Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter (amplify electricity)

[delboy]

Tesla (1901) :
...my next step was to use the earth itself as the medium for conducting the currents, thus dispensing with wires and all other artificial conductors. So I was led to the development of a system of energy transmission and of telegraphy without the use of wires, which I described in 1893. The difficulties I encountered at first in the transmission of currents through the earth were very great. At that time I had at hand only ordinary apparatus, which I found to be ineffective, and I concentrated my attention immediately upon perfecting machines for this special purpose. This work consumed a number of years, but I finally vanquished all difficulties and succeeded in producing a machine which, to explain its operation in plain language, resembled a pump in its action, drawing electricity from the earth and driving it back into the same at an enormous rate, thus creating ripples or disturbances which, spreading through the earth as through a wire, could be detected at great distances by carefully attuned receiving circuits. In this manner I was able to transmit to a distance, not only feeble effects for the purposes of signaling, but considerable amounts of energy, and later discoveries I made convinced me that I shall ultimately succeed in conveying power without wires, for industrial purposes, with high economy, and to any distance, however great.

[forest]

Link please !

[gyulasun]

http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1901-02-09.htm

[Magluvin]

Hey Delboy. Good to see you back. =]

I wonder if Teslas transmission of power through the earth was just normal in all other ways like power lines.
Like would each reciever added to the system(earth) put more drain on the transmitter? And if nobody was using power, would the transmitter still be pushing out the power and it be wasted? These things would still make it logical to just run wires as to get everyone to pay for the production of power, or do the receivers have usage meters.
And could it be known, from the earth, whether power is being used or not in order to not waste power in production.
Thanks for the tidbit Delboy.

Mags

[delboy]

...Now, there is a vast difference between these two, the electromagnetic and current energies.  That A which goes out in the form of rays, is, as I have indicated here, unrecoverable, hopelessly lost.  You can operate a little instrument by catching a billionth part of it but, except this, all goes out into space never to return.  This other energy, however, of the current in the globe, is stored and completely recoverable.  Theoretically, it does not take much effort to maintain the earth in electrical vibration.  I have, in fact, worked out a plant of 10,000 horse-power which would operate with no bigger loss than 1 percent of the whole power applied; that is, with the exception of the frictional energy that is consumed in the rotation of the engines and the heating of the conductors, I would not lose more than 1 percent.  In other words, if I have a 10,000 horsepower plant, it would take only 100 horsepower to keep the earth vibrating so long as there is no energy taken out at any other place

...Suppose that the earth were an elastic bag filled with water.  My transmitter is equivalent to a pump.  I put it on a point of the globe, and work my little piston so as to create a disturbance of that water.  If the piston moves slowly, so that the time is long enough for the disturbance to spread over the globe, then what will be the result of my working this pump? The result will be that the bag will expand and contract rhythmically with the motions of the piston, you see.  So that, at any point of that bag, there will be a rhythmical movement due to the pulsations of the pump.

That is only, however, when the period is long.  If I were to work this pump very rapidly, then I would create impulses, and the ripples would spread in circles over the surface of the globe.  The globe will no longer expand and contract in its entirety, but it will be subject to these outgoing, rippling waves.

Remember, now, that the water is incompressible, that the bag is perfectly elastic, that there are no hysteretic losses in the bag due to these expansions and contractions; and remember also, that there is a vacuum, in infinite space, so that the energy cannot be lost in waves of sound.  Then, if I put at a distant point another little pump, and tune it to the rhythmical pulses of the pump at the central plant, I will excite strong vibrations and will recover power from them, sufficient to operate a receiver.  But, if I have no pump there to receive these oscillations, if there is nowhere a place where this elastic energy is transferred into frictional energy (we always use in our devices frictional energy -- everything is lost through friction), then there is no loss, and if I have a plant of 1,000 horsepower and I operate it to full capacity, that plant does not take power, it runs idle, exactly as the plant at Niagara.  If I do not put any motors or any lamps on the circuit, the plant runs idle.  There is a 5,000 horsepower turbine going, but no power is supplied to the turbine except such power as is necessary to overcome the frictional losses.

Now the vast difference between the scheme of radio engineers and my scheme is this.  If you generate electromagnetic waves with a plant of 1,000 horsepower, you are using 1,000 horsepower right along -- whether there is any receiving being done or not.  You have to supply this 1,000 horsepower, exactly as you have to supply coal to keep your stove going, or else no heat goes out.  That is the vast difference.  In my case, I conserve the energy; in the other case, the energy is all lost.