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Could Tesla's Broadcast Power System Work? 57

Posted by Cliff from the relevant-ideas-from-one-of-science's-greatest dept.
Pinball Wizard asks: "I ran into a nice Web site while doing some research on the life of Nikola Tesla. Turns out PBS is doing a special on him, beginning Dec. 12. In case you're not familiar with the man, he invented alternating current and radio, as well as the basic concepts behind all of our wireless control and communication. Besides alerting the Slashdot population to the documentary, I thought I'd pose a question to the EE's in the crowd. Tesla was a bit of a rebel, and many of his inventions never came to light because they conflicted with the interests of corporations or wealthy people with more influence. The most interesting of these to me is the transmission of electricity through the upper atmosphere. Obviously that would make electricity much harder to meter and control by monopolistic interests. Was his idea feasible? After reading about Tesla, I seriously wonder how much we screwed ourselves by following the interests of money, rather than listening to this scientific giant."
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Would Tesla's Broadcasting Power System Work? More

Would Tesla's Broadcasting Power System Work?

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  • Tau:
    [previous poster]She advocated the right to be paid a fair amount for one's efforts...[/previous poster]

    Show me where this is stated, either in one of her treatises or in one of her fictional works. Go ahead, I'll wait.

    I'll bet you won't be able to find this in as many words, because the concept of "a fair amount" is foreign to the philosophy.

    I only read Atlas Shrugged and a few interviews, etc. I think she was deeply interested in fairness, but not in the right to be paid fairly for work, as you also say. The fairness she sought was the right to be allowed to seek a market price for one's productiveness. One would be free under this definition to produce works with no market value.

    It should also be noted that she felt that art that had social value would, in an objectivist society, command appropriate market prices. People writing good books would find a ready market for them in an objectivist society. If an artist is not able to support himself in an objectivist society by selling his art, it is an indictment of the poor value of his work, and therefore he doesn't deserve to get paid for it.

    Does this sound right?
  • What does that article about Oracle have to do with utility companies???
    --
  • Yep - and in Sim City 2000 you could build an orbitting solar central/microwave receiver as a power plant. The trick was that sometimes the microwave ray would get out of its path and set fire to buildings nearby the receiver :)
  • Let me just make sure I have this correct:

    If electricity were freely available to the masses, that would impose the semiotics of a posttextual paradigm, which would lead to the destruction of our society.

    OK, first of all, why does this make sense to anyone? Is it me? Am I just dumb, or is this a little pile of stinking pseudointellectual mumbo-jumbo bullshit? I'm not seeing one coherent thought in that paragraph. Maybe I need more context or something, but I suspect the rest of Hankopf's writing amounts to little more than a reading comprehension test for undergrads. Use enough big words, make the barrier to entry just high enough, and you too can make the most thoroughly stupid idea worthy of serious undergraduate consideration.

    What are the semiotics of a posttextual paradigm, and why are they sad?
  • Transmission of electricity via Airborne arc's would probably not work well for three reasons...

    First, Transmitting electricity would produce such large amounts of RFI that it would likely impair communications and general electronics failures within a huge radius of any electrical transmission burst.

    Second, transmitting electrical current through the air would be incredibly difficult to steer. Buildings such as high rises would act as antena's and would at the very least effect the direction of a transmission.

    Third, there is no way to exactly predict the environmental ramifications of electrical transmissions. Would it lead to more destruction of the Ozone or other levels of the stratosphere?

    Just my 2 cents...
  • When oxegen undergoes ionization it can recombine into ozone, which thoretically could replenish the ozone layer - I wouldn't bet on it though.
  • I cannot offhand think of anything she wrote which would contradict that seriously. Then again, it's been years since I studied with Randroids. I'll have to settle for not disagreeing with you (and mention that my memory agrees pretty much with your statements).
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  • She advocated the right to be paid a fair amount for one's efforts...
    Show me where this is stated, either in one of her treatises or in one of her fictional works. Go ahead, I'll wait.

    I'll bet you won't be able to find this in as many words, because the concept of "a fair amount" is foreign to the philosophy. Consider the example of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. He did an enormous amount of work on a housing project for nothing, because it was an interesting problem and he wanted the satisfaction of seeing it done. In other words, he did it as art. Consider John Galt, who didn't demand anything other than the value of his work considered as a market good (and refused to put his work on the un-free market when he was subject to arbitrary and capricious re-valuation of his labor). What's "fair"? Unless you define fair as what you get when free bidders and free sellers agree to exchange money, I don't think that you can find anything in Rand to support your assertion. Furthermore, given the loaded meanings given to "fairness" these days (like "a living wage" for completely unskilled work performed by an indifferent worker) and the incompatibility of these meanings with Rand's philosophy, you should probably not be using that word at all. (In other words, it's not efficacious.)
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  • Rand didn't advocate the profit motive as some sort of God, not one of her works says anything to that effect. You're falling for the crap college Objectivist clubs try to justify by Raqnd's text much like the way Nietzche's works are used to justify intolerance again falsely.

    She advocated the right to be paid a fair amount for one's efforts, the right to research (reverse engineer, experiment, reimplement), the right to respect and value anyone you choose including yourself over others.

    Using Rand to justify monopolies is dishonest.

    By the above argument no one should be allowed to sell anything independently because it would hinder the progress of a related culture.

    The only argument I will buy is that a continually visible interest in a market from a corporation that can manage is more likely to produce than hoping that random individuals are going to be interested in your mony and your needs when you need them.

    On the other hand if people make their own it all breaks down to doing it yourself. So even that argument makes no sense.

    Take a look at the net. Where would it be without view-source?
  • Big Gorilla make noise about bigger Gorilla. Fewer Gorillas less noise. Less noise society better.

    What a crock.
  • Unless you define fair as what you get when free bidders and free sellers agree to exchange money

    Couldn't have said it better myself. Speaking on unfree markets, ever wonder why successful companies like Bose don't IPO? Because that way they get to set the price of their stock. Frankly the public stock stock market exemplifies everything that's wrong with collectivist ideals.

    1. Someone else decides your worth to the point where you are not allowed to claim more than what the majority tells you are worth.

    2. The collective owners (shareholders) get away with murder with hardly any liability whatsoevere. They are allowed to sue the bloody fuck out of you for not patenting something that you know to be unpatentable by moral standards.
  • We're not living in an objectivist society and art that is of value has not commanded appropriate market prices. Sounds like a proof of Rand to me.
  • We're not living in an objectivist society. Are you going to tell me Rupert Murdoch, AOL, and Time Warner and their censorship policies represent such a society? Art in our society is constantly disparaged and trampled upon. Rand wins this argument.
  • move along nothing to see here.
  • I'm not sure she was shooting for the Nabokov award. I look at her books as simply a record of the kind of shit you can expect from society.

    I agree so far as saying some of her works read like a police blotter of mind games and psychological warfare people play. Not too entertaining but still important works.
  • True Edison did slander Tesla, but Tesla's college Electrical Engineering professor told him that an AC motor was an impossiblity.
    Secondly there were scientists who didn't think the world was round, quite alot of them the fact that there were those you believed otherwise serves to prove my point, not yours.
    Thirdly the same applies. You've named three scientists who would have believed in flight, contrast that to the number who didn't.
    Fourthly, is that supposed to be sarcasm? I certainly hope not, Einstein theory of relativity flew in the face of not only then then accepted theory of aether, but indeed in the face of newtonian physics themsevles. Einstein hardly thought "in the box".

  • When Tesla was doing his thing, there were no high tension lines. Long term health and environmental effects had yet to be imagined.
  • "Microwaves. It's well known and it's not safe. (Marconi fried himself slowly to death this way). "

    No, you`re confusing him with Macaroni.
  • How do you think the ozone got there in the first place? Ozone is an unstable configuration of oxygen; it doesn't last forever and must be continually replenished! Ozone in the atmosphere is made by the impingement of ultraviolet light on normal O2 in the atmosphere. The O2 molecule absorbs the UV energy and breaks int 2O. These 2O combine with nearby O2 to make O3 (ozone). It's a naturally-occuring phenomena.

    3O2 + 1uv ---> 2O3

    The ionization that you mention already happens daily! It's just done by light rather than by a strong E field.

  • not a bad discussion for not reaching the front page of /.

    Apparently, wireless transmission of energy falls under Tesla's 'crackpot' ideas - I probably would have refined my original question to 'what is the future of electricity' or something to that effect had I realized that from the start. I think we can agree that we have to replace burning coal with something more efficient and less polluting(right?) And I still think monopolistic control of the power supply is a Bad Thing. It would be great if our electrical system worked more like the internet.

    Obviously I have more in common with Tesla's 'dreamer' side than with his 'electrical engineer' side. :)

    I watch the sea.
    I saw it on TV.

  • it seems to me that, plausible or not, this idea may have worked in tesla's time, but not now. today we have many bands of communication freq's out there, and it seems to me (while i am no great educated source on this, mod. accordingly) that broadcasting electricty wirelessly would cause several probelems with cell phones, radios, wireless lan's, you name it. one gets signal interference merely by running an unshielded cable parallel to an a/c cable. of course, that's induction, and i don't know if it applies, but another interesting concept would be it's effects on ic's and the like, wouldn't this be close to an emp of sorts?
  • Hey, You know how he did it? Microwaves. It's well known and it's not safe. (Marconi fried himself slowly to death this way). There was a modern power solution to collect solar energy via satellite and beam it to earth with a narrow microwave beam that everybody could avoid. This would only work with some new kind of microwave laser technology, other wise you couldn't get it narrow enough.
  • the 1800's were NOT a time when people thought about potential environmental effects PERIOD. This was killed because there was no viable business model to control it. Do some reading on him, while a genius, a genius in the financial realm he was not. A shame too because he could have changed the world even more.
  • New microwave laser? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your comment, but if memory serves correctly, the MASER (microwave version) preceeded the LASER by a couple years.
  • I don't think it was strictly political or financial forces that kept widespread deployment of this technology. One of the other issues that may have arisen is that the long-term health and environmental effects of transmitting electricity in this fashion were and still are unknown. I know a lot of people don't like to build schools near high tension power lines because of the unknown effects (I lived under high tension power lines as a kid, and it didn't seem to affect me)
  • Tesla's energy transfer experiments were awesome in their day, but many of his AC experiments -- especially applied to the ether -- would knock our modern world on its ass.

    Many of the cool devices in his workshop -- the wool powered Van de Graff treadmills to the spark gap wireless sets, on to the three-story 'God Has Spoken!' plasma lightning generator... would bring the sirens and the suits.

    Unfortunately the very properties that make energy transfer possible make it 'noisy'. With our modern radio receivers and dense modulation techniques, there's little tolerance for folks who like to play with lightning. :)

    The Ether is not very accomodating. Line of sight energy transfer from orbit through a Ghz/Thz beam is an option, but high-current over the horizon or through the earth stuff is too loud, and we've already committed the ether for communication. For example, most of those cold war over-the-horizon radars that used to roll over large portions of the HF band have been retired. Good riddance!

    Our critical use of the spectrum reaches down to the dozens of hertz... Tesla once demonstrated an amazing ELF coupling device that used low frequency high current AC with the earth as the medium, and was able to power a light bulb miles away.

    Try it today and you might disrupt maritime and aviation becons, or more exotic forms of oceanic data transfer... if the spooks lose contact with their subs every time you crank up some Big Science gizmo, you can expect a really warm reception.

    It's true that we are buzzing the world big time at 50 and 60 hertz... but those throbbing fundements and their harmonics are stable, known & notched. representing a good tradeoff for civilization.

    ALso, whales and elephants use the ELF band for long distance communication. Muck with their freqs and they become disoriented and cannot navigate. Even humans have been known to be disrupted low frequency high energy fields... with effects that range from mild discomfort to head banging, hysterical giggling, or dimpled chads.
  • I think something like this needs alot of research done on it...what effects does it have, how can you monitor useage, etc

    But, I'm all for anything that lets me have less wires on my desk/floor/wall/self

  • Anna Hankopf, formerly of the EE department [berkeley.edu] at UC-Berkeley, had an interesting paper about the possible destabilizing effects of limitless mains power without centralized control. One need only look at the mess [infoworld.com] that Oracle is currently making in Mountain View WRT power to see that the utility companies are not as evil as some might have us believe.

    Unfortunately, I can't find a link for Dr. Hankopf's paper, but it primarily focused on the necessity of some centralized control of mains electrical power, if a technological society is to flourish. Hankopf claims that free power is merely

    'mythopoetical libertarianism,' which imposes upon a newly-classless society the semiotics of a sadly posttextual paradigm. But an abundance of narratives concerning the economy, and subsequent stasis, of cultural society may be found. A Marxist approach will destroy the semiotics of a technology culture and, ultimately, cause its collapse.

    There is no need to dissect Hankopf's bias -- as a card-carrying Objectivist, she clearly feels that corporations with a profit motive will provide the best foundation for a modern society. However, she raises some interesting points, especially in light of the Oracle debacle.

  • First, I'm not falling for anything; just quoting.

    What if you misappropriated Nietzsche the way Rand did, using the "transvaluation of all values" to justify a diluted, "I'm OK, you're OK", philosophically tepid world-view? Would that be bad? Really. I wonder how much of her philosophy stemmed from her husband's documented impotence and the "virtuous selfishness" of her stream of young lovers.

    Hankopf's essay relates directly to the problems arising from Oracle being allowed to provide electricity for their HQ and surrounding areas. Basically, she demonstrates that, since Oracle only has a motive to provide QoS for themselves, that they will not be receptive to other consumers' complaints. This places Oracle in a bit of a bind, since PG&E is not interested in providing the level of QoS that Oracle desire.

    So, if Rand really relies on the profit motive, then she's just as full of shit as her followers, since not even Ellison's billions can provide an excuse for PG&E to get their heads out of their bums.

  • I remember hearing something about an experiment where one satelite sent power to another in space. I don't remember who did it, but it was a few years ago... not to much environment to worry about up there. :) Oleg
  • Wow!

    Elaborately constructed, full of fun buzzwords, even a link thrown in for good measure. A 10-pointer! It's not precisely originial but well enough executed to excuse that.

    -- Michael

    Gee, this beats that whole "Stallman" thing (heh, I bet there's *still* folks who believe there's a real "RMS" person!)

  • Er, was that an offer? I'm really not into online cruising but if you send me a pic I'll pass it around & I'll see who might take you up on it...

    (I take it you're a bottom.)

  • Let me guess - missed the med cart this morning?

    > By working at specific frequencies, work cycles and high voltages it might be possible to reduce resistance.

    Yeah, & if I tap my heels together three times...

    Nope, you're still there. Sorry, wishing don't make it so.

    Then we get to:

    > I believe that Tesla, as the brilliant man he was, knew exactly what he was doing with his Wardenclyffe coil. He didn't have the theoretical quantum physics explanation for what he designed, but he had the practical knowledge to make it work.

    >There's a story about Tesla lighting up lightbulbs 100 miles away using such a system. I prefer not to give much credit to this, but I believe Tesla wouldn't fail.

    Riiiigghhttt. Like I said, no carnations in the airport please.

    I'm gonna go doing something constructive now & I think it's time for your basket-weaving class..

  • > Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)

    And based on what do you claim that?

    You're thinking of physics in the conventional way, as did Ampere 200 years ago.

    You disconsider that Tesla was one of the first people to think about subatomic particles and quantum physics as part of a realm where "normal things don't happen very often".

    By working at specific frequencies, work cycles and high voltages it might be possible to reduce resistance.

    I believe that Tesla, as the brilliant man he was, knew exactly what he was doing with his Wardenclyffe coil. He didn't have the theoretical quantum physics explanation for what he designed, but he had the practical knowledge to make it work.

    There's a story about Tesla lighting up lightbulbs 100 miles away using such a system. I prefer not to give much credit to this, but I believe Tesla wouldn't fail.

    > Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law

    Inverse-square-law rule? Once again, Tesla's system doesn't deal with classic physics. And even if it did, this system doesn't have much to do with this law.

    > but almost anything would mess with this & cause it to vary: trees, streams, underground streams, wet/dry soil, weather (do not operate in a shower!) and that's well before we get to things like buildings, walls, metal-objects, etc.

    I believe you may a point when mentioning large metallic structures, because there may be a potential difference from both ends due do improper grounding.

    Trees, streams and the like wouldn't be a problem since all of them are at the same potential.

    > Hazardous local environment. At the energies Tesla was talking every metallic object nearby would be carrying a hefty charge.

    Ground large structures like the Eiffel tower (or better yet, make one of the tesla coils there). You shouldn't have a problem with small metallic structures like satellite dishes.

    > Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed.

    No you're not because you can rectify and filter the AC signal, thus making it high-voltage DC. Now run it through a switched power supply and generate AC in any possible voltage and any possible frequency. Rectify again to get DC at that new voltage.

    > the supply would vary wildly.

    No it wouldn't. You'd regulate the supply the same way you regulate it nowadays.

    > Furthermore parts of motors & other devices would be receiving charge almost randomly.

    Based on WHAT do you say that?

    My God, don't comment on what you don't know!

    Flavio
  • Have you noticed that we still use Newtonian physics for most of our useful work (because relativistic/quantum calculations yield indistinguishable results under normal conditions, and they are vastly more involved)? Most of what Ampere did is still good science; for the most part it has only been refined, not replaced.

    So? If Tesla's system exists you won't be able to explain it using classic physics. Don't digress.

    > You disconsider that Tesla was one of the first people to think about subatomic particles and quantum physics as part of a realm where "normal things don't happen very often".

    Tesla's work follows from well-understood principles such as Maxwell's equations. These are purely classical physics. On what grounds do you claim that Tesla understood, let alone used, any quantum phenomena?

    Tesla's work DOES follow from Maxwell's data, but again you digress. Tesla did NOT understand nor use quantum phenomena but based on his observations he conjectured that there must exist subatomic particles with specific laws to dictate their behavior.

    And DAMN IT, READ what I wrote: Tesla was one of the first people to think about subatomic particles. I did not write he "claim that Tesla understood, let alone used, any quantum phenomena".

    By working at high voltage and low current you do reduce resistive losses, but you do nothing to reduce resistance.
    You obviously weren't paying attention because you want to flame me so badly. The whole point of specific work cycles, frequencies and high voltages is to make a quantum mechanics phenomenon more likely to happen than in normal conditions.

    The higher your frequency the less current can penetrate into the bulk of a conductor, leading to increased losses. This is well-understood and is known as "skin effect". It's also why you can get burns on your skin from RF, but your heart is largely immune (it's deep inside and sees little current due to skin effect).

    I'm obviously discussing this with someone with more than grade school knowledge this time, but you don't pay attention to what I write anyway.

    You're throwing around words that sound good to the ignorant ("subatomic particles", "quantum physics", "specific frequencies", "work cycles") and trying to use them to baffle people into taking you seriously. I take you as an idiot or a troll (same difference).

    As my slashdot history proves, every childish narrow-minded conclusion jumper that disagrees with me calls me an idiot and/or troll. Join the club.

    Ironically, you call me someone who practices physics as if it were theology. You must learn some methodology yourself and yet know when to have faith.

    Anyone with an RF voltmeter and a little bit of gear (more or less equivalent to a crystal radio) could measure the transmission efficiency from an AM radio tower to a receiving antenna of a particular size and design.

    You again miss the point. We're not dealing with normal RF propagation through vacuum here, but with electricity transmission using the atmosphere and the ground. You don't even remember what the Ask Slashdot question was about because (again) you want to flame me so badly.

    I won't waste any more of my time answering this. If there's any troll here, that's you. And STOP bullshitting (driving a transformer from the ambient field? get real.)

    In any case, all you people out there don't think that you'd be able to receive electricity from anywhere in the world by using Tesla's system, right? It's not as magical as "tapping the ether" as Tau Zero wants to do with his transformer.

    Flavio

  • Since when did the propagation of EM fields along a conductor (such as the earth) become such a huge mystery that only the disciples of Tesla can know the secrets?

    Since the day people like you proclaimed there's nothing else to learn about them.

    Your contempt for Tesla and for everyone who doesn't shoot down his radical thinking is quite clear as well.

    > And STOP bullshitting (driving a transformer from the ambient field? get real.)
    Oh, really? What do you think the loopstick antenna in a portable AM receiver is?

    You're jumping to conclusions again. What makes you believe I don't know that?

    I again don't think you've read the Ask Slashdot question or any of my comments. The poster that started this discussion claimed that Tesla's system would invariably have large losses.

    You'd have huge losses no matter how large your coil is and no matter how close to Tesla's transmitter it stands. Of course you know that, and it's precisely why you shot down my first reply in the first place.

    Now what I want you to consider is that I'm not thinking of Tesla's system in the conventional "textbook solved exercise" most people do. I don't want to get the simplest, dumbest idea that comes to mind like a huge flyback transformer with an air core and try to apply it.

    I believe that [in general] Slashdot geeks must have respect and not blast the ones with different ideas by making assumptions which lead to incriminating facts. People in Slashdot are usually more smarter than average but that still doesn't make them smart.

    Any jackass can imagine Tesla's theoretical system as something incredibly stupid because I don't believe any of us have seen it at work.

    To finish things: the purpose of Ask Slashdot is to give light to some topic, not to break the topic. If you can't think of a way to achieve high efficiency and long range wireless energy transmission, don't claim that's impossible. Making a failed example of that and shooting it down doesn't make wireless energy transmission "a la Tesla" inviable.

    Flavio
  • Tesla invented the alternating current motor, he did not invent alternating current(AC). At the time AC was known to be easier to produce and more efficient to transmit but had to be rectified (turned to DC) to drive motors. this was very inefficient and the motors wore out quickly. AC motors have only 1 moving part so are more economical. this invention revolutionized the electrical industry (power to the people:). we still use basically the same tech today. also Teslas power distribution scheme used the earth to transmit electricity. A separate idea of his was to energize the ionosphere to light up the sky like a huge florescent lightbulb so ships could see at night.
  • Well, I didn't think Tesla's system broadcast in the upper atmosphere. I thought it was a ground wave system, which he hoped to give long range by tuning to the "right" frequency. Well, you can pull power from the sky right now with a diode-based AM receiver ("crystal radio").

    However, I've heard that systems like that are not compatible with wired societies, nor ones using metal-framed structures. Blasting electromagnetic pulses across the countryside will produce a lot of heating and sparks....and never mind your TV and radio reception, because those towers will cross far too many different levels of potential.

  • And you sit there repeating myths yourself...

    Tesla was laughed at for thinking AC motors were possible.

    No, actually he was the victim of a fight-to-the-death between Edison and Westinghouse. Edison did everything he could to make the public think that Tesla was nuts - but Science had nothing to do with it.

    The scientists of back in the day would practically kill you for merely suggesting that the world might be round.

    Wrong again. "scientists" have been calculating the diameter of the globe since at least Aristotle. The idea that people thought Columbus would fall off the edge is a myth. What the people really didn't believe was that little, rickety European sailing vessels could survive the crossing from Europe to Asia. Seeing as how (a) Columbus deliberately distorted the math to make the Earth seem smaller than it actually is and (b) he never actually made it to Asia, they were right.

    Go back 200 years and tell them man will fly and clone animals and they will laugh at you.

    Really? Da Vinci would have laughed? Gallileo? Newton?

    I'm certainly not a member of any Tesla "cult", but being biased on any given side is useless, and Tesla in his life proved the skeptics wrong on a number of occasions, in fact all the great advancements have come from men who go against the grain, not those who blindly cling to it.

    Perhaps. After all, every one knows what rebels men like Einstein, Bohr, Teller and Hawking are.


    --

  • I think it most likely could have. From what I have read about Wardeclyff, it wasn't going to be a giant Tesla coil as we think of it - throwing off lightning and such. There might have been small streamers, but nothing of great proportion.

    Look at his work - the majority involved resonance (heh - though there was the "flying bedframe" patent - Tesla definitely wasn't an aviation pioneer). He once remarked that he knew how to split the earth, using timed dynamite charges to cause the earth to "ring", and crack like a wine glass. Whether this was possible with the tech of the day is questionable (ie, TNT) - but in theory it could be done given strong enough explosives (H-Bombs?). He used to make a variety of mechanical oscillators that could shake entire buildings (causing him to be kicked out of more than one apartment complex), merely by "tapping" them at the proper resonant frequency of the structure (similar to how you can get a pendulum to swing by tapping it at its resonant period). Those who experienced it thought it was an earthquake.

    One poster nearly got it right - a ground wave station. Tesla's idea was to pump energy into the earth at resonant frequency, then tap that back out anywhere along the point (probably via one of those aerial earth/sky antenna things - that used the atmosphere as a giant capacitor - he has several patents on these).

    Would there have been noise - yeah, there would have. It probably wouldn't have been good for today's electronics. However, if he had suceeded in his plans, and made such wireless power distribution a reality, we may not have gone down the same roads we have since gone down - and probably would have developed our current tech differently to deal with the noise.

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • At the time AC was known to be easier to produce and more efficient to transmit but had to be rectified (turned to DC) to drive motors. this was very inefficient and the motors wore out quickly. AC motors have only 1 moving part so are more economical.
    DC motors can last a good long time; how many times have you ever had to fix a motor in a vacuum cleaner? How about in a sewing machine, or a blender? Electric drill? Those are "universal motors", which will run on AC or DC, and they have brushes and commutators just the same. They work just about as well as most mechanical things did at the time, and did not require an undue amount of maintenance.

    The thing that really made AC and killed DC was the cost of generation and transmission. Because DC cannot use transformers, the voltage of generation, transmission and consumption all have to be more or less the same (before resistive losses, which are considerable at voltages like 110). AC was always more desirable, because DC required all kinds of little generating stations everywhere in order to keep voltage drops down to an acceptable level. When Tesla demonstrated the induction motor (which could operate off of AC current), he removed the last roadblock to big, centralized, efficient, cost-effective AC power stations. All the induction motor did was remove a critical amount of the logjam placed there by entrenched interests and Edison PR; once that was gone, it was all over for DC distribution (except in subways and other electric rail systems, oddly enough).
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  • Since when did the propagation of EM fields along a conductor (such as the earth) become such a huge mystery that only the disciples of Tesla can know the secrets?
    Since the day people like you proclaimed there's nothing else to learn about them.

    Your contempt for Tesla and for everyone who doesn't shoot down his radical thinking is quite clear as well.

    Now you're proving that you never read what I wrote. Tesla was brilliant. Tesla came up with things that literally re-made industry and large parts of society (where would we be without the fractional-horsepower motors which we have long taken for granted?). Tesla was radical... for his time. So were Schroedinger, Einstein, Crooks, Roentgen, and even the Wright brothers. Today their work is solidly main-stream and taught in undergrad and even high school curricula. The people I hold in contempt are those who:
    1. Claim that Tesla had some mystical understanding of electricity or whatever which is not part of current knowledge or art, and
    2. Cannot or will not demonstrate anything to back up those claims.
    That's you, in case you didn't recognize yourself.
    Oh, really? What do you think the loopstick antenna in a portable AM receiver is?
    You're jumping to conclusions again. What makes you believe I don't know that?
    Maybe it was when I said "Since you're already starting with RF, it would make more sense to just have a set of taps on a small transformer driven directly from the ambient field" and you responded "It's not as magical as "tapping the ether" as Tau Zero wants to do with his transformer." It is painfully clear that you had no idea what I was talking about, until I explained it and made a fool of you.
    I believe that [in general] Slashdot geeks must have respect and not blast the ones with different ideas by making assumptions which lead to incriminating facts.
    In other words, you demand that everyone on Slashdot keep their minds open so far that their brains fall out. (Is that what happened to yours?)

    I work differently. If it looks like a crank, walks like a crank and sounds like a crank, it has the burden of demonstrating that its ideas do not fall into the zone of crankdom before having the right to be taken seriously. Showing that something works as described is sufficient. I'd even believe Joseph Newman's machine worked if he could hook up a flat battery to it, start it going and come back some time later to a fully-charged battery. I've never heard of him being able to do this under controlled conditions, so he's a crank.

    If you can't think of a way to achieve high efficiency and long range wireless energy transmission, don't claim that's impossible.
    Oh, I'm sure that it's possible. There appears to be nothing physically impossible about creating beams of very short wavelength microwaves and beaming them through space to a receiver a considerable distance away (hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of miles). Space is lossless, and sufficiently large antennas can guarantee that any desired fraction of the transmitted power gets to the receiver. Sending power around the curve of the earth using very low frequencies, using a resistive Earth and lossy ionosphere as the two surfaces of a waveguide, at high efficiency, is a completely different matter. I want some evidence that conventional wisdom is in error before I give it the time of day. People who don't demand such evidence tend to be parted from both their money and credibility in short order. I prefer to give the readers of Slashdot something to chew on when they see fantastic claims. A little critical thinking, that's all I ask. Not of you, you've failed that test, but the others out there reading this will be served well.
    "
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  • > Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)

    And based on what do you claim that?

    You're thinking of physics in the conventional way, as did Ampere 200 years ago.

    Have you noticed that we still use Newtonian physics for most of our useful work (because relativistic/quantum calculations yield indistinguishable results under normal conditions, and they are vastly more involved)? Most of what Ampere did is still good science; for the most part it has only been refined, not replaced.
    You disconsider that Tesla was one of the first people to think about subatomic particles and quantum physics as part of a realm where "normal things don't happen very often".
    Tesla's work follows from well-understood principles such as Maxwell's equations. These are purely classical physics. On what grounds do you claim that Tesla understood, let alone used, any quantum phenomena?
    By working at specific frequencies, work cycles and high voltages it might be possible to reduce resistance.
    By working at high voltage and low current you do reduce resistive losses, but you do nothing to reduce resistance. The higher your frequency the less current can penetrate into the bulk of a conductor, leading to increased losses. This is well-understood and is known as "skin effect". It's also why you can get burns on your skin from RF, but your heart is largely immune (it's deep inside and sees little current due to skin effect).

    You're throwing around words that sound good to the ignorant ("subatomic particles", "quantum physics", "specific frequencies", "work cycles") and trying to use them to baffle people into taking you seriously. I take you as an idiot or a troll (same difference).

    I believe that Tesla, as the brilliant man he was, knew exactly what he was doing with his Wardenclyffe coil. He didn't have the theoretical quantum physics explanation for what he designed, but he had the practical knowledge to make it work.

    There's a story about Tesla lighting up lightbulbs 100 miles away using such a system. I prefer not to give much credit to this, but I believe Tesla wouldn't fail.

    I believe! Halleluia!

    Anyone with an RF voltmeter and a little bit of gear (more or less equivalent to a crystal radio) could measure the transmission efficiency from an AM radio tower to a receiving antenna of a particular size and design. From this, they wouldn't have much trouble calculating how much power you'd need to light a fluorescent bulb at 100 miles given a similar transmitter and receiver; with the right licenses and equipment you could proceed to actually do it. There is nothing divine about this ability, it only takes a decent education, money and (different from Tesla's day) regulatory relief.

    > Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law

    Inverse-square-law rule? Once again, Tesla's system doesn't deal with classic physics. And even if it did, this system doesn't have much to do with this law.

    Yeah, inverse-square law. This is modified somewhat if the waves are confined by the ionosphere because you're no longer transmitting to infinite space, but conservation says that all energy has to come from somewhere and geometry says that you spread that energy to cover every point on the surface surrounding the point from which it radiates; if the energy isn't spread evenly, then you have hot spots and dead spots. If you are asserting that you do not have any reduction in areal power density in inverse proportion to the increase of area of the boundary surface, you are claiming that the total amount of energy goes up with distance and energy is not conserved.

    This is an utterly extraordinary, nay, fantastic claim. State your evidence in support of it.

    > Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed.

    No you're not because you can rectify and filter the AC signal, thus making it high-voltage DC. Now run it through a switched power supply and generate AC in any possible voltage and any possible frequency. Rectify again to get DC at that new voltage.

    Since you're already starting with RF, it would make more sense to just have a set of taps on a small transformer driven directly from the ambient field and rectify at the desired voltage straight from those, but that would require understanding what you're talking about. You don't; you're just bullshitting. You're trying to practice physics as if it were theology. I'll give you a hint: your performance is miserable, and you'd be laughed out of any high-school class worthy of the name.
    Based on WHAT do you say that?

    My God, don't comment on what you don't know!

    "First remove the beam that is in your own eye..."
    "
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  • I'm obviously discussing this with someone with more than grade school knowledge this time, but you don't pay attention to what I write anyway.
    You're so far out of your league, you don't have the sense to know when you're not making sense. This amuses me.
    You again miss the point. We're not dealing with normal RF propagation through vacuum here, but with electricity transmission using the atmosphere and the ground.
    Since when did the propagation of EM fields along a conductor (such as the earth) become such a huge mystery that only the disciples of Tesla can know the secrets? Solving wave functions is an undergraduate double-E exercise; transmission of low-frequency EM waves across the earth has been extensively studied as a byproduct of AM radio, LORAN, Omega and WWVB.
    And STOP bullshitting (driving a transformer from the ambient field? get real.)
    Oh, really? What do you think the loopstick antenna in a portable AM receiver is? I'll give you a hint: it's the secondary coil of a tuned RF transformer. If you made one big enough and placed close enough to a sufficiently powerful transmitter, you could drive bulbs from it... just like Tesla.

    It's entertaining to shoot you down like Snoopy on his little doghouse, but I have to get some work done now.
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  • There was a modern power solution to collect solar energy via satellite and beam it to earth with [1] a narrow microwave beam that everybody could avoid. This would [2] only work with some new kind of microwave laser technology, [3] other wise you couldn't get it narrow enough.
    False on all counts.
    1. The window of frequencies which can be used to send power through air, clouds, etc. is low enough in frequency (and thus long in wavelength) that you can't make "really narrow beams that everybody could avoid". The original schemes called for receivers literally miles across, and safe zones for some distance beyond. The power density was only 70 watts/m^2 at the peak, to avoid thermal blooming and defocussing of the beam from atmospheric effects.
    2. There is no requirement for any "new microwave laser". Any set of amplifiers which can drive a phased array will do the job; electronically-steered radars do exactly this, and prove that it requires nothing more sophisticated than the technology of 20 years ago.
    3. Having a coherent source doesn't automatically create a tiny beamwidth. You need an aperture that's wide enough to focus the radiation. Ever wonder why big telescopes can see more detail than small telescopes (up to the point where the atmosphere doesn't allow any further improvement)? It's called the diffraction limit; look it up.
    All in all, it looks like you should do some studying. You can start with the demonstrations which were done at Goldstone, beaming power through just as much air as a beam coming down from orbit would have to transit. You should find all of this very informative.
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  • The skeptical inquirer and it's followers always amuse me. You can always catch "skeptics" floating around paranormal newsgroups yabbering about psuedoscience and whatnot. Most of them are just as biased toward established science as any loon is toward his or her chosen belief system. Of course some of Tesla's ideas were bad, that could be said of any given scientist. But the problem with "Skeptics" is that they cling to hard to established scientific dogma. Tesla was laughed at for thinking AC motors were possible. The scientists of back in the day would practically kill you for merely suggesting that the world might be round. Go back 200 years and tell them man will fly and clone animals and they will laugh at you. I'm certainly not a member of any Tesla "cult", but being biased on any given side is useless, and Tesla in his life proved the skeptics wrong on a number of occasions, in fact all the great advancements have come from men who go against the grain, not those who blindly cling to it.

  • Actually, planes get hit by lightning quite often. Often enough that they are designed [avweb.com] to make sure that the passengers never know a thing about it

    and yes, i know it was just a joke, son.

  • hmmmm...one point that you (or anyone else so far in this thread) haven't mentioned is the noise factor. To generate that much electricity You'll be creating lots of noise. For those of you who live in the Los Angeles Area, I encourage you to go to Griffth Park Observatory. They have a minaturized version of the Tesla Coil, and they do demonstrations on it every hour or so. It's pretty neat to watch people holding florscent lights and have them magically turn on. The reason they don't leave the display on all the time is that it is *really* loud. I wouldn't want to live anywhere near something so loud!
  • People writing good books would find a ready market for them in an objectivist society.

    As neat a reductio ad absurdum of Obectivism as anyone could reasonably ask for.

  • No, my point is that in an objectivist society, nobody would have heard of Objectivism, as Rand's books are so fucking bad.

  • I lived under high tension power lines as a kid, and it didn't seem to affect me

    You're reading Slashdot for heavens sake ... how can you say it didn't affect you?! ;)
  • It was obvious to almost everyone at the time that Tesla's invention could be outright dangerous. Even without knowing much about the detrimental effects of microwaves, the huge lightning bolts emitted by the machine gave something of a reason to doubt its effectiveness.

    Its marvelously ineffiecient, as well. MASSIVE amounts of power are disappated with his scheme. There's no way around it. Its completely impractacle. We'd have to charge the entire planet, from the top of the upper atmosphere down 10 miles under the ground. Its impossible.

    You know why there where people who thought he might not be someone to listen to? Maybe it was the hallucenations. Or maybe it was the disregard for the safety of his own life. Those aren't little trivial details.

    Its not like the media was saying that a Yale graduate is stupid, as many media figures have with Bush. These claims are a little more waranted.

    There's a fine line between genius and insanity, and Tesla walked it. That's why he's so cool; that's why he's idolized.

  • Not sure how happy I'd be if I got zapped every time the pilot of the plane I was on went a little to high...

  • The Tesla Cult (Score:3)

    by Zoyd ( 13778 ) on Sunday December 10, 2000 @05:57PM (#568536)
    Skeptical Inquirer [csicop.org] did a cover story on Tesla and the pseudoscience cult that has formed around him:

    Skeptical Inquirer
    SUMMER 1994 [csicop.org] (vol 18, no 4.): `Extraordinary science' and the strange legacy of Nikola Tesla, by Johnson. Nikola Tesla: Genius, visionary, and eccentric, by Johnson.

    Their take on it was that he a lot of good ideas, but also a lot of bad ones, and that the common perception of him as an infallible genius is misplaced.

  • It has (Score:3)

    by JohnG ( 93975 ) on Sunday December 10, 2000 @07:25PM (#568537)
    There have been people that have done so on a smaller level using two tesla coils. I think the farthest one I read about reached about 100 feet or so, of course those were relatively small coils, no where near the monster that Tesla was building at wardenclyffe. The problem that occured is that Marconi came in and stole the idea as the radio (violated 14 Tesla patents and even had his patent revoked by the courts, but alas the history books still list Marconi as the inventor of the radio [and Edison as the man who brought power to the world even though he said AC would never work!]) Nowadays it wouldn't work becuase there is already to much competing airways as many others have said, not to mention Tesla coils make electrical appliances near them go batty, back before electricity was mainstream there could have been ways around it, such as putting faraday cages around electrical appliances to protect them, but now that is near impossible and another reason why the idea is lost.

  • Tesla Foibles (Score:4)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:23AM (#568538) Homepage Journal
    Couple of problems with Tesla's idea of pumping electricity directly through the aether:

    1. Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)
    2. Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law but almost anything would mess with this & cause it to vary: trees, streams, underground streams, wet/dry soil, weather (do not operate in a shower!) and that's well before we get to things like buildings, walls, metal-objects, etc.
    3. Hazardous local environment. At the energies Tesla was talking every metallic object nearby would be carrying a hefty charge. Touching any of these could well be hazardous: Local fence-wires would sizzle with charge, metal doors could be deadly. I have no idea what this much radiated energy over a long period would do to local biological activity but the simple random shocks alone couldn't be good.
    4. Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed. Good grounds would be difficult, power is DC, the supply would vary wildly. Furthermore parts of motors & other devices would be receiving charge almost randomly. I can't imagine trusting something as basic as an elevator winch motor under these conditions much less microelectronics like my digital watch, cellphone, etc.
    Look, Tesla is a fascinating (and tragic) character but some of his ideas, were, well, impracticable.

    I used to work with Tesla coils almost daily & let me tell you they are not a good solution. Indoors and at comparatively low power they were hazardous & required care to operate, scaled up and put into The Real World they'd have been regularly deadly. Not deadly as in once-a-year power-main-fell-on-somebody or Little-Bobby-put-a-hairpin-in-the-socket-&-zapped- himself deadly but random step in a puddle & die deadly, sit between two angled metals walls & fry deadly, metal-fillings in your jaw grow warm & make you ill deadly.

    ps For all of those automatically saying we should re-study Tesla's idea & going for the 'underdog': there's a cult out there waiting for you & no I don't want any carnations in the airport.

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