Re: MIT wireless energy transfer etc. (fwd)

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:18:47 -0600
From: Gary Peterson <g.peterson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: MIT wireless energy transfer etc. (fwd)

Back in Nov. 2006 I tried explaining to those fellows at MIT what Tesla was 
actually doing, but it seems they are not really interested in that.

Wallace,

You wrote to Aristeidis Karalis:
> I regret I do not have the two articles to which I referred in electronic 
> form.   However I recently made a hard copy of them for my friend Gary 
> Peterson who I will ask to make a copy of them for you.

I have posted typescripts of the two articles on the web at 
www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/eccles.htm  and www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/fleming.htm 
[in progress].  Here are the wireless transmission distance statements made 
therein along with a short commentary that I have prepared.

In 1943 W. H. Eccles wrote, ". . . Tesla's main purpose was the transmission 
of power and messages across space.  In 1892 and 1893 he developed his 
scheme.  High-frequency power was to be led to a large antenna consisting of 
an elevated metal area connected by a vertical wire to a large metal plate 
buried in the earth.  The receiving antenna was to be equal in every 
respect. . . . Tesla had thus supplied, two years before wireless began its 
commercial career, all the elements of both spark and continuous wave 
sending stations. . . . After building one or two small stations, he started 
in 1897, at his own expense, a station of 200 kilowatts in Colorado.  From 
this point in 1899 he transmitted power enough to light a lamp at 30 km. 
For the reception of continuous wave signals he invented the interrupter 
device known as a ticker, which was employed by others for the next dozen 
years, and from the Colorado station received signals at a distance of 1,000 
km.  Later, his form of antenna, his rotating discharger, and his tuned 
transformer were used successfully by many others at spark stations in every 
country." [Eccles, W. H., "Dr. Nikola Tesla," Nature, London, 13. II 1943., 
p. 189]

In 1944, Fleming wrote, "Following up his idea of making the whole 
terrestrial globe oscillate electrically, in 1899 in Colorado he erected a 
high aerial tower and connected a very high-voltage Tesla coil between it 
and the ground.  He hoped apparently that the large periodic electric charge 
which was thereby elevated high above the ground would excite an oscillation 
of the whole globe.  Immense power seemed essential to him, and he 
presumably hoped to achieve a resonance of the globe.  The mechanism of 
propagation he looked for was not the mechanism which Hertz and Maxwell 
thought of and which is used today, but the method he used in his attempt 
involved the employment of a high aerial and a ground connection, two of the 
most obvious features of present-day radio.  He transmitted enough power to 
light a lamp at a distance of 30 km. and to produce detectable signals at a 
distance of 1,000 km."   [Fleming, A P. M., Journal of Institution of 
Electrical Engineers, London, Vol. 91, February 1944]

Considering the dates, it is possible that Fleming's remarks were based upon 
those of Eccles appearing in Nature.  Eccles' wording of the wireless 
transmission account is somewhat unclear.  He states, "From this point [the 
Colorado station] 1899 he [Tesla] transmitted power enough to light a lamp 
at 30 km.," which is plain enough, but he then goes on to say that Tesla, 
"from the Colorado station received signals at a distance of 1,000 km," a 
statement that is slightly ambiguous.  There would be no question if Eccles 
had written, "he received signals from the Colorado station at a distance of 
1,000 km," or as stated by Fleming, "He transmitted enough power . . . to 
produce detectable signals at a distance of 1,000 km," but he didn't.

Henry Bradford has pointed out that in the 1916 interview Tesla does not 
mention the transmission-reception distance figures cited by Eccles.  Tesla 
does say,

     "The distance at that time [in or about the year 1897], and I think the 
greatest distance at which I ever received signals from the Houston Street 
laboratory, was from the Houston laboratory to West Point.  That is, I 
think, a distance of about 30 miles. . . ."

In the same interview, when questioned about the distance of his test 
receivers from the sending station in Colorado Springs and from the 
Wardenclyffe plant Tesla responds,

     ". . . these distances were small, . . . they were merely intended to 
give me quantative data . . . 10 miles or so. . . . Similarly, in the Long 
Island Plant." [Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their 
Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power, 
second edition, Anderson, L.I., Ed., Twenty First Century Books, 
Breckenridge, 2002, p. 172-173.]

As you stated earlier in regards to the Fleming and Eccles statements, "when 
men of their stature publish in journals with peer review, I would think 
they would be very careful not to damage their reputations. . . . they did 
not put in caveats such as "Tesla "reported" . . . or Tesla "claimed to 
have" . . . On the other hand Eccles admiration of Tesla was  said to border 
on adulation.   And these were intended to be tributes made at the death of 
Tesla."

Were it not for the accounts specifying Colorado as the location where the 
observations were made, one might conclude that the data were collected some 
time subsequent to 1916, perhaps during the wireless transmission 
demonstrations said to have taken place around 1930 north of Quebec City, 
Canada. [Recorded interview with Arthur Mathews, please see 
http://www.tfcbooks.com/teslafaq/q&a_051.htm .]

In his written record of Colorado Springs experiments Tesla does provide 
accounts of having received naturally occurring signals originating a 
significant distance from the station.  "In one instance the devices 
recorded effects of lightning discharges fully 500 miles away." [Nikola 
Tesla  Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900, Nolit, Beograd, 1978, p. 110]

The Eccles distance figure of 1,000-kilometers , some 621 miles, is about 
24% beyond that provided by Tesla for his 'spherics' observation.  Given 
that many second-hand accounts of Tesla's achievements are known to contain 
inaccuracies, perhaps the Eccles figure does not seem so far off.

As for the lighting of a lamp at a distance of 30 kilometers, some 19 miles, 
this is . . . harder to explain.  This distance is about 86% beyond the "10 
miles or so" that Tesla spoke of in the 1916 interview.  On the other hand, 
we have J. J. O'Neill's 1944 account,

". . . By piecing together the fragmentary material published in a number of 
publications, however, it appears evident that Tesla . . . tested his power 
transmission system at a distance of twenty-six miles from his laboratory 
and was able to light two hundred incandescent lamps, of the Edison type, 
with electrical energy extracted from the earth while his oscillator was 
operating.  These lamps consumed about fifty watts each . . . ."  [Prodigal 
Genius, Ives Washburn, Inc. 1944, 1964, p. 193-194]

Two additional Tesla statements provide us with a bit of substantiation that 
the second hand accounts have at least some basis in fact.

"While I have not as yet actually effected a transmission of a considerable 
amount of energy, such as would be of industrial importance, to a great 
distance by this new method, I have operated several model plants under 
exactly the same conditions which will exist in a large plant of this kind, 
and the practicability of the system is thoroughly demonstrated. ["The 
Problem of Increasing Human Energy," Century, June, 1900]

and

To illustrate, let me mention here [one of] two widely different experiments 
of mine.  [A] small incandescent lamp was lighted by means of a resonant 
circuit grounded on one end, all the energy being drawn through the earth 
electrified from a distant transmitter. . . . [T]he expert . . . knows that 
to make the little filament glow, the entire surface of the planet, two 
hundred million square miles, must be strongly electrified. . . . What 
impresses him most, however, is the knowledge that the little lamp will 
spring into the same brilliancy anywhere on the globe, there being no 
appreciable diminution of the effect with the increase of distance from the 
transmitter." ["Tuned Lightning," English Mechanic and World of Science, 
March 8, 1907, pp.  107, 108.]
[END]

In further responding to Aristeidis you wrote:
> Tesla claimed, to my recollection, at the time, that he estimated his 
> system would only result in 3% losses [after a base amount], so that his 
> system also must have been free of radiative losses. . . .

Here are Tesla's own words in this regard:

     "Now, there is a vast difference between these two, the electromagnetic 
and current energies.  That energy which goes out in the form of rays, is, 
as I have indicated here [on the diagram of Fig. 82], unrecoverable, 
hopelessly lost.  You can operate a little instrument by catching a 
billionth part of it but, except this, all goes out into space never to 
return.  This other energy, however, of the current in the globe, is stored 
and completely recoverable.  Theoretically, it does not take much effort to 
maintain the earth in electrical vibration.  I have, in fact, worked out a 
plant of 10,000 horse-power which would operate with no bigger loss than 1 
percent of the whole power applied; that is, with the exception of the 
frictional energy that is consumed in the rotation of the engines and the 
heating of the conductors, I would not lose more than 1 percent.  In other 
words, if I have a 10,000 horsepower plant, it would take only 100 
horsepower to keep the earth vibrating so long as there is no energy taken 
out at any other place."  [Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating 
Currents . . . , p. 140.]

You wrote:
> . . . [the Marconi] patent [U.S. Patent No. 586,193] . . . described a 
> sending station and a receiving station without any tuned circuits. . . . 
> Tesla's stroke of genius was to use tuned coupled coils,  move the energy 
> storage capacitance to the primary side, and to add a ground connection. . 
> . . Tesla was the first to inductively couple the secondary circuit [where 
> the capacitance must be small] to a tuned primary circuit, where the 
> energy storage element [capacitance] may be huge by comparison. . . ." 
> [Correspondence with Malcolm Watt]

Of course this describes the evolution of the "radio" transmitter.  We know 
that Tesla used the same coupled tuned circuit oscillator to implement his 
non-radiative "disturbed charge of ground and air method" of wireless 
transmission. [Colorado Springs Notes, p. 29.]  Both wireless methods 
incorporate a minimum of four tuned circuits, two at the transmitter and two 
at the receiver.

Tesla also used a series of four concatenated tuned circuits for the 
wireless transmission of energy by electromagnetic induction.  This work 
started at 35 South 5th Ave., and was subsequently adopted to light the 46 
Houston St. laboratory. [Nikola Tesla: Guided Weapons & Computer Technology, 
Anderson, L.I., Ed., Twenty First Century Books, Breckenridge, 1998, p. 62.] 
Tesla also used the induction energy transmission method at Colorado Springs 
in order to test its efficacy as compared with the "disturbed charge of 
ground and air method."  In this case the induction transmitter contained 
three of the tuned circuits, and the receiver was a single tuned circuit 
comprised of a one-turn inductance and a capacitor.

     "This [shown in Fig. 59] is transmission of energy by induction.  Here 
is a tuned circuit, you see, out in the field with three incandescent lamps 
and a condenser.  The energy is transmitted inductively, from the 
oscillator.  In this case, I have the primary supply circuit, the energizing 
condenser circuit, the primary inducing circuit, and the secondary in the 
field as in the fourth circuit, all tuned -- four circuits in resonance." 
[Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents . . . , pp. 93-94.]  ". 
. . it is found that with the above circuits and under such conditions about 
1 mile communications should be possible.  With circuits 1000 meters square, 
about 30 miles.  From this, the inferiority of the induction method would 
appear to be immense as compared with disturbed charge of ground and air 
method." [Colorado Springs Notes, p. 29.]

To summarize, there are three different wireless energy transmission methods 
being spoken of here, 1) radio, 2) induction, and 3) disturbed charge of 
ground and air.  The first method is radiative; methods number two and three 
are nonradiative.

Aristeidis Karalis wrote:
>> Our task is to achieve a very "efficient" (~50%) energy transfer over 
>> mid-range distances, namely within a room, . . . The sources for that 
>> purpose would be ~1m on a room ceiling. . . .

And, clearly, you would be using the induction method to do this.

>> . . . By the scaling law of Maxwell's equations, one could achieve 
>> "efficient" energy transfer also with a huge tower of 100m high but the 
>> range would be at most on the order of 1km and not more.

But, Tesla's huge tower was not designed on the basis of the induction 
method.  Its design embodies the non-radiative "disturbed charge of ground 
and air method."  The scaling law of Maxwell's equations does not appear to 
be applicable in this case.

Regards,
Gary

Gary Peterson
Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc.
P.O. Box 8041
Breckenridge, CO 80424-8041
Phone: 970-453-9293   Fax: 970-453-6692
www.ntmsc.org
www.teslascience.org
www.teslabooks.com
www.teslaradio.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wallace Edward Brand"

To: Aristeidis Karalis
Cc: "Gary Peterson"  "Malcolm Watts"
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: Congratulations on your rediscovery of wireless energy 
transmission

> Dear Mr. Karalis,
>
> I regret I do not have the two articles to which I referred in electronic 
> form.   However I recently made a hard copy of them for my friend Gary 
> Peterson who I will ask to make a copy of them for you.  Mr. Peterson 
> operates a company in Colorado called 21st Century Books, specializing in 
> books about Nikola Tesla and he is particularly interested in the 
> transmission of energy without wires.  You must send us a mailing address 
> at which you can receive them.  They had been reprinted in a volume 
> published by the Tesla Museum in Belgrade entitled, to my recollection, A 
> Tribute to Nikola Tesla.  Both of the authors had been Presidents of the 
> IEE in the UK.  Both greatly admired Tesla.
>
> Tesla claimed, to my recollection, at the time, that he estimated his
> system would only result in 3% losses [after a base amount], so that his 
> system also must have been free of radiative losses.  It is true that with 
> his tower he contemplated transferring large amounts of energy but the 
> Westinghouse generator he operated at his facility at Wardenclyffe, now 
> Shoreham, NY, was not a large one.  It is also true that now satellite 
> communications travel thousands of kms but 1901 was the dawn of radio 
> communication.
>
> To my understanding, "Marconi, in 1894, learned of the Hertz 1888 
> experiments and in 1896 filed an application in the United States, upon 
> which was granted the patent which was reissued as 11,913.  According to 
> my friend Malcolm Watt in New Zealand, that patent, described a sending 
> station and a receiving station without any tuned circuits. The system 
> would operate, but only at short distances, because there was too much 
> waste of energy. The transmitting antenna would quickly, and not 
> persistently, radiate the energy applied to it, with the result that the 
> train of ether waves would be too short instead of being sustained. And at 
> the receiving station, the antenna likewise would quickly absorb the 
> received waves, instead of storing them up, and the antenna also would 
> receive undesired waves from other transmitting antennas [citations 
> omitted]. The Lodge patent was an improvement; both the transmitting and 
> the receiving antennas being tuned with inductance, so that each would 
> vibrate longer and the receiver would be more selective (inductance in an 
> electrical system is the same as inertia in a physical system). Moreover, 
> even with the Lodge patent, signaling only to short distances, about 
> eighty miles, was all that was possible before the invention of the 
> [four-circuit] system which enabled communication in 1901 over a distance 
> of more than 6,000 miles."
>
> Watt says "Tesla's stroke of genius was to use tuned coupled coils, move 
> the energy storage capacitance to the primary side, and to add a ground 
> connection. Tesla was the first to inductively couple the secondary 
> circuit [where the capacitance must be small] to a tuned primary circuit, 
> where the energy storage element [capacitance] may be huge by comparison. 
> This remarkable innovation made possible the generation of RF signals 
> immensely more powerful than Hertz's apparatus [and therefore more 
> powerful than the apparatus in Marconi's reissue patent]."
>
> According to some people I have met,  Hertz calculated his peak power at 
> 16KW. They have concluded that his average radiated power was trifling. In 
> contrast, at Colorado Springs, in 1899, Tesla's average power was in 
> excess of 250KW and his peak power exceeded 76 megawatts, a long way from 
> Hertz in just a decade.
>
> In any event, I am very impressed with your wireless transfer of energy 
> for a distance of 25 or thirty feet with only 50% losses.  You should be 
> very proud of being able to travel in Tesla's footsteps.

>

> My heartiest congratulations.
>
> Very truly yours,
>
> Wallace Brand
>
> On Nov 15, 2006, at 4:24 PM, Aristeidis Karalis wrote:
>
>> Dear Mr. Wallace Brand,
>>
>> Thank you very much for your interest and your wishes.
>>
>> Our work has been inspired a lot from that of Tesla. Prof. Soljacic in 
>> particular is a great admirer of Tesla and that is one of the reasons 
>> that led to this invention.
>>
>> I did not manage to retrieve those articles, since they date that far 
>> back (perhaps Prof. Soljacic has them, but he is away for a conference). 
>> If you have them in electronic form, I would be very interested to see 
>> them.
>>
>> I do not doubt at all that Tesla had managed to succeed in transferring 
>> "some" energy wirelessly. But you can imagine how much power was wasted 
>> in order to light a bulb 30km away, compared to how much power was 
>> generated by the huge towers he liked to build back then. And indeed 
>> nowadays, satellite communications rely on detectable signals that travel 
>> thousands of kms.
>>
>> Our task is to achieve a very "efficient" (~50%) energy transfer over 
>> mid-range distances, namely within a room, as this technology is adapted 
>> to modern world's needs, such as laptops, cell phones and all those 
>> mobile devices that have been powered by batteries all of these years. 
>> The sources for that purpose would be ~1m on a room ceiling. By the 
>> scaling law of Maxwell's equations, one could achieve "efficient" energy 
>> transfer also with a huge tower of 100m high but the range would be at 
>> most on the order of 1km and not more.
>>
>> Again, thanks a lot for the interesting information.
>> Aristeidis Karalis
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Marin Soljacic

>> Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:52 PM
>> To: Wallace Edward Brand
>> Cc: Gary Peterson; John Wagner; Henry Bradford; Aristeidis Karalis
>> Subject: Re: Congratulations on your rediscovery of wireless energy 
>> transmission
>>
>> Thanks for the info.  My colleague Aristos will respond, since I am on my 
>> way to airport.
>>
>> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Wallace Edward Brand wrote:
>>
>>> Dr. Marin Soljacic
>>> Assistant Professor of Physics
>>> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>>>
>>> Dear Professor Soljacic,
>>>
>>> In your preprint on wireless non-radiative energy transfer 
>>> http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0611063 , you state that Nikola Tesla's 
>>> scheme for wireless energy transfer over long distances met with little, 
>>> if any, success.
>>>
>>> There are two credible sources which state that Tesla transmitted 
>>> sufficient power to light a lamp some 30 kilometers from the generator 
>>> via wireless transmission in 1899.  They also state that he  produced 
>>> detectable signals at 1000 km.  These are: A.P.M. Fleming, Journal of 
>>> Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, Vol. 91, February 1944 and 
>>> W. H. Eccles, Nature, London, 13, II 1943 p. 189.
>>>
>>> Your invention is most interesting.  I wish you great success in your 
>>> endeavor.
>>>
>>> You will find a bust of Nikola Tesla at MIT donated by my friend John 
>>> Wagner.
>>>
>>> Very truly yours,
>>>
>>> Wallace Brand