damninteresting.

com

http://www.damninteresting.com/teslas-tower-of-power/

Teslas Tower of Power

In 1905, a team of construction workers in the small village of Shoreham, New York labored to erect a truly
extraordinary structure. Over a period of several years the men had managed to assemble the framework and wiring
for the 187-foot-tall Wardenclyffe Tower, in spite of severe budget shortfalls and a few engineering snags. The
project was overseen by its designer, the eccentric-yet-ingenious inventor Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 7 January
1943). Atop his tower was perched a fifty-five ton dome of conductive metals, and beneath it stretched an iron root
system that penetrated more than 300 feet into the Earths crust. In this system that I have invented, it is necessary
for the machine to get a grip of the earth, he explained, otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip
so that the whole of this globe can quiver.
Though it was far from completion, it was rumored to have been tested on several occasions, with spectacular,
crowd-pleasing results. The ultimate purpose of this unique structure was to change the world forever.
Teslas inventions had already changed the world on several occasions, most notably when he developed modern
alternating current technology. He had also won fame for his victory over Thomas Edison in the well-publicized
battle of currents, where he proved that his alternating current was far more practical and safe than Edison-brand
direct current. Soon his technology dominated the worlds developing electrical infrastructure, and by 1900 he was
widely regarded as Americas greatest electrical engineer. This reputation was reinforced by his other major
innovations, including the Tesla coil, the radio transmitter, and fluorescent lamps.
In 1891, Nikola Tesla gave a lecture for the members of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York
City, where he made a striking demonstration. In each hand he held a gas discharge tube, an early version of the
modern fluorescent bulb. The tubes were not connected to any wires, but nonetheless they glowed brightly during
his demonstration. Tesla explained to the awestruck attendees that the electricity was being transmitted through the
air by the pair of metal sheets which sandwiched the stage. He went on to speculate how one might increase the
scale of this effect to transmit wireless power and information over a broad area, perhaps even the entire Earth. As
was often the case, Teslas audience was engrossed but bewildered.
Illustration showing Tesla's demonstration of
wireless electricity.
Back at his makeshift laboratory at Pikes Peak in
Colorado Springs, the eccentric scientist continued to
wring the secrets out of electromagnetism to further
explore this possibility. He rigged his equipment with the
intent to produce the first lightning-scale electrical
discharges ever accomplished by mankind, a feat which
would allow him to test many of his theories about the
conductivity of the Earth and the sky. For this purpose he
erected a 142-foot mast on his laboratory roof, with a
copper sphere on the tip. The towers substantial wiring
was then routed through an exceptionally large highvoltage Tesla coil in the laboratory below. On the night of his experiment, following a one-second test charge which
momentarily set the night alight with an eerie blue hum, Tesla ordered his assistant to fully electrify the tower.
Though his notes do not specifically say so, one can only surmise that Tesla stood at Pikes Peak and cackled
diabolically as the night sky over Colorado was cracked by the man-made lightning machine. Colossal bolts of

1/4

electricity arced hundreds of feet from the towers top to lick the landscape. A curious blue corona soon enveloped
the crackling equipment. Millions of volts charged the atmosphere for several moments, but the awesome display
ended abruptly when the power suddenly failed. All of the windows throughout Colorado Springs went dark as the
local power stations industrial-sized generator collapsed under the strain. But amidst such dramatic discharges,
Tesla confirmed that the Earth itself could be used as an electrical conductor, and verified some of his suspicions
regarding the conductivity of the ionosphere. In later tests, he recorded success in an attempt to illuminate light bulbs
from afar, though the exact conditions of these experiments have been lost to obscurity. In any case, Tesla became
convinced that his dream of world-wide wireless electricity was feasible.
In 1900, famed financier J.P. Morgan learned of Teslas convictions after reading an article in Century Magazine,
wherein the scientist described a global network of high-voltage towers which could one day control the weather,
relay text and images wirelessly, and provide ubiquitous electricity via the atmosphere. Morgan, hoping to capitalize
on the future of wireless telegraphy, immediately invested $150,000 to relocate Teslas lab to Long Island to
construct a pilot plant for this World Wireless System. Construction of Wardenclyffe Tower and its dedicated power
generating facility began the following year.
Tesla's lab at pike's peak
In December 1901, a scant few months after construction
began, a competing scientist named Guglielmo Marconi
executed the worlds first trans-Atlantic wireless telegraph
signal. Teslas investors were deeply troubled by the
development despite the fact that Marconi borrowed from
seventeen Tesla patents to accomplish his feat. Though
Marconis plans were considerably less ambitious in scale, his
apparatus was also considerably less expensive. Work at
Wardenclyffe continued, but Tesla realized that this his
competitors success with simple wireless telegraphy had
greatly diminished the likelihood of further investments in his
own, much grander project.
In 1908, Tesla described his sensational aspirations in an
article for Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony magazine:

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

In essence, Teslas global power grid was designed to pump the planet with electricity which would intermingle
with the natural telluric currents that move throughout the Earths crust and oceans. At the same time, towers like the
one at Wardenclyffe would fling columns of raw energy skyward into the electricity-friendly ionosphere fifty miles up.
To tap into this energy conduit, customers homes would be equipped with a buried ground connection and a

2/4

relatively small spherical antenna on the roof, thereby creating a low-resistance path to close the giant Earthionosphere circuit. Oceangoing ships could use a similar antenna to draw power from the network while at sea. In
addition to electricity, these currents could carry information over great distances by bundling radio-frequency
energy along with the power, much like the modern technology to send high-speed Internet data over power lines.
Nikola Tesla
Given his supporting experimental data and previous engineering
accomplishments, there was little reason to doubt the veracity of
Teslas claims. But building the power station, the huge wooden
tower, and the fifty-five ton conductive dome depleted the original
investment money relatively quickly, leading to chronic funding
shortages. The complications were further compounded by a stock
market crash in 1901 which doubled the cost of building materials
and sent investors scurrying for financial cover.
The Wardenclyffe team tested their tower a handful of times during
construction, and the results were very encouraging; but the project
soon devoured Teslas personal savings, and it became
increasingly clear that no new investments were forthcoming. In
1905, having exhausted all practical financial options, the construction efforts were abandoned. Regarding the
projects demise, Tesla stated:

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

If Teslas plans had come to fruition, the pilot plant would have been merely the first of many. Such magnifying
transmitter towers would have peppered the globe, saturating the planet with free electricity and wireless
communication as early as the 1920s. Instead, the futuristic facilitys potential went untapped for over a decade,
until the tower was finally demolished for salvage in 1917.
The fall of Wardenclyffe thrust the brilliant inventor into a deep depression and financial distress, and in the years
that followed his colleagues began to seriously doubt his mental well-being. His eccentricities became increasingly
exaggerated, underscored by his tendency to bring home and care for the injured pigeons he encountered during
his daily visits to the park. He also developed an unnatural fear of germs, washing his hands compulsively and
refusing to eat any food which had not been disinfected through boiling. But his mind remained pregnant with
groundbreaking ideas, as he demonstrated when he described radar technology in 1917, almost twenty years before
it became a reality. In 1928, aged seventy-two years, he filed one of his last patents; it described an ingenious
lightweight flying machine that was an early precursor to todays tilt-rotor Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing
(VSTOL) planes such as the V-22 Osprey.
One of our Damn Interesting original propaganda-style science posters

3/4

Nikola Tesla shuffled off this mortal coil in 1943, suffering a heart attack alone in his hotel room. Though he kept
copious diaries of his experiments and ideas throughout his
life, they were notoriously vague and lacking in technical
details. He preferred to rely on his photographic memory for
such nuances, therefore much of his knowledge went with him
to the grave. Some modern investigations and calculations,
however, do support Teslas contention that wireless electricity
is not only feasible, but it may have even been a superior
alternative to the extensive and costly grid of power lines
which crisscross our globe today.
Had Wardenclyffe been completed without interruption, Tesla
may have once again managed to alter the course of history.
Instant access to power, information, pirated phonograph
cylinders, and lewd photos of bare-ankled floozies on the
TeslaNet may have ushered in the Information Age almost a
century ahead of schedule, making todays world a very different place indeed. Perhaps one day we will enjoy the
future that Tesla envisioned, albeit a bit behind schedule.

4/4