Tesla subject to multiple law
suits over unpaid Colorado Springs expenses. George Westinghouse,
who bought Tesla's patents for alternating current motors and
generators in the 1880's, turns down the inventor's power transmission
business proposal. Workers gradually stop coming to the Wardenclyffe
laboratory when there are no funds to pay them. In an article,
Tesla comments on Peary's expedition to the North Pole and tells
of his, Tesla's, plans for energy transmission to any central
point on the ground.
1907: When commenting on the destruction
of the French ship Iena,
Tesla noted in a letter to the New
York Times that he has built and tested dirigible
torpedoes (remotely controlled torpedoes), but that electrical
waves would be more destructive. "As to projecting wave energy
to any particular region of the globe ... this can be done by
my devices," he wrote. Further, he claimed that "the
spot at which the desired effect is to be produced can be calculated
very closely, assuming the accepted terrestrial measurements to
be correct."(26)
1908: Tesla repeated the idea of destruction
by electrical waves to the newspaper on April 21st. His letter
to the editor stated, "When I spoke of future warfare I meant
that it should be conducted by direct application of electrical
waves without the use of aerial engines or other implements of
destruction." He added: "This is not a dream. Even now
wireless power plants could be constructed by which any region
of the globe might be rendered uninhabitable without subjecting
the population of other parts to serious danger or inconvenience."(27)
In the period from 1900 to 1910
Tesla's creative thrust was to establish his plan for wireless
transmission of energy. Undercut by Marconi's accomplishment,
beset by financial problems, and spurned by the scientific establishment,
Tesla was in a desperate situation by mid-decade. The strain became
too great by 1906-1907 and, according to Tesla biographers, he
suffered an emotional collapse.(28),(29) In order to make a final effort
to have his grand scheme recognized, he may have tried one high
power test of his transmitter to show off its destructive potential.
This would have been in 1908.
The Tunguska
event took place on the morning of June 30th, 1908. An explosion
estimated to be equivalent to 10-15 megatons of TNT flattened
500,000 acres of pine forest near the Stony Tunguska River in
central Siberia. Whole herds of reindeer were destroyed. Several
nomadic villages were reported to have vanished. The explosion
was heard over a radius of 620 miles. When an expedition was made
to the area in 1927 to find evidence of the meteorite presumed
to have caused the blast, no impact crater was found. When the
ground was drilled for pieces of nickel, iron, or stone, the main
constituents of meteorites, none were found down to a depth of
118 feet.
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Several explanations have been given for the Tunguska
event. The officially accepted version is that a 100,000 ton fragment
of Encke's Comet, composed mainly of dust and ice, entered the
atmosphere at 62,000 mph, heated up, and exploded over the earth's
surface creating a fireball and shock wave but no crater. Alternative
explanations of the disaster include a renegade mini-black hole
or an alien space ship crashing into the earth with the resulting
release of energy.
Associating Tesla with the Tunguska
event comes close to putting the inventor's power transmission
idea in the same speculative category as ancient astronauts. However,
historical facts point to the possibility that this event was
caused by a test firing of Tesla's energy weapon.
In 1907 and 1908, Tesla wrote
about the destructive effects of his energy transmitter. His Wardenclyffe
facility was much larger than the Colorado Springs device that
destroyed the power station's generator. Then, in 1915, he stated
bluntly:
It is perfectly practical to transmit electrical energy without wires
and produce destructive effects at a distance. I have already
constructed a wireless transmitter which makes this possible.
... But when unavoidable [it] may be used to destroy property
and life. The art is
already so far developed that the great destructive effects can
be produced at any point on the globe, defined beforehand with
great accuracy (emphasis added).(30)
He seems to confess to such a
test having taken place before 1915, and, though the evidence
is circumstantial, Tesla had the motive and the means to cause
the Tunguska event. His transmitter could generate energy levels
and frequencies capable of releasing the destructive force of
10 megatons, or more, of TNT. And the overlooked genius was desperate.
The nature of the Tunguska event, also, is consistent with what would
happen during the sudden release of wireless power. No fiery object
was reported in the skies at that time by professional or amateur
astronomers as would be expected when a 200,000,000 pound object
enters the atmosphere at tens of thousands miles an hour. Also,
the first reporters, from the town of Tomsk, to reach the area
judged the stories about a body falling from
the sky was the result of the imagination of an impressionable
people. He noted there was considerable noise coming from the
explosion, but no stones fell. The absence of an impact crater
can be explained by there having been no material body to impact.
An explosion caused by broadcast power would not leave a crater.
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