Nikola Tesla is today famous for his work on electricity and energy. He developed the alternating current system, making it possible to transmit electricity over large distances, and worked also on wireless communication and energy transfer. He was a brilliant thinker, but also very eccentric. Maybe the more enigmatic parts of his personality make him such an interesting subject for conspiracists. Tesla is credited to have worked on unknown energy-sources, to be contacted by UFOs, caused the Tunguska explosion by a death-ray, and even worked on an earthquake-generator.
In 1896 Tesla was working on
oscillations to be used for energy transfer. The idea was to create a
steam-powered oscillator, able to create various frequencies. If the frequency
matched the resonance frequency, a receiving device should transform the
mechanical oscillations back into an electric current.
In 1897 the device was ready and
in 1898 he supposedly managed to oscillate his laboratory at 48 E. Houston St.,
New York, enough, that alarmed neighbors called the police and ambulance,
fearing an earthquake happening. Tesla later explained this principle to
reporter Allan L. Besnson, who published in February 1912 an article about Tesla’s resonator in The World Today magazine:
“He put his little vibrator in
his coat-pocket and went out to hunt a half-erected steel building. Down in the
Wall Street district, he found one, ten stories of steel framework without a
brick or a stone laid around it. He clamped the vibrator to one of the beams,
and fussed with the adjustment until he got it.
Tesla said finally the structure
began to creak and weave and the steel-workers came to the ground
panic-stricken, believing that there had been an earthquake. Police was called
out. Tesla put the vibrator in his pocket and went away. Ten minutes more and
he could have laid the building in the street. And, with the same vibrator, he
could have dropped the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River in less than an
hour.”
Tesla imagined using the waves
generated by his invention for peaceful applications. One device would
transform electricity into vibrations. Tesla then would use the rocks in the
underground to send the vibrations to a second device. This recieving device
would pick up the vibrations and transform the oscillations into electricity,
to be used locally. In fact, so Tesla, the device, consisting of a piston
vibrating in a cylinder, was already powerful enough to vibrate an entire
building. Just one precaution was necessary. If powerful enough, so Tesla, his
machine could match Earth’s frequency, causing even earthquakes.
Still, in the 1930s, Tesla
imagined using smaller devices to relieve energy from Earth, in this case, to
prevent earthquakes. However, the “telegeodynamics” system by Tesla never
managed to get beyond the prototype. The device was in reality not powerful
enough to send energy far enough. Dampening of the oscillations by structures
and the underground was far too strong. Another idea of Tesla was more
successful. He imagined using the oscillations generated by his device to
prospect the underground. Waves send into the underground would be reflected by
obstacles or different rocks. Observing the returning waves, a geologist may be
able to see the underground. It’s just this basic idea that modern
seismologists use. Pulses of energy, generated by electromagnetic devices,
controlled explosions or mechanical pistons, send deep into the underground are
reflected or deflected by geological structures. The reflected signals can then
be used to reconstruct a model of the underground.
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