Re: Tesla Coil RF Transmitter

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Davetracer@xxxxxxx 

In a message dated 10/12/2005 4:23:37 PM Mountain Daylight Time, 
tesla@xxxxxxxxxx writes:

I see a ton of wishful thinking and *no* hard data to back it up. In
realtiy, Tesla had no idea how conductive (lossy) the ionized
rarified air was as a conductor. There is no mention of how the "ray"
was to be generated. In short he is rhapsodizing about what at that
time was effectively science fiction. I find his real inventions much
more appealing. We would literally be living a century ago without
them.

Malcolm

    Malcolm, I suspect this is close to one of those "religious" 
style disputes, see also "What Computer Language is Best?" and "What 
Computer Model Doesn't Suck The Most", and, of course, "Linux versus 
Everything".

    I have an intuitive feeling that Tesla will have the last laugh 
on a lot of things. It tells me a lot that he succeeded in his 
wishful thinking of a spinning magnetic field (truly a tasty hack!), 
alternators, 3-phase, transformers (certainly more than meets the 
eye). Since he had the ability to visualize so strongly that he could 
"see" things (he was annoyed that they blocked his vision) we truly 
don't know -what- he was seeing; we can only give our best guess. And 
we have to rely on Tesla describing what he saw, and I've read a lot 
of Tesla, and just maybe, he's one of those people where you ask them 
what time it is, and they tell you how to build a watch ...

    However, I must point to the following paragraphs in your note:

>     "The advance of science to this point, however, is attended with
> terrible risks for the world.  We are facing a condition that is
> positively appalling if we ever permit warfare to invade the earth
> again.  For up to the present war the main destructive force was
> provided by guns which are limited by the size of the projectile and
> the distance it can be thrown.

         In the future nations will fight each
> other thousands of miles apart.  No soldier will see his enemy.  In
> fact future war will not be conducted by men directly but by the
> forces which if let loose may well destroy civilization completely.

        > If war comes again, I look for the extensive use of 
self-propelled air
> vehicles carrying enormous charges of explosive which will be sent
> from any point to another to do their destructive work, with no human
> being aboard to guide them.  The distance to which they can be sent is
> practically unlimited and the amount of explosive they can carry is
> likewise practically unlimited.  It is practicable to send such an air
> vessel say to a distance of four or five thousand miles and so control
> its course either gyroscopically or electrically that it will land at
> the exact spot where it is intended to have it land, within a few
> feet, and its cargo of explosive can there be detonated.
>
>     "This cannot be done by means of the present wireless plants, but
> with a proper plant it can be done. and we have here the appalling
> prospect of a war between nations at a distance of thousands of miles,
> with weapons so destructive and demoralizing that the world could not
> endure them.  That is why there must be no more war."
    Of course this is a pretty good description of mechanized modern 
warfare with standoff weapons, and thermonuclear warfare by ICBM.

    Tesla had the dubious distinction of being wrong in the short 
run -- World War I
introduced ghastly chemical weapons -- and right in the long run.

    Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer insisted it would take a whole 
new jump in thinking to deal with atomic weapons.

    Now I know we're drifting off-list, but my opinion, for whatever 
it's worth (2 cents?) is that Tesla nailed some things about the 
future pretty well, as you've shown. Certainly he did better than 
some of his contempories, like Madam Blavatsky, and he sure did 
better than the guy who insisted that all major scientific 
discoveries had been made and it was just cleanup from there on in. 
(I believe that was Lord Kevlin in about 1895 but am not sure, I just 
remember the gist of the quote).

    Just as Max Planck was hesitantly, and with a real sense of 
horror, thinking up the word "quanta" and the concept of discrete 
packets of energy ...

    Anyways, please don't take me too seriously --

    -- grins,

    David