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New York Times,
October 22, 1907, p. 8, col. 6.
Nikola Tesla Says
Distance Forms No Obstacle to Transmission of Energy.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
In your issue of the 19th inst. Edison makes statements which cannot
fail to create erroneous impressions..
There is a vast difference between primitive Hertzwave signalling,
practicable to but a few miles, and the great art of wireless
transmission of energy, which enables an expert to transmit, to any
distance, not only signals, but power in unlimited amounts, and of which
the experiments across the Atlantic are a crude application. The
plants are quite inefficient, unsuitable for finer work, and totally
doomed to an effect less than one percent of that I attained in my test
in 1899.
Edison thinks that Sir Hiram Maxim is blowing hot air. The fact is
my Long Island plant will transmit almost its entire energy to the
antipodes, if desired. As to [Martian communications] I can only
say, that I shall be able to attain a wave activity of 800,000,000 horse
power and a simple calculation will show, that the inhabitants of that
planet, if there be any, need not have a Lord Raleigh to detect the
disturbance.
Referring to your editorial comment of even date, the question of
wireless interference is puzzling only because of its novelty. The
underlying principle is old, and it has presented itself for
consideration in numerous forms. Just now it appears in the novel
aspects of aerial navigation and wireless transmission. Every
human effort must of necessity create a disturbance. What
difference is there in essence, between the commotion produced by any
revolutionary idea or improvement and that of a wireless transmitter?
The spectre of interference has been conjured by Hertzwave or radio
telegraphy in which attunement is absolutely impossible, simply because
the effect diminishes rapidly with distance. But to my system of
energy transmission, based on the use of impulses not sensibly
diminishing with distance, perfect attunement and the higher artifice of
individualization are practicable. As ever, the ghost will vanish
with the wireless dawn.
NIKOLA TESLA
New York, Oct. 21, 1907. |
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