Re: Stone Stone

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

Original poster: "Gary Peterson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <glpeterson-at-tfcbooks-dot-com>

> I don't know more about Mr. Stone, but recognize that he had
> the right idea about how to use a Tesla coil as transmitter.

Of course Tesla knew full well how to use his electrical oscillator as a
transmitter as well, and many in the field were learning from him.

In a 1915 tribute to Tesla, John Stone Stone wrote:

    "Marconi, receiving his inspiration from the experiments of Hertz and
Righi in electrical radiation and therefore impressed with the electric
radiation aspect of the subject, regarded his transmitter entirely from the
standpoint of a radiator of electromagnetic waves and it was a long time
before he seemed to appreciate the real role of the earth in the operation
of his system, though he early recognized that the connection of his
oscillator to the earth was very material value.  Tesla, on the other hand,
approaching the subject of wireless telegraphy from a standpoint of his own
powerful high frequency current experiments and their ability to transfer
large amounts of energy in open circuits, regarded his transmitter from the
point of view of a generator of high frequency currents and potential waves
in the earth.  Both were justifiable explanations of the same phenomena
taking place in the Tesla and Marconi transmitters and of the two points of
view, Tesla's electric earth waves explanation was the more serviceable in
that it explained the important and useful function of the earth, whereby
the waves were enabled to travel over and around hills and were not
obstructed by the sphericity of the earth's surface, while Marconi's view
led many to place an altogether too limited scope to the possible range of
transmission by the system of grounded, vertical antennae.

    "I refer to an article by Tesla in The Century Magazine in its issue of
June 1900, pages 175-211, and particularly to that section entitled
"Wireless Telegraphy--The Secret of Tuning--Errors in Hertzian
Investigations--A Receiver of Wonderful Sensitiveness."  Here as elsewhere,
Tesla takes a fling at those who attribute the transfer of the energy of
these high frequency currents to a distance as a process of radiation.  In
this he was more than half right, and whatever error be made in this
connection was a failure to recognize that electromagnetic waves guided by
the earth's surface, and therefore accompanied by currents in that surface,
are in a sense still radiation, and that the two explanations of the
phenomena are supplemental of one another and a comprehensive explanation of
the phenomenon includes both the conception of the gliding electromagnetic
waves and the currents in the earth's surface.  I misunderstood Tesla.  I
think we all misunderstood Tesla.  We thought he was a dreamer and
visionary.  He did dream and his dreams came true, he did have visions but
they were of a real future, not an imaginary one. Tesla was the first man to
lift his eyes high enough to see that the rarified stratum of atmosphere
above our earth was destined to play an important role in the radio
telegraphy of the future, a fact which had to obtrude itself on the
attention of most of us before we saw it.  But Tesla also perceived what
many of us did not in those days, namely, the currents which flowed way from
the base of the antenna over the surface of the earth and in the earth
itself.

Appreciation

    "Tesla, with his almost preternatural insight into alternating current
phenomenon that had enabled him some years before to revolutionize the art
of electric power transmission through the invention of the rotary field
motor, knew how to make resonance serve, not merely the role of a microscope
to make visible the electric oscillations, as Hertz had done, but he made it
serve the role of a stereoptician to render spectacular to large audiences
the phenomena of electric oscillations and high frequency currents.  It is
worthy of note that in all these experiments he used frequencies from 10,000
to a few hundred thousand. He did more to excite interest and create an
intelligent understanding of these phenomena in the years 1891-1893 than
anyone else, and the more we learn about high frequency phenomena,
resonance, and radiation today, the nearer we find ourselves approaching
what we at one time were inclined, through a species of intellectual myopia,
to regard as the fascinating but fantastical speculations of a man whom we
are now compelled, in the light of modern experience and knowledge, to admit
was a prophet.  But Tesla was no mere lecturer and prophet.  He saw to the
fulfillment of his prophesies and it has been difficult to make any but
unimportant improvements in the art of radio-telegraphy without traveling
part of the way at least, along a trail blazed by this pioneer who, though
eminently ingenious, practical, and successful in the apparatus he devised
and constructed, was so far ahead of his time that the best of us then
mistook him for a dreamer."

    "I never came anywhere near having an appreciation of what Mr. Tesla had
done in this art until a very late date, in fact, until I commenced this
study of the art."

The complete text of Stone's tribute to Tesla is contained in the monograph
JOHN STONE STONE ON NIKOLA TESLA'S PRIORITY IN RADIO AND CONTINUOUS-WAVE
RADIOFREQUENCY APPARATUS, available through my Tesla website at
www.tfcbooks/mall/more/436ntpr.htm.

Gary Peterson
Twenty First Century Books
www.tfcbooks-dot-com