Technol Rep Tohoku Univ: GENERATION OF ANTI-GRAVITY ...

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an electricity supply system that was infinitely better than Edison's. If
Edison would only use his, Tesla's, method of alternating or AC current
instead of direct or DC current, which was notorious for its inability to
travel over long distances, Tesla knew he could deliver a system that was
far more efficient.
Yet, by the mid-1880s, Edison's entire infrastructure—indeed, his
entire business base—revolved around the supply of DC power, whatever
its manifest deficiencies. As a result, Tesla left the Edison Electric
Company to set up on his own.
From then on, his career was dogged by a series of business disasters,
but as an inventor—and the man who gave the world AC current into the
bargain—Tesla was without parallel. In 1891, he developed the Tesla
Coil, a remarkable invention that remains the basis for radios, televisions
and other means of wireless communication.
But it was the wireless transmission of energy that became his great
goal and for most of his professional life Tesla dedicated himself to the
pursuit of a system that promised to give the world a free supply of
energy. It hardly seemed to enter his head that big business, which by the
early 20th century was starting to make handsome profits out of electricity,
would be resolutely opposed to the idea.
Tesla's wireless energy transmission system was initially based upon
technology for sending power through the air, but he soon developed a
far more efficient transmission medium: the ground. In a series of
experiments in Colorado, Tesla showed that the earth could be adapted
from its customary role as an energy sinkhole—a place to dump excess
electricity—into a powerful conductor; a giant planetwide energy
transmission system that obviated the need for wires.
Tesla died penniless in 1943, mumbling to the end about fantastic
beam weapons that could blast aircraft from the skies or be bounced off
the ionosphere to strike at targets anywhere on the globe. One of the
wilder theories that still cling to his memory revolves around a supposed
experiment to beam some kind of message to the Arctic explorer Robert
Peary, who in mid-1908 was making an attempt to reach the North Pole.
According to legend, Tesla, who had built a powerful transmitter at
Wardencliff on Long Island, beamed the "message" on June 30 and
awaited news from Peary. The explorer saw nothing, but thousands of
miles away, in a remote corner of Siberia, a massive explosion equivalent
to 15 megatons of TNT devastated 500,000 acres of land centered on a
place called Tunguska.
The Tunguska "incident" is generally ascribed to the impact of a
comet fragment or a meteorite, but the absence of evidence for the impact