Tesla's nose

[MileHigh]

I came across this on EF:

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/7644-joule-thief-back-emf-explained.html#post134870

Quote:
Can you provide a reference from Tesla stating this? Never heard this from him. thx
Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents -- Chapter IV
http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/nt_on_ac.htm

"I have designed circuits in connection with an enterprise in 1898 for transmission of energy which, once started, would vibrate three years, and even after that the oscillations could still be detected. "

My personal interpretation of this is that this is a bold-faced lie made by Tesla.  It all makes sense.  You had a man looking for investment funds to support his research.  You had a general public that knew next to nothing about electricity, it was very new technology that only was available in the major cities.  And perhaps most importantly, it was an era where hucksters of all forms, from the lowest con artist to the richest newspaper magnate, regularly practiced the "Big Lie."  They did this because the general public had not yet developed the cynicism that we are all too aware of that stared in the 1960s.

Technically, there is no way in hell you could set up some kind of a coil in self-resonant mode or a big LC tank circuit that would resonate for three years.  I know that some of the the rabid Tesla fans might cry, "How do you know you weren't there!"  Another scenario is that they might believe that Tesla had a good ol' "secret sauce" coil configuration that somehow magically overcame the fact that there would be resistance in the coil wire.

Here is were you have to confront reality.  You really can say with 100% confidence that the Tesla quote demonstrates that Tesla was capable of lying in order to advance his own agenda or to unscrupulously garner new investment funds.  Hell, you can also say that some of the people that have been writing about Tesla ever since the Cult of Tesla started are in the same category.

So what's the point?  The point is that Tesla did some good research and some flashy nonsensical research.  The point is that a lot of what he did has been superseded by newer generations of technology.  Yes, he "invented" alternating current, but that really isn't rocket science by any means.  The point is to attempt to put Tesla in some sort of context, instead of believing that everything that he did was the miraculous work of a super-genius.  Tesla was also part Carney and huckster.

We as a technological society have used some of the basic building blocks that Tesla researched.  However for the most part Tesla is forgotten history, like an Edison wax-cylinder-based record player.  We have moved on.

Spark gaps and "disruptive discharges" might be fun to play with, but in a general sense they are not used at all in the day-to-day running of our society.

Instead of reading Tesla you should be reading a 1940s or 1950s book on practical applications and experiments that can be done with electricity.

There in nothing like the smell of a fresh rant in the morning!

MileHigh

[humbugger]

The ultimate blasphemy.  Tesla a liar.  You've done it this time, MH

Hum

[MileHigh]

Hum:

There is over unity in them thar hills!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY

[Chet K]

                                                              



                                                 

[Allcanadian]

@Milehigh

My personal interpretation of this is that this is a bold-faced lie made by Tesla.  It all makes sense.

That is one interpretation, if memory serves me correct Tesla started experimenting with mechanical oscillators in a hard vacuum which would obviously vibrate for extended periods of time. Next he experimented with extending the period of electrical oscillations which of course led to patent 685012," Means For Increasing The Intensity Of Electrical Oscillations", a product of Carl Von Linde's work with the condensing of air and a means to produce cheap oxygen for industry. To my knowledge this is the first patent in history which relates directly to super-conduction and Tesla states that this is in fact his goal-- to decrease all resistance to zero. The next year Tesla applies for another patent 685958, "Method Of Utilizing of Radiant Energy", now we have two patents 685012 in 1900 and 685958 in 1901. One patent seeks to reduce all resistance to zero, super-conduction,  and the other to utilize "radiant energy" to power an electrical device from an external source.
Now let's do some math here, I have one (1) superconducting circuit and I have one (1) circuit which utilizes an external radiant energy source, and when I add one to the other I would get a superconducting circuit having almost no resistance powered by a radiant energy source which I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably wouldn't be stopping any time soon. As well it also sounds a hell of a lot like science to me, look at the time line, Tesla was moving in one direction and only one. He wanted to reduce all resistance and harness a clean,free external energy source which could produce usable amounts of energy. Even in this modern day and age we are still striving to do the exact same thing, superconducting transmission lines and renewable energy are at the top of our wish list and Tesla knew this in 1900, he stated this was what was needed.

Spark gaps and "disruptive discharges" might be fun to play with, but in a general sense they are not used at all in the day-to-day running of our society.

Maybe you better just hit the old folks home early because your not making any sense, spark gaps ie.. ESD and plasma research are cutting edge technologies in every science journal, electrostatics/nanotechnology are cutting edge technology in every science journal, disruptive discharges, transient effects, and fast transient discharges up into the terrahertz spectrum are cutting edge technologies in every science journal---period. You see the problem here is that your area expertise is the past, it has no future and it is not sustainable and our younger generation understands this much better than we do.

Here is one example of what we are up against milehigh, tonight my family and I are sitting in the hot tub and my 10 year old daughter says "what are the three states of matter" to my eight year old son because my kids are always talking about science, go figure. He quickly says "solid, liquid and gas" and my daughter says "Ha -- wrong solid, liquid, gas and plasma the text book and my teacher were wrong because I researched it". I also personally know of two teenagers under sixteen who built a GEET and had proven, that is proven, that the efficiency is higher than the best automobile engines available as their science project. Imagine that, a couple of teenagers getting better efficiency from an internal combustion engine than the best engineers in the automobile industry--exactly how does that work?. You see only so many people can believe the BS for so long before they finally clue in and I am afraid most of our younger generation as well as myself just ain't buying your story anymore because it has no future.
Regards
AC

[Chet K]

                                        OUCH!!
                                 A Poke In the Nose!

[MileHigh]

Okay, I have to do a partial back-peddle here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_superconductivity

So I wasn't aware that research into superconductivity went all the way back to the 19th century.  By the same token and using the real world circa 1898 as the reference point you can get a clearer understanding of the context:

"I have designed circuits in connection with an enterprise in 1898 for transmission of energy which, once started, would vibrate three years, and even after that the oscillations could still be detected. "

This was a theoretical paper design only.  From my link:

A milestone was achieved on 10 July 1908 when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at the Leiden University in Leiden produced, for the first time, liquified helium.

So in 1898 there was no means to even approach absolute zero.  Maintaining very cold temperatures requires large amounts of energy to run refrigeration equipment, which I assume didn't even exist at the time anyways.  Any system to transmit energy using superconductivity with low-temperature superconductors would require refrigeration along the entire length of the transmission line, consuming vast amounts of power.  Higher temperature superconductors are a technology that has only been around for the last 30 years or so.

So in that context there was no viable enterprise to do what Tesla claimed with respect to energy transmission.  In addition, even superconductors have a finite but extremely low resistance.  Even if you could overcome some of the technical hurdles in 1898 and create a superconducting LC resonator using ordinary metal wire my guesstimate is that it would not resonate for three years.  It might resonate for weeks or perhaps months.

So I give Tesla credit for being a minor player in the history of superconductivity.  Tesla still gets a fail for the statement which was not really true.  It was more hucksterism than fact.  Then of course a big fail for any modern-day Tesla fanatics that interpret the Tesla quote as Gospel truth and believe that he had a real working system in 1898 that performed like he claimed.

As far as spark gaps go they maybe used for some research.  But I said, "not used at all in the day-to-day running of our society" I was not referring to any research being done at Sandia Labs.  I can't comment in GEET but I don't get a great feeling about it.  How come everybody isn't using GEET right now?  It's a rhetorical question.

MileHigh

[humbugger]

Yeah but Tesla was using radiant energy which we all know makes for cold electricity...really cold electricity.  The more resistance you have and the more Amps and Volts cold you have, the chillier things get.  0 degrees K would take only 73.5A at 285.7V, which I'm sure Nikola could muster.

Humbugger

[Chet K]

                                    WOAHHhhhhhhhh
                       Hamdragger goes for a cHeesy I poke!!
                                    Illegal manuva !

[humbugger]

  cHeeeeeesy