Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site uw-beaver Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!fowler From: fowler@uw-beaver (Rob Fowler) Newsgroups: net.physics Subject: Re: Tesla Message-ID: <894@uw-beaver> Date: Tue, 5-Mar-85 23:12:00 EST Article-I.D.: uw-beave.894 Posted: Tue Mar 5 23:12:00 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 04:44:57 EST References: <131@azure.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: U of Washington Computer Science Lines: 72 I posted something on this to net.rumor, but since Tesla came up again ... One of the things that Tesla was into was power transmission by novel means. Fer instance, apparently a lot of the stuff in the Colorado Springs lab had portable power supplies consisting of secondary coils coupled to the huge primary that surrounded the building. Another scheme that he experimented with was long distance power transmission (AC) using a single phase and a single wire and using the Earth as the return path. I've heard and read about these experiments in several places, but don't really know anything about the results. Using ground loops is something I've been trained to avoid. About 6 or 7 years ago there were a couple of really bad years of Winter weather in North America. The jet stream had wandered all over the place. The Northwest was relatively dry and sunny. There was speculation about "power droughts" (enough to drink, but not make electricity). The Midwest and East were extremely cold and were getting hit by blizzard after blizzard. In the midst of this there was an employee (a "scientist" of undetermined vintage and credentials) of the National Research Council of Canada who managed to get the Canadian press to print his version of what was going on. To paraphrase it: It was just another nefarious plot by those damn Russkies!!. They had been studying Tesla's work initially because they were interested in communicating with their submarines. The idea was to avoid using a special purpose system (like Project Sanguine in Wisconsin) by using (parts of) their existing power grid as an antenna. By unbalancing the power grid you can somehow create a ground current that is somehow detectable by a submerged sub. Well, we don't know how successful they were at communication, but they apparently detected some climate modification. Aha!! says some commisar, we will wage economic warfare!. We jack around our power grid, this pushes global air currents off their normal courses, warm moist air is sucked up over the Ukraine thus causing bumper crops, cold Arctic air is pushed off of the North Pole into the middle of North America causing all kinds of suffering, and finally, the winter long low pressure systems that usually hang around off the British Columbia coast head South and flood California!! A despicable, but brilliant, plan! This guy from NRC wound up getting the ear of several reporters over the course of two or three years. As I recall, he was explaining North American inaction on his theory by saying that although the governments recognized the correctness of his position that they had no reasonable form of retaliation prepared. After all, we couldn't just tell them to stop screwing around with our weather or it's "Nuke City". So much for the theory. I'd stumbled across these articles in the Canadian popular press up until '78 when I left Vancouver. Since then I've seen nothing. A couple of years later I happened upon some of the Tesla biographies/hagiographies, but they are pretty non-technical. This leads to a couple of questions (discussion topics): What exactly was Tesla doing w.r.t. power transmission and/or communication using ground returns? His tower on Long Island was going to use this, but how? Marconi had heard of Hertz and Maxwell and used the theory of electromagnetic waves. Tesla's tower seems to be to be a kludge left over from an earlier, pre-EM era. (I recall mention of very low bandwidth and using the entire Earth/atmosphere system as a resonator. Not so good for Hi-Fi, but Ok for calling subs?) What are the power transmission aspects of this? Does anyone else out there recall anything about the guy in Ottawa and his weird rantings? Does he still work for NRC? Is there any scuttlebutt about these rumors, theories, accusations? -- Rob Fowler ( ... uw-beaver!fowler or fowler@washington.arpa)