A HUNGARIAN WIZARD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6895, 8 September 1900, Page 1

A HUNGARIAN WIZARD.

Mr Tesla's Haohlno. Lord Lytton in " The Coming Race," and IMr H. G. Wells, in "The War of the Worlds " and " When the Sleeper Wakes," have both drawn pictures of what the world will be like when the scientific in- ! ventor really lets himself go (says an English paper). An article that Mr Nikola Tesla has contributed to the "Century" shows that these forecasts — of which Lord Lytton's at least must have been a pure child of the imagination— were singularly accurate, and are now very likely to be realised. , If Mr Tesla succeeds in making half his discoveries available for daily use, we shall have everything at our command that the Vrilya had, and shall have gone a long way towards acquiring the AMAZING FORCES OP THE MARTIANS. Some ten years ago, in a lecture to the Royal Institution, Mr Tesla showed that if an electric current be reversed a great number of times a minute, it will "develop powers immensely in advance of anything we can produce by other means. Acting . on this principle, ihe has succeeded in producing what is really an induction 'coil with a hundred and fifty thousand alternations of current per second. With this huge " oscillator," as he calls it, the ordinary spark of 4i v few inches becomes a roaring blaze seventy feet across, while it produces such a disturbance of the electrical equilibrium in suflPbunding objects that, when at work, sparks an inch long can be drawn from a water-main at a distance of three hundred feet from the laboratory. Moreover, he has discovered a way of so " tuning" it that another coil similarly tuned will respond to its vibrations at a distance which he believes may be infinite, but which in practice does not seem to have been tested beyond six hundred miles. He thus has at his disposal a means- of conveying electric energy of millions of volts — (N.B.— Two thousand volts will kill a man) —to a great distance in any direction he pleases, and, of course, without any connecting wires. No known substance or power can stop or insulate this current, which can travel indifferently through the earth or the air, nor can anyone tap or avail himself- of it unless ihe possesses a coil exactly tuned to the vibrations of the oscillator. ■ ,■■•, ITS MARVELLOUS POWERS. What this extraordinary machine can do outstrips all the stories of medieval magic. By its use Mr Tesla claims that he can double the food supply of the world. For it offers the best and most economical means of fixing the nitrogen which, as Sir William Crcokes has 'told us, is the life of plants, and he can therefore make two ears of corn grow where one grew before. It can produce iron in vast quanti-' ties by a cheaper process than any hitherto attempted. It can also control at enormous distances an automatic machine, as, for instance, a crewlessjpboat, which shall carry its own propelling and steering power, and yet be as entirely under, the control of the operator seated in his study hundreds of miles eff as an organ is under the control of tihe player at the keyboard. • Finally, though Mr Tesla does not tell us so in this article, the battery can so "electrify" — to use the word in its popular sense-r-a. room, that an exhausted glass tube Will glow -with radiant light whenever it is brought within a certain distance of the flocr or ceiling. If it does what its inventor expects of it, light and power should at no very distant date be within the reach of all, w,hile the problem of feeding our increasing millions should be greatly simplified. MORE MIRACLES PROMISED. The facts so far have been proved by actual experiment, and may, therefore, be taken, to \ise the French phrase, as definitely acquired by science. But when Mr Tesla goes on to tell use what lie thinks the result of his discoveries will be, one does not wonder that an American biographer depicts him as much elated at his successes. He says that it will soon, be possible to draw our supplies cf electric force not, as now, from magnets rotated by steam engines, or, still more expensively, by the decomposition of cihemicals, but from the upper strata of t'he atmosphere. By these means we shall command a practically unlimited supply of power, and we can set about* transforming the faca of Nature in real eaimest. War will, cf course, be done away with, or rather it will be reduced to a 'contest of macMnes, at which the nations will be "simply interested, ambitious spectators." Then machines "which are now made of iron or copper will be made of aluminium — a theory, by the way, anticipated in " The War of the Worlds" — with the result that flying machines will be of daily use. These are, in fact, according to him, already on the way, and he prophesies that "the next year will sea the establishment of an ' air-*>ower,' and its centre may not be far from New York." At a later date will arrive "a self-acting machine deriving energy from the attn'bient medium," which will "really, but for the wear and tear of its parts, come as near perpetual motion as can be.. Then will conie a time when EARTH WILL BE TOO SMALL to hold us, and we shall get more anxious than most of us are at present to establish communicatioMs with the other plaaeta. When this ibappens, .we 'shall find Mr Tesla ready arid able to obligS : üb. ' " My measurements and calculations have shown that it *f . . . ■

» perfectly practicable to produce, on our globe, by the Mse of these principles, an electrical movement, of such magnitude that without the slightest doubt its effect will be perceptfble on some of our nearer planet*, such as Venus and Mars." What will happ«n if the Venusites and the Martians should turn out, when we do make their acquaintance, -to he armed with powers as formidable as even Mt Tesla's oscillator he does not stop ta inquire. JBut it is (to he hoped that all this will M^afreMy gone into before he is allowed to make his signal. ■ ■' ■ How much «f all this Will stand further investigation remains to be seen. Altiho-Tigh borni in Hungary, Mr Tesla has been domi? died ifor some time in America, wihere the desir* for "the greatest thing <m airth" shows no Bign of abatement.