R&D

The discovery of alternating-current (A.C.) power and the rotating magnetic field (which is the basis of nearly all AC machinery) by Nikola Tesla, the eccentric and obsessed visionary, ushered in the power age but made Thomas Edison, with his corner on the D.C. power market, rather sore. Not long after, there was a mysterious fire at Tesla's lab . . . things were beginning to heat up.

Serbian by birth, Tesla became one of the founders of Westinghouse Electric Co. and a scientist of singular genius. In 1900, he discovered terrestrial stationary waves, by which he proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor and would respond like a tuning fork to electromagnetic waves on a certain frequency. He demonstrated the effect by lighting 200 electric lamps, without wires, 25 miles away!

Tesla wanted to build a system whereby standing waves circling the Earth would provide practically free power and communications anywhere on the globe. J.P. Morgan granted him the money to develop his idea but later withdrew his support abruptly when someone reminded him that he wasn't going to make much money from free energy. Tesla's experiments were suppressed and he was never to achieve prominence again.

Later, he was inhibited by a progressive germ phobia, and claimed to have angelic visitations and to have received his blueprints from signals in space. His many accomplishments included creating the first man-made lightning, invention of the induction motor, and the development, he claimed, of a death ray. In 1943, he died in semipoverty and virtual obscurity. — RE

Reviews

Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology

Jeanne Manning

This work is about advances in Tesla technology. Learn about the U.S. Government’s new ground-based Star Wars weapon system HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project. The HAARP is an experiment in the ionosphere that targets the electrojet (a river of electricity that flows thousands of miles through the sky), attempting to turn it into a vibrating artificial antenna for sending electromagnetic radiation raining down on the earth. This experiment could affect the earth's upper atmosphere: changing weather patterns over large areas, and interfering with wildlife migration. As a weapon, it could be used to jam global communications, for weather control, or to disrupt human mental processes. Out of control, it could affect the whole planet's life cycle. The book includes a chronology of large-scale electromagnetic experimentation from Tesla to nuclear explosions in the Van Allen Belt to ionospheric heating or sky busting, to the development of HAARP. There is information on: Russian Microwave experiments conducted against the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, C.I.A. Mind Control experiments, positive applications of electrophysiology, and developments in non-lethal weaponry. There is a series of diagrammatic illustrations of the HAARP, and even suggestions for turning the destructive uses of it to more positive applications. Picked as one of the top 10 under reported news stories of 1994 by Project Censored. MC

Publisher: Earthpulse
Paperback: 233 pages

Experiments With Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency, with Appendix: The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires

Nikola Tesla

Transcription of a lecture delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London. Appendix covers his Colorado experiments in transmission of electric energy without wires. Originally published in 1904.

Publisher: Brotherhood of Life
Hardback: 162 pages
Illustrated

The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla with David Hatcher Childress

Lots of neat pictures and descriptions of Tesla's various patented inventions including his “amazing death ray” and other “unusual inventions”; the Supreme Court documents on the dismantling of Wardenclyffe Tower; a complete bibliography; and the never-before-told story of how he and Guglielmo Marconi faked their deaths, moved to a secret compound deep in the Amazon jungle, built a fleet of anti-gravity-powered flying saucers and flew them to Mars in the late '40s, where they may or may not have built a few pyramids and the famous “face.” DB

Publisher: Adventures Unlimited
Paperback: 340 pages
Illustrated

Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla

Thomas Commerford Martin

This book was originally printed in 1894 by Electrical Engineer Magazine of New York. It is reprinted in its exact original form without a new preface or any comment on the “cult of Tesla” that has blossomed in recent years. It is very technical and concerns itself primarily with the nature of electricity and its applications to lighting and motors. A good source for anybody who is setting out to study the greater body of Tesla's work, it shows how he was perceived by his peers and just how much of what he achieved is now taken for granted. Anybody seeking biographical detail or the “classified stuff” is advised to look elsewhere. This is a very specific (and thorough) look at a focused area of endeavor. SA

Publisher: Lindsay
Paperback: 496 pages
Illustrated

Nikola Tesla’s Earthquake Machine

Dale Pond and Walter Baumgartner

According to the New York World-Telegram, Nikola Tesla claimed to have set off an earthquake in the vicinity of his Manhattan laboratory in 1898. The authors have investigated his claim and also his plans to create a worldwide power transmission system based on “tele-geo-dynamics,” the art of producing terrestrial motions at a distance. A new science of vibrational physics is proposed based on Tesla and John Keely’s lost research. Includes reproductions of the original patents for Tesla’s electric generator and plans for building your own mechanical oscillator-generator. SS

Publisher: Message
Paperback: 176 pages
Illustrated

Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla

John J. O’Neill

An overview of the life of Nikola Tesla, one of the most unusual thinkers of our millennium, originally published in 1944 by a guy that Tesla himself said understood him “better than anyone else in the world.” The best thing about this book is a little surprise regarding “the love story of Tesla's life,” early on promising the skinny on “a romance the like of which is not recorded in the annals of human history,” and he's not kidding. Sure, the stories of his 1897 invention of our modern polyphase alternating-current electrical distribution system, his unsung creation of what later became broadcast radio, and his experiments with the wireless transmission of power through the air and even the Earth itself are all pretty interesting, but you'll forget all about that trivia when you get to the part where he explains his tendency to obsessively feed pigeons. “There was one pigeon,” Tesla reveals, “a beautiful bird, pure white with light gray tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female… I loved that pigeon. Yes,” he replies to an unasked question, “yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.” Oh, the humanity! DB

Publisher: Brotherhood of Life
Paperback: 329 pages

Tesla Coil

George Trinkaus

Plans, diagrams and text which are actually written in plain English. Get kilovolts out of an ordinary AC socket, light fluorescent bulbs without plugging them in, or scare the hell out of your friends with lightning on demand. FLA

Publisher: Flatland
Pamphlet: 24 pages

Tesla Technology Series Volume 1: The Problem of Increasing Human Energy and the Wireless Transmission of Power

Nikola Tesla

Publisher: Adventures Unlimited
Paperback: 92 pages

Tesla: A Man Out of Time

Margaret Cheney

The best biography of Nikola Tesla, the ultimate “mad” scientist who abhorred women, couldn't stand anything white and globular, and invented AC electrical transmission, star wars particle weapons, death rays and free-energy devices. FLA

Publisher: Dell
Paperback: 320 pages
Illustrated

The Theory of Wireless Power

Eric P. Dollard

Contains many essential formulae and supporting data necessary to understand the process of the transmission of electrical energy without wires. Based on real work with a Tesla Magnifying Transmitter.

Publisher: Borderland Sciences
Pamphlet: 69 pages