Nikola Tesla was a well known inventor and a genius in physics and electricity, he was a mechanical engineer and a futurist too. With over 300 patent, Nikola Tesla created many inventions we use in our everyday life. He worked on the alternating current (AC), he made the fluorescent light bulb and created the remote control the radio and many other important inventions. But he has a goal that would change the world in a way no one did before.
Nikola Tesla, wanted to lit up the whole world with free energy , but think what , he wanted to do it wirelessly !
The 21st century is mainly build on electricity , so what would happen if the energy left on earth will fade in the next decades ? Nikola Tesla wanted to provide free energy to the earth in completely new way, sending electricity wirelessly.
Back in the 19th century , Tesla said that electricity could be generated using the natural resources given by the earth, he said that we can get energy from the sun the wind the sea etc. Tesla wanted to harness the energy of the planet to provide it to the whole population for free. Tesla had already demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers , how power can be transferred wirelessly, when he lit up 2 light bulbs without wires.
Illustration showing Tesla's demonstration of wireless electricity at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers
In 1901 the Tesla Tower (or the Wardenclyffe tower) construction begun in New York, the tower was 57 meter tall , and on its top there was a dome that weights 55 ton of conductive metal, and finally a solid iron penetrated more than 90 meter in the earth core. Using this tower , Tesla would be able to harness the energy from the earth crust and transmit it to its atmosphere. Tesla wanted to build a global network formed by these towers, so the power formed by this system could be sent to buildings, homes, everything that need electricity in order to work, on land or in the sea.
1904 image of Wardenclyffe Tower located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York
In 1908 Tesla described his tower for the Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony magazine:
“As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.”
Does wireless electricity harm people ?
Tesla cared very much on people safety, and he used his inventions for good purposes , he wanted to lit up the world and give energy for people for free. Wireless electricity is completely safe. In 1899 , Nikola Tesla built a 44 meter tall coil, that make 12 million volt of electricity, and he transmitted that energy wirelessly over 40 kilometers to lit up 200 lamps and no one was harmed.
Nikola Tesla in his Niagara Falls lab with his coils, which could discharge millions of volts and send electricity through the air
Why don't we use Tesla Towers for electricity in the 21th century ?
Tesla wasn't a millionaire despite that he have over 300 patent but lot of his patent were stolen, like the radio who he created but wasn't credited for it's invention. So in order to build the Tesla Tower, JP Morgan gave Tesla 150 000% and he get 51% of the patent in return. In 1905 Morgan withdraw his support and the tower building was abandoned. Why would Morgan go back on such a technological breakthrough ? By that time Morgan had become one of the most powerful man on earth, he had a net worth equivalent to $68 millions , from controlling the US electrical and railroad industries. While the Tesla Wireless Power could be a threat to Morgan industry, Fossil Fuels. With wireless towers built all over the world that collect energy from the earth, Morgan wouldn't be a millionaire. A couple of years later the Tesla Tower was demolished !
Illustration of the Tesla Tower at work
Tesla said :
“It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! […] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer’s keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”
Want to know more about Nikola Tesla ? The Man Who Predicted The Future . Nikola Tesla !