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- Tesla's 1904 resume advertising his services and those of the
Wardenclyffe facility
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- The Wardenclyffe World Wireless Facility was envisioned to be quite
different from radio broadcasting stations as they presently exist.
- Conventional transmitters are designed to maximize the amount of power
radiated from the antenna structure.
- Such equipment must process tremendous amounts of power in order to
counteract the loss in field strength (P = 1/R2) encountered
as the signal radiates.
- The transmitter at Wardenclyffe was being configured to minimize the
radiated power.
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- The energy of Tesla's steam driven Westinghouse 200 kW alternator was to
be channeled into an extensive underground radial structure of iron pipe
installed 120 feet beneath the tower's base.
- This was to be accomplished by superposing a low frequency baseband
signal on the higher frequency signal coursing through the transmitter's
helical resonator.
- The low frequency current in the presence of an enveloping
corona-induced plasma of free charge carriers would have
"pumped" the earth's charge.
- It is believed the resulting ground current and its associated wave
complex would have allowed the propagation of wireless transmissions to
any distance on the earth's surface with as little as 5% loss due to
radiation.
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- The terrestrial transmission line modes so excited would have supported
a system with the following technical capabilities:
- establishment of a multi-channel global broadcasting system with
programming including news, music, …
- interconnection of the world's telephone and telegraph exchanges, and
stock tickers.
- transmission of written and printed matter, and data.
- world wide reproduction of photographic images.
- establishment of a universal marine navigation and location system,
including a means for the synchronization of precision timepieces.
- establishment of secure wireless communications services.
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- By the Summer of 1902 Tesla had shifted his laboratory operations from
the Houston street Laboratory to the rural Long Island setting and work
began on development of the station.
- Construction had been made possible largely through the backing of
financier J. P. Morgan who had offered Tesla $150,000 towards the end of
1900.
- By July 1904, however, this support had run out and Tesla was compelled
to pursue alternative methods of financing.
- In spite of valiant efforts to maintain the operation, income dwindled
and his employees were eventually dropped from the payroll.
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- A second mortgage in 1908 acquired again from the Waldorf-Astoria
proprietor G. C. Boldt allowed some additional bills to be paid, but
debt continued to mount.
- Between 1912 and 1915 Tesla's financial condition disintegrated.
- The property was foreclosed.
- The plant's abandonment sometime around 1911 followed by demolition and
salvaging of the tower in 1917.
- Tesla's April 20, 1922 loss on appeal of the judgment completely closed
the door to any further chance of his developing the site.
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- “Nikola Tesla is the true unsung prophet of the
- electrical age without whom our radio, auto ignition,
- telephone, alternating current power generation
- and transmission, radio and television would all have
- been impossible. Yet his life and times have vanished
- largely from public access.”
- Kolmogorov-Smirnov Publishing
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- "As soon as [the Wardenclyffe plant 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
&
- Telephony, 1908, pp. 67-71.
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- US 5,548,819
Method and apparatus for communication of information
- US 5,908,444
Complex frequency pulsed electromagnetic generator and method of
use
- US 6,104,107
Method and apparatus for single line electrical transmission
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- Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application
to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power, L. I.
Anderson, Editor, Sun Publishing, Denver 1992.
- Tesla Coil Builder's Guide to the Colorado Springs Notes of Nikola Tesla,
Second edition, R. Hull, 1994.
- The Problem of Increasing Human Energy. With Special References to the
Harnessing of the Sun’s Energy,
N. Tesla: http://www.tfcbooks.com/energy.htm
- My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla: http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/teslaautobio.html
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- Nikola Tesla: http://www.mercury.gr/tesla/introen.html
- Tesla's Teleautomation: http://www.mercury.gr/tesla/remoten.html
- Wardenclyffe Project: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jas4
- Tesla Page, Tesla Coils (Bill Beaty's Homepage): http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/tesla.html
- 21st Century Books: http://www.tfcbooks.com
- Tesla Biographies: http://www.tfcbooks.com/biograph.htm
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- L. D. Henderson, Duchamp in Context, Science and Technology in the Large
Glass and Related Works, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ,
1998.
- T. West, In the Minds Eye, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1997.
- D. G. Fraser, Tesla Electric, New Canadian Drama Series, Toronto, 1995.
- B. Degazio, 1958, “Nikola Tesla Overture,” Roads to Chaos, Soundprints
recording, 1996.
- “Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla,” The Edinburgh
Fringe Festival, July 30 - Aug 24, 2003:
http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/brilltour.htm
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- Pubic Broadcasting Service (PBS):
Life and Legacy Inside the Lab:
TESLA
Master of Lightning
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/
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Notes