BROADCAST POWER, TAKE TWO
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Best known for the insights that put the alternating current system associated with Westinghouse on a working basis, Tesla was a brilliant experimenter in electricity. He devised a system for broadcasting electrical power in the first decade of this century that, among other things, could (and did) light lightbulbs at a distance of 25 miles without their being connected by wires to a source of electricity. His broadcast power system indisputably worked, both in Colorado and Long Island–but only for Tesla. No one has been able to duplicate this effect, even working from Tesla’s notes; like many geniuses, he seems not to have bothered to write things down that, while “obvious” to him, were in fact quantum leaps of knowledge.
Cecil is well acquainted with the inventor of the Tesla coil, an artificial-lightning device familiar to high school physics students. But he had forgotten about Tesla’s global ambitions for his invention. Just as well. Tesla’s broacast power scheme was even wilder than the satellite power system.
Many people excuse Tesla’s failures by saying he was too far ahead of his time. I doubt it. His understanding of the medium in which he worked was primitive. He refused to accept the complex nature of the atom and for years denied Einstein’s theories. His problems arose largely from the fact that he was an eccentric who was unable to work with (and consequently to learn from) other people, and the increasing unreality of his ideas shows it. Broadcast power is exhibit A.
