The Complete Patents Of Nikola Tesla
Edited By Jim Glenn
As a child Nikola manifested a full share of Duka's ingenuity, building among other things a bug–propelled engine. Much later he would mention that he had always the ability to see his ideas constructed in his mind, and in such detail that he could adjust and balance the parts. In school he absorbed languages quickly (English, French, Getman, Italian) and made an impressive showing in mathematics.
He entered the Polytechnic College of Graz in 1875, studied hungrily, but for lack of funds was unable to complete his second year. He took himself to Prague, immersing his restless mind in the university library there (and took up gambling as a means of support-with what success is uncertain); he returned to Smiljan in 1879.
Already at Graz he knew that electricity would be his life's fascination. Indeed, this was the scientific frontier, where mystery and knowledge collided. When he learned in 1881 that a telephone exchange, one of Europe's first, was to be built in Budapest, he left at once. The Edison Tel. Co. (European subsidiary) in Budapest hired him, sent him to Paris in 1882 and to other cities. His standing and repute within the field were sufficient by 1884 that a colleague wrote a letter recommending him to Thomas Edison. Tesla fully appreciated that an inventor's prospects in America–to attract capital, to manufacture and sell, to reap rewards-greatly exceeded his opportunities in Europe.
He did emigrate and he did go to work for Edison, but for less than a year, until the fee promised for a particularly difficult project, redesign of an Edison dynamo, failed to materialize. Edison, it is recorded, made some mention of the Serb's failure to comprehend American humor. (Of course Tesla, who later formed a great friendship with Mark Twain, perfectly well understood American humor and Edison.)
Over the next ten years, free to make his own arrangements, Tesla consulted, invented, invested–forming with his backers a number of companies and producing the forty or so fundamental AC patents that revolutionized the running of industrial America. His name became synonymous in the press with electrical wizardry; he was seldom photographed without megavolt streamers playing around him, the apparatus afire with an eerie glow. All of which is a fair picture of the man: he relished the highvoltage drama of his public demonstrations but no less in the lab insisted on being first and closest in any chancy experiment.
Tesla was" in any case, a natural showman. Strikingly thin, six–foot–four, always whitegloved and well dressed, he lived at the Waldorf (when he could afford it), ate the best food, with the best people, and infallibly charmed his company. But that problematic, intense youth never disappeared: he counted things compulsively, calculated the volumes of bowls and cups before he could eat from them; his assorted phobias and fetishes perhaps denied him any close relationships. He wrote of recurrent visual sensations, bright and geometric, which occasionally overwhelmed his sight, actually blotting out scenes in front of him.
Among his business investors he would eventually number the likes of J. P. Morgan and John Jacob Astor, but the most important for his aspirations was an early association with George Westinghouse. Westinghouse purchased Tesla's basic AC patents in 1888 for cash and shares amounting to $60,000 and a royalty on electrical horsepower sold. (By agreement the two principals canceled the mostly unpaid royalty in 1897; the lump sum Westinghouse negotiated has never been firmly determined, though a check record for $216,000 does exist.) More importantly Tesla acquired a resourceful and tenacious champion in the Westinghouse Corporation.
A fierce, often underhanded competition raged for years between the General Electric Co. (a creature of Morgan) and Westinghouse. GE's strategy, when mere engineering would not avail, was to invent ghastly tales of AC hazards and misadventures. In 1890 the company went so far as to license, through an agent, the Westinghouse system in order to power a death contraption which they called an "electric chair." Sing Sing Prison, in upstate New York, was persuaded to use it, with the gratifying results for GE that the press for a while played headlines in which prisoners were "Westinghoused."
When the publicity battles were over, and the superiority of AC systems apparent, Westinghouse was kept constantly in the courts, defending the patents–which the company did with ferocity. For Tesla, now an eminence in the field, success brought little in the way of wealth. With consultant and contract work he lived comfortably enough and kept his lab busy; he sometimes wrote that genuine millions could not elude him for long.
Through the 1890s he absorbed himself (and his redoubtable chief assistant, George Scherff) in work with x–rays, with high–frequency, high–voltage phenomena, and with radio. By 1899 he had built in Colorado Springs an isolated laboratory in which he could unleash power at unheard–of levels. His "magnifying transmitter," which included a 52–foot Tesla coil, reached 12 Mv in the secondary-the arcs thrown from its antenna mast sounded a man–made thunder for miles around. As satisfying as were such spectacles for their creator, and tantalizing to his searching mind, any possible commercial value in energy at this scale lay far, far over the horizon.
A 1902 venture, with J. P. Morgan, to construct a transatlantic radio installation (at Wardenclyffe, Long Island) was abandoned by 1906. Troubled from the outset by thinness of financing, the facility never became fully operational.
Now entering his fifties, Tesla received honors with regularity (including the Edison Medal) and stipends or fees enough to make ends meet, but clearly a decline had set in. Patent filings were fewer, lectures more seldom, his eccentricities more noticeable. Still, he seemed always able to find working capital, putting together the Tesla Ozone Co. in 1910 and later the Tesla Propulsion Co. (to produce his new and patented turbine).
His notes, letters, and patent filings bespeak a genius at work through his seventies, but a genius whose time is increasingly given over to feeding the pigeons of Manhattan, and to nursing the sick ones in his hotel room. When he died, January 7, 1943, in a world at war, the FBI showed up within hours to open his safe–though Tesla had become an American citizen in 1891, his many boxes and crates were put under seal and unaccountably turned over to the OAP (Office of Alien Property). Many were released in 1952 to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, some have not resurfaced. His is a legacy of brilliance and enigma.
Remarkable by any standard, Tesla's 111 patents illuminate only his most purposive, practical work. As he often lamented, there just wasn't enough time to tame the racing of ideas in his head; so much had to be left incomplete. Some of the projects–for achieving ultra-high vacuum, a rocket engine design, experiments in directed beams and solar power–simply don't fit into the early twentieth century. His musings on ball lightning (he proposed an onionlike gaseous sphere of many charged layers) accord well with the most recent and satisfactory computer models. Frequently he was content to publish his findings without regard to priority or patentability: he introduced in this way the therapeutic method now called diathermy.
But the patent record is, as always, incontrovertible and precise. All inventors who wish to eat regularly must sooner or later become acquainted with the ordeals of the patent process. It will be useful to sketch the essentials of filing, using, and defending these peculiar grants.
To begin, a U.S. patent can be filed only by the inventor. Other nations, at different times in history, have allowed patents to whomever appeared first, treating the act of filing much like staking out a gold claim.
The application itself consists of five parts: petition (who is filing), oath (swearing to originality), specifications (how is it made, what it does), claims (what is new, important, and patentable about it), and drawings. A specialist, a patent examiner with expertise in one or several fields, studies the application and begins the often long, unpredictable process. The heart of the application lies in its specifications and claims.
Language describing a device's function or manufacture might later become crucial to making distinctions between it and a world of seemingly similar machines. Ordinary words (like "sever , "inclined," "adjacent") have judicial pedigrees and must not be used casually. And the result must be clear enough that a person skilled in the appropriate arts could construct a copy from the description.
Claims should be neither too broad nor too narrow-but they must stake out clearly the territory the inventor wants for his own. Up to twenty claims may be submitted with the basic filing fee; more claims mean more charges.
Tesla's patent claims, it will be noted, generally iterate one or two basic ideas but described in several ways: this is good patent form. There are no unusual requirements of the drawings, so long as they correspond well with the specifications. Tesla never sent actual models with any filing, though a skeptical examiner did visit once to have a look at his remote–controlled devices (No. 613,809). The Patent Office only occasionally insists upon working models, most famously for all applicants presenting perpetual motion machines. But then, the Patent Office for years used the same tactic to shoo away persons bearing drawings of flying machines.
Between the filing and the grant of a patent, a number of time – and paper–consuming things generally happen. The examiner will request clarifications, disallow various claims, point out errors, and give notice of "interference"–existence of applications by other inventors whose work and claims are very similar. (In the U.S. an interference may prompt an investigation to determine whose work has priority in actual fact, not merely in time of filing.)
Tesla and his lawyers submitted arguments to dissolve potential interferences in nearly every patent. Against an earlier radio patent by Wilson, for example, Tesla pointed out that his own four–circuit transmitter / receiver (No. 725,605) operated with two distinct frequencies, while Wilson's used only one, polarized in two planes. Similar distinctions were made to challenges on behalf of Fessenden, Cardwell, MacKaye, Hogg, and DeForest.
When all the changes are made, claims language negotiated, objections answered, the sheaf of correspondence concerning a single Tesla patent, the "patent wrapper," might run to fifty or eighty pages and thousands of dollars in legal fees.
With all of these matters settled, and with the examiner satisfied that the patent can be reduced to "constructive practice"-that it can actually be built–a patent may finally be granted. (Tesla had a great deal of difficulty convincing the Patent Office about a balloon-supported conductor in No. 645,576. The inventor clearly didn't care how his antenna arrived at a great elevation, but the examiner did.)
In many ways the woes of an inventor only begin with the patent's issue. The patent is, legally, a "negative right"; it does not grant a right to manufacture (which might infringe in the process on other patents), it merely assures the right of its holder to bring infringement suits in court–a hazardous and expensive privilege.
The court might look into the patent and perhaps decide its novelty is a mere improvement upon some earlier design, the work of a skilled mechanic but not original or ingenious enough to merit a patent. Or it may conclude the patent covers something altogether obvious. Worse, the patent might describe a device patented earlier, a fatal case of "anticipation." It may be the inventor hasn't been vigilant, allowing general borrowing of the patent or, conversely, that the patent hasn't been put to any practical use-either way the court will detect "abandonment" of the patent. In all of these cases the patent will not be sustained. (In granting a patent, the Patent Office makes no guarantees about its legal durability.)
The pivotal patent case concerning priority in radio (Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. v. U.S., 320 U.S. 1) didn't work its way up to the Supreme Court until 1943, when some of the issues in question were nearly thirty years old. Tesla, it must be understood, was not a party to this suit.
Marconi v. U.S. had begun as an action to recover licensing fees from the government for its use of certain radio equipment during World War 1. Although Marconi Wireless had ceased to exist after 1919, its patents and other property having been absorbed by RCA, it reserved the right to pursue this litigation. The legal ghost that Marconi Wireless had become won a victory in the U.S. Court of Claims to the tune of $42,984.93, but only by the thinnest edge: survival of a single claim among the many in the patent. The government appealed to the Supreme Court.
In the course of its eighty–page decision, the Court found it necessary to rule on many points of law, procedure, and fact, including the facts, or history, of radio development. Its consideration relied heavily on what it named a radio communication system with "two tuned circuits each at the transmitter and receiver, all four tuned to the same frequency," by which it meant tuned antenna (output / input) and oscillator (signal / detector) circuits coupled by transformers in each piece of equipment. But this should not be confused with the four circuits of a later, more sophisticated Tesla patent (No. 723,188), in which two different frequencies are transmitted and received–to eliminate a degree of noise and (though the Patent Office contested the claim) to allow greater privacy of transmission.
A majority of the Court found, after tracing the lineage of radio through Maxwell, Hertz, Lodge, Tesla, and Crookes, the basic Marconi patent (No. 763,772, filed Nov. 1900) used nothing not already included in Tesla's earlier patent No. 645,576 (filed Sept. 1897), except for the presence in Marconi's design of an inductively tuneable antenna. (And the antenna element under discussion-Lodge's patent, No. 609,104-was bought from Lodge by Marconi.) The Court went on to note that Stone's radio patent (No. 714,756) completely anticipated Marconi's, antenna included. Stone, by the way, had always credited Tesla with the first basic, workable design, saying of his own patent it was "practically the same as that employed by Tesla" –but with the valuable refinements of a tuneable antenna and design adjustments to "swamp" parasitic oscillations in the transmitter.
Even the patent history of Marconi No. 763,772 showed serious blemishes: it had been rejected outright by the Patent Office and was only wrangled into being by persistent renewal and argument of Marconi's lawyers. With the facts thus marshalled, and observing that no amount of commercial success could save Marconi's patent, the Court held it invalid.
The decision was stunning, especially in view of the ease with which the Marconi patent had prevailed in earlier suits. In a 1914 case one federal judge found singular value in Marconi's use of a ground connection, and heaped praises on him as the indubitable inventor of radio. Nearly thirty years later, writing in dissent of Marconi v. U.S., justice Frankfurter would credit only Marconi with having the "flash," the stroke of genius, that unites disparate elements into a fundamentally new process or device. Yet he could not identify wherein Marconi's patent differed from those that had come before.
More than one judge has lamented the court's role as scientific referee, for it often has little in resources or temperament to give the job an assured performance. Utterly specious notions persisted for years, in and out of court, over such things as a ground connection-chaff thrown into the proceedings by lawyers hoping to add technical mystery and confusion. (There is a ground in all of Tesla's patent specifications, and in everyone else's equipment, too.)
Slowly, perhaps a little grudgingly, writers of scientific history have enlarged their paragraphs on the development of radio, giving Tesla the credit he is due. Surely, as the patents show, if that all–unifying "flash" came to any man, it was Nikola Tesla.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
MOTORS & GENERATORS
Preface to AC Motor/Generator Patents 3
THE PATENTS:
(Filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Mar. 30, 1886 Thermo-Magnetic Motor #396,121 5
Jan. 14, 1886 Dynamo-Electric Machine #359,748 9
May 26, 1887 Pyromagneto-Electric Generator #428,057 14
Oct. 12, 1887 Electro-Magnetic Motor #381,968 17
Oct. 12, 1887 Electrical Transmission of Power #382,280 26
Nov. 30, 1887 Electro-Magnetic Motor #381,969 35
Nov. 30, 1887 Electro-Magnetic Motor #382,279 39
Nov. 30, 1887 Electrical Transmission of Power #382,281 44
Apr. 23, 1888 Dynamo-Electric Machine #390,414 48
Apr. 28, 1888 Dynamo-Electric Machine #390,721 52
May 15, 1888 Dynamo-Electric Machine or Motor #390,415 56
May 15, 1888 System of Electrical Transmission of Power #487,796 58
May 15, 1888 Electrical Transmission of Power #511,915 64
May 15, 1888 Alternating Motor #555,190 67
Oct. 20, 1888 Electromagnetic Motor #524,426 71
Dec. 8, 1888 Electrical Transmission of Power #511,559 74
Dec. 8, 1888 System of Electrical Power Transmission #511,560 77
Jan. 8, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #405,858 84
Feb. 18, 1889 Method of Operating Electro-Magnetic Motors #401,520 87
Mar. 14, 1889 Method of Electrical Power Transmission #405,859 91
Mar. 23, 1889 Dynamo-Electric Machine #406,968 94
Apr. 6, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #459,772 97
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #416,191 102
May 20, 1889 Method of Operating Electro-Magnetic Motors #416,192 106
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #416,193 110
May 20, 1889 Electric Motor #416,194 113
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #416,195 116
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #418,248 122
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #424,036 125
May 20, 1889 Electro-Magnetic Motor #445,207 129
Mar. 26, 1890 Alternating-Current Electro-Magnetic Motor #433,700 132
Mar. 26, 1890 Alternating-Current Motor #433,701 135
Apr. 4, 1890 Electro-Magnetic Motor #433,703 138
Jan. 27, 1891 Electro-Magnetic Motor #455,067 141
July 13, 1891 Electro-Magnetic Motor #464,666 145
Aug. 19, 1893 Electric Generator #511,916 148
TRANSFORMERS, CONVERTERS, COMPONENTS
Preface to Patented Electrical Components 157
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
May 6, 1885 Commutator for Dynamo-Electric Machines #334,823 159
May 18, 1885 Regulator for Dynamo-Electric Machines #336,961 161
June 1, 1885 Regulator for Dynamo-Electric Machines #336,962 165
Jan. 14, 1886 Regulator for Dynamo-Electric Machines #350,954 169
Apr. 30, 1887 Commutator for Dynamo-Electric Machines #382,845 172
Dec. 23, 1887 System of Electrical Distribution #381,970 177
Dec. 23, 1887 Method of Converting and Distributing
Electric Currents #382,282 182
Apr. 10, 1888 System of Electrical Distribution #390,413 187
Apr. 24, 1888 Regulator for Alternate-Current Motors #390,820 192
June 12, 1889 Method of Obtaining Direct from
Alternating Currents #413,353 197
June 28, 1889 Armature for Electric Machines
(Tesla-Schmid, co-inventors) #417,794 204
Mar. 26, 1890 Electrical Transformer or Induction Device #433,702 208
Aug. 1, 1891 Electrical Condenser #464,667 211
Jan. 2, 1892 Electrical Conductor #514,167 213
July 7, 1893 Coil for Electro-Magnets #512,340 216
June 17, 1896 Electrical Condenser #567,818 219
Nov. 5, 1896 Man. of Electrical Condensers, Coils, &c. #577,671 222
Mar. 20, 1897 Electrical Transformer #593,138 225
HIGH FREQUENCY
Preface to Patents in High Frequency 231
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Nov. 15, 1890 Alternating-Electric-Current Generator #447,921 233
Feb. 4, 1891 Method of and Apparatus for Electrical
Conversion and Distribution #462,418 238
Aug. 2, 1893 Means for Generating Electric Currents #514,168 242
Apr. 22, 1896 Apparatus for Producing Electric Currents
of High Frequency and Potential #568,176 245
June 20, 1896 Method of Regulating Apparatus for
Producing Currents of High Frequency #568,178 249
July 6, 1896 Method of and Apparatus for Producing
Currents of High Frequency #568,179 254
July 9, 1896 Apparatus for Producing Electrical
Currents High Frequency #568,180 258
Sept. 3, 1896 Apparatus for Producing Electric
Currents of High Frequency #577,670 262
Oct. 19, 1896 Apparatus for Producing Currents of High
Frequency #583,953 266
June 3, 1897 Electric-Circuit Controller #609,251 269
Dec. 2, 1897 Electrical-Circuit Controller #609,245 275
Dec. 10, 1897 Electrical-Circuit Controller #611,719 280
Feb. 28, 1898 Electric-Circuit Controller #609,246 285
Mar. 12, 1898 Electric-Circuit Controller #609,247 289
Mar. 12, 1898 Electric-Circuit Controller #609,248 292
Mar. 12, 1898 Electric-Circuit Controller #609,249 295
Apr. 19, 1898 Electric-Circuit Controller #613,735 298
RADIO
Preface to The Radio Patents 305
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Sept. 2, 1897 System of Transmission of Electrical
Energy #645,576 307
Sept. 2, 1897 Apparatus for Transmission of Electrical
Energy #649,621 314
July 1, 1898 Method of and Apparatus for Controlling
Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles #613,809 318
June 24, 1899 Apparatus for Utilizing Effects Transmitted
from a Distance to a Receiving Device
Through Natural Media #685,955 331
June 24, 1899 Method of Intensifying and Utilizing
Effects Transmitted Through Natural Media #685,953 338
Aug. 1, 1899 Method of Utilizing Effects Transmitted
Through Natural Media #685,954 344
Aug. 1, 1899 Apparatus for Utilizing Effects
Transmitted Through Natural Media #685,956 353
May 16, 1900 Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy
Through the Natural Mediums #787,412 361
July 16, 1900 Method of Signaling #723,188 367
July 16, 1900 System of Signaling #725,605 372
Jan. 18, 1902 Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical
Energy #1,119,732 378
LIGHTING
Preface to The Lighting Patents 385
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Mar. 30, 1885 Electric-Arc Lamp #335,786 387
July 13, 1886 Electric-Arc Lamp #335,787 392
Oct. 1, 1890 Method of Operating Arc Lamps #447,920 397
Apr. 25, 1891 System of Electric Lighting #454,622 400
May 14, 1891 Electric Incandescent Lamp #455,069 405
Jan. 2, 1892 Incandescent Electric Light #514,170 408
MEASUREMENTS & METERS
Preface to Patents for Measurement 6, Meters 413
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Mar. 27, 1891 Electrical Meter #455,068 415
Dec. 15, 1893 Electrical Meter #514,973 418
May 29, 1914 Speed-Indicator #1,209,359 421
Dec. 18, 1916 Speed-Indicator #1,274,816 429
Dec. 18, 1916 Ship's Log #1,314,718 434
Dec. 18, 1916 Flow-Meter #1,365,547 437
Dec. 18, 1916 Frequency Meter #1,402,025 440
ENGINES & PROPULSION
Preface to Patents for Engines & Propulsion 447
THE PATENTS:
(filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
Jan. 2, 1892 Electric-Railway System #514,972 449
Aug. 19, 1893 Reciprocating Engine #514,169 452
Dec. 29, 1893 Steam-Engine #517,900 456
Oct. 21, 1909 Fluid Propulsion #1,061,142 461
Oct. 21, 1909 Turbine #1,061,206 465
Sept. 9, 1921 Method of Aerial Transportation #1,655,113 470
Oct. 4, 1927 Apparatus for Aerial Transportation #1,655,114 476
VARIOUS DEVICES & PROCESSES
Preface to Various Devices & Processes 487
THE PATENTS:
(Filing date) (description) (pat. no.)
June 17, 1896 Apparatus for Producing Ozone #568,177 489
Feb. 17, 1897 Electrical Igniter for Gas-Engines #609,250 493
Mar. 21, 1900 Means for Increasing the Intensity of
Electrical Oscillations #685,012 496
June 15, 1900 Method of Insulating Electric Conductors #655,838 500
Sept.21, 1900 Method of Insulating Electric Conductors
(reissue of #655,838) #11,865 506
Mar. 21, 1901 Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant
Energy #685,957 512
Mar. 21, 1901 Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy #685,958 517
Oct. 28, 1913 Fountain #1,113,716 521
Feb. 21, 1916 Vaivular Conduit #1,329,559 525
May 6, 1916 Lightning-Protector #1,266,175 531
© 1994 by Barnes & Noble Inc.
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Nikola Tesla's Automobile
from: "Revolution in Technik, Medizin, Gesellschaft" — Hans A. Nieper — ISBN 3-925188-00-2
english: "Dr. Nieper's Revolution in Technology, Medicine and Society" — ISBN 3-925188-07-X
© M.I.T. Management Interessengemeinschaft für Tachyonen–Feld–Energie GmbH
Friedrich–Rüder–Straße 1, 2900 Oldenburg, Federal Republic of Germany
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In well informed circles, it is occasionally mentioned that Nikola Tesla, even in retirement, built an automobile propelled by gravity stressing energy. At the age of 70, in a period of deep economic depression, Tesla had considerable financial means. While these means were not as ample as originally and contractually promised by Westinghouse, they made possible this extraordinarily interesting episode which is today fully documented. We say this also because, once again. the episode points out the enormous significance of this extraordinary experimental physicist. It took no less than 100 years of today's fast-moving events to fully grasp the importance of the man. There is no explanation for this. One can merely humorously assume that Tesla came from some other world, to be born on Earth. His results in experimental physics, which appeared to be perfectly obvious, still cause indigestion in orthodox theoretical physics circles.
In 1930, Nikola Tesla asked his nephew, Petar Savo, who was born in Yugoslavia in 1899, to come to New York. Petar was 43 years younger than his uncle. Up to that date, he had lived under stringent conditions in Yugoslavia, Tesla's country of birth. During the summer of 1931, Tesla took his nephew to Buffalo to unveil and test a new automobile. Tesla had developed it with his own personal funds.
It was a Pierce Arrow, one of the luxury cars of the period. The engine had been removed, leaving the clutch, gearbox and transmission to the rear wheels undisturbed. The gasoline engine had been replaced with a round, completely enclosed electric motor of approximately 1 meter in length and 65 cm in diameter, with a cooling fan in front. Reputedly, it had no distributor. Tesla was not willing to say who had manufactured the engine. It was possibly one of the divisions of Westinghouse.
The "energy receiver" (gravitational energy converter) had been built by Nikola Tesla himself. The dimensions of the converter housing were approximately 60 X 25 X 15 cm. It was installed in front of the dashboard. Among other things, the converter contained 12 vacuum tubes, of which three were of the 70-L-7 type. A heavy antenna, approximately 1.8 meters long, came out of the converter. This antenna apparently had the same function as that on the Moray converter (see below). Furthermore, two thick rods protruded approximately 10 cm from the converter housing. Tesla pushed them in, saying "Now we have power." the motor achieved a maximum of 1,800 rpm. Tesla said it was fairly hot when operating, and therefore a cooling fan was required. For the rest, he said there was enough power in the converter to illuminate an entire house, besides running the car engine. The car was tested for a week, reaching a top speed of 90 miles per hour effortlessly. Its performance data were at least comparable to those of an automobile using gasoline. At a stop sign, a passerby remarked that there were no exhaust gases coming from the exhaust pipe. Petar answered "We have no motor."
The car was kept on a farm, perhaps 20 miles outside of Buffalo, not far from Niagara Falls.
A few months after this automobile test, and because of the economic crisis at the time, Pierce Arrow had to stop production. It is very likely that the interconnection between the electric motor and the transmission had been performed there. Pierce Arrow's tools were taken over by Studebaker, in South Bend. Not quite 30 years later, that company also vanished to form American Motors, jointly with Nash. Later, some of its fans attempted to resuscitate the Pierce Arrow. Unfortunately, they were not successful.
Thus, today that company's name is in a mausoleum, together with others. such as Horch, Maybach, Hispano-Suiza, Bugatti and Isotta Fraschini.
Nikola Tesla apparently knew that this construction contradicted the technical concepts of the time. He thus avoided all discussions with engineers, theoretical scientists, or companies (with very few exceptions). It is obvious that this Pierce Arrow was built only as a private hobby. An inventory of all available information – by aeronautical engineer Derek Ahlers – was completed on September 16, 1967, in New York. The complete documentation of all the information gathered by Ahlers is in our archives, The experimental car built by Nikola Tesla in 1931 already foreshadowed the cars of the future. Minimum operating costs and freedom from pollution are part of it also. The invention of super magnets, mentioned earlier. creates possibilities for unlimited conversion of gravity field energy anywhere on Earth, thus benefiting individualistic society.
Tesla's Electric Car - another version
Dr. T. Henry Moray with his resonate coil device. This device could output 80,000 watts.
This device was properly tested and documented.
After the Patent Office refused Henry Moray a patent on his device, he offered to give it to the goverment for free — They refused the offer.
( It appears from my studies on the subject, that Nikola Tesla had a chance to see Henry Moray's device after the Germanium detector was smashed by a malicious person.
Nikola Tesla was able to replace Henry Moray’s "solid state component" with vacuum tubes in the resonate coil design he used for his car. —Tommy C— )
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Margaret Cheney has written an easy to read "people book" about Nikola Tesla's life and times.
"Tesla – Man Out Of Time".
© 1981, Dorset Press – New York; ISBN 0–88029–419–1
— Tommy C —
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Nikola Tesla — Erased at the Smithsonian !!!
John W. Wagner – Third Grade Teacher, Tells The Story of His Class Project.
The Resonate Coil Project
Looking at Nikola Tesla's Ideas with today's tools.
Understanding That Nature Obeys Rules, Too !
The History of Western Technology.
Wouldn't be so rich without Nikola Tesla's contributions.
Yale University's Scientific Magazine on Nikola Tesla
A Great Link
The Make-up of Our Atomic World Site Link List
Using Hydroponics to Understand the Earth's Life Processes
On the Atomic Level
The Tortoise Shell Life Science Puzzle Box Front Page
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