DEBUNKING SOME
TESLA MYTHS
Fixing common widespread errors
2012 W. Beaty

1. A TESLA COIL IS AN AIR-CORE TRANSFORMER? Not exactly.

First of all, Tesla's later work wasn't based on a transformer. Instead, his device was a single coil with an AC dynamo; a coil with energy injected into one end and high voltage appearing at the other. No primary coil. A very strange invention! Its closest relative is the quarter-wave groundplane antenna used for CB and ham radio. Today his device has come to be known as a "magnifier" as opposed to a "transformer." Tesla drove such coils directly through the ground connection. Or, sometimes he adjusted the amount of coupling by adding a conventional transformer between the dynamo and the main coil, but this wasn't essential. And finally: it's perfectly possible to build a Tesla coil with capacitive coupling: with a single coil, AC-driven metal plate placed near its base, and no primary coil.

As for older Tesla coils such as "theatrical" lightning machines ...conventional transformers achieve voltage step-up based on turns-ratio of their primary and secondary coils. But the turns-ratio is nearly irrelevant with Tesla coils. Instead, the step-up effect is caused by the phenomenon known as "resonant rise." In Resonant Rise, the central role is played by the bell-like ringing or "Q-factor" of the resonant coils. The longer a coil can ring, the greater the energy it can accumulate, and the higher the voltage it can produce.

2. THE "SKIN EFFECT" PROTECTS US FROM TESLA COIL ZAPS? Wrong.

The skin-effect mostly applies to extremely conductive materials: wires and metal objects. Not salt water, not hamburger. Human bodies aren't metal. At the usual operating frequencies of Tesla Coils, the "skin depth" of electric currents in metals is a fraction of a millimeter. But for human flesh, skin depth is around 50cm, HALF A METER. If you're zapped by a big TC, the path of current isn't on the surface. It's internal. You could accidentally cook your bone marrow. (Don't forget that two common devices rely on this effect for their operation: 2GHz microwave ovens cooking the inside of meat, and in sports medicine, 27MHz diathermy muscle-warming devices used for deep tissue heating.)

Why then no shocks? If TCs can't electrocute you, well, why not? It's because human nerves don't respond to frequencies higher than about 5KHz. Tesla Coils can drive fairly high currents through our bodies, but we can't feel the electric shock; only the heating.

So, whenever you allow the arcs of a large TC to strike a metal wrench held in your hand, the current dives deep into your muscles. If your joints seem a bit painful afterwards, that's because you were being slightly cooked internally.

3. EDISON TOOK TESLA'S IDEAS WITHOUT PAYING, SO TESLA QUIT THE COMPANY?

Tesla quit, but Edison apparently didn't use any of Tesla's compact core designs. They later ended up as a main feature of the Westinghouse product line. Edison only adopted them many years later. The "Long legged" electric motors and generators faded away, and Tesla's cylindrical motor designs (even for DC motors) soon took over the world.

Oddly enough, Edison's industrial DC dynamos in his European branch were being redesigned by J. Hopkinson, based on basic physics knowledge. They eventually pushed out the Long Legged format. (Speculation: Hopkinson succeeded within the Edison Co., where Tesla failed, because the distant Edison branch in Europe wasn't aware that the efficient short-path designs were probably a personal affront to Edison himself, while the benefits of this design were of course obvious to their European customers.)

By the way, and this is a painful reflection, it was Schmidt and I who developed this type of frame and this general arrangement which is universally adopted now ...I remember years ago, some of my friends, Messrs. Crocker and Wheeler, started with those long magnets and I told them, "The sooner you throws these away and adopt (my) construction, the better it will be for you." They have got it now; it is all right. - N. Tesla, 1916

4. TESLA WAS SCREWED OVER BY FINANCIERS AND DIED PENNILESS? NOPE.

Don't forget that Tesla lived his life in a suite of rooms in downtown NYC. That's the situation of a penniless failure? Not quite! Sure, his inventions should have made him fantastically wealthy. They didn't, but that wasn't only the fault of financiers. Besides, "not a billionaire" is very different than being "penniless." Don't forget that Tesla worked as a consulting engineer for years following the failure of Wardenclyffe (remember his bladeless turbine project?) He lost Wardenclyffe because he gambled on putting his own income into equipment and experiments, then ignored bills for hotel rent, and then had his landlord take the Wardenclyffe property to cover those bills. Apparently Tesla kept no retirement savings, and put every cent into self-funding his personal lab, but that wasn't the fault of "financiers." After the Great Depression Tesla perhaps would have died penniless, except the Tesla Foundation and Yugoslav government paid him a monthly pension of around $100,000/yr ($7,200 in 1940s dollars.) Even so, Tesla still put every cent into research, failed to pay his rent, and during his last years was two years behind on the bills!

Tesla's financial problems had many causes: Tesla absolutely refused to charge for (or even patent) any of his medical inventions, nor would he pursue the idea-thieves reaping rewards for those inventions. The inventions made millions for the companies who produced them without attribution. Also, Tesla courted investors, but he then spent all his hundreds of thousands in personally paying for research equipment and entire labs. When Westinghouse was pushed to the wall by stockholders, Tesla threw away millions (possibly billions in today's money) by tearing up his dollars-per-watt contract. A few years later, the bankers took Westinghouse's company away from him anyway. Another: while building Wardenclyffe and dealing with JP Morgan, Tesla's remaining fortune was nearly wiped out in a stock crash. And finally, his major wealthy supporters all died: Westinghouse after being forced out of his company; JJ Astor went down with the Titanic.

Perhaps part of the "penniless" myth comes from Tesla's odd health beliefs and dietary experiments. At the end of his life he practiced extreme vegetarianism, and people of the time might conclude that he was too poor to afford normal food. Rumor has it that he reduced this even further, and lived entirely off milk.

5. WORLDWIDE WIRELESS POWER CAN'T WORK, INVERSE SQUARE, AND LOSSES ARE TOO GREAT?

Does the P=1/r^2 inverse square law forbid worldwide wireless? Nope. For the same reason, food in a microwave doesn't need to be placed right near the magnetron port. The microwave oven is a driven resonant cavity, and so is the Earth. Both employ standing waves, and both exhibit patterns of intense e-fields far from the actual transmitting antenna. There are nodes and antinodes, and yes, a receiver will work poorly if placed right at a node. Think about it this way: if your power receiver is placed out in the Indian Ocean exactly 180deg away from the transmitter in the USA, wouldn't you expect to find a HUGE signal? All the waves focus themselves at the opposite point in the atmosphere? Yes, because the system is using a driven standing wave, not a conventional radio system. (And if you traveled away from that distant maximum spot, the power would decrease *NOT* as inverse square, but as cosine, falling to near zero at the 1/4 wavelength 1st node location.)

6. TESLA WAS CRAZY

The scientific community regarded Tesla as crazy for claiming that radio waves could bend over Earth's horizon, that the waves could travel repeatedly around the entire Earth, and that a broadcasting station could send signals to receivers located anywhere on the planet. All of these ideas were direct violations of known physics at the time (this was before the Heaviside Layer, even before Marconi.) Their disdainful disbelief apparently prevented any investigation of Tesla's discoveries, and Earth Resonance was only rediscovered decades later after the parties in the controversy were dead.

Tesla was obviously crazy for building that giant tower at Wardenclyffe.

Hold on a sec. That giant construction was for worldwide broadcasting using a megawatt transmitter. What did BBC world service use? And Voice of America? And the USSR competitors? GIANT RADIO TOWERS AND MEGAWATT TRANSMITTERS. So perhaps Tesla only seems crazy because investors pulled out, and Long Island never became a transmitter complex for the first major worldwide radio service? Or was he only crazy because his giant radio tower was wood rather than metal, was also much shorter than the others built later, and his had a metal sphere on top? (Tesla's letters reveal that the Wardenclyffe tower was supposed to be three to six times taller than it was, but Tesla couldn't afford the construction costs.)

7. THERE'S A GLOBAL CONSPIRACY TO SUPPRESS TESLA!

So why is it that when Tesla-supporters complain about his treatment by the history experts and contemporary scientists, why all the accusations of "Conspiracy Theory?" Isn't this a logic fallacy, "straw man argument?"

Heh, perhaps those who complain loudest about conspiracies are actually GOVERNMENT AGENTS who were planted to DISCREDIT the community of Tesla supporters by equating "Conspiracy Theorists" with our legitimate complaints of suppression. It's all a BIG CONSPIRACY to make it look like a conspiracy when actually it isn't a conspiracy!!!! (Well, that's my all-caps THEORY at least.) :)

8. A MAGNIFYING TRANSMITTER IS A 3-COIL DEVICE?

No, since we actually don't know what Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter really was.

The modern "Tesla coiler" community has declared that a any base-driven 3-coil device is a "Tesla Magnifier," yet Tesla himself had been using such setups at least since 1892, so to him they were not a new breakthrough deserving a new name. What was being magnified in the new "Magnifier" device? Not voltage, since all his coils did that. Perhaps peak power was "magnified" during pulse-mode operation? Or perhaps the term "Magnifying Transmitter" was simply part of Tesla's marketing hype for the Wardenclyffe project: an improved coil with heavy conductors, extensive grounding system, and a terminal covered with small adjustable hemispheres. Or there's this pure speculation: apparently the Wardenclyffe tower contained racks for supporting some large glass devices: powerful sources to pre-ionize a discharge path above the main terminal. A Tesla Coil transmitter with a glass globe on top is fundamentally different from his other inventions. Perhaps "Magnifier" refers to a Tesla coil including a gigantic plasma-contactor: a device for generating an invisible plasma-antenna much taller than the physical tower's height.

I saw that I would be able to transmit power provided I could construct a certain apparatus -- and I have, as I will show you later. I have constructed and patented a form of apparatus which, with a moderate elevation of a few hundred feet, can break the air stratum down. You will then see something like an aurora borealis across the sky, and the energy will go to the distant place. ...I came to the conviction that it would be ultimately possible, without any elevated antenna --- with very small elevation --- to break down the upper stratum of the air and transmit the current by conduction. -N. Tesla 1916

9. THE US GOVT BLEW UP WARDENCLYFFE TOWER TO PREVENT WWI GERMAN SPIES FROM CONTACTING U-BOATS? NOPE.

10. TESLA DESIGNED THE NIAGARA FALLS GENERATORS?

11. DON'T TRUST TESLA BECAUSE HE ALWAYS EXAGGERATES?

(Note that even Wardenclyffe never "failed" in this respect, instead Tesla ran out of money before the device was up and running.) Science involves "Let the experiment be made," not "bold untested ideas are as crazy as they seem; guilty until proven innocent."

A less irresponsible method of examining untested devices and determining Tesla's trustworthyness would be to examine his track record. In the past did he make any apparently crazy claims which actually proved to be crazy? In the mid-1800s everyone knew that brushless motors were impossible, and in addition, DC is the obvious choice for power systems (otherwise the great Edison wouldn't have chosen it!) Tesla's crazy AC motor ideas couldn't attract a single investor in Europe. Finally after his move to the USA, Westinghouse takes him seriously, and all of Tesla's "impossible" claims are completely vindicated. Tesla was right all along. Any physicists calling the induction motor a "perpetual motion machine" were shown to be fools. The entire expert community was wrong, while one lone voice was right.

Next, Tesla claims to send signals around the curve of the Earth and that the Earth has a fundamental resonance and overtones. He claims that a megawatt transmitter could be built to send broadcasts to the entire world. This is impossible: goes directly against 1890s physics. Tesla keeps his radio experiments secret. Marconi does not, and performs the impossible by inexplicably broadcasting around the curve of the Earth. (Later, ionospheric reflection and Heaviside's layer is discovered.) Then, oddly, the scientific community never bothers to look for Earth resonance. It was real, of course. Today it's named for its "discoverer," W.O. Schumann. Tesla's "physics-violating" crazy idea is (silently) vindicated. Tesla invents other ridiculous things: vehicles with transparent bubble cockpits, particle beam weapons, secure encoded communications, cruise missiles, VTOL aircraft. All are obviously ridiculous and were bad-mouthed in public. None attract any investors, yet each is vindicated decades later.

12. TESLA DISCOVERED X-RAYS!

13. TESLA COULDN'T HAVE DISCOVERED X-RAYS: VACUUM PUMPS WEREN'T GOOD ENOUGH

14. THE SECRET OF TESLA'S DEATH-RAY IS LOST

15. TESLA'S "STATIC ELIMINATOR" IS A PAIR OF ADJUSTABLE PANCAKE COILS

We have little direct evidence of how Tesla's version worked, but it was probably a variation on spread-spectrum "frequency hopping." Most probably it was a spinoff from one of his methods of secure and non-interceptable comms employing the concept of the "Wave Complex." Wave Complex was a signal employing a beat-wave or "line-splitting" frequency effect produced by an excited multi-resonator device. In modern terms this was FHSS, a Spread-Spectrum comm system based upon near-random Frequency-hopping. But Tesla's frequency-hopping was analog, not digital; where the random effect was produced naturally via several interacting tuned circuits. Visualize a radio with several tuning knobs for each channel, rather than just one, and where thunderstorms cannot duplicate the odd multi-peak spectrum to which only the special receivers will respond. "Static free" reception like FM! But based on spread-spectrum technique.

It is what I call a 'static preventer.' A great trouble, when I came to Colorado, whas that I could not 'operate' at all. You know that the static interference is today the great bane of the wireless transmission. The reason for that is defective construction of the plants, but with this invention I am enabled to even make these defective plants operate satisfactorily. The principle involves the employment of a plurality of tuned circuits in series as shown. However, any interaction of the circuits, arising from mutual induction, produces results which are exceedingly complex. - N. Tesla 1916

16. THE TESLA-PROMOTERS ARE LYING. EVERYONE IS FAMILIAR WITH TESLA'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS!

17. TESLA IS SERBIAN! TESLA IS CROATIAN!

18. TESLA CAUSED THE TUNGUSKA BLAST

1. A 10 megaton blast, or about 40 billion megajoules, would require broadcasting radio energy at a level of 10 megawatts for 130 years (that is, if the process was 100% efficient, longer if not.) In other words, the power-grid connected to Wardenclyffe can't produce megaton-scale explosions.

2. Coupling a VLF transmitter's output to the Earth resonance wavelengths requires a miles-long antenna similar to the US Navy submarine-comms low-freq transmitter projects (project Seafarer/Sanguine, Mary Creek, etc.) Actually this is a problem for many of Tesla's claims: he used no miles-long antennas, yet his devices supposedly could transmit enormous wattage at VLF/ELF wavelengths.

3. A meteor or comet is a sudden brief event, while if Tesla did it, there would probably be a slow buildup. We'd expect to see various odd atmospheric phenomena occurring for many minutes or even hours before any "explosion." There might even be several explosions in series, separated by a constant delay. If it was a single blast with no precursors, then it wasn't a Tesla event.

4. Legend has it that Tesla intended to produce artificial aurora at North Pole, but he overshot the mark. So, if Tunguska isn't on the great-circle including Wardenclyffe and the North Pole, then the claim fails right there. A random comet/meteor strike will probably be in a completely unrelated location. Go get a world globe and look.

So, Tesla could not have caused the blast unless... 1. he discovered an enormous energy source in the Earth's Schumann cavity, and his transmitter only acted as a catalyst or trigger and not the main energy supply. 2. unless he had some secret method of "getting out," of transmitting significant VLF wattage without an appropriate long antenna, 3. unless minutes/hours of strange phenomena were observed in Russia prior to the and following the blast, 4. unless Tunguska is on the straight line between Wardenclyffe and the North Pole. Well, number four is moot: Tunguska *is* on the line! Scary! Number three also proves true: apparently Russian investigation showed just such earthquake and sky effects over an extended period before the blast. Experts had always ignored this as inexplicable, since it conflicted with the conventional explanation based on an exploding cosmic body. Number one might be real also: one NASA group detected Schumann resonance Q-factors in the thousands, indicating incredibly low losses in the waveguide, or more probably, some sort of unknown self-oscillation effect. HAARP project early documents also notes VLF broadcasts returning at higher levels than transmitted, and cautions against a possible disastrous self-reinforcing effect.

So "Tunguska blasts" may possibly be man-made. Still there's #2, and it would require an antenna very much larger than Wardenclyffe tower to be able to transmit more than a tiny wattage signal at VLF wavelengths.

19. TESLA COILS ARE AMAZING LIGHTNING MACHINES

20. TESLA COILS ARE ALWAYS HORIZONTAL AND UNGROUNDED. ANY VERTICAL COIL IS AN OUDIN COIL.

21. EDISON BURNED DOWN TESLA'S LAB IN COLORADO

22. OK, THEN EDISON BURNED DOWN TESLA'S LAB IN NYC

TESLA LINKS

• Wardenclyffe: a squarewave transmitter?