Nikola Tesla - Free-Energy Devices

250 INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA.direction of extreme degrees of heat. How can such high temperatureshe arrived at How ? are the highest degrees of heatreadied in nature ?By the impact of stars, by high speeds andcollisions. In a collision any rate of heat generation may beattained. In a chemical process we are limited. When oxygenand hydrogen combine, they fall, metaphorically speaking, froma definite height. We cannot go very far with a blast, nor byconfining heat in a furnace, but in an exhausted bulb we canconcentrate any amount of energy upon a minute button. Leavingpracticability out of consideration, this, then, would be themeans which, in my opinion, would enable us to reach the highesttemperature. But a great difficultywhen proceeding in this wayis encountered, namely, in most cases the bodyis carried off beforeit can fuse and form a drop. This difficulty exists principallywith an oxide, such as zirconia, because it cannot be compressedin so hard a cake that it would not be carried off quickly.I have endeavored repeatedly to fuse zirconia, placing it in a cup ofarc light carbon, as indicated in Fig.152. It glowed with a mostintense light, and the stream of the particles projected out of thecarbon cup was of a vivid white but whether it was;compressedin a cake or made into a paste with carbon, it was carried offbefore it could be fused. The carbon cup, containing zirconia,had to be mounted very low in the neck of a large bulb, as theheating of the glass by the projected particles of the oxide wasso rapid that in the first trial the bulb was cracked almost in aninstant, when the current was turned on. The heating of theglass by the projected particles was found to be always greaterwhen the carbon cup contained a body which was rapidly carriedoff I presume, because in such cases, with the same potential,higher speeds were reached, and also because, per unit of time,more matter was projected that is,more particles would strikethe glass.The before-mentioned difficulty did not exist, however, whenthe body mounted in the carbon cup offered great resistance todeterioration. For instance, when an oxide was first fused inan oxygen blast, and then mounted in the bulb, it melted veryreadily into a drop.Generally, during the process of fusion, magnificent lighteffects were noted, of which it would be difficult to give an adequateidea. Fig. 152 is intended to illustrate the effect observedwith a ruby drop. At first one may see a narrow funnel of