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Re: How to build a Tesla Tower



Original poster: "Rob Judd by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <canska-at-a5-dot-com>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 1:48 PM
Subject: Re: How to build a Tesla Tower

 > Tesla's patents do give plenty of detail of what he proposed.  Note
 > particularly the reference to the capacitors required. He emphasizes the
 > necessity of having very high leakage resistance to avoid loss; that
 > implies a very lower power source.  Since he knew the laws of physics
 > perfectly well I can't imagine that he ever expected these gadgets to be
 > of any practical value and regarded them as curiosities only.
 >
 > Ed

He says its a very low charging current, but it will eventually reach
voltages high enough to rupture the dielectric. I imagine it is possible to
build an elevated terminal of such large area (or hundreds of medium sized
ones) that there would be a rather substantial current. Even so, this
clearly isn't going to generate enough power to run a city. But it might be
well suited to charging batteries for infrequently used devices in remote
locations, such as the emergency telephones on remote highways. Of course,
with modern advances in solar cell technology, they would most likely be
cheaper than Tesla's device.

I think Tesla's main interest in these patents was the same as mine, its an
easy and affordable way (albeit pretty slow) to charge a massive capacitor
bank to a very high voltage. I also recall reading that Tesla did a great
deal of calculation about how much energy is capacitively stored between the
Earth and the Ionosphere and that he was very interested in finding a way to
harness it. This seems to be his first shot at it.