Talk:Wireless power transfer/Archive 2

Rarified air stratum
"The outer end of the secondary or high-tension coil A was connected to the ground, as illustrated, while the free end was led to a terminal placed in the rarefied air stratum through which the energy was to be transmitted, which was contained in an insulating tube of a length of fifty feet or more, within which a barometric pressure varying from about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty millimeters was maintained by means of a mechanical suction-pump." SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900.

"I took a tube 50 feet long, in which I established conditions such as would exist in the atmosphere at a height of about 4 1/2 miles. . . . And when I turned on the current, I showed that through a stratum of air at a pressure of 135 millimeters, when my four circuits were tuned, several incandescent lamps were lighted." Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power pp. 126, 127.

Am I misinterpreting something in these statements about a barometric pressure of 120 - 135 - 150 mm at an elevation of ~ 4 1/2 miles and the words, "rarefied air stratum through which the energy was to be transmitted" ? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hooking up a Tesla coil to one end of a tube and lighting a bulb at the other is one thing ( this sounds a lot like a Moore lamp which was an important alternative to incandescent lamps for a while, though in that case the tube itself is the lamp), but how did Tesla get the current 5+ miles up in the air, and down again? Why would the discharge from his Wardenclyffe tower preferentially climb miles into the sky when fat juicy ground return is only a few score feet away?  And how did he propose to get the current to come *down* from the sky at a suitable receiver site and not on every hilltop and church steeple on Long Island instead? --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "It is, furthermore, a fact that such discharges of extreme tensions, approximating those of lightning, manifest a marked tendency to pass upward away from the ground, which may be due to electrostatic repulsion, or possibly to slight heating and consequent rising of the electrified or ionized air. These latter observations make it appear probable that a discharge of this character allowed to escape into the atmosphere from a terminal maintained at a great height will gradually leak through and establish a good conducting-path to more elevated and better conducting air strata, a process which possibly takes place in silent lightning discharges frequently witnessed on hot and sultry days.  It will be apparent to what an extent the conductivity imparted to the air is enhanced by the increase of the electromotive force of the impulses when it is stated that in some instances the area covered by the flame discharge mentioned was enlarged more than sixfold by an augmentation of the electrical pressure, amounting scarcely to more than fifty per cent." SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * More importantly, what is the relevance to this article? This article is to talk about wireless energy transfer, not "schemes that were supposed to be wireless energy transfer but ran into unfavorable physics first". --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The scheme is notable to the article, because it was a serious attempt to do wireless energy transfer world wide. And we don't absolutely know how the attempt failed, you seem to be assuming that it was physics, whereas one of the major problems was that Morgan was rather upset about not being able to meter the energy; which is more of an accountancy thing.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This is an excellent point. Current research into the Tesla World Wireless System suggests the underlying physics are sound. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You also seem to have a weird thing going on about Tesla; he wasn't a mad scientist, he actually did make very important contributions to ignition coils, AC power distribution, he invented tuned circuits in radio, he used resonance to boost power reception and production, he was the first to see [observe] X rays, he created the theory behind induction motors. He's mentioned in this article, because he invented most of the things the article describes. He invented resonant inductive transfer, such as is used in Witricity; that's the working principle of his 1897 Tesla coil (it's just used over the range of a few inches inside each Tesla coil to give a large air gap which provides insulation [and proper coefficient of coupling -- GaryPeterson (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)].) He also invented and demoed wireless remote control. The list goes on and on. These aren't inflated things either, he made genuine major, key contributions in all of them. A lot of the electrical things around you right now are traceable back to Tesla. Fluorescent lights, laptop backlight circuits [and digital computers in general, Tesla being the inventor of the electronic digital logic gate (see U.S. Patent No. 723,188, "Method of Signaling," Mar. 17, 1903 and U.S. Patent No. 725,605, "System of Signaling," Apr. 14, 1903).-- GaryPeterson (talk) 20:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)}, car ignition circuits, the AC power system itself.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's actually a classic example of OR. You've taken a statement that applied in one scenario and applied it to another. The patent that is referenced from the sentence says 15 miles, not 4.5 miles. Point of fact you can form a plasma at any altitude with enough voltage anyway; that doesn't mean that his world power system was going to be ionising air at that altitude. The patent indicated that putting contacts at 35,000 feet might be done- but he didn't say that he was going to ionise the air at that altitude either, so far as I can tell he was just trying to get closer to the ionosphere to improve efficiency.Rememberway
 * The referenced patent says "a barometric pressure varying from about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty millimeters." The barometric pressure at 4.5 miles is 135 mm. "I took a tube 50 feet long, in which I established conditions such as would exist in the atmosphere at a height of about 4 1/2 miles." [ Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power ] In the referenced patent Tesla cites evidence collected in a laboratory setting to justify his claim that energy could be transmitted by atmospheric conduction at an elevation of 120-150mm thereby eliminating the requirement for elevated terminals reaching all the way up to 15 miles. The U.S. Patent Office accepted this claim.
 * What I now claim is—
 * 9. The method hereinbefore described of transmitting electrical energy through the natural media, which consists in generating current impulses of relatively-low electromotive force at a generating-station, utilizing such impulses to energize the primary of a transformer, generating by means of such primary circuit impulses in a secondary surrounded by the primary and connected to the earth and to an elevated terminal, of sufficiently-high electromotive force to render elevated air strata conducting, causing thereby impulses to be propagated through the air strata, collecting or receiving the energy of such impulses, at a point distant from the generating-station, by means of a receiving circuit connected to the earth and to an elevated terminal, and utilizing the energy so received to energize a secondary circuit of low potential surrounding the receiving-circuit. SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

(talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And I'm pretty sure that ionization at low altitude would be serious inefficiency; it costs lots of energy to do that. Unless you have a clear reference that he was going to do that, it can't go in the article.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay,
 * It has been well known heretofore that by rarefying the air inclosed in a vessel its insulating properties are impaired to such an extent that it becomes what may be considered as a true conductor, although one of admittedly very high resistance. The practical information in this regard has been derived from observations necessarily limited in their scope by the character of the apparatus or means heretofore known and the quality of the electrical effects producible thereby.  Thus it has been shown by William Crookes in his classical researches, which have so far served as the chief source of knowledge of this subject, that all gasses behave as excellent insulators until rarefied to a point corresponding to a barometric pressure of about seventy-five millimeters, and even at this very low pressure the discharge of a high-tension induction-coil passes through only a part of the attenuated gas in the form of a luminous thread or arc, a still further and considerable diminution of the pressure being required to render the entire mass of the gas inclosed in a vessel conducting.


 * While this is true in every particular so long as electromotive or current impulses such as are obtainable with ordinary forms of apparatus are employed, I have found that neither the general behavior of the gases nor the known relations between electrical conductivity and barometric pressure are in conformity with these observations when impulses are used such as are producible by methods and apparatus described by me and which have peculiar and hitherto unobserved properties and are of effective electromotive force, measuring many hundred thousands or millions of volts.


 * Through the continuous perfection of these methods and apparatus and the investigation of the actions of these current impulses I have been led to the discovery of certain highly-important useful facts which have hitherto been unknown. Among these and bearing directly upon the subject of my present application are the following: First, that atmospheric or other gases, even under normal pressure, when they are known to behave as perfect insulators, are in a large measure deprived of their dielectric properties by being subjected to the influence of electromotive impulses of the character and magnitude I have referred to and assume conducting and other qualities which have been so far observed only in gases greatly attenuated or heated to a high temperature, and, second, that the conductivity imparted to the air or gases increases very rapidly both with the augmentation of the applied electrical pressure and with the degree of rarefaction, the law in this latter respect being, however, quite different from that heretofore established. . . .


 * As to the influence of rarefaction upon the electric conductivity imparted to the gases it is noteworthy that, whereas the atmospheric or other gases begin ordinarily to manifest this quality at something like seventy-five millimeters barometric pressure with the impulses of excessive electromotive force to which I have referred, the conductivity, as already pointed out, begins even at normal pressure and continuously increases with the degree of tenuity of the gas, so that at, say, one hundred and thirty millimeters pressure, when the gases are known to be still nearly perfect insulators for ordinary electromotive forces, they behave toward electromotive impulses of several millions of volts like excellent conductors , as though they were rarefied to a much higher degree. . . .


 * By the discovery of these facts and the perfection of means for producing in a safe, economical, and thoroughly-practicable manner current impulses of the character described  it becomes possible to transmit through easily-accessible and only moderately-rarefied strata of the atmosphere electrical energy  not merely in insignificant quantities, such as are suitable for the operation of delicate instruments and like purposes, but also in quantities suitable for industrial uses on a large scale up to practically any amount and, according to all the experimental evidence I have obtained,  to any terrestrial distance . SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900.
 * Do these meet with your requirements? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * They're not my requirements they're the Wikipedia's. And you're not meeting them. You should either drop it, find other references or rewrite the text.Rememberway (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Pursuant to your request I have rewritten the text and added references. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 20:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, no. I'm simply going to remove everything that is unreferenced to primary, reliable sources; and for the record, patents are not reliable sources except about what somebody actually claimed, or patented. Any use of the word 'is' or 'are' must be something that is done today, and I'm also going to remove any analogy that isn't backed up to a reliable source saying that that analogy is valid in that particular context. You're also not going to get away with any degree of OR; defined as taking information from two sources and combining them to make a new point, no matter how trivial.Rememberway (talk) 00:18, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Tesla may not have started out (entirely) mad, but sure ended up that way. Can anyone explain to me why the mumblety-million volts on the top terminal at Wardencliffe would preferentially climb miles into the air, go half-way around the world and power someone's factory, instead of discharging somewhere on Long Island in the mother of all man-made lightning bolts? Please? If someone can explain that one point to me, then I'll concede that the Tesla stuff can be relevant to this article. This would seem to be an elementary problem that even J.P. Morgan must have noticed, surely he would have seen the chaotic arcs and sparks coming out of Tesla coils and would have been curious how Tesla proposed to redirect those sparks. Tesla must have had a convincing answer, what was it? --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually I think that he pointed out that plasmas are pretty hot and do tend to rise, and his towers were pretty tall, and I expect that that had something to do with it. One of his patents talked about using balloons at 35,000 feet to increase the chance of a plasma connection going up, rather than down.Rememberway (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't even matter. What matters is that it's very clearly on-topic and notable. Our task as editors is to collect what's written about it and summarise it appropriately.Rememberway (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Now we're getting somewhere. It would be on-topic if we could explain how Wardenclyffe was to overcome the naive obstacles I keep asking about. Two questions: How many megawatts does it take to sustain a column of ionized air 50 feet in diameter and 4 1/2 miles high? And, how do I set up that column at my receiving site 4000 miles away, where I initially have no power supply to begin with? (I visualize this working like carnival bumper cars that have an electrified floor, the earth in the Wardenclyffe scheme, and an electrified tin roof, which is some layer in the ionosphere. Bumper cars don't have poles 4 1/2 miles long, though.). No doubt these are the same questions J. P. Morgan was asking. (Supplemental question:What stops the wind from blowing away the column?) Explain this, and we're on the way to explaining how Tesla's scheme wasn't just the product of an unhinged mind but was in fact a valid attempt to transmit power. Metering is no problem, you've got a patent, and it's not like someone can hide a 4 1/2 mile high column of flaming gases - you'd be able to count installations with a pair of binoculars and compare that to your list of licensees quite easily. (We don't talk about Tesla's conversations with Venusians in the SETI article, do we ?) --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)


 * No. That's not how the Wikipedia works at all. It might be utterly and completely impossible, the power might be stupidly impossible etc. etc. and it might be obvious (to us) that it would never, ever work. That's completely irrelevant. What's relevant is what people have written down in reliable sources about this, and how it is regarded in those reliable sources.- Sheer Incompetence (talk) Now with added dubiosity! 02:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Outdent. How much space does Wikipedia devote to the flat-earth theory when discussing, oh, say, international trade? Tesla couldn't convince Morgan to keep funding him in an era when people bet a million dollars on which raindrop would run down the window first. It is inappropriate to dwell on the Tesla dead end here, except to mention "Tesla tried it, claimed much, produced nothing of consequence in this field." --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Please explain,

 * How do I set up that column at my receiving site 4000 miles away, where I initially have no power supply to begin with?

The facility at the receiving site is identical to that at the transmitting site in every respect, power supply and all. Onsite or nearby electric power generating plants provide all of the electrical energy needed to run accessories such as electric lights, air conditioners, pumps, air compressors, etc., plus the plants' transmiting-receiving apparatus, including high-power ultra-violet LASERs that may be used to create vertical ionized leader beams. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If I have enough power to generate megawatts of ultraviolet lasers, I don't NEED broadcast power.

We are discussing the World Wireless System for digital data transfer (bits and bytes) and electrical power transmission. There will be large transmitters located where electrical energy is cheap and somewhat smaller installations like the Wardenclyffe prototype at metropolitan centers around the world. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * What about Tesla's pocket-watch sized communication gadgets, which surely were not intended to require a coal-fired plant to run? --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Assuming that some of the big transmitters are coal-fired, then yes, perhaps billions of such receivers would be run that way. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Why do the millions of volts on the top terminal at Wardenclyffe preferentially climb miles into the air, go half-way around the world and power someone's factory, instead of discharging somewhere on Long Island in the mother of all man-made lightning bolts?

The high-potential terminals are set to a height at which sparks do not reach the ground under normal operating conditions. The transmitter output powers are adjusted so that no streamers issue forth from their elevated terminals. If the conditions change for some reason creating a system overload and the potential on an elevated terminal rises to the point at which a spark does break out, then it issues forth from a special appurtenance intended specifically for this purpose.

"To increase the safety, I provide on a convenient place, preferably on terminal D, one or more elements or plates either of somewhat smaller radius of curvature or protruding more or less beyond the others (in which case they maybe of larger radius of curvature) so that, should the pressure rise to a value, beyond which it is not desired to go, the powerful discharge may dart out there and lose itself harmlessly in air. Such a plate, performing a function similar to that of a safety valve on a high pressure reservoir, is indicated at V. APPARATUS FOR TRANSMITTING ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Jan. 18, 1902, U.S. Patent 1,119,732, Dec. 1, 1914."

If you take a close look at the Wardenclyffe powerhouse/laboratory building you will see on the top of the chimney a lightning rod the purpose of which is to receive the artificial lightning bolt in the case of a serious accident. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This doesn't seem plausible. I've seen lots of Tesla coil videos and the sparks never go straight up, they seek ground with what would be described in an animate creature as "considerable eagerness". This would have been as unconvincing in 1910 as it is in 2010.  --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me sir, you are mistaken. Have you ever built and operated a small-scale Tesla wireless system demonstration apparatus?, or have someone skilled in the art demonstrate the Tesla wireless system for you? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:54, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what "Tesla wireless [system demonstration] apparatus" is being referenced. . . . -- Wtshymanski (talk) 20:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Apparently you have not seen a Tesla wireless system demonstration apparatus in operation. One is photographically documented at www.teslaradio.com/pages/sstc-a.htm THE EXPERIMENTAL REALIZATION OF A LOW POWER SOLID-STATE TESLA COIL TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER. If you have difficulty finding someone in your vicinity with the demo apparatus, I would be pleased to make the demonstration for you. This offer is good in the continental United States only, Alaska excluded.
 * Yeah. Ok. Do you perhaps have a You Tube video or something? What do you mean by "Tesla coil transmitter and receiver"? Beam a kilowatt over 2 miles or clicks in headphones at 50 years or ? --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * How many watts does it take to sustain a column of ionized air 50 feet in diameter and 4 1/2 miles high?

That is yet to be determined or is proprietary information. I do know that 100 kW is the claimed output power of a CO2 laser being developed by Northrop Grumman as a weapon. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * And what is the relevance of that?

It is relevant because ultraviolet LASERs can be used to produce the ultraviolet leader beams -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A CO2 laser is not a Wardenclyffe World Wireless system.

I know that. What's your point? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There's surely some open literature pertaining to electron beam weapons or high-power CO2 lasers that would give an order of magnitude, at least. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

You think so? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * What stops the wind from blowing away the column?

Good question. Somebody should look into that. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Did Tesla have an answer? Obviously not one that convinced Morgan. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

He may very well have considered this. Problem is that the bulk of Tesla's research notes are in Belgrade at the Nikola Tesla Museum and they are not openly available to researchers. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla_Museum#History for an introduction to The Muzej Problem. . . . -- GaryPeterson (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I visualize this working like carnival bumper cars that have an electrified floor, the earth in the Wardenclyffe scheme, and an electrified tin roof, which is some layer in the ionosphere. Bumper cars don't have poles 4 1/2 miles long, though.

The closest ionosphere layer is D at 30 - 55 miles in the daytime followed by the persistent E layer at 55 - 90 miles. What are the sources of your beliefs that the ionosphere is somehow involved in the operation of the World Wireless System? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 18:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * But this is what Tesla said he was using.

Some are of the opinion that Tesla did not even know the ionosphere exists. Furthermore, the ionosphere is comprised of naturally ionized atmospheric strata beginning at 30 miles in the daytime and 55 miles at night. Tesla claimed he could artificially ionize the atmosphere starting at an elevation of 4.5 to 15 miles, depending on how one interprets his words in the "System" patent. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Either Tesla was mistaken about the ionization layers of the atmosphere, which makes him guilty of bad science, or else he knew and for some reason didn't frankly disclose the error in his model. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's neither -- GaryPeterson (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, he seems to have intended to use the earth as one conductive plate, and the ionosphere as the other. For example that's what it says here: http://www.damninteresting.com/teslas-tower-of-power Rememberway (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference. The author of this paper writes, "towers like the one at Wardenclyffe would fling columns of raw energy skyward into the electricity-friendly ionosphere fifty miles up" but does not reference a primary source to back up this assertion. I don't mind him expressing his opinion, but a revision has to be made adding "50 miles" and referencing the source.

-- GaryPeterson (talk) 17:40, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * There's two different ways you can tap into the power. The simplest way is just have a Tesla coil connected to a capacitor on the roof and earthed. It capacitively taps the potential difference between the sky and the ground and collects the power; its very similar to what happens when the tops of two Tesla coils are a few feet or more apart, you can wireless light lamps and stuff- but the difference is that the conductive sphere 'plate' that is the ionosphere is enormous so it works at more or less unlimited distances.Rememberway (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Any terminal on the roof of a building is going to be a tiny fraction of the distance to ground as it is to the "ionized layer" 4 1/2 (or 50 ) miles above - the capacitance between terminal and ground will be thousands of times greater than the capacitance between the terminal and even a shell of superconducting material 4 1/2 miles up. (My texts are packed away, but I'm sure there's an illustration of a sphere between two infinite parallel plates that would illustrate the problem.) Tesla must have known this, electrostatics was a common study field well before 1908. How did he propose to get around this virtual short-circuit between his receiving terminal and local earth? And again, if the whole Earth is surrounded by this layer, the shunt capacitance around a receiving terminal is going to be enormous compared to the tiny tap you're going to make.  --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The other way (I think aeroplanes were intended to use) is to make a plasma contactor directly from the vehicle to the sky and another to the ground.Rememberway (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * If you've got a powerplant that can ionize 4 1/2 miles of air that's small enough to carry on an airplane, you don't need broadcast power. This can't possibly be what Tesla intended. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW the scheme is almost certainly currently unworkable. It relies on creating huge voltages on the ionosphere, similar to the natural static voltage of a few hundred volts per metre. However, the difference is that it would be an AC field. So if there's a (say) a million volts AC on the ionosphere at 50 km, then there would be about 1,000,000/50,000 = 20 volts/metre AC. And unfortunately you need fairly high voltages for it to work (the resonance tricks only go so far). The current health limits are about 0.15 volts/metre for AC fields, a hundred times lower!!! Oops!!! (I had a quick look at the standards, there seems to be real health effects starting a bit above that, they're actually not particularly conservative.)Rememberway (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * That's one of the few minor bits of cleverness behind witricity- they mostly avoid the electrostatic voltages, and just use magnetism, but it has horribly low range.Rememberway (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, sure, but Tesla wasn't worried about EMF effects on health. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Incredibly confusing replies
Hey, could we do this in consecutive paragraphs, it would be less dizzy to follow.

We're not talking about dits and dahs and Branly coherers - not clicks in headphones. In this article, we're talking about turning motors and lighting lamps - kilowatts at the receiving end. I'm not sure what "Tesla wireless [system demonstration] apparatus" is being referenced, if it's the former, not the latter, it's radio and we already know how that works. Wikipedia says Kennelly and Heaviside published speculation on the E-layer around 1902, so Tesla could well have known of these speculations. How did Tesla know there was enough ionization to support his scheme? And why does he say 4 1/2 miles instad of 50+ miles? He either didn't know anything about atmospheric ionization, or else he knew, but kept mum as long as J.P. Morgan was footing the bills. How do you stop the ions from blowing away?

How do you keep a column of air 4 1/2 + miles high ionized using 1902-era technology? Tesla didn't have ultraviolet lasers. He barely had electric light bulbs, which mostly made IR, not UV. And even today ultraviolet light in that quantity is not going to be cheap to produce.

Any Tesla coil videos I see have sparks jumping to ground. What was supposed to stop Wardenclyffe from shorting out like a bad spark plug cable?

How do you do a capacitive voltage tap with a tiny tap capacitance and a *huge* shunt capacitance? The transmitting and receiving terminals are virtually indistinguishable from ground level, from the perspective of a "layer" thats 5 or 50 *miles* in the air. The terminals have much higher capacitance to local earth than to the sky, they'd be at the same as earth potential, especially at the kilohertz frequencies Tesla seemed to favor.

How does a man-portable gadget ionize all that air to contact the ionosphere layer? Again, using 1902 technology. Even if you used a pound of radium, it would only reach a few metres in any direction, and would be lethal to the user. -- Wtshymanski (talk) 20:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

"In some cases when small amounts of energy are required the high elevation of the terminals, and more particularly of the receiving-terminal D' may not be necessary, since, especially when the frequency of the currents is very high, a sufficient amount of energy may be collected at that terminal by electrostatic induction from the upper air strata, which are rendered conducting by the active terminal of the transmitter or through which the currents from the same are conveyed. SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900."

-- GaryPeterson (talk) 21:41, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

And wouldn't lighting strokes the world over short-out any attempts to artificially charge the ionosphere? Now, there's an ionized column miles long - but it takes nature gigawatts to open that channel and it is only sustained for microseconds. This must have been apparent to Tesla at the time. Every lightning stroke would have been a crowbar across the terminals of Tesla's apparatus.

Morgan, or someone working for him, must have asked questions like this and been dissatisified at any evasive or unclear answers he got. Maybe Tesla didn't know the answers, certainly a century of feverish research into Tesla's methods hasn't asnwered these questions. Tesla lived well as long as Morgan was financing Wardenclyffe, but seems to have hit the wall (financially) shortly afterward.

The Tesla museum stuff is great, by the way...KGB agents, worldwide conspiracies...it's got Elvis, JFK, and Marilyn Monroe beat. Seventy years since Tesla died and no-one who speaks English has ever read the papers? Amazing. All we need now is a tag claiming that wireless energy transfer is a Croatian/Serbian invention. -- Wtshymanski (talk) 20:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 21:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There's never any numbers in the Tesla stuff. A concentric spherical capacitor, with the inner plate the radius of the Earth, and the outer plate plate 10 km separated from the inner, would have a capcitance of about 0.453 farads. A portable receiving terminal of 1 metre radius cannot have a capacitance to local ground of less than 112 picofarads (higher at finite spacing, but I haven't found the equation yet and my calculus is rusty). Roughly speaking, for every ampere passing through the portable metre-scale terminal, you must pass 4 billion amperes through the distributed capacitance between the Earth and the ionized layer.  Doesn't look very practical to me.  If I advocated this, I'd be considered either a fool or a charlatan.  I don't think the knowledge of electrostatics was much less advanced in 1902 than today. Tesla could not in all seriousness have advocated a capacitance-divider approach to picking up current from a hypothetical ionized layer in the atomosphere.  So, what's the real explanation? What did Tesla really think he was doing?  How did he get any money out of J.P. Morgan at all? Was J. P. Morgan sucked in before he had a chance to do some due diligence? --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * You should read this page carefully, and you might start to understand it: http://amasci.com/tesla/tesceive.html Rememberway (talk) 23:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's mostly to do with resonance and high voltages. Resonance increases the electrical length of the receiver, so it acts like it's a very much bigger plate than it physically is, and it's actually able to collect a lot more energy than you could expect from its small size.Rememberway (talk) 23:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Tesla knew better than pretty much anyone at the time what air was like at high altitude, because he routinely made low pressure gases! One of the sneaky things that Tesla coils can do is vacuum pumping; you arrange a discharge in a chamber, and it will ion pump and you can getter down to very low pressures. How did you think he made those vacuum tube lights?Rememberway (talk) 23:36, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Assuming you have not seen a Tesla wireless system demonstration apparatus in operation (one is photographically documented at www.teslaradio.com/pages/sstc-a.htm THE EXPERIMENTAL REALIZATION OF A LOW POWER SOLID-STATE TESLA COIL TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER) I am prepared to make the demonstration for you. Otherwise you may be able to find someone in your vicinity with the demo apparatus or you could assemble one yourself.

First of all you have to understand the fact that we are discussing a non-radiative wireless transmission-reception system that is designed for combined digital data transfer (bits and bytes) and electrical power transmission. The Wardenclyffe prototype was intended for trans-Atlantic telephony. The wireless power transmission component was for a proof-of-concept demonstration.

The right question to ask is, "what was Tesla actually doing?" The ongoing research into the World Wireless System that started in 1943 is just now providing some meaningful answers. You are not going to learn everything you need to know in a couple days. If you are sincere in your desire to sift truth from belief, then,  as a starting point , give me a shipping address where I can send you the book NT on AC, or borrow a copy. Failing this, sorry, I'm afraid there is nothing more I can do for you.

Most sincerely, GaryPeterson (talk) 23:15, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The Web page at forgets that if you're going to tap any power from the resonant circuit, you damp it! (Incredibly annoying style, too...just the facts, please, no Mystery Science 3000-style movie references.)  Otherwise every AM radio would spark over across the loopstick - it's the same physics. A bunch of ASCII schematics and no modelling of what really happens. no-one ever does the math.  And even in the example, the capacitance to earth is orders of magnitude higher than the capacitance to the sky, which shorts out the "resonator". Again, Tesla knew this full well - so what was he trying to pull?
 * Or was it all just a giant scam? Tesla loved to live high, and had many eccentric habits which must have cost a fortune. --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's just a capacitive divider between the sky, the plate and the Earth. There's no shorting out.Rememberway (talk) 05:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Did Tesla ever publish any numbers showing this, and explaining how a 100 watt light bulb was going to be fed through this divider? Yes, I know, most of his lab notes were lost in the fire, and anything that's left is locked in a vault in Belgrade or was seized by the FBI and suppressed by order of the copper wire cartel. But he must have sent some kind of memorandum to J.P. Morgan or someone somewhere where he shows us his arithmetic. Someone who's been studying Tesla's work for 20 years might even recreate the arithmetic and show us how Tesla persuaded Morgan to fork over so much cash, at least initially. He must have had something going for him other than reputation and charisma, Morgan didn't get to be a millionaire without exercising due diligence. Concealing the numbers is one way to perpetuate a scam, though. --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't care about that. You said it shorted it out, but if it shorted it out, ordinary Tesla coils wouldn't work. The truth is that in accordance with Gauss more or less half of the electrostatic flux impinging on a spherical capacitive object comes from the sky, and this increases with altitude.Rememberway (talk) 18:26, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's also why there's a natural potential gradient with altitude; as you go away from the Earth the horizon's angle changes, and you electrically see more of the sky, which is at a different potential to the ground. Unless you're grounded, the potential increases.Rememberway (talk) 18:26, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * But a Tesla coil is plugged into a wall socket - we don't care that it's only very weakly coupled to the ionosphere because we're not trying to get any power from the ionosphere (we'd prefer this, we'd rather not lose power to the atmosphere). Tesla coils do "short out" to local ground, that's kind of the reason people like to build them; we like big sparks. However, in what is described to me as Tesla's scam concept, the eensy-weensie capacitance between the top of a Tesla coil and the ionosphere is somehow sufficient to, say, light a 100 watt bulb. Never mind that the top terminal of a Tesla coil has many orders of magnitude more capacitance to Earth than to the sky, thereby making the division ratio...pretty darn high. Let's see, 112 pf in shunt with 453,000,000,000 pf is a division ratio of 24.7 billion to one. How did Tesla propose to get 1 amp out at the reciever with 24.7 billion amps leaving the transmitting terminal? (I'm trying to establish if Tesla sincerly had a plausible chance at building a wireless energy transmission system, or if he knew at the time that his scheme had some..ahh, let's say "hurdles"...to overcome first.) None of what I've read explains the concept well enough to persuade J.P. Morgan to part with any money at all; what case did Tesla make?  --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Electrodynamic
Is there any actual meaning meant to be conveyed by the redundant term "electrodynamic induction", or is just a gaudy phrased used by wireless energy transmission promoters to make their writings sound more awesomely scientifical? I think it's a purposeless adjective, "induction" will do, and "electrodynamic" is redundant. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:11, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is meaning.

""High frequency impulses produce powerful inductive actions. . . . These inductive effects are either electrostatic or electrodynamic. The former diminish much more rapidly with the distance--with the square of the same--the latter are reduced simply in proportion to the distance. On the other hand, the former grow with the square of intensity of the source, while the latter increase in a simple proportion with the intensity. Both of these effects may be utilized for establishing a field of strong action extending through considerable space, as through a large hall. . . ." -- Tesla, Nikola, HIGH FREQUENCY OSCILLATORS FOR ELECTRO-THERAPEUTIC AND OTHER PURPOSES, The Electrical Engineer Vol. XXVI. November 17, 1898. No. 550."

Regards, Gary GPeterson (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Did Tesla write that before or after hearing the voices from Venus? Must have been before he fell in love with a pigeon. Could we get a reference that doesn't rely on Tesla's whack-job concepts? --Wtshymanski (talk) 02:41, 16 December 2010 (UTC)