Can someone who is familiar with Tesla's wireless transmission of power explain how this was to be achieved? I have a lot of info but I can't get a coherent picture.
Magnifying Transmitter (TMT): Would this apparatus transmit power through the air or through the ground? or both? What is its purpose? Is it the main power source in the scheme?
Earth / Ionosphere (EI) : Would the TMT charge or discharge the EI? If so, how could this be done so that there is a buildup of voltage that can be transmitted?
Resonance: A lot of what I read proposes putting the EI into resonance and harnessing the power from this. How would this be done? I have some basic knowledge of RLC circuits but don't see the connection between resonance in a RLC circuit and the ability to buildup tremendous voltages / currents.
Receiver: Somehow this transmitted power has to be converted to a useable form. Another RLC circuit to do this?
Mostly, Tesla failed to successfully design and build a reasonable model of "broadcast power." The reports of lighting hundreds of incandescent lamps miles away from his huge coil are highly exaggerated (myths).
Spherical radiation dispersion and the inverse square law are tough nuts to crack when it comes to using broadcast power as a significant method of energy transfer. However, Tesla's basic idea is still alive as attested to by the orbiting solar arrays with microwave downlinks proposals. Microwaves are more easily focused into tight beams.
I once saw a picture of one of his wireless power experiments. There was an antenna about the size of a big-screen monitor on his desk, with some apparatus, but it was a wide-angle photo and the induction coils up the walls and across the floor and ceiling were quite evident - IOW, he and his whole experiment were sitting inside a giant transformer.
During Tesla's radio experiments he apparently discovered the same thing that physicists re-discovered in the 1950s: the fact that lightning strikes produce a ringing VLF wave at around 8Hz. This occurs because the powerful radio pulse from lightning becomes trapped between the ground and the ionosphere, and it travels repeatedly around the Earth many times before fading away. The Earth behaves as a giant transmission line, and since this transmission line wraps back upon itself, it's also a resonant chamber.
Besides the 8Hz fundamental frequency, numerous higher harmonics would also be present, since two, three, four, etc. waves could fit in the circumference of the Earth. The resonance effect as a frequency band to many kilohertz before the losses become large, where the shortest waves damp out instead of passing all the way around the Earth. It's like a "comb filter" with a resonance spike every 8Hz or so, and where the frequency of these spikes extends up into the kilohertz range. NASA researchers Sutton and Spaniol used amplified VLF antennas to explore some of these resonance lines and they found two things: the "Q" of these resonances are up in the hundreds, and the frequencies wander around. Drifting frequencies apparently fooled earlier more primitive spectrum analyzers into reporting a low value for Q. But drifting frequencies would make it difficult for a transmitter to take advantage of the high Q, since the transmitter would need to match its output frequency to a wandering resonance peak.
Tesla apparently planned to broadcast worldwide signals as well as usable power by sending out narrow intense DC pulses at one of the Earth's upper harmonics. As with any high-Q RF system, this would store energy in the (planet-sized!) resonator, leading to extremely intense sine-wave EM fields all through the chamber (all across Earth's surface.) The field would be concentrated particularly strongly at the transmitter and at the opposite spot on the Earth. A distant receiver with a sharply-tuned resonant antenna should be able to tap into this field and put out AC power for home use.
Big question: what kind of received power would be feasible? I've never seen this analyzed rigorously, and if Tesla determined it experimentally, he kept the results secret. Tesla certainly intended to run morse-code receivers, stock tickers, and clock motors. Remotely-powered cars, ships, and planes were discussed in his later articles, but the accompanying illustrations depict conductive ion- beams in use, rather than simple radio antennas.
Big question: how could Tesla's 50KHz coil send out VLF power, broadcasting hundred-Hz or kilohertz pulses? Answer: it's in his patents. He used a pair of sphere-electrodes in series with that main conductor which connects the Tesla coil's output to the large sphere- antenna. The coil would take some milliseconds to build up a high frequency output. Periodic repeating sparks between these sphere- electrodes would send out periodic repeating DC pulses on the antenna, also partially shorting out the Tesla coil each time, and requiring it to repeatedly ramp up it's high frequency output between these pulses.
Big question: how can a transmitter hit the narrow, wandering resonance peak frequencies? There's possibly a very interesting effect here. Perhaps the Earth-resonant EM waves in the environment might bias the voltage on the transmitting antenna, which would trigger the periodic sparks early, acting to phase-lock the repeated sparking to the Earth resonator. In this case the Tesla-coil- sparkgap-antenna system becomes like a neon bulb relaxtion oscillator, but with a (planet sized) resonant circuit attached. This would allow Tesla to adjust his system to lock on to a particular Earth-overtone. More importantly, it would force the transmitter to alter its frequency as the Earth-resonances wandered around, so the transmitter would always broadcast exactly in the center of one of the resonant frequency spikes.
Tesla's patents also depict resonant "shorting bars" of various frequencies connected between the antenna and the ground. This suggests that he intended to emit energy at more than one Earth- overtone frequency simultaneously. (And he writes elsewhere of sending out a "wave-complex" with this device.)
The Magnifying transmitter is just a Tesla coil. If you split the secondary of a conventional Tesla Coil into two parts connected by a wire, you can place one part against the primary coil. This lets you easily adjust the inductive coupling to any desired value. Then also move the other half of the secondary far away from the rest of the equipment in order to eliminate unwanted HV breakdown. This is Tesla's "3-coil" system.
The energy, the EM waves, would be in the air, while the electric current would be in the ground. It's much like a ground-plane antenna system used by AM radio towers and by home CB transmitters. As for current vs. energy... conventional power lines are analogous: the EM energy is in the magnetic and electrostatic fields located in the space between the conductors, while the electric current remains within the metal. Don't confuse the energy flow with the charge flow. Remember: EM energy flows from source to load, while charges sit within the conductor and wiggle back and forth.
It's like a radio transmitter, but since it "broadcasts" into a sealed resonant chamber the size of a planet, it's not really radio. It doesn't lose wave energy off into infinite space. Also, the inside of a transmission line doesn't obey the inverse-square law, instead it obeys near-field equations.
Nope.
His device should ignore the DC charge already present. However, by sparking a Tesla coil to an antenna, he repeatedly puts out enormous DC pulses, causing the Earth cavity to ring with AC sine waves.
No, instead he was hooking his transmitter to a conventional electric generator, then broadcasting energy without wires. He was harnessing the resonance EFFECT, harnessing the impedance match provided by hiqh- Q resonators, not harnessing some unusual energy source. The broadcast energy comes from coal-fired generators, or Niagra Falls.
Um... resonant step up? On a swing set, if you lean back in the swing periodically, you can build up an enormous amplitude. In a high-Q parallel RLC resonator, if you excite it with an AC low current at the resonant frequency, you create an enormous current in the coil/ capacitor loop. And in a series resonator, if you excite it with a small voltage, you create an enormous voltage at the node connecting the coil and capacitor.
The "effective aperture" of a small antenna can be enlarged by connecting it to a high-Q resonator. Of course it helps to have a large receiving antenna in the first place.
Also see:
Skeptical analysis of Tesla's claimed "non-Hertzian waves" http://205.243.100.155/frames/Non-Herzian_Waves.html
PBS special on Tesla: Colorado Springs
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My own article "Tesla's Big Mistake"
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((((((((((((((((((((((( ( ( (o) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty Research Engineer beaty a chem washington edu UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74 billb a eskimo com Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700 ph425-222-5066
I just can't imagine Tesla's method of power transmission being very efficient, especially over long distance.
Check it out, this modern Tesla Coil is BIG. The builder states 55,000 watts but don't you think he means 55,000 volts low frequency AC or he would be dimming the street lights. LOL
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