Tesla's New York Laboratory Up For Sale 183
Ziest points us to NY Times piece on the battle over the site of Nicola Tesla's last failed experiment. Tesla's laboratory, called Wardenclyffe, located on Long Island, has been put up for sale by its current owner, Agfa Corp. Local residents and Tesla followers were alarmed by a real estate agent's promise that the land, listed at $1.6 million, could "be delivered fully cleared and level." Preservationists want to create a Tesla museum and education center at Wardenclyffe, anchored by the laboratory designed by Tesla's friend, Stanford White, a celebrated architect. "In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious. The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. ... But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory."
If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, a loon.
Nothing there anymore except the poisoned ground.
There really isn't anything to learn there anymore.
It's not like there going to level the building and store rooms full of stuff.
OTOH, a pool of people that wanted to turn it into a museum could probably be brought together for some fund Raisers.
Hell, you do it. Contact the real estate agent and find out what kind of time you have. Get some on line organization going and hit all the Tesla Forums.
You would be the first person to do this type of thing successfully. If you really want to save it, there is no reason you can't give it a good effort. None.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if the damage hasn't already been done, there's a price tag on preservation: $1.6 million. Not much more than an equivalently sized residential property in the area.
What's the issue again?
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Recurring fees (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, $1.6m to buy the land.
Then what is your plan to pay property taxes, or upkeep to meet building codes?
You're talking a lot more than $1.6M even just to keep it as is, never mind building a museum...
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Informative)
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Link: Right off Tesla St. [google.com], in fact.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, I love the smell of hipster nihilism in the morning. It smells like... defeat!
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Informative)
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Uhuh. I see this kind of claim all the time from creators of perpetual motion machines:
"Well, of course those 'scientists' can't replicate my results! It's because they don't understand my genius!"
Uhh ... no. If we're unable to get it to work, chances are it never worked in the first place.
Yeah, seized by the Stonemasons! Just ask Homer ...
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
you do realize that many of the technologies mentioned in the article do exist today (like wireless video transmission, stock quotes etc.) but in 1903 few people if any could explain how to make that work. and the other ideas, about providing wireless electricity? those arent so far fetched either
2008: Intel reproduces Nikola Tesla's 1894 implementation and Prof. John Boys group's 1988's experiments by wirelessly powering a light bulb with 75% efficiency. wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transmission)
just because you and 99% of people dont understand something dosent make it a hoax. i mean hell look at how many people dont realise the internet isint some kind of truck.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is 75% of which power?
Unfortunately, it was 75% of received power, not transmitted power.
About 99.99% of the transmitted power went to other directions, it heated neighboring rocks and nothing else.
Unless you have a directional antenna, any sort of wireless power transmission will waste a lot of power. And, to have a directional antenna, you need to know in which direction your receiver will be. Then it starts to look pretty much like a wired power transmission setup...
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck is your point?
The guy came up with the idea way back in 1894 so who really cares about its efficacy..
Everything we plug in today has Nikola Tesla's I.P. in it. AC transmission won the current war over the DC method.
Anyone who try's to belittle Tesla's work really has no idea what they are talking about. But yeah he had lots of crazy ideas but it was 1894 for god sake! Everyone who has ever invented something useful also probably had at least 100 bad ideas as well..
ae
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck is YOUR point? It wouldn't matter if he came up with it in 1498 - a crappy idea is a crappy idea, regardless of when it's thought up. If your "invention" requires 50,000 killowatts to power a friggin lightbulb, there's a bit of a problem there, especially when you're making use of a well known effect rather that inventing something new. Induction was discovered in 1831, so it's not like Tesla was discovering a new aspect of the physical world - he simply made use (in an extremely inefficient way) of a principle discovered by Faraday.
Which is not necessarily a good thing. The only advantage of AC current is that it can be easily modified by transformers. Long-distance power transmission (between grids) is DC because it doesn't require phase synchronization and it's less wasteful, and the difference adds up nicely over longer distances. AC didn't replace DC - the two systems are complimentary.
Also, while Tesla did invent a three phase AC generator, he didn't exactly come up with the idea of AC current, nor was he the only one working on it.
Anyone who tries to deify a mad scientist isn't firing on all cylinders.
Exactly - the problem here is that the Tesla Cult like to pretend that his 100 bad ideas were actually 100 GREAT ideas which we "can't understand yet". Which is, to be blunt, bullshit. You can idolize the man for the great things he did, if you want, as long as you're not trying to prop up his shitty ideas at the same time.
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Unless you have a directional antenna, any sort of wireless power transmission will waste a lot of power.
I see you subscribe to the particle model of electromagnetic radiation.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transmission#Resonant_induction [wikipedia.org]
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Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Funny)
It's like microwaving everyone in NY just so you can send a decent power output to Texas from Long Island?
You say that like it's a bad thing.
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I think you just have to have the frequency right at about 420khz or mhz or something like that.
He was talking about long range transmission by bouncing it off the ionosphere. That might create some ozone or destroy. Who knows. You wont know until you build it full size and test it.
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Tesla must have been on some shit. Like mushrooms or some other psychotic food additives
Indeed he was. You've heard of "ecstasy"? Well, Tesla was on "imagination".
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Informative)
If you had ever read anything about what he was trying to do, you'd realize that he was trying to create electromagnetic waves that would travel across the entire globe, and feed the amplitude of that wave by precise timing of the bursts. The technology he was experimenting with was seized by the US government, and is currently being explored in the HAARP project.
The wealth of most of the northeastern United States can be traced to the Niagara Falls dam, and the vast amounts of energy it provides without the need for human effort. Which means it can be traced directly to Tesla. He's one of the greatest benefactors of the human race in recorded history. You might want to remember that when you're pissing on his name, and maybe question the way you calculate the measure of a man.
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you do realize that many of the technologies mentioned in the article do exist today (like wireless video transmission, stock quotes etc.) but in 1903 few people if any could explain how to make that work. and the other ideas, about providing wireless electricity? those arent so far fetched either
Jules Verne also published a lot of technology ideas with no practical details on how to make them a reality. Back then these ideas were considered fantastical fictional works. Today they're considered the basis of science fiction. We also have working examples of many of these ideas. But it doesn't mean at any point real science was involved.
That doesn't mean Nikola Tesla was not a scientist. But it does point out that making predictions that one can later find functional examples of holds little weig
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Replace "few people" with "no people, including Tesla", and we'll agree 100%.
What's your point?
That such a fact-free comment was modded +5 insightful says horrible things about the credulity of the average slashdotter.
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Umm. He was a loon and we do know how his projects worked and didn't.
They where all interesting but as with many brilliant but crazy people most where not practical and none of them are past our understanding today.
His lab is still there as are the foundations of the tower. Simple answer declare it a historical site and it becomes just about impossible to destroy no matter who owns it.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike some other loon inventors back then.
Lookin' at you, Thomas Alva.
(Topsy the Elephant, RIP) [youtube.com]
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If I'd heard this before, I'd forgotten it, but in Telsa's Wikipedia article it says, "Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest mistake had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp."
I wonder if Edison honestly believed it was superior, or if he was just sad that he missed out on his share of the metric shit-ton of money that other people made with Tesla's AC ideas.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Informative)
I suggest you read more about his latter life. He was a loon. Actually I know a lot about his projects. My favorite is the Telsla turbine. It is a terrible turbine for air. It makes a great pump for solid-fluid mixtures but as a turbine it is no where near what more traditional turbines can do.
His power transmission also just doesn't work. His work on AC power transmission and his AC electric motor. Brilliant.
Time travel, death beams, free power... Loonie.
It is a shame that so many of his fans do him a disservice by pushing his fantasy achievements.
They are as loonie as was in his later life. His decline into mental illness should be forgotten and his real achivments should be remembered.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both should be remembered. It's important to remember that no matter how brilliant some humans are, they're still human. Genius in a specific pursuit does not imply genius in all pursuits.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like many innovators. Clinically speaking, he was obsessive-compulsive, and this had some very specific effects on his activities but did not prevent him from inventing a dozen things in the room I'm in right now (including radio and flourescent lighting, of course). Edison, by contrast, was a mild meglomaniac and paranoid.
Well, let's see about that....
The one I built works rather well as a air-powered motor. Oddly enough, it works like Tesla said it does (not like the modern Tesla worshippers claim, though - it won't power a spaceship to mars).
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. You can pump mud with a "Tesla turbine" type pump, but Tesla had some other pump designs that worked better. Also, what do you consider a "traditional turbine"? There is no single accepted turbine design, nor was there in Tesla's time. (I'm partial to the Loeffel Francis myself, but it's not all that popular outside the hydropower field.)
"Just doesn't work?" Since he was not able to complete his work, yet was able to light up lamps from a quarter mile away and throw mile-long lightning bolts, I think "just doesn't work" is a bit of a facile dismissal from an Internet naysayer.
AC power is a doddle, but yes, the universal brushless motor is indeed brilliant.
Time travel? Never heard that one. And of course, being killed by a beam of coherent energy will never happen (oh, wait, it did? Never mind).
Here's all you need to know about Tesla's insight: In 1915 he tried to convince everyone that burning petroleum was wasteful and foolish, and that we should develop sources of energy that relied on the great movements of the cosmos - spinning planets, cycling winds, geothermal, solar radiation, etc... and people said "what a loonie!"
We got no disagreements there, bud. But he was never any more subject to mental illness than the inventor of Bittorrent - his madness did not significantly affect his work, and may have helped him to focus on the insights that others blithely dismiss as insanity.
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"Just doesn't work?" Since he was not able to complete his work, yet was able to light up lamps from a quarter mile away and throw mile-long lightning bolts, I think "just doesn't work" is a bit of a facile dismissal from an Internet naysayer.
I have (and have read) a bound copy of his Colorado Springs notes and books of his patents. It's been a long time since I read them, but I never recall seeing any such claims. He did report that he could light up bulbs set some unspecified distance from his lab in Colorado Springs, but the pictures look like they're just out back of the lab, not a quarter mile away. There's also some discussion in the notes that it was tough to take the pictures in enough light to see the coil, background and light at th
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You are correct about the time travel. That does come from the Tesla kook sources and not the him. And using the term loon is a bit unkind. Mentally ill is the correct term. I still feel that it is a real shame that so much of his brilliant work has has been over shadowed by the fantasy of his fans. His work on the AC power system should be enough to make him the equal of Bell and Edison but the fantasy of his fans and his own mental illness really have made it too easy to marginalize his memory.
Maybe he
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--I suggest you read more about his latter life. He was a loon. Actually I know a lot about his projects. My favorite is the Telsla turbine. It is a terrible turbine for air. It makes a great pump for solid-fluid mixtures but as a turbine it is no where near what more traditional turbines can do.--
True but that turbine does indeed have some special uses and is being made better now that we have better process to make it.
--His power transmission also just doesn't work. His work on AC power transmission and h
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My favorite is the Telsla turbine. It is a terrible turbine for air. It makes a great pump for solid-fluid mixtures but as a turbine it is no where near what more traditional turbines can do.
How terrible to have a turbine which is only a fantastic pump for solid-fluid mixtures. Imagine the agony.
The big problem with the Tesla turbine is that you basically need variable disc spacing in order to achieve useful efficiency across a broad range of inputs. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever worked out a way to do this gracefully. If someone does, I suspect the thing will be rather more useful.
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it surprises me that people cant envision wireless power transfer, and free at that.
I can certainly envision it -- but I can't see how it would be free. After all, that power has to be generated somehow before it can be transferred, and generating power costs money.
It's also not clear how to broadcast power efficiently over long distances. (I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I don't know how you would do it. Narrowcasting power might be done efficiently with a laser, but broadcasting it to everyon
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You see to make it possible you must build the transmitter out of Unicorn poop and Fairy farts.
No really it is impossible to do long distance none direction broadcasting of power with any efficiency. Maxwell's equations pretty much prove that. Even using a laser you conversion steps that drop the efficiency. BTW microwaves are much better but you don't want to be in the beam.
Imagine it sure. Build it? Nope and Telsla couldn't make work because it couldn't work they way he though it could.
Now over short dist
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just because you or i dont have the vision or ability to make it work dosent mean it cant be done!
That's not the reason it can't be done.
The reason it can't be done is found in Maxwell's equations.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Funny)
The reason it can't be done is found in Maxwell's equations.
That's not the reason it can't be done.
The reason it can't be done is because even if it were possible, it would be impossible to meter.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
My take on it was:
REALTOR: We'll sell this historic land for $1.6 million dollars
CONDO BUILDER: I'll buy that
REALTOR: Do you want us to demolish this historic site also?
MUSEUM BUILDER: Oh hell no! $2 million!
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, shit! Dr. Evil doesn't even get a say in this kind of real estate market!
Whats with the nihilism? (Score:2)
RIP Nicola Tesla. Towards the end of his life, he seems to have descended into mental illness . Now our portrayals of him are doing the same - for example, the TV series 'Sanctuary' apparently shows him as a vampire.
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We already stole everything we could comprehend, and probably many things we couldn't. Since then we've only been doing bad tesla imitations. HAARP is one such... Read the patent, or for that matter watch the "documentary" HAARP: Holes in Heaven which has an interview with its author. (The film is pretty shlocky but it has some cool interviews.)
Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine the upper layer of the atmosphere as a copper shell. Any high voltage alternated current deposited there could be harnessed by a sufficiently high tower that could "touch" the copper shell.
Square law doesn't apply because its a conductor that captures the wave and prevents it from spreading in 3 dimensions just like it doesn't apply in wires.
All the viability is in how closely ionized upper atmosphere resembles a copper shell and also in how hard it is to effectively "touch" this layer with lots of air in between you and it.
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Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Informative)
I think the better example is how ham radio, or UHF stations can bounce in the atmosphere to reach long distances.
For example when I was a kid in West central Florida, if the weather was right, we could watch TV from Texas with a regular mast mounted antenna (50' tall). We required the same antenna to pick up UHF and VHF stations in the next major city, approximately 100 miles away.
I'm familiar with Tesla's work. It's all really interesting stuff.
There really isn't anything left at the site, which is a terrible shame. It could be recreated, but would cost a fortune, and without Tesla there to make it work (or work out the bugs), it's seriously doubtful the casual hobbyist could make a working replica.
His wireless power on a global scale idea would require much more than just the Wardenclyffe site. The plans indicated many transmitters globally. This would never happen, as it takes the control away from too many huge money making industries. No government would allow it either. During a military operation, one of the first strategic moves is to disable the infrastructure (power, communications, water, and transportation). Once an enemy is blinded, the aggressive forces have a significant advantage.
I was always curious about long term effects. Non-ionizing radiation is proven to cause various illnesses. For example, some schools were built on cheap property in close proximity to large power transmission lines. That caused an unusually high rate of leukemia in the students. Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. Obviously, no research was done with Tesla's unfinished work. And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .
Some of Tesla's earlier work in Colorado Springs caused sparks to jump out of water faucets and from peoples feet as they were walking. It would have been interesting to see, but I'm sure quite unnerving after a while. I don't know the Wardenclyffe facility would have caused the same effect, or if he corrected it by possibly changing the frequency that he worked at.
The only people with enough documentation to know are the US Government, who seized all of his work materials when he died.
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between searching google [google.com]
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Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Funny)
The plans indicated many transmitters globally. This would never happen, as it takes the control away from too many huge money making industries. No government would allow it either.
He tried to get it funded by JP Morgan. One day, he got a telegraph:
"No interest in wireless power. Nowhere to put the meter."
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"No wireless power. No space for meter. Lame"
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Informative)
Prolonged exposure (living or going to school) at 200 meters raised the chance of getting leukemia by 70%. 200 meters to 500 meters raised it by 20%. [...] And for those asking for citations, search Google for "power lines leukemia" .
I did. Half of the results I got were of the "study finds no link between power lines, leukemia [msn.com]" type. The rest seemed to be written by internet nuts with no clue what they were talking about. Assuming then you meant to search without the quotes, I repeated the search. This time I found more that substantiate what you said, but realising that half of them didn't know what they were talking about I repeated it on google scholar (as should anyone interested in what actual scientific research on a subject says).
Results: "no relationship was found between leukemia and electric power line configurations" [oxfordjournals.org], "Residence near high-voltage lines did not increase risk" [oxfordjournals.org], [test subjects who lived] within 300 metres [of a power line showed a] relative risk [with] 95% confidence interval [of one kind of leukemia of] 0.8-3.5 [, or for another] 0.7-3.8 [, or if exposure was prolonged] 1.0-4.6 [or] 0.9-4.7" [jstor.org] (i.e., for those who don't understand how to interpret that last one, no statistically significant effects -- note that this is the study that's usually cited _in favour_ of arguments about power lines causing leukemia). "the risk was not significantly associated with either residential magnetic-field levels " [nejm.org], "The study provides [...] no support for an association between leukemia and [magnetic field exposure]" [oxfordjournals.org], "the results suggest that typical magnetic fields of high-voltage power lines are not an important cause of leukemia in adults" [nih.gov], "These results provide little support for a relation between power-frequency EMF exposure and risk of childhood leukemia" [oxfordjournals.org], "For residential exposure >= 0.2 uT, the relative risk for leukemia was estimated at .. 95% confidence interval 0.8-2.2" [jstor.org] (i.e. not statistically significant). That's the first page of results finished with; I don't see any evidence fdor your assertion of a 70% increase in risk, and I would be cautious at claiming even that there's a link. Google scholar selects widely cited papers first, and papers with the most provocative results are likely to be the most widely cited. Given the number of studies that have been conducted on this subject, we'd expect at least some to come up with postive results based on random variation. That none of the ones I've looked at have even had statistically significant results suggests there's nothing to this, and it really is just random variation we're seeing.
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And interestingly enough, all those studies were funded by companies in the power/radio/telecom/mobile industries
Citation please. The only one I see any overt link to such a company is actually the one most favourable to the OP's position. I'll happily ignore this paper; the rest of my point still stands.
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I became interested in a similar fashion. It was before I knew Tesla had even existed (I was young, and he wasn't well taught). We drove out onto power company owned property under large transmission lines. If I stood in the back of our truck, and held the light up at arms length, it would light. I wanted to find out more, and did.
And for those who replied saying there is no association between EMF and leukemia, the most notable case that I remember from when I researched thi
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Informative)
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This is why we have a cellphone on every hip and wifi in random $100 consumer electronics, while point-to-point transmissions of a couple hundred watts, with lousy efficiency, tuned directional antennas, and an EE to man the thing, are still in the realm of laboratory/trade show curiosity.
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Interesting)
while point-to-point transmissions of a couple hundred watts, with lousy efficiency, tuned directional antennas, and an EE to man the thing, are still in the realm of laboratory/trade show curiosity.
Did and done back in 1975. [youtube.com]
34 kilowatts, 1.5 kilometers with an efficency of over 82%. That's hardy "a couple hundred watts, with lousy efficiency".
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Insightful)
Magic.
He did a lot of incredibly smart things, but some of his stuff was just loony.
That might not be fair, perhaps experimentally ignorant. But with that time period and electricity, everyone was.
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Well I do believe he was toying with using Earth's resonant frequency to essentially generate electricity using the atmosphere (by putting in a small amount he could receive a lot back and I think there was a story about him blowing up some power plant's generators doing this). Just some of the crazy things he did...
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Well I do believe he was toying with using Earth's resonant frequency to essentially generate electricity using the atmosphere (by putting in a small amount he could receive a lot back and I think there was a story about him blowing up some power plant's generators doing this). Just some of the crazy things he did...
+4 informative? Let me try... I heard he was tapping into the sub-ether (which normally cancels out the regular ether, see Michelson-Morley experiment) which can start a cascade reaction to generate electricity. I think there was a story about him blowing up some power station's transformers doing this. Just some of the crazy things he did...
Radio principle (Score:2)
He was basing this experiment on how radio works. Does the radio station see any difference in power if 10 people listen? How about 100,000 people? The station outputs the same power no matter who is receiving.
Re:Radio principle (Score:5, Informative)
What? yes, every person that listens takes power. It's a minute amount of power but it does. In this case it weakens the range of the broadcast.
Do you even think about what you are saying? If that where true we would all be powering our devices from radio signal. You are saying 50K watts of power can power infinite devices, ir be broad cast to an infinite amount of radios with degrading the signal.
THINK!
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Do you even think about what you are saying? If that where true we would all be powering our devices from radio signal. You are saying 50K watts of power can power infinite devices, ir be broad cast to an infinite amount of radios with degrading the signal.
Inverse square law prevents that without having to speculate that receivers diminish the signal. The energy density over any area is never greater than the power put into the transmitter multiplied by the length of time over which its transmissions can b
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Back when I was a patent examiner I had an idea about harvesting power from radio waves, we're submerged in a sea of radio broadcasts. Capturing some of this seemed like free power.
Then I thought, would this work on a large scale - it seems like free energy - but the issue you (geekoid) mentioned popped to mind and I discounted it as a "maybe someday I'll mess with that" idea.
Then last week on the Gadget show I see wireless power transmission for gadgets ... but also mention of harvesting power from radio w
I think the idea was to couple to the ionosphere.. (Score:5, Interesting)
How would these towers effectively transmit electricity? I'm having trouble seeing how this would work effectively given the inverse square law.
I'm not Tesla but I can take a guess.
I think the idea was to couple to the ionosphere - treating the conductive ground and one of the layers of the conductive ionosphere as the two walls of a resonant cavity and pumping one of its resonances. The energy would not propagate away into space but would stay in the cavity until removed by a load or resistive losses due to the imperfect conduction of the cavity walls and its contents (dirt, buildings, birds, people, ...). It would be an extremely high impedance - enormous voltage (because of a nontrivial voltage gradient - in the ballpark of the atmospheric DC bias - multiplied by an enormous height) combined with minuscule currents through the tiny (though physically large) apacitances.
At the relatively low (compared to radio) frequencies involved you wouldn't have appreciable currents in anything that wasn't also a resonator and strongly coupled to the cavity (by being tall and broad at the top), i.e. a "raised capacitance" (Tesla's term for that big sphere-ish conductive shape on the top of the structure) and a big coil between it and ground, forming a tank circuit tuned to the carrier frequency and cavity resonance.
Buildings and metal towers might have nontrivial unintentional currents. But they'd be reactive currents because of the low resistance of the buildings' structural members. So they wouldn't suck out much power - just shift the phase of the power carrier signal in the area near them.
But a resonant circuit between a big raised conductor and ground would be able to efficiently power out of the cavity and couple it to a secondary coil around the main coil - shifting the voltage/current ratio from the extraordinarily high impedance of the transmission system to a lower impedance more convenient for use (though still at the carrier frequency so probably in need of rectification or other frequency conversion).
At least I think that may be what he intended. Whether it would work or not is still "up in the air", pun intended.
One nice thing: At the frequency involved you shouldn't be interfering with any existing information services. If the losses are low enough for it to be practical for power transmission it would be constantly "ringing" from lighting excitation. (Or maybe that's the ELF band where the US is talking to submerged submarines...)
(Heh. Thinking about this I just recognized the details of the broadcast power that was a throwaway background item in Eric Frank Russel's novel _Wasp_. Cars were "dinos" with the car body for "raised capacitance" and a dynamotor for frequency conversion. Disconnecting the "intake lead" and striking it against an "earth terminal" would produce a thin thread of arc if the distant power transmitter was on. And the energy density necessary to operate an automobile on this was completely ignored, of course. B-) )
Re:I think the idea was to couple to the ionospher (Score:2)
A thing to remember is that Tesla was working when the concept of an electromagnetic wave was just being developed. He did a lot of stuff with resonance phenomenon, transformers, and low-pressure gas plasmas and so was probably thinking in terms of circuit components even when he invented radio - ahead of Helmholtz/Hertz/Maxwell/etc. who had the theory of transverse electromagnetic waves in free space.
Then again he was a math whiz and he might have been quite aware of this work and trying to use longitudin
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My question is, doesn't the charge that defines the ionosphere help protect us from solar radiation and who-knows-what-else?
I don't think so. It's more a byproduct of the processes that DO protect us (mainly the magnetic field deflecting and/or trapping the charged particles of the solar wind.)
Even if this did work, I shudder to think what would happen if we started removing gigawatts from the ionosphere to power our doo-dads.
Why not if we put the gigawatts up there first?
We're not talking about removing a
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It couldn't and your not missing a thing.
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have to get the books out, but I seem to recall that Wardenclyffe was partly a proof-of-concept demonstration based upon his Colorado Springs, CO experiments so I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't work like he intended. Also, one of his papers on the wireless transmission of electricity explained that a series of towers similar to Wardenclyffe would be needed throughout the world in order to achieve his goals.
However, I am willing to concede that the plans might not have worked out as Tesla had hoped for even if he did not encounter the financial issues due to a lack of full understanding of electrical theory. All told though, it would be a shame to have museums dedicated to Edison here in the US, but you have to the Tesla Museum [tesla-museum.org] in Serbia if you want to learn about him outside of books.
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Interesting)
even if he did not encounter the financial issues due to a lack of full understanding of electrical theory
His financial troubles were caused by a much more wealthy and sinister Edison whose inferior design did not match up to Tesla's. Edison constantly and consistently tried to undermine Tesla evidenced with the famous plug-a-cat-into-ac-adapter demonstration. There is also speculation that Edison has something to do with Tesla's lab mysteriously bursting into flames.
In the early days when Tesla first moved to the US, He partnered with Edison only to have his plans stolen and the promised research money never delivered.
Where Tesla was an inventor, Edison was a businessman. To me, Edison having a museum is like Warren Buffet or Donald Trump having one, a waste of good museum real estate.
Article text (Score:5, Informative)
Subscription-free, minus the pictures and maps.
A Battle to Preserve a Visionary's Bold Failure
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: May 4, 2009
In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all.
It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious.
The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. One midsummer night, it emitted a dull rumble and proceeded to hurl bolts of electricity into the sky. The blinding flashes, The New York Sun reported, "seemed to shoot off into the darkness on some mysterious errand."
But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory.
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.
A science group on Long Island wants to turn the 16-acre site into a Tesla museum and education center, and hopes to get the land donated to that end. But the owner, the Agfa Corporation, says it must sell the property to raise money in hard economic times. The company's real estate broker says the land, listed at $1.6 million, can "be delivered fully cleared and level," a statement that has thrown the preservationists into action.
The ruins of Wardenclyffe include the tower's foundation and the large brick laboratory, designed by Tesla's friend Stanford White, the celebrated architect.
"It's hugely important to protect this site," said Marc J. Seifer, author of "Wizard," a Tesla biography. "He's an icon. He stands for what humans are supposed to do - honor nature while using high technology to harness its powers."
Recently, New York State echoed that judgment. The commissioner of historic preservation wrote Dr. Seifer on behalf of Gov. David A. Paterson to back Wardenclyffe's preservation and listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
On Long Island, Tesla enthusiasts vow to obtain the land one way or another, saying that saving a symbol of Tesla's accomplishments would help restore the visionary to his rightful place as an architect of the modern age.
"A lot of his work was way ahead of his time," said Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla Science Center, a private group in Shoreham that is seeking to acquire Wardenclyffe.
Dr. Ljubo Vujovic, president of the Tesla Memorial Society of New York, said destroying the old lab "would be a terrible thing for the United States and the world. It's a piece of history."
Tesla, who lived from 1856 to 1943, made bitter enemies who dismissed some of his claims as exaggerated, helping tarnish his reputation in his lifetime. He was part recluse, part showman. He issued publicity photos (actually double exposures) showing him reading quietly in his laboratory amid deadly flashes.
Today, his work tends to be poorly known among scientists, though some call him an intuitive genius far ahead of his peers. Socially, his popularity has soared, elevating him to cult status.
Books and Web sites abound. Wikipedia says the inventor obtained at least 700 patents. YouTube has several Tesla videos, including one of a break-in at Wardenclyffe. A rock band calls itself Tesla. An electric car company backed by Google's founders calls itself Tesla Motors.
Larry Page, Google's co-founder, sees the creator's life as a cautionary tale. "It's a sad, sad story," Mr. Page told Fortune magazine last year. The inventor "couldn't commercialize anything. He could barely fund his own research."
Wardenclyffe epitomized that kind o
Cats, hats, and wolverines... (Score:5, Funny)
The building's dark interior was littered with beer cans and broken bottles. Flashlights revealed no trace of the original equipment, except for a surprise on the second floor. There in the darkness loomed four enormous tanks, each the size of a small car. Their sides were made of thick metal and their seams heavily riveted, like those of an old destroyer or battleship. The Agfa consultant leading the tour called them giant batteries.
"Look up there," said the consultant, Ralph Passantino, signaling with his flashlight. "There's a hatch up there. It was used to get into the tanks to service them."
Tesla authorities appear to know little of the big tanks, making them potential clues to the inventor's original plans.
Boy are they going to be surprised when they open them and find hundreds of hats, dead cats and human corpses with huge bone claws on their hands crammed in there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I had to read that twice before I realized they weren't talking about 'tanks' the vehicles.
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"He was an absolute genius," Dennis Papadopoulos, a physicist at the University of Maryland, said in an interview. "He conceived of things in 1900 that it took us 50 or 60 years to understand. But he did not appreciate dissipation. You can't start putting a lot of power" into an antenna and expect the energy to travel long distances without great diminution.
"It is absolute folly to imagine a rocket working in outer space, with no air to push against."(quote inexact)
But, as more learned folk have said, the energy doesn't really have to travel long distances, so inverse square doesn't apply. Wardenclyff was not a radio transmitter; it was more along the lines of one coil of a rather elaborate transformer that basically used the Earth and its atmosphere as a giant capacitor and drew power from there.
I dunno, bloody Atlanteans, coming back and expecting us to forg
Re: (Score:2)
Wardenclyff was not a radio transmitter; it was more along the lines of one coil of a rather elaborate transformer that basically used the Earth and its atmosphere as a giant capacitor and drew power from there.
And one of the things they really ARE doing with HAARP is studying how to charge and discharge the ionosphere, and the author of the patent upon which it is based said that he was inspired by and based on the work of Nikola Tesla. So it seems especially probable that the scheme was possible.
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Subscription-free, minus the pictures and maps.
Subscription-free, with the pictures and maps. [nytimes.com]
ATHF (Score:2)
I need to dig up a photo online. I keep getting the mental picture of the lab at the beginning of the ATHF episodes.
Paging Dean Kamen (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like this would be right up his alley. He always said he wants scientists to be appreciated like sports stars. Here's his chance to enshrine one of the most famous and far thinking of them all.
Is this it? (Score:4, Informative)
Tesla's Laboratory? [google.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, those are the grounds. The smaller building with the older-looking roof on the southeast of the building complex is the actual laboratory building (the one with the small tower in the center of the roof), and I presume his 187-ft tower was located in the concrete octagon to the south of the lab.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah - you can see the remnants of the original building from the older looking roof - i believe the windvane is still on top there .. there were train tracks that ran a separate line behind the laboratory, and yes - the octagonal shape i believe is the foundation for the tower that was blown up by the US Army in 1917 (they were worried that the Germans might use it either for a landmark for their submarines or as some sort of communication device) .. it was rumored that it took multiple attempts to actuall
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i will buy it (Score:3, Funny)
Get congress to Earmark it. (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously... Blowing a couple of million bucks on the site, along with perhaps a reconstructed museum and tower, is honestly a good way to waste Federal money. There's a big war bill coming out of the House, and get the New York delegation to stuff some money in there for a national museum, and while we're at it, have the President declare it as a national heritage site.
There will be some dopes at the National Review that will bitch about it, but even hard righties like me love national parks and the story of American industrialization and research. It's a lot better than Woodstock. I'd plug it on my right wing site, for sure.
Come on libs, spend some money and save this place!
If wishes were horses... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd ride mine down to cash in my winning lottery ticket, buy the land, and endow part of the fund needed to launch a world-class museum. You can visit Edison's lab in Greenfield Villiage (Henry Ford Musuem, etc) in Dearborn, Michigan - which, if you ever get the chance, do it - you won't be disappointed, I guarantee.
It would be shame if Tesla doesn't become similarly remembered.
amazing how this news keeps changeing (Score:5, Interesting)
I work across the street from his old lab (on Tesla st no less) The place is in serious disrepair, but it would be nice to see it preserved. His transmission towers are in wreckage all over the DEC property on the south side of 25a in rocky point.
Last I heard 1 week ago the museum was a go, guess things change.
If a company the size of AFGA (Score:2)
is scraping for 1.6 million, they might as well give it away, becasue there not going to be here in a year anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
is scraping for 1.6 million, they might as well give it away, becasue there not going to be here in a year anyways.
If they're in that kind of financial trouble, they're not legally allowed to give it away. A company that is expecting to be liquidated must not give away assets, because technically from the moment it is considered likely that liquidation will occur those assets effectively belong to the creditors.
C'mon, folks! (Score:4, Interesting)
This perhaps the single greatest opportunity ever to cross paths with Slashdot!
If we each pitch in a buck a piece...
Can you imagine the fun a few million /.ers can have with this stuff?
Projects/experiments can be decided democratically (!) via the moderating system and we can further fund the entire project from the click-throughs generated by poster signatures.
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I would be interested in helping. As in, I won't just cheer you on on the internet, I might pitch in real money.
I am not so interested in a museum, or at least not just a museum -- some sort of museum seems appropriate for the place. I would be more interested in something like a "Hacker Space" with labs and workshops and possibly living arrangements, but on a bigger scale than hacker houses; more like a self-run graduate or research institute. I would like to be able to use the facilities like a Tech Sh
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually a pretty good idea - short of the project/experiments and democratic voting process.
It should be a museum - not a research lab. Well - maybe a small one in the back. :-) You'd need trinkets to sell to keep the facility operating, so might as well dedicate part of it to just developing those. heh a mini desktop Tesla coil or something equally useless but cool to have.
Like, what would you seriously do in a residential neighborhood using century old equipment?
How much for.... (Score:2)
How much for the cloning machine from 'The Prestige'?
Re: (Score:2)
delivered fully cleared and leveled (Score:2)
Such a loss. Has mankind totally lost its mind and cant appreciate the past?
Or are we just doomed to repeat it, again.
One of most brilliant men *ever* to exist. At least Davinchi gets credit for his work.
Re:Can you cut down on the long words, please? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
As long as they send Eva Mendes to kick my ass, BRING IT.
Please?
Re:Can you cut down on the long words, please? (Score:5, Funny)
Your post makes me sad.
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I don't get it.
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"Destroy it and we might never know."
Disassemble it thoroughly during demolition, dig up any interesting areas, then level the place afterwards.
There is nothing architecturally compelling about the site.
Two Words (Score:2)
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Short answers, yes and sort of. I think JP Morgan merged with Chase at some point, so there you go.
JP Morgan only ruined Tesla in the sense that whatever Tesla was doing wasn't financially viable for JPM, but I don't think there were any malicious actions by JPM (unlike Edison, who actively undermined Tesla).