Nikola Tesla

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Tesla had successfully transmitted power through the earth.

It is possible that Nikola Tesla is best known for his remarkable statements regarding the wireless transmission of electrical power. His first efforts towards this end started in 1891 and were intended to simply "disturb the electrical equilibrium in the nearby portions of the earth... to bring into operation in any way some instrument." In other words the object of his experiments was simply to produce effects locally and detect them at a distance. By 1899 the electrical potential of his transmitter had increased to the point that more room was needed for the sake of safety. This and other considerations led him to temporarily shift his experiments to a location just outside of Colorado Springs.

Fig 1. Nikola Tesla’s Electricity Transmitter

It was at this Colorado "Experimental Station" that Tesla had some early success in wireless power transmission. In one of his demonstrations, photographs show that "a small incandescent lamp was lighted by means of a resonant circuit grounded on one end, all the energy being drawn through the earth" from the nearby transmitter. In 1907 he even went as far as to make the following statement.

"... to make the little filament glow, the entire surface of the planet, two hundred million square miles, must be strongly electrified. This calls for peculiar electrical activities, hundreds of times greater than those involved in the lighting of an arc lamp through the human body [a more spectacular demonstration]. 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." So in basic terms he could transmit electricity like a radio radio wave and receive it through equipment connected to the same earth. A great achievement indeed.