2009-06-15

Nikola Tesla continued....

Deciding to better insulate the arrangement in order that all possible line leakages could be eradicated, he again attempted the experiment. The knife switch rapidly closed and opened, he again felt the unpleasant shock just as painfully as before. Right through the glass shield! Now he was perplexed. Desiring total distance from the apparatus, he modified the system once more by making it "automatic".

He could freely walk around the room during the test. He could hold the shield or simply walk without it. A small rotary spark switch was arranged in place of the hand-held knife switch. The rotary switch was arranged to inter­rupt the dynamo current in slow, successive intervals. The system was actu­ated, the motor switch cranked it contacts slowly. Snap ... snap ... snap ... each contact produced the very same room-filling irritation.

This time it was most intense. Tesla could not get away from the shocks, regardless of his distance from the apparatus across his considerably large gallery hall. He scarcely could get near enough to deactivate the rotating switch. From what he was able to painfully observe, thin sparks of a bright blue-white color stood straight out of the line with each electrical contact.

The shock effects were felt far beyond the visible spark terminations. This seemed to indicate that their potential was far greater than the voltage ap­plied to the line. A paradox! The dynamo charge was supplied at a tension of fifteen thousand volts, yet the stinging sparks were characteristics of electro­static discharges exceeding some two hundred fifty thousand volts. Some­how this input current was being transformed into a much higher voltage by an unknown process. No natural explanation could be found. No scientific explanation sufficed. There was simply not enough data on the phenomenon for an answer. And Tesla knew that this was no ordinary phenomenon. Somewhere in the heart of this activity was a deep natural secret. Secrets of this kind always opened humanity into new revolutions.

Tesla considered this strange voltage multiplying effect from several viewpoints. The problem centered around the fact that there was no magnetic induction taking place. Transformers raise or lower voltage when current is changing. Here were impulses. Change was happening during the impulse. But there was no transformer in the circuit. No wires were close enough for magnetic inductions to take place. Without magnetic induction, there could theoretically be no transformation effect. No conversion from low to high voltage at all. Yet, each switch snap brought both the radiating blue-white sparks and their painful sting.

Tesla noted that the strange sparks were more like electrostatic discharges. If the sparks had been direct current arcs reaching from the test line, he would surely have been killed with the very first close of the switch. The physical pressure and stinging pain of these sparks across such distances could not be explained. This phenomenon had never been reported by those who should have seen and felt its activities.

Tesla gradually came to the conclusion that the shock effect was some­thing new, something never before observed. He further concluded that the effect was never seen before because no one had ever constructed such a powerful impulse generator. No one had ever reported the phenomenon be­ cause no one had ever generated the phenomenon. Tesla once envisioned a vortex of pure energy while looking into a sunset. The result of this great Providential vision was Polyphase current. A true revelation. But this, this was an original discovery found through an accident. It was an empirical discovery of enormous significance. Here was a new electrical force, an utterly new species of electrical force, which should have been incorporated into the electrical equations of James Clerk Max­well. Surprisingly, it was not.

Tesla now questioned his own knowledge. He questioned the foundations on which he had placed so much confidence in the last several years. Max­well was the "rule and measure" by which all of Tesla's Polyphase genera­tors had been constructed. Tesla penetrated the validity of Maxwell's math­ematical method. It was well known that Maxwell had derived his math­ematical descriptions of electromagnetic induction from a great collection of available electrical phenomena. Perhaps he had not studied enough of the phenomena while doing so.

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