Re: Tesla's orphans

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

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

His statements about the conducting layer (not the ionospheric) height
are most puzzling for someone who knew quite a bit about the breakdown
voltage of gasses at low pressure.  He asserts many times that this is a
CONDUCTIVE system.  He seems to have had no comprehension of what the AC
characteristics of his proposed "transmission line" would have been,
again most puzzling for someone who understood the transmission of three
phase power so well.

"5) Tesla was too good at his job to have made such errors of several
orders
of magnitude."

	I think he was more nearly off by ten or 12 order of magnitude.  I've
tried designing "his system" by calculating the properties of the
"conducting layer", including its capacitance to the surface.  If his
scheme were to be as lossless as he said that layer would have been very
highly conducting, meaning that at the feed point you'd see the
capacitance of the circuit composed of the entire surface of the earth
and of the layer.  Try it and then calculate the current needed to
sustain a voltage of "100 million volts" at any frequency you select.

	Tesla knew Ohm's law quite well, as evidenced by his calculations in
CSN.  Makes the above even more astounding as it was almost
contemporary.  Note again that he claimed normal electric circuit laws
to explain the workings of his system, but that those same laws show
conclusively that it couldn't work.  Something wrong here!

	Anyone challenging my conclusions is invited to make the same
calculations as I did and to publish the results here.

Ed

"Hi John, All,

Unfortunately, the assertion that Tesla's propagation system was using
the
ionosphere is reading later developments back into history and ignoring
certain physical facts:

1) An ionosphere was first theorized in 1902 but its existence was not
even
established until AFTER his energy transmission patents and the
dismantling
of Wardenclyffe tower.
2) Tesla's "conductive layer" of the atmosphere was asserted by him to
be
at an altitude of 8 to 15 miles. The LOWEST part of the ionosphere
starts
at about 50 miles and continues up to ~240 miles.
3) The MAXIMUM air pressure in the ionosphere is only 1/100th of what
Tesla
asserted in his patents was necessary and desirable for his transmission
of
energy.
4) Lightning does NOT originate in the ionosphere, but in the much lower
area that Tesla referred to. i.e. the upper Troposphere.
5) Tesla was too good at his job to have made such errors of several
orders
of magnitude.

Conclusion: Tesla was talking about Tropospheric, NOT Ionospheric
transmission. It is easy to imagine and propagate assertions of all
sorts
of things if one overlooks the numbers, or is ignorant of them. This is
what makes it one of the very wide spread myths of "Teslaism".

Matt D.."