power transmission for free?

[indigom]

a goal of Nichola Tesla. Using the Earths magnetism (and iron core) to tap into wireless energy. I'm no EE. What do you think?
Some counties (USA) counted him as the inventor of wireless transmission of energy, tuned of course. Many of his inventions involved tuning.

Biography
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/biog.txt

more on the Interweb.

helped change the last 110+ years with AC distro, radio, emissions.

Was cut off and retired, What would he think now? How would he improve things? My electric bill becomes higher every month.

 

[sodderboy]

Funny that that auto-bio does not mention harnessing Niagra Falls. I recommend the Margaret Cheney bio, which includes references to that pulp auto-bio.
It was not good enough for Tesla to go to "11"- why not "111"? When something worked in a laboratory, he would scale up to continental. He was in a race with Marconi to realize radio data transmission, and he conceived the idea of power transmission.
The energy used by Marconi to transmit "s" across the Atlantic would power thousands of cell phones today. The energy required to "activate the atmosphere" for "energy transmission" would most likely disrupt most other radio transmissions.
But, coming to a desk near you will be wireless re-charging of cell phones and other portable devices, so that is a start.
If you want lower energy bills, improve insulation, burn candles, DIY a root cellar, bag the plasma TV, etc.
If you want lower energy costs, petition your local, state, and federal foliticians for:
1. more power generating plants, preferably nukular
2. less regulation of power generation and interstate power transmission
3. lower taxes on utilities
4. lower taxes on energy providers
5. increase domestic refining capacity
6. increase domestic oil extraction

A mixture of the above, more than a 19th century genius' hypotheses, will lower your energy costs.
Mike

 

[PRR]

> that auto-bio does not mention harnessing Niagra Falls.

Niagara was well harnessed before electricity. Canals, tunnels, shafts, pulleys alongside and downstream of the falls. Mills packed in like sardines.

Tesla's most world-changing invention was his dream of an AC electric motor. This alone was not enough to expand Niagara's distribution from mechanical to electrical, but it was key. (DC is hardly better than a good rope drive.)

Aside from my electric use, my car alone gives me more power than a wealthy Roman farmer got from his hundred field-hands. A hard-worked human can do 0.2HP (but not all day) or 20HP from 100 serfs. I work my car at an average near 20HP, with 148HP peaks which no Roman could apply to any one job.

> If you want lower energy bills

What? Give up my car and live poorer than the wealthier Romans????

> Was cut off and retired

No. He rose and fell on his own. He was quite crazy. He was crazy in just the right way and time and place. He dreamed the motor that Westinghouse needed, and Westinghouse paid well to get things started. As AC motor use grew and costs fell, what seemed fair became a burden on the industry, and the royalty was dropped by mutual consent. Sure Tesla liked the money, but he was also crazy enough to allow the industry to grow without holding out for large payments. Nobody liked working with him (Edison fired Tesla from a simple electrician's job, or maybe Tesla left before Edison's boot reached his butt). He spent the rest of his life, and fortune, doing what he loved.

 

[PRR]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/123467

"The Cult of the Volt
Inventor Nikola Tesla didn't get much glory when he was alive, but to hipsters now, he's a real turn-on."
NEWSWEEK
Mar 24, 2008 Issue

 

[bcarso]

HIPSTERS!!??

Somehow that really strikes me as funny. Particularly in connection with Tesla. But I guess hip and hipster are coming back, and maybe never left. See for example

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4175091

I can't hear hipster though without thinking of Lord Buckley's version of Marc Antony's funeral oration in Julius Caesar: "Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies---Knock me your lobes..."

 

[Flatpicker]

Actually the Edison/Tesla story goes, Edison promised Tesla 50 grand (a lot back then!) if he could redesign those crappy dynamos he was using to generate DC. Tesla took him up on it, and nearly a year later yielded a greatly improved version to Edison's original. When Tesla tried to collect his $50K, Edison told him he was only joking and added a comment about Tesla not understanding American humor. Tesla was never paid.

Although he was a little crazy, he was a genius (a lot of them are border-line crazy) and rarely got the credit he deserved. His pioneering of AC power led to our power systems of today. Not that someone else wouldn't have invented it had he not, but he was the first. He was also the first to invent the radio, which Marconi later patented and received credit for, but the US Supreme Court removed Marconi's patent and gave it to Tesla in 1943.

Edison was a pretty smart fellow himself, (although not in Tesla's caliber IMHO) but was also pretty shrewd. When Westinghouse began supporting Tesla's idea of superior AC power, Edison began using scare tactics by having animals electrocuted with AC in public to demonstrate it's dangerous lethal potential.

I don't have the exact quote, but Tesla once said of Edison something like "If he had enough sense to do a little math, it'd save him weeks of work!"

 

[bcarso]

[quote author="Flatpicker"]
I don't have the exact quote, but Tesla once said of Edison something like "If he had enough sense to do a little math, it'd save him weeks of work!"[/quote]

That was the (near) quote I was alluding to in Consul's thread about DSP emulation of various nonlinear things, when he, as I interpreted it at least, enlisted Edison's example of beating a problem to death without worrying about understanding it.

One of my prized rare books is Tesla's Experiments with Alternate [sic] Currents of High Potential and High Frequency.* It includes "...an appendix by the same author on the transmission of electric energy without wires, reviewing his recent work and presenting illustrations from photographs never before published."


*not the facsimile edition