Alternating -

Current
Electricity

Wireless
Power
Transmission

Drawing by D.F. Bach

Tesla, A Bizarre Genius

Tesla Shaped The Country's Course Through Radio,
Power Transmission, And Other Inventions
BY WILLIAM J. BROAD
Copyright ©1984 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

The world of science is belatedly recogniz- the company of the pigeons who were his fa- Tesla invented the polyphase electric mo-
ing the genius of one of its most important, vorite companions in the final years of his tor, the bladeless steam turbine and the ra-
eccentric and enigmatic inventors, Nikola life, he is at last being elevated to the pan- dio -guided torpedo. Some scientists say it
Tesla. theon of the world's great inventors. was Tesla who first conceived ideas for a
A century after he arrived penniless on It was Nikola Tesla, not Marconi, who in- "Star Wars" type of military shield in space.
the docks of New York City, Tesla is receiv- vented the first radio; it was Tesla, not Edi- To help analyze and publicize the accom-
ing credit for brilliant achievements that out- son, who devised the system of electric pow- plishments of the reclusive genius, a group
did those of his contemporaries, Edison and er distribution now used throughout the of scientists and engineers have formed the
Marconi. And more than 40 years after the world. Working in small laboratories in mid- Tesla Centennial Committee and recently
recluse died in a Manhattan hotel room, in town Manhattan and Greenwich Village, held a symposium, organized a museum ex -

32 / POPULAR COMMUNICATIONS / April 1985 THE MONITORING MAGAZINE

I r
hibition and persuaded the Governor of Many of the 27 speakers at the Tesla sym- voice, far more still, to transmit power, in
Colorado to dedicate the month of August posium, held ... at The Colorado College in unlimited amounts, to any terrestrial dis-
to Tesla. Colorado Springs, put their emphasis on tance and almost without any loss."
"He helped spawn the industrial revolu- Tesla's most spectacular experiments of all,
tion," said Toby Grotz, chairman of the Tes- which occurred at a laboratory not far from Financed By J.P. Morgan
la Centennial Committee and an engineer at the symposium site. There, at the turn of the With the financial backing of J.P. Morgan,
Martin Marietta Aerospace in Denver. "It century, Tesla built enormous coils that gen- Tesla embarked upon a plan to commercial-
couldn't have happened without him. He erated 10 million to 12 million volts of elec- ize the discovery, building a 200 -foot tower at
came from a period when a single individual tricity and sent bolts of artificial lightning Shoreham on Long Island. By 1905, how-
could still change the course of history." flashing 135 feet through the air, a feat that ever, Morgan had abandoned the project
The centennial events have largely taken has never been equaled. and the tower was never completed.
place in Colorado, where the inventor had Tesla, especially in later years, was a man
built a laboratory to create huge bolts of arti- Work Shrouded In Mystery of extraordinary idiosyncrasies and boastful
ficial lightning. To this day, scientists debate what Tesla declarations that sometimes sent his science
"We're trying to bring his name to its right- accomplished in Colorado, for much of the peers into a rage. His ideas for power trans-
ful prominence," said William H. Terbo, work was shrouded in mystery. Dr. Robert mission through air were dismissed by many
who is Tesla's great-nephew and honorary W. Bass, an electrical engineer with Litton as pure fantasy.
chairman of the Tesla Memorial Society. Industries, said at the symposium that one of With a pocket-size vibrator, he once told
The proceedings of the symposium will be Tesla's more controversial claims-that he reporters, he could generate resonant trem-
published by the New York -based Institute had created ball lightning-was probably ors that would split the earth in two. He gave
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the true and he cited contemporary theories of its resonant frequency as one hour and 49
world's largest such society. physics to explain how Tesla could repro- minutes. Whatever the plausibility of his
The committee says conventional histories duce such a rare natural phenomenon. earth -splitting scheme, the rather precise es-
all too often dismiss Tesla in a few para- Tesla's laboratory in Colorado Springs timate of the earth's frequency turned out to
graphs. Indeed, the usual story is quite short. was a barn -like structure that sat atop a hill be close to the mark, as was demonstrated
Tesla was born in 1856 in Croatia, then on the prairie and was crowned by an 80 - during the great Chilean earthquake of
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and foot tower and beyond that a 122 -foot mast. 1960, when geophysicists were able to mea-
soon showed a talent for invention and The tall fence surrounding it carried signs sure the time it took waves to travel back and
tinkering. In 1884, he took a ship to New reading: "Keep Out-Great Danger." The forth through the Earth.
York and immediately went to work for claps of thunder from his bolts of artificial At the symposium some of Tesla's advo-
Thomas Alva Edison. But the two quickly lightning could be heard for miles. cates seemed to try to outdo the master's
parted ways after a dispute over an invention. According to Charles Wright, a retired en- knack for hyperbole as they conjured visions
Going into business for himself, Tesla gineer formerly with the Public Service of death rays and futuristic weapons. In a
soon developed the basis for the alternating - Company of Colorado, the laboratory was paper entitled "Star Wars Now!" Thomas E.
current system in worldwide use today. He filled with a host of inventions including Bearden, a retired nuclear engineer and Ar-
realized that direct current can be transport- high -voltage transformers, dynamos, coils, my war games analyst, noted what he said
ed over wires for only a few miles, whereas capacitor -discharge devices, oil -insulated were a number of designs for making wea-
high -voltage alternating current can go on capacitors and a large metered control panel. pons based on Tesla's more exotic ideas.
almost forever without sustaining great In Colorado Tesla hit upon what he The hypothetical devices included what he
losses of power. To make the new system thought was a revolutionary way to send termed a Tesla howitzer and a Tesla shield
practical, he invented and patented a variety electricity through the air. "Not only was it that could allegedly stop Soviet missiles.
of alternating -current generators, trans- practicable to send telegraphic messages to
formers and motors. any distance without wires," he wrote of the Proposed Death Rays
Edison backed direct current as the perfect insight, "but also to impress upon the entire Tesla suggested in 1940 that the United
electrical source of the future, and the two globe the faint modulations of the human States military could build a system of death
men fought a heated battle over the best sys-
tem. It went down in science history as the
"war of the currents" -a contest Tesla won.
Conceived Futuristic Devices
So much for Tesla's conventional history.
The Centennial Committee says he went on SUBSCRIBER SERVICE
to do much more than just spark the age of
electricity-envisioning and inventing a CHANGE OF
dazzling array of futuristic devices. ADDRESS
"All the literature says Marconi invented Planning to move? Please let us
ATTACH LABEL HERE
the radio," Mr. Grotz said in an interview. know six weeks in advance so
"But long before Marconi had a patent, Tes- you won't miss a single issue of
la was demonstrating a radio -controlled POPULAR COMMUNICATIONS
model boat and talking about transmitting Attach old label and print new
electrical power across the Atlantic. Com- address in space provided. Also NEW ADDRESS HERE PLEASE PRINT
pare that to Marconi's S-O -S." include your mailing label
Indeed, in 1943 the Justices of the Su- whenever you write concerning
your subscription to insure
preme Court of the United States over- prompt service on your inquiry.
NAME
turned Marconi's patent because they found ADDRESS
it had been preceded by Tesla's practical POPULAR COMMUNICATIONS CITY
achievements in radio transmission. -STATE__
76 N. Broadway,
Another example is radar, which employs Hicksville, NY 11801 DATF ZIP
short wavelength radio signals that can be re-
flected back from solid objects. As early as
1900, members of the centennial committee
note, Tesla suggested that these wavelengths
could be used for locating ships at sea.

THE MONITORING MAGAZINE April 1985 / POPULAR COMMUNICATIONS / 33

 Receiving Antennas rays that would melt enemy airplanes at a
distance of 250 miles. The War Department
looked into the idea and said politely, no
Butternut Introduces thanks.
"With Tesla you're always going to get the
SC -3000 fringe," said Robert K. Golka, a physicist
who spoke at the symposium. "It's hard to
A Scanner Antenna tell what is real and what is not. Tesla will al-
for the "Pros"! ways attract guys with ideas about perpetual
motion."
Butternut's patented "trombone®" phasing sections increase
Indeed, Tesla himself was something of a
capture area and let you pull in the weak signals that aren't
character, according to Margaret Cheney,
even there on conventional scanner antennas.
whose book, "Tesla, Man Out of Time," de-
tails some of the eccentricities. At the height
Covers 30-512 MHz scanner ranges
Omnidirectional coverage area of his fame, while eating dinner in the Palm
Receive gain Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he
UHF Up to7dB would polish the already sparkling silver and
VHF Up to3dB crystal using exactly 18 napkins. He had a
Low Band -Unity gain
Height 11 ft. phobia about germs and a love of numbers
divisible by three.
For the SWL .. . The New York Times reported in a front-
page article in 1915 that Tesla was to share
- o that year's Nobel Prize in physics with Edi-
son. But he never got the award. One biog-
rapher said that Tesla had refused to share it
Tune in the weak ones. Butternut's exclusive inductive stub -tuned dipole with his old rival. Another version has it that
requires no heavy lossy traps. Specifically engineered for maximum signal to Tesla rejected the prize because it had been
noise on the popular 13, 16, 19, 25, 31 and 49 meter foreign broadcast bands. given in 1909 to Marconi.
Covers 2-30 MHz. Includes 50 ft. of feedline. After the death of his mother, Tesla be-
Maximum overall length 73 ft. came increasingly eccentric and withdrawn.
He vigorously disagreed with theories put for-
Dealer inquiries invited
ward by great scientists of his day including

4.2\ BUTTERNUT ELECTRONICS CO.

James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. He
never married. Nearly every day he would go
to Bryant Park behind the New York Public
Library and feed his friends, the pigeons.
Please send all reader inquiries directly.
Late in life he announced that he had re-
ceived signals from distant planets, a claim
that was greeted with some skepticism.
THE Attracts Following
Of Fanatics
SHOR1 WAVE PROPAGATION Waldemar B. Kaempffert, a science edi-
HANDBOOK Second Edition tor of The New York Times in the first half of
the century, once described Tesla as "an in-
The all new revised 2nd edition of The Shortwave Propagation Handbook is here. tellectual boa constrictor" and a "medieval
Authors W3ASK and N4XX explore the whys and wherefores of how radio signals practitioner of black arts."
between 3 and 300 MHz travel over long distances under the influence of sunspots, Tesla's closest living relative, Mr. Terbo,
the ionosphere, meteor trails, auroral ionization, sporadic -E, scatter phenomena,
says that four basic types of people are attract-
and other factors. Through fascinating text, amply supplemented by many charts,
photos, and illustrations, you find out how to predict and use to your communica- ed to Tesla-serious scientists, Yugoslays
tions advantage the various types of skip openings-whether you're using a scan- proud of his achievements, pseudoscientists
ner to monitor the low or high VHF bands, an HF communications receiver or trans- who pursue some of his wackier ideas and cult-
ceiver to pinpoint that hard -to -hear station, or are a 27 MHz operator or an Amateur ists who worship him as an extra -terrestrial.
operator looking for that rare country-the information in this book will tell you "There are religious fanatics in Pasadena
what you need to know so that you can take the fullest advantage of your communi- who say he came down on a space ship from
cations facilities. Venus," said Dr. Terbo, adding, "It's no
The all new 2nd edition of The Shortwave Propagation Handbook is only $8.95, small group."
postpaid (sent by Book Rate Mail-allow time for delivery). Order now. Although Tesla is only belatedly being rec-
ognized for the wide-ranging brilliance of his
Popular Communications achievements, one testimonial to his genius
76 N. Broadway, Hicksville, NY 11801
did come in 1917 from B.A. Behrend, an en-
Please rush me my copy of the 2nd Edition of The Shortwave Propagation gineer who had an inkling of the mark Tesla
Handbook: would make on Western civilization.
0 $8.95 for the book plus $2 for shipping & handling. "Were we to eliminate from our industrial
world the results of his work," he told a ban-
Name
quet in Tesla's honor, "the wheels of indus-
Address try would cease to turn, our electric cars and
City State Zip trains would stop, our towns would be dark,
our mills would be dead and idle. His name
Mastercard O VISA marks an epoch in the advance of electrical
My account number is.
science. From his work has sprung a revolu-
tion." PC

34 / POPULAR COMMUNICATIONS / April 1985 THE MONITORING MAGAZINE