Екатерина Вавилова – All sciences. №1, 2023. International Scientific Journal (страница 3)
Financial assistance to the inventor was provided by the Niagara Falls Company. Thanks to Edward Adams, Tesla had $100,000 to equip a new laboratory. Already in the fall, the research resumed at a new address: 46 Houston Street. At the end of 1896, Tesla achieved the transmission of a radio signal over a distance of 30 miles (48 km).
It was there that a mechanical oscillator using selective resonance was created, representing a kind of analogue of a swing, if you give a push at the right moment, you can rock the installation to large amplitudes without putting much effort. It was then that an artificial earthquake was caused, as a result of one of the experiments that could destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in a few minutes. Selective resonance is the action of constant uniform vibrations that can destroy any object of choice. This earthquake was called the New York earthquake of 1898.
It is also worth noting the great predilection of Nikola Tesla himself for pigeons. But also the inventor himself organized small celebrations, where the notable people of that time came, Kipling, who loved to read poetry, Mark Twain made them laugh with his signature stories, and Dvorzek played the piano, and then Tesla brought them to his laboratory, showing wonderful experiments, telling about the future of science. It was an unforgettable evening. Nikola met many of them because of contact with Robert Johnson, the editor-in-chief of Century Magazine, with whom they met on the basis of love for poetry, and once they also translated and published a collection of poems by Serbian poets. They were also impressed by one of them – Ioan Zmai.
One of Tesla ’s favorite poems was:
Moreover, the news is known today that it was Tesla who dissuaded Johnson from boarding the train that was in an accident. For example, he also persuaded his friend and patron, the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel chain, Colonel John Jacob Astaire, not to sail on the Titanic, but, unfortunately, he did not listen to him.
Nikola Tesla in a laboratory in Colorado Springs. Early 1900s (photo obtained by double exposure)
According to Tesla's assumption, standing waves from Colorado Springs reached the greatest intensity near Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean. On May 18, 1899, at the invitation of a local electric company, Tesla moved to the resort town of Colorado Springs, where he stayed for almost a year, and about $ 30,000 was allocated as a grant from Colonel Astaire for his research. He stayed at the Alta Vista Hotel, where he placed his office.
On June 2, 1899, Tesla completed the construction of a wooden hangar measuring approximately 50 by 60 feet (15 by 18 meters), about 18 feet high (5.4 meters), with two windows and a large door. At the end of July, Tesla was already conducting various experiments in complete secrecy, not allowing anyone but his assistants into his laboratory. He conducted experiments mainly at night due to the availability of electrical energy, which he received from the city electric company.
While working in his laboratory, Tesla developed the design of a large high-frequency emitter with three oscillatory circuits, the potential of which reached 10 million volts, tested various variants of receiving devices with one or two coherers with special offset excitation circuits, measured electromagnetic radiation of electric discharges in nature, developed measuring techniques in radio engineering, thought out modulator devices, antennas with parallel power supply, etc. He also outlined his theory of the formation of ball lightning and could create them artificially.
Nikola Tesla recorded descriptions of scientific research and observations in the laboratory in Colorado Springs in a diary, which was later published under the title "Colorado Springs Notes, 1899-1900". Judging by the entries in his diary, Tesla devoted most of his time (about 56%) to the transmitting device, in particular to the generator of high-frequency currents of high power, then to receivers of weak signals (about 21%), measuring the capacity of a vertical single-pole antenna (about 16%), and various other scientific research and research (about 6%).
There were also rumors about the recording "Abandon hope, everyone who enters here", at the entrance to the laboratory. In the middle of the laboratory, a transformer was created, one end of which was grounded, and the second was brought to a great height. This device was capable of accumulating the energy of lightning discharges and giving out another several million volts and a frequency of 150,000 Hz, but of course I wanted more. The goal was to transmit energy over long distances using the Earth as a transmitter. Not far from the laboratory, he stuck several hundred light bulbs into the Ground and began to expect a thunderstorm, and as soon as lightning struck the ball at the top of the mast, the laboratory came to life. The transformer collected the energy of the lightning discharge and threw it into the atmosphere with triple force! These were 40-meter man-made lightning bolts! The flow of energy covered the city, everything was saturated with electricity, the experiment was fully justified, it became possible to transmit energy wirelessly through the ground, 250 meters from the tower, two hundred light bulbs lit up at once. But, unfortunately, the generator of the local power plant completely burned down. And after completing the entire research program, he put everything on paper, after which Robert Johnson published an article in his own journal.
It was then that this article caught the eye of the famous banker and industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, and he decided to meet with him, but he was only interested in using radio communication. So on January 11, 1900, Tesla returned to New York. The Tesla Tower is Nikola Tesla's first wireless telecommunications tower for commercial transatlantic telephony, radio broadcasting and demonstration of wireless power transmission. The first full-scale tests of the resonator tower took place on June 15, 1903 at exactly midnight local time. According to his plan, he wanted to create 5 towers for wireless communication around the globe, "as soon as the project is completed, a business person can dictate his instructions from New York, and they will immediately appear in the office in London or any other place. An inexpensive instrument, no more than a watch, will allow its owner to listen anywhere, at sea or on Land, to music or songs, speeches of a political leader, a speech by an outstanding scientist or sermons of a priest located at a great distance. In the same way, any picture, sign, drawing or text can be transmitted," Tesla said.
With the help of his project, he wants not only to transmit energy across the planet without wires, but with the help of this system, he intends to cause rains in the desert, illuminate the sky over sea routes, power cars and airplanes, and even carry out interplanetary communications. Of course, such a project required a much larger scope than Morgan singled out, but this does not bother him, and he creates on the island of Long Island, 60 meters from New York, he creates the first tower by the name of the Wardencliff locality. With the unfinished tower, he begins fantastic experiments. In the summer of 1903, the tower on Long Island almost drives New Yorkers crazy, giant artificial lightning bolts stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions from it. They light up the sky over the Atlantic so that you can read the newspaper headlines that the newspaper "New York San" writes: "Last night we witnessed strange phenomena – giant lightning, personally emitted by Tesla. The layers of the atmosphere ignited at different heights and over a large area so that the night instantly turned into day, the whole air was filled with glow. It centered around the edges of the human body, and everyone present radiated a light blue mystical flame. We felt like ghosts to ourselves." As Tesla himself wrote: "The waves created by my transmitter will be the greatest spontaneous manifestation of energy on the planet."
The halo surrounding Tesla's personality and discoveries contributed to the spread of all kinds of statements, which are usually semi-mythical in nature. Such statements cannot be verified due to the lack of documents, which does not prevent, however, attributing to Tesla a direct or indirect relation to many mysteries of the XX century.
According to legend, after Tesla's death, the FBI special department, which was engaged in storing the property of foreign citizens (Eng. Alien Property Custodian), sent employees who seized all the papers they found in the room. The FBI suspected that even a few years before Tesla's death, some papers had been stolen by German intelligence and could be used to create German flying saucers. Wanting to prevent a repeat of this incident, the FBI classified all the papers they found.