POWER TRANSMISSION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22469, 13 July 1936, Page 10

POWER TRANSMISSION

DR. TESLA'S ANNOUNCEMENT WIRES DEEMED UNNECESSARY NEW YORK, July 10 Dr. Nicola Tcsla, famous inventor of the Tesla coil and other electrical devices, celebrated his 80th birthday today by announcing his invention for tile transmission of power without wires. Dr. Tesla predicted that tho development of wireless power will overshadow his other accomplishments and will usher in a new civilisation. Thus, power developed at Muscle Shoals, Tennessee, might bo transmitted to England, China and Little America, with equal ease and at comparatively littlo cost. Several Euro|>ean Governments had promised co-operation, added the inventor. Plant utilising the invention would be installed in some place in Europe within a year. The,scheme would utilise 100,000,000 volts, compared with 18,000,000, which was the maximum so far attained in any laboratory. Dr. Nicola Tcsla, who was born in Austrian Croatia, was interested in electrical work at an early age. He left Paris for America to secure a better opening in 1882, and was made a member of the late Mr. Thomas Edison's staff. Four years afterwards he formed a company to exploit an arc-lainp development, but continued to focus his main interest on the rotation field principle for alternating current work and its application to motors. Tho result of his labours was the famous Tesla coil or transformer. His inventive genius also bore fruits in radio work and the transmission of power from Niagara Falls, and latterly, he has been interested in the wireless transmission of power. In 1931 he was stated to have declared that ha had discovered the solution to this problem. "Dr. Tesla is undoubtedly a very able investigator and a man of high reputation, and he did some very fine work in his earlier days. Lately, however, he never publishes any of the results from his laboratory in the more serious scientific publications, and in recent years we have had a number of rather sensational announcements about which little is subsequently heard," said Dr. D. Brown, lecturer in physics at the Auckland Univcrsitv College, vesterdav. "If Dr. Tesla has succeeded in doing what ho claims, the discovery would be just as revolutionary in the scientific world as a claim he made not lons ago, to have discovered particles which moved with greater velocity than light, but I have seen nothing further about that in anv scientific journal. In these circumstances it is difficult to judge the value of his work." The transmission of power without wires had been a dream of the inventor. Dr. Brown added, but ho did not know of any very serious contributions to a solution of the problem as yet. Tt was quite possible that Dr. Tesla had hit on something, but it was to be hoped that he would publish a detailed account of it.