Tesla

130 years ago today Nickola Tesla emigrated to the U.S.A (June 6, 1884)

A documentary on his life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98QwPO1b5j4

My View: Tesla was a brilliant engineer, he changed the world.

The problem is that he had too little business sense and failed to reap the rewards of his patents.

As such the world took off on A.C. power and left him behind.

After his successes with AC, he failed to produce anything of value. The following is my opinion of what happened:
Now that the world of trained engineers, physicists and inventors have accepted his new techniques, the tsunami of new developments in electrical technology was too much for a single man to keep ahead of. In order for him to get ahead of the wave he needed to go to extremes that no one else would dare. So he made grand promises, as well as deliberate misrepresentations to obtain funding for his grand energy transmission inventions ( Wardenclyffe etc). But the promises were too big for him to keep and he lost credibility as time went on.


Electromagnetic theory and the Aether:
Tesla was a believer in the aether (as many people were /are ) and spoke of it from time to time.
Tesla was not a theorist, he was an engineer who accepted and used the prevailing models and theories.
Tesla provided no advancement to electromagnetic theory that I can find.
He discovered much new phenomenon by trial and error in the Laboratory (like X-rays) but was so consumed with his grand ambitions, that these seemingly inconsequential discoveries were ignored.

more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Comments

  • DistintiDistinti Posts: 38
    edited April 2020
    OOPS:
    The following sentence is in need of replacement

    "So he felt that in order to get ahead of the"

    should be replaced by

    "In my opinion, He wanted to maintain public spotlight, so in order to get ahead of the "


    sorry,

    RJD
  • LloydLloyd Posts: 35
    edited April 2020
    You can edit your initial post and make the correction there.
  • DistintiDistinti Posts: 38
    edited April 2020
    Thanks
  • Walter VerbrugggenWalter Verbrugggen Posts: 22
    edited April 2020
    Tesla was a brilliant engineer, but he had the same problems as a lot of other scientists.

    The electric models used at that time were insufficient to make a validation of his patents.

    Tesla was using scalar electromagnetic waves, for his wireless power transmission.
    And since scalar electromagnetic waves do not exist , evenin the current science-books, it's difficult to prove the existence....

    Then Robert J Distinti came along....
    His model can be used for describing scalar electromagnetic waves.

    Konstantin Meyl, came to the same conclusion, and is able to transmit power wireless .

    Arman
  • nztykenztyke Posts: 14
    edited April 2020
    Apparently Eric Dollard is familiar with Tesla's wireless power transmission.

    http://ericpdollard.com/free-videos/the ... ss-system/
  • SebastianGSebastianG Posts: 184
    edited April 2020
    I just listened to the newest episode of "Offenbarung 23" which is a German audio-play about conspiracy theories. The interesting thing about this series is that it often gives a different and much more rational look on many conspiracy theories.

    The newest episode 51 "Mad Scientists" is about Tesla. There is a famous story about a car ride with an electric motor which is powered by free energy. Tesla stated that the car (Pierce Arrow with an ac motor) is powered by a "cosmic energy power receiver". But Tesla has already started to disguise his new inventions with myths so others could not steal his ideas from him any more. The car drove on a road directly to the first ac power plant at the Niagara falls.

    In the audio-play they stated that Tesla used the power line, which was all along the road, to induce electric currents to feed the motor. So it was wireless but it never was free energy since the power line was powered by the ac power plant.
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    SebastianG wrote:
    There is a famous story about a car ride with an electric motor which is powered by free energy. Tesla stated that the car (Pierce Arrow with an ac motor) is powered by a "cosmic energy power receiver". But Tesla has already started to disguise his new inventions with myths so others could not steal his ideas from him any more. The car drove on a road directly to the first ac power plant at the Niagara falls.

    In the audio-play they stated that Tesla used the power line, which was all along the road, to induce electric currents to feed the motor. So it was wireless but it never was free energy since the power line was powered by the ac power plant.

    I have another idea about that "radiant energy converter". If you check the story of Henry Moray, he also had a quite similar converter, but when they tested it, there were no nearby AC lines.
    I think both devices could be a kind of heat-electricity converters. Tesla mentioned somewhere that he sees the possibility to convert heat to electricity, and well, heat is a kind of "radiant energy which is present everywhere in our environment".
    So, my idea is the followings: We know that heat is the very high frequency random movement of the free electrons inside a metal. Basically heat is the kinetic energy of the free electrons. If you slowly charge up a wire to a very high negative voltage, you simply push the free electrons closer to each other inside that metal wire. It is like compressing a gas, it will heat up a bit. But what happens when you quickly discharge it? You let that electron gas spring expand, and it will cool down (just like as releasing the pressure from a gas tank). If you try to calculate the change of the kinetic energy of the electrons when you compress them (or decompress), you will find that the speed of the compression does matter!!! If you compress at higher speed, the electrons will gain more kinetic energy. The same is true to the decompression as well. So the idea is to compress the electrons slowly, and decompress quickly, and thus the metal will be cooler a bit. This effect is almost negligible in the lower frequency range. My guess is, we need a very fast (GHz or THz range) discharge, and very high voltage to convert usable amount of power from heat to electricity.
    I think Tesla (and Moray) may have built a resonant circuit, where one part of the cycle was charging a wire (which they called antenna) to high negative voltage (at kHz speed), the other part of the cycle was a very quick discharge through an air gap (in probably nanoseconds). That "antenna" wire could became colder, and the resonant circuit could provide excess energy.

    Since this idea came into my mind, I had not enough time to start experimenting on it, but I think it may worth a try...
  • SebastianGSebastianG Posts: 184
    edited April 2020
    Interesting idea!

    So you would slow down the electrons to harvest their kinetic energy, right? And in this process the material cools down a bit... But how should the material get hot again? It could also just stay cool, or not?
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    SebastianG wrote:
    But how should the material get hot again? It could also just stay cool, or not?
    Sebastian, how do an icecube gets melted if you just leave it on the kitchen table? Through thermal conduction from the environment.
    Now, before you ask if cooling the environment will cause an ice age, think about this: the amount of energy you converted from heat to electricity will be used up by some device. That energy (through losses) will always finally end up in being converted into heat...
  • DistintiDistinti Posts: 38
    edited April 2020
    Hi Tibor,

    Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect

    This works using the principle that you describe; however, its is very inefficient.

    Being inefficient means there must be a better way (ROA 30).

    Essentially, they use two dissimilar materials, one with more free electrons than the other. At the junction of these two materials, the electrical pressure from the material with more free electrons is higher than the other and electron are injected ( a voltage is developed across the junction). The higher the temperature the higher the voltage. The effect is improved by cooling the material with lower electron density.

    I believe that solar cells are inefficient for the same reasons.

    So any improvement in this technology would be welcome. What is automobile waste engine heat could be converted to usable power?

    Do you have a good reference for Henry Moray? I would like to learn more.

    Regards,
    RJD
  • Walter VerbrugggenWalter Verbrugggen Posts: 22
    edited April 2020
    About information about H.T.Moray, here is a link http://www.free-energy.ws/t-henry-moray.html
    Instead of a metal plate, he used an antenna wire to produce "free" energy...
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    Distinti wrote:
    Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect
    This works using the principle that you describe; however, its is very inefficient.

    No, that one is a quite different principle. The thermoelectric effect needs a temperature difference, it converts some of the energy from the process of heat transfer between the hot and cold side. But, if you want to create that hot and cold sides from a thermal equilibrium, you have to invest more energy than what finally you can get from the thermoelectric effect. You are right, that one is very inefficient.

    The process I previously tried to explain does not need a temperature difference! That would convert heat directly to electrical energy. You can imagine it like a circuit box, which cools down (takes heat from it's environment), while outputs electrical power. Well, it clearly contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, but that law is only applicable for certain processes, not all of them. Maxwell already have found a theoretical counter-example to that law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon And since then, some people already constructed working devices in contradiction to that law, eg.: http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/file ... 88&aid=253

    I heard about Henry Moray about 20 years ago, that time I have known someone who collected all the possible information about him. Unfortunately no usable circuit diagrams remained about Moray's device, just some obscure patents, and descriptions. As I know, Moray did not understood the working principle of his own device. He have found an effect accidentally while he tried to construct a radio. He made a device based on that effect, but he did not know where the energy was coming from, and he was not even able to control it well. Sometimes his device was not working, sometimes it worked for a few days, and sometimes it created so much energy, that destroyed parts of his device. He drove his investors to be mad at him after a while, and he did never succeed on constructing a reliable working device ready for production.
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    About information about H.T.Moray, here is a link http://www.free-energy.ws/t-henry-moray.html
    On that page, this is written: "...he developed a power source that produced 50,000 watts of a cold form of electricity..."
    Well, they could not measure it by a watt meter, as the device produced too high frequency for that. They estimated the output power based on the light intensity of the connected bulbs. That time the normal bulbs had about 1% efficiency. You can notice, they mention "cold form of electricity". If their bulb produced light without heat, then it was near to 100% efficiency. So, in reality that device produced only about 500 watts, but using high voltage and high frequency the bulbs worked in a much more efficient way.
  • Walter VerbrugggenWalter Verbrugggen Posts: 22
    edited April 2020
    My view on Moray (and Tesla) is different from your approach, I don't think on a thermoelectric process for producing the energy.
    Moray has written a book, "the sea of energy in which we flow" ore something like that.

    I think the electric potential of the atmosphere is the energy providing source.
    when the potential is high enough, the spark will short it to ground, producing a current (obviously) ...
    The potential level of the antenna wire, as it will be shorted to ground will be 0V.
    If the spark dissapears, the antenna wire will reach the surrounding potential again, until it reaches the voltage a spark will occure.

    Lightning strikes the earth about 7 times a second,
    The sea of energy, is the electric potential of the atmosphere.

    I've spend also quite some time in investigation of Henry Moray's device.
    Moray also wanted to take a patent on his invention, but couldn't explain the way it was producing the electricity. Tesla had the same problem.
    The schematic representation of both differs only on the "antenna" Tesla has used a metal plate, Moray has used a wire.....

    The electric models back then couldn't fill the gap between static and dynamic electricity.

    There are more analogies between the two, after their patents were rejected, they left their research work and did something different.
    Personally I'm not paranoid but in my opinion it is weird a scientist leaves this kind of investigation.
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    I think the electric potential of the atmosphere is the energy providing source.

    The antenna is a piece of wire held by two gentleman inside that room, so there is no high altitude atmospheric electricity involved.


  • Walter VerbrugggenWalter Verbrugggen Posts: 22
    edited April 2020
    This info comes from wikipedia:
    Experiments have shown that the intensity of this electric field is greater in the middle of the day than at morning or night and is also greater in winter than in summer. In 'fine weather', the potential, aka 'voltage', increases with altitude at about 30 volts per foot (100 V/m), when climbing against the gradient of the electric field.[3] This electric field gradient continues up into the atmosphere to a point where the voltage reaches its maximum, in the neighborhood of 300,000 volts. This occurs at approximately 30–50 km above the Earth's surface.[4] From that point in the atmosphere up to its outer limit, nearly 1,000 km, the electric field gradient produced in the lower atmosphere either ceases or has reversed.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_electricity

    I know you can't compare electric potential in a room to electric optential in open space, but 100V/m is high enough for sparks..

    on the foto indeed you see two men helding an antenna wire in a room. (on which floor?)
    The ceiling of the room is not higher than the doors?

    In Henry Moray's work, there are also indications toward electric potential, such as "in night time the power is a bit less than during daytime".
    He did an experiment in the desert, far away from the power lines, (this is open air)


    I only wanted to give my point of view, and this also could be wrong.
  • DistintiDistinti Posts: 38
    edited April 2020
    There are two separate trains of thought here

    1) Atmospheric potentials introduced by Walter.
    2) Electric pressure (for lack of a better name) introduced by Tibor.

    111111
    It seems from the wiki article that the atmospheric potentials are the electric fields due to the charge imbalances in the atmosphere.
    unfortunately, this 100V/m is unusable as a power source because electric fields are conservative (Kirchhoff's law).
    If there are actual working devices that pull energy from the atmosphere, they must work on some other principle.
    Could it be that our present models of the electromagnetic theory are incomplete? Perhaps, the only way to know for sure is to obtain a working device and study it.
    So lets see if we can't find a reasonable schematic and build one.


    222222

    Note: The thermoelectric effect does not require a temperature differential (think thermocouples) -- it just works better with one.

    The reaction between two dissimilar metals (Seebeck effect I think) is the basis of the thermoelectric effect as well as other well known devices such as batteries, semiconductors. The interesting point is that a thermoelectric junction can be operated in reverse. Meaning that electricity is applied which forces heat from one side of the junction to the other. Such devices are used for electric cooling and refrigeration (very inefficient though).
    With all of that said, I have never been 100% satisfied with the models and theories of how these things work.

    The following is me thinking outloud:

    I think Tibors idea to harness the electric pressure has merit. The trick would be to make it work at ambient temp (or heated with sunlight). the second trick (if possible) is not to use dissimilar metals. Lets call the part the emits the electrons the cathode and the part the receives the electrons the anode.
    In the cathode, we have free electrons that are darting about in all different directions (thermal noise). This thermal noise is very broad frequency.
    Is it possible to construct the cathode in such a manner that thermal energy is concentrated at one point such that a surface electron will be ejected? I'm thinking something along the lines of a cone (this is just off the cuff) where the tip of the cone would "concentrate" the wave energy such that an occasional electron is ejected. The question is how big or how small should this cone be? How far away should the anode be to collect this ejected charge? Perhaps a whole bunch of cones stacked end to end would magnify the effect. Perhaps a magnetic field applied could help separate the forward and back motions in the free charge. It would probable have to be done in a vacuum. There is a lot of work here.
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    In Henry Moray's work, there are also indications toward electric potential, such as "in night time the power is a bit less than during daytime".
    Well, that can be also due at night the temperature was a bit lower than during daytime in that desert.

    I think, it may be possible to harvest atmospheric electricity somehow. But I think Moray's device had too much power output for such a small antenna in such small altitude difference relative to it's grounding.
    Note: The thermoelectric effect does not require a temperature differential (think thermocouples) -- it just works better with one.
    That is not true. If you connect two different kind of metals, there is a junction voltage between them. But when you close the circuit on the other side, you get the same junction voltage, but opposite polarity, if both junctions are at the same temperature. Current only flows, if there is a temperature difference between the junctions. Please check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect
    This thermal noise is very broad frequency.<e>
    And the distribution of that frequency range is dependent on the temperature. AFAIK it is almost the same as the black body radiation frequency distribution: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... dpi_en.png
    That diagram shows wavelength instead of frequency, but you can calculate the frequency using vacuum light speed. Inside the metal the wavelength will be different, but the frequency remains the same.

    I'm not sure if I described my idea clearly enough. What I wanted to tell about is a circuit, where in every cycle I charge up a piece of metal slowly, and discharge quickly. It have to be charged to a very high negative voltage, and the discharge should be very quick to get usable power. It should work at almost near to absolute zero degrees too.

    Robert, what you described with the different shaped cathode and anode, that works too. I heard about some Chinese gentlemen who created a diode like that: http://www.google.com/patents/US6768177 I don't know why didn't they make a commercial product yet.
  • DistintiDistinti Posts: 38
    edited April 2020
    Tibor, you are correct, there needs to be a temperature differential to measure a voltage differential if you are using all metal on metal connections. Thank you -- I had forgotten.

    On the other hand, If you replace any metal-on-metal junction with a metal-electrolyte-metal junction (or other form of ionic bridge) the voltage differential can be measured without a temperature difference. -- but then this is how a battery works.

    My concerns regarding your thought experiment:

    In order for you to charge a conductor to a high negative voltage, you need to get charges from somewhere else.

    when conductor A is charged with electrons, conductor B is discharged.
    A will heat
    B will cool
    After a moment
    A will lose heat and B will gain heat.
    A will trend toward ambient which means its voltage will reduce (becomes more positive)
    B will trend toward ambient which means its voltage will also reduce (becomes more negative )
    If you could find (or invent) a way to commutate this, you could have a heat pump.
    When operated in reverse, it would generate electricity -- but then you are back to needing a temperature gradient to drive it.

    Consider:
    The temperature gradient is the most rudimentary form of "magic door" (from Maxwell's demon)
    The Seebeck effect (dissimilar metals) is another form of magic door, but then you have the metal-on-metal issues described above.
    In a previous email, I was thinking that the shape of the conductor could offer another means to a magic door. This is based on how different conductive shapes behave at high voltage.

    Conclusion
    As you can tell, I'm not a fan of actively driving this. too many reasons to get into here.
    If a magic door could be developed, then a passive energy source could be realized (like solar panel)


    any way -- I'll leave it at that.

    Regards,
    RJD




    Consider this instead: A conductor already has a substantial quantity of negative charges at ambient.

    If you could find or invent a means to commutate the
  • tibortibor Posts: 11
    edited April 2020
    On the other hand, If you replace any metal-on-metal junction with a metal-electrolyte-metal junction (or other form of ionic bridge) the voltage differential can be measured without a temperature difference.
    That is interesting! I'm wondering, what happens if we create eg. a gold-electrolyte-graphite sandwich? Gold and graphite will not be involved in chemical reactions with the electrolyte, but we may get a thermal junction voltage...
    any way -- I'll leave it at that.
    Me too, at least for now. I'm too busy with my current job and my newborn son these days... And I know someone working currently on a special diode for converting heat into electricity. Some parts of his work were published here:
    If he will not succeed, then later I will come back to this puzzle.

    Thanks for your thoughts!
  • MenausMenaus Posts: 21
    edited April 2020
    I think we should stay on topic. That is, this thread being about Tesla, we should speak about Tesla's ideas, his life, and himself. Discussions on the Seeback effect can go to threads on the Seeback effect. :)

    I'm more interested in discussing the validity of Tesla's claims, Tesla's persona and whether he was crazy or not, how well his inventions were put together, etc.
  • MenausMenaus Posts: 21
    edited April 2020
    I'd like to point that Distinti mentioned his experiments needed to be in the realms of high frequency and/or high voltage. This being the case, I'd like to remind us that Nikola Tesla began his engineering career after his invention of the induction motor with investigations almost exclusively devoted to things involving high voltage and high frequency. It is with apparatus such as that where he spoke of electrified sound waves, and I speculate that Distinti may be moving in this direction without realizing the parallelism.

    Of course, it is only speculation. We haven't really seen his experiments as of yet, but I am eagerly awaiting their arrival.
  • SebastianGSebastianG Posts: 184
    edited April 2020
    @Menaus I also can't wait to see the new experiments. Normally an engineer try to calculate with linear systems. But if you look into it these systems are only linear at small speeds/frequency/temperatures. I you want to have a complete formulation of your problem, you have to include every dependency and their non-linearities.

    Maybe Robert just wants to show the linear limits of some physical laws, by turning up the voltages to very high levels. But it's like you said, all speculation and we have to wait for the actual experiments.
  • DelandDeland Posts: 1
    edited April 2020
    I think tesla did leave behind his circuit diagram for harnessing the potential out of the atmosphere. Just reverse his tesla coil circuit , reciprocity, having the capacitor to the right instead of the left. should be relatively simple to construct.Instead of shooting lightnig out of the taurus the taurus should collect atmospheric charge and convert it to ac.check out the circuit design on wiki tesla coil.
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