LOST INVENTION

 

Tesla's oscillator

Tesla's electro-mechanical oscillator is a steam-powered electric generator patented by Nikola Tesla in 1893.^[1][2] Later in life Tesla claimed one version of the oscillator caused an earthquake in New York City in 1898, gaining it the popular culture title "Tesla's earthquake machine".

Tesla's oscillator is a reciprocating electricity generator. Steam would be forced into the oscillator, and exit through a series of ports, pushing a piston up and down that was attached to an armature, causing it to vibrate up and down at high speed, producing electricity. The casing's upper chamber had to withstand pressures of 400 psi and temperatures exceeding 200 °C. Some versions used air trapped behind the piston as an "air spring", increasing efficiency. Another variation used electromagnets to control the frequency of the piston's oscillation.

Tesla developed many versions of the oscillator and looked on it as a possible replacement for inefficient reciprocating steam engines used to turn generators, but it was superseded by the development of highly efficient steam turbines. Tesla also used the highly regular tunable oscillation of the device to set frequency in his high frequency electrical and wireless transmission experiments.

"Earthquake" claims[edit]

In 1935 at his annual birthday party/press meeting a 79-year-old Tesla related a story where he claimed a version of his mechanical oscillator caused extreme vibrations in structures and even an earthquake in downtown New York City.

 Tesla said the oscillator was around 7 inches (18 cm) long and weighing one or two pounds, something "you could put in your overcoat pocket". At one point while experimenting with the oscillator, he alleged it generated a resonance in several buildings, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew, he said that the machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to use a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived.

Wireless Energy

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In 1901, Tesla secured $150,000 from financier J.P. Morgan to build a 185-foot-tall, mushroom-shaped tower on the north shore of Long Island capable of transmitting messages, telephony and images to ships at sea and across the Atlantic Ocean by using the Earth to conduct signals. As work began on the structure, called Wardenclyffe Tower, Tesla wanted to adapt it to allow for wireless power delivery, believing from his experiments on radio and microwaves that he could light up New York City by transmitting millions of volts of electricity through the air. Morgan, however, refused to give Tesla any additional funding for his grandiose scheme. (Some speculate that Morgan cut off funds once he realized that Tesla’s plan would have crippled his other energy-sector holdings.) Tesla abandoned the project in 1906 before it could ever become operational, and Wardenclyffe Tower was dismantled in 1917.

Tesla's design for Wardenclyffe grew out of his experiments beginning in the early 1890s. His primary goal in these experiments was to develop a new wireless power transmission system. He discarded the idea of using the newly discovered Hertzian (radio) waves, detected in 1888 by German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz since Tesla doubted they existed and basic physics told him, and most other scientists from that period, that they would only travel in straight lines the way visible light did, meaning they would travel straight out into space becoming "hopelessly lost".^[3]

In laboratory work and later large-scale experiments at Colorado Springs in 1899, Tesla developed his own ideas on how a worldwide wireless system would work. He theorized from these experiments that if he injected electric current into the Earth at just the right frequency he could harness what he believed was the planet's own electrical charge and cause it to resonate at a frequency that would be amplified in "standing waves" that could be tapped anywhere on the planet to run devices or, through modulation, carry a signal.^[4] His system was based more on 19th century ideas of electrical conduction and telegraphy instead of the newer theories of air-borne electromagnetic waves, with an electrical charge being conducted through the ground and being returned through the air.^[5]

Tesla's design used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere,^[5] a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis.^[6] Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his return path in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.

Death ray

Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented a "death beam" which he called teleforce in the 1930s and continued the claims up until his death.^[9][10][11] Tesla explained that "this invention of mine does not contemplate the use of any so-called 'death rays'. Rays are not applicable because they cannot be produced in requisite quantities and diminish rapidly in intensity with distance. All the energy of New York City (approximately two million horsepower) transformed into rays and projected twenty miles, could not kill a human being, because, according to a well known law of physics, it would disperse to such an extent as to be ineffectual. My apparatus projects particles which may be relatively large or of microscopic dimensions, enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. Many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist."^[12] Tesla proposed that a nation could "destroy anything approaching within 200 miles... [and] will provide a wall of power" in order to "make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack".^[12] He claimed to have worked on the project since about 1900, and said that it drew power from the ionosphere, which he called "an invisible ball of energy surrounding Earth". He said that he had done this with the help of a 50-foot tesla coil.

Artificial Tidal Wave

The engineer and physicist believed the power of science could be harnessed to prevent war. In 1907 the New York World reported on another of Tesla’s military innovations in which wireless telegraphy would trigger the detonations of high explosives at sea to generate tidal waves so vast that they would capsize entire enemy fleets. The newspaper reported that the artificial tidal wave would “make navies as useless as the paper boats that babies float in bathtubs” and, foreshadowing later claims about the development of nuclear weapons, “by its horrors hasten the day of universal peace.”