Spaceship Earth and Nikola Tesla

Tesla, Nikola, June1900, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy. With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Sun's Energy.", The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol. LX, No.2, pp. 175-211, May 1900 to October 1900. New York: The Century Company. Discusses the issues of overpopulation, global shortages, and increased strain on the natural environment, especially the atmosphere, due to increasing human consumption and energy demands.

The Onward Movement of Man — The Energy of the Movement — The Three Ways of Increasing Human Energy; The First Problem: How to Increase the Human Mass — The Burning of Atmospheric Nitrogen; The Second Problem: How to Reduce the Force Retarding the Human Mass — The Art of Telautomatics; The Third Problem: How to Increase the Force Accelerating the Human Mass — The Harnessing of the Sun's Energy; The Source of Human Energy — The Three Ways of Drawing Energy from the Sun; Great Possibilities Offered by Iron for Increasing Human Performance — Enormous Waste in Iron Manufacture; Economical Production of Iron by a New Process; The Coming Age of Aluminum — Doom of the Copper Industry — The Great Civilizing Potency of the New Metal; Efforts Toward Obtaining More Energy From Coal — The Electric Transmission — The Gas-Engine — The Cold-Coal Battery; Energy from the Medium — The Windmill and the Solar Engine — Motive Power from Terrestrial Heat — Electricity from Natural Sources; A Departure from Known Methods — Possibility of a "Self-Acting" Engine or Machine, Inanimate, Yet Capable, Like a Living Being, of Deriving Energy from the Medium — The Ideal Way of Obtaining Motive Power; First Efforts to Produce the Self-Acting Engine — The Mechanical Oscillator — Word of Dewar and Linde-Liquid Air; Discovery of Unexpected Properties of the Atmosphere — Strange Experiments — Transmission of Electrical Energy Through One Wire Without Return — Transmission Through the Earth Without Any Wire; "Wireless" Telegraphy — The Secret of Tuning — Errors in the Hertzian Investigations — A Receiver of Wonderful Sensitiveness; Development of a New Principle — The Electrical Oscillator — Production of Immense Electrical Movements — The Earth Responds to Man — Interplanetary Communication Now Probable; Transmission of Electrical Energy to Any Distance Without Wires — Now Practicable — The Best Means of Increasing the Force Accelerating the Human Mass.

Note to Fig. 1. — This result is produced by the discharge of an electrical oscillator giving twelve million volts. The electrical pressure, alternating one hundred thousand times per second, excites the normally inert nitrogen, causing it to combine with the oxygen. The flame-like discharge shown in the photograph measures sixty-five feet across.

Fig. 3. Experiment to Illustrate the Supplying of Electrical Energy Through a Single Wire Without Return.

Fig. 4. Experiment to Illustrate the Transmission of Electrical Energy Through the Earth Without Wire.

Fig. 6. Photographic View of the Essential Parts of the Electrical Oscillator Used in the Experiments Described.

Fig. 7. Experiment to Illustrate an Inductive Effect of an Electrical Oscillator of Great Power.

Note to Fig. 8. — The coil, partly shown in the photograph, creates an alternative movement of electricity from the earth into a large reservoir and back at the rate of one hundred thousand alterations per second. The adjustments are such that the reservoir is filled full and bursts at each alternation just at the moment when the electrical pressure reaches the maximum. The discharge escapes with a deafening noise, striking an unconnected coil twenty-two feet away, and creating such a commotion of electricity in the earth that sparks an inch long can be drawn from a water-main at a distance of three hundred feet from the laboratory.

Fig. 9. Experiment to Illustrate the Capacity of the Oscillator for Creating a Great Electrical Movement.

Fig. 10. Photographic View of an Experiment to Illustrate an Effect of an Electrical Oscillator Delivering Energy at a Rate of Seventy-Five Thousand Horse-Power.

Tesla: The Electric Magician "Despite his relative obscurity, the greatest genius of all time may have been Nikola Tesla. With over 700 patents in his name, Tesla shaped our current technological landscape more than any other individual." Series by ParaScope.