Re: Flat coils & undamped waves (was Wire Length)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Gary Peterson" <g.peterson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

In regards to the production of isochronous oscillations, Tesla said this:

    I want to say now why these machines were the means of obtaining 
the best results in my wireless work.  The machine at the Houston 
Street laboratory with which I could obtain any difference of phase, 
as well as that machine at 35 South Fifth Avenue, were the means of 
running a motor in perfect isochronism.  That is, if I connected a 
synchronous motor to these machines and drove it with currents of 
different phase, I obtained an absolutely uniform rotation -- 
constant in time -- and when I coupled this motor directly to an 
alternator, I obtained from the latter currents of absolutely 
constant frequency, all the more readily as I tuned the circuit of 
the alternator to the same frequency.

    These machines I have described in a general way only.  The work 
has covered years, and it would take a long time to explain all about 
them. They enabled me to operate in whatever I did with currents of 
constant frequency, and the small alternators in my experiments were 
driven in this way.  While this work was going on, I was perfecting 
various other ways of generating electric oscillations of absolutely 
constant frequency which were then not producible in the art. [NIKOLA 
TESLA ON HIS WORK WITH ALTERNATING CURRENTS AND THEIR APPLICATION TO 
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, TELEPHONY, AND TRANSMISSION OF POWER : AN 
EXTENDED INTERVIEW, Leland I. Anderson, editor, Twenty First Century 
Books, 2002, Tesla Presents Series Part 1, pp. 46-47; 
http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/nt_on_ac.htm .

> . . . The most pathetic single part is the inventory of Wardenclyffe 
> which includes "one submarine boat".  He was a very proud man so how 
> it must have hurt him to see that taken by the foreclosure!!!!!!!!!! . . .
>
> Ed

The oral history of the Wardenclyffe wireless plant includes an 
account of this remote control boat having been carried up to Long 
Island Sound by some kids where it was placed in the water and 
sunk!  As for the idea that Tesla was being deliberately obtuse when 
he gave the 1916 interview, I don't buy into that for a moment.

Gary

P.S. I want to appologize for getting snippy towards you in my pervious post.

> Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> > Nevertheless, deliberate augmentation of the resonator's internal 
> > capacity as a substitute for what might be called the 'external 
> > capacity' formed by the elevated terminal and its distant 
> > counterparts would be self defeating.  To assert that this was 
> > Tesla's true intention is quite ridiculous.
> >
> > Gary Peterson"
>
>    I don't know whether this was his intent or not - just quoting 
> his patent verbatim.  Since this was written a long time before his 
> later statement I don't think there's any way to know what his real 
> knowledge was at that time or how much he knew about the losses 
> involved.  For the record, I suspect he never employed this idea 
> but simply applied for a patent when the thought struck him - 
> that's certainly the case with a number of his other 
> patents.   Patents for patents sake?
>
>     I've just reread Leland Andersen's book on Tesla's later 
> testimony and end up with the same impression as the first time I 
> read it a number of years ago.  It's really a tragic story about 
> realization of opportunity lost and what "might have been".  It 
> seems to me in large part to be a lament about how others have been 
> successful using "my ideas" and "my schemes".  Lots of personal 
> pronouns there and denunciations of successful people.  As for the 
> accuracy of his claims the only real evidence is in the fascinating 
> photographs of stuff like his tuned wire receiver, his patents and 
> his descriptions of some of his work are so vague as to be 
> disconcerting.  "If only" he had published more and made more 
> public demonstrations.   Clearly his priorities were elsewhere.  I 
> was again struck by his extreme vagueness about the actual 
> frequencies used in many of the experiments (certainly not all) and 
> find it hard to believe that he could have forgotten that much in 
> the intervening years.  The most pathetic single part is the 
> inventory of Wardenclyffe which includes "one submarine boat".  He 
> was a very proud man so how it must have hurt him to see that taken 
> by the foreclosure!!!!!!!!!!
>
>    There are several points raised in it which I'll detail in a 
> later note as I'm interested in seeing how the rest of you feel about them.
>
> Ed