Nikola Tesla - Free-Energy Devices

142 INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA.Louis, it may be remarked that to the superficial reader, Mr.Tesla's introduction, dealing with the importance of the eye, mightappear as a digression, but the thoughtful reader will find thereinmuch food for meditation and speculation. Throughout his discourseone can trace Mr. Tesla's effort to present in a popularway thoughts and views on the electrical phenomena which havein recent years captivated the scientific world, but of which thegeneral public has even yet merely received an inkling. Mr.Tesla also dwells rather extensively on his well-known method ofhigh-frequency conversion ;and the large amount of detail informationwill be gratefully received by students and experimentersin this virgin field. The employment of apt analogiesin explaining the fundamental principles involved makes it easyfor all to gain a clear idea of their nature. Again, the ease withwhich, thanks to Mr. Tesla's efforts, these high-frequency currentsmay now be obtained from circuits carrying almost anykind ofcurrent, cannot fail to result in an extensive broadeningof this field of research, which offers so many possibilities.M r.Tesla, true philosopher as he does not is, hesitate to point outdefects in some of his methods, and indicates the lines which thim seem the most promising. Particular stress is laid by himupon the employment of a medium in which the dischargeelectrodes should be immersed in order that this method of conversionmay be brought to the highest perfection. He has evidentlytaken pains to give as much useful information as possibleto those who wish to follow in his path, as he shows in detail thecircuit arrangements to be adopted in all ordinary cases met within practice, and although some of these methods were describedby him two years before, the additional information is still timelyand welcome.In his experiments he dwells first on some phenomena producedby electrostatic force, which he considers in the light ofmodern theories to be the most important force in nature for usto investigate. At the very outset he shows a strikingly novelexperiment illustrating the effect of a rapidly varying electrostaticforce in a gaseous medium, by touching with one hand one ofthe terminals of a 200,000 volt transformer and bringing tinotherhand to the opposite terminal. The powerful streamerswhich issued from his hand and astonished his audiences formeda capital illustration of some of the views advanced, and affordedMr. Tesla an opportunity of pointing out the true reasons why.