Re: C of Earth...

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

Hi Terry, Jim, All! 

        One of the frequent problems encountered when trying to evaluate 
historical events is the tendency to project our own age's knowledge and 
understanding back onto an historical era. For example, since Wardenclyffe 
was dismantled in 1917, it could not have been built to utilize any 
characteristics of the earth or the atmosphere that were unknown prior to 
1917. 
        Oliver Heaviside and Arthur E Kennelly independently predicted the 
existence of an electrically charged portion of the atmosphere in 1902. 
However, it was not until 1924 that its existence was detected by Edward V. 
Appleton. The term "ionosphere" was applied to the Kennelly-Heaviside layer 
even later. It seems unlikely therefore, that Tesla was referring to the 
ionosphere as we now know it, in his experiments either in Colorado Springs 
or in the construction of Wardenclyffe. I suspect that he was referring to 
that layer of the atmosphere in which thunderstorms originate. This is, of 
course, unless one wants to credit Tesla with being the "true" discoverer of 
every mathematical and scientific principle of the 19th and 20th centuries, 
pre-empting everyone from Hertz and Heisenberg to Einstein and Oppenheimer. 

Matt D. 
In a message dated 5/7/01 3:15:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes: 




>
> Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net> 
>
> Hi Jim and All, 
>
> Seeing How Tesla was sort of desperate to get the energy transmission thing 
> to work, I have been thinking of ways to help out ;-)) 
>
> Assuming unlimited money and the use of modern materials and going off the 
> real basis for Tesla's power transmission idea: 
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/OtherPapers/TeslaPatents/us000645576.pdf 
>
> I was wondering what it would take to get the darn thing working...   
>
> If I have a transmitting and receiving station 100 miles apart, a 6 meter 
> wide copper sheet stretched between the two stations to solve the ground 
> problem (hey, I can cheat a little ;-)), two big 100 foot diameter 
> metalized balloons reaching to the ionosphere and electrically tethered 
> back to the stations...  There is a fundamental problem.  What is the 
> conductivity of the ionosphere between the two balloons for the stations. 
> One could probably get say 20 MV up there but if the ionosphere is not 
> going to conduct well the losses are going to kill it despite whatever else 
> one does.  I assume lightning and other obvious problems are not worth 
> worrying with until this fundamental problem is analyzed.   
>
> I found a chart at: 
>
> http://jupiter.agu-dot-org/epubs/jgr_space/ja9905/1999JA900056/f04.html 
>
> Which implies that the conductivity of the ionosphere is fairly good for a 
> very high voltage low current system.  However it does not give the units 
> well unless it is saying 100 ohm/m^3 as a volume resistivity???  This is a 
> pretty important number to know to within a few orders of magnitude.  If 
> the resistance is too high, we are just going to make pretty lights in the 
> sky. 
>
> I can just see the thing making on ionized path between the two stations as 
> in the picture at: 
>
> http://www.oma.be/BIRA-IASB/Scientific/Topics/SpacePhysics/Aurora.html 
>
> Although pretty, this would just be a waste of power for our system and 
> would irritate the locals under it. 
>
> If the resistance is not too high and the electrical path does not ionize 
> too wastefully, then one could start worrying about "tuning" something with 
> a 100 mile streamer running a city at the other end.  But Bill's friends 
> are working that out...  Possibly, a far more difficult hurdle to 
> overcome...  Of course, DC may work fine too but that would sort of spoil 
> the whole idea. 
>
> I note that Tesla's Colorado Springs system did not seem terribly efficient 
> but maybe it just needs a little fixing: 
>
> http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/bulbs.jpg 
>
> 200 watts of bulbs at 100 feet from a 30kW transmitter with 2500 square 
> feet of receiving antenna is obviously not going to sell :-))  Probably a 
> bad example... 
>
> I don't mean to prolong this thread that always seems to go on too long, 
> but maybe we can find a way for it to at least sort of work a little even 
> though it is not practical to do.  That would help Tesla's memory out if at 
> least there were a reasonable way the system "could" have worked a little 
> bit.  Then we could say it is too expensive and "messy" instead of it is 
> impossible. 
>
> Cheers, 
>
>    Terry 
>
>
>