Tesla's "Magnifying Transmitter" Article: "The New York Times"...27 March, 1904
To gather in the latent electricity in the clouds and with the globe itself as a medium of transmission to convey telegraphic messages, power for commercial purposes, or even the sound of the human voice to the utmost confines of the earth is the latest dream of Nikola Tesla. In an article which appeared recently in The Electrical World Mr. Tesla explains the theories on which the world telegraphy system is founded and what he expects to accomplish by it.
His plans involve the establishment of stations for the transmission of messages and power, "preferably near important centers of civilization." Oddly enough, what Mr. Tesla proudly designates as the first of his commercial "world telegraphy" stations has been established at Wardenclyffe, Shoreham, Long Island, New York, which is not in any sense an important "centre of civilization," but a place described by train hands of the Long Island Railroad as a way station where "a passenger alights occasionally."
Tesla's "Magnifying Transmitter", at Wardenclyffe, Shoreham, LI (New York). The transmitting station is an octagonal tower, pyramidal in shape, and some 187 feet in height. It consists of huge wooden stilts, heavily braced, and reinforced, and surmounted by a cupola of interlaced steel wires, bent so as to form an arc. In the cupola there is a wooden platform occupying its entire width. Mr. Tesla began work on his transmitting station about eighteen months ago.
When he first came there, and it was understood that J. Pierpont Morgan had become interested in his odd enterprise and furnished him with financial assistance, a thrill of vague expectancy ran through the little settlement, The Wardenclyffe Land Company, which owns practically all the available ground in the vicinity, gave the inventor a free grant of some 175 acres of fine land, and then settled down to wait for the day when Wardenclyffe would become the centre of the universe.
Some of the farmers who come to Wardenclyffe to send their products to this city look at Mr. Tesla's tower, which is situated directly opposite the railroad station, and shake their heads sadly. They are inclined to take a skeptical view regarding the feasibility of the wireless "world telegraphy" idea, but yet Tesla's transmitting tower as it stands in lonely grandeur and boldly silhouetted against the sky on a wide clearing on the concession is a source or great satisfaction and of some mystification to them all.
"It is a mighty fine tower," said one food farmer to a visitor last week. "The breeze up there is something grand on a Summer evening, and you can see the Sound and all the steamers that go by. We are tired, though, trying to figure out why he put it here instead of at Coney Island." While the tower itself is very "stagy" and picturesque, it is the wonders that are supposed to be hidden in the earth underneath it that excite the curiosity of the population in the little settlement.
In the centre of the wide concrete platform which serves as a base for the structure there is a wooden affair very much like the companionway on an ocean steamer. The tower and the enclosure in which it has been built are being carefully guarded these days, and no one except Mr. Tesla's own men are allowed to approach it. Only they have been allowed as much as the briefest peep down the companionway. Mr. Scherff, the private secretary of the inventor, told an inquirer that the companionway led to a small drainage passage built for the purpose of keeping the ground about the tower dry.
But such of the villagers as saw the tower constructed tell a different story. They declare that it leads to a well-like excavation as deep as the tower is high with walls of mason work and a circular stairway leading to the bottom. 
From there, they say, tunnels have been built in all directions, until the entire ground below the little plain on which the tower is raised has been honeycombed with subterranean passages.
They tell with awe how Mr. Tesla, on his weekly visits to Wardenclyffe, spends as much time in the underground passages as he does on the tower or in the handsome laboratory and workshop erected beside it, and where the power plant for the world telegraph has been installed.
No instruments have been installed as yet in the transmitter, nor has Mr. Tesla given any description of what they will be like. But in his article he announces that he will transmit from the tower an electric wave of a total maximum activity of ten million horse power. This, he says, will be possible with a plant of but 100 horse power, by the use of a magnifying transmitter of his own invention and certain artifices which he promises to make known in due course. What he expects to accomplish is summed up in the closing paragraph as follows:
"When the great truth, accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed, is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by virtue of this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere...on sea, or land, or high in the air...humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming!" "Cloud born Electric Wavelets To Encircle the Globe: This Is Nikola Tesla's Latest Dream, and the Long Island Hamlet of Wardenclyffe Marvels Thereat," New York Times, 27 March 1904.
Let's continue:
As a young man, Nikola Tesla talked often of the possibility of interplanetary communication. Influenced by Buddhist philosophy and the thinking of Ernst Mach, Tesla began to develop a cosmology that tried to get at the heart of what life was and simultaneously discover electricity's role in the process. He believed in the concept of an all-pervasive aether and also believed that machines could be developed that would have the capability of thinking for themselves.
"The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", which was published 100 years ago (as of June 2000) in Century Magazine spells out Tesla's thoughts and visions for the future of mankind. This was written at the pinnacle of Tesla's life, when he was full of vigor, fresh from his startling accomplishments with the complete victory of his alternating current system over Edison's direct current system. In a radical departure from his previous writings which were of a technical nature, Tesla reveals his philosophy and hopes for humankind. In the article, Tesla expressed his belief that all of us are responsible for increasing the human mass, morally, intellectually, and physically. It was a radical article then... and in some circles... still be considered radical. Nonetheless it caught the eye of JP Morgan who financed Tesla's biggest dream... and most devastating disappointment.. Wardenclyffe! With the tower he had planned for the site, Tesla was going to power the world and light the oceans...A Fascinating Vision...However, powerful economic roadblocks stood in the way that drove Tesla deep into bankruptcy and culminated in the mindless destruction of the tower at Wardenclyffe.
CREDIT: The Electrical Experimenter, Dec. 1917.
Tesla's World Of Tomorrow
Tesla's life changed dramatically after Wardenclyffe. Initially his focus was on developing his bladeless turbine; but always his thoughts turned towards the revival of Wardenclyffe and his beloved Magnifying Transmitter. In 1925, his ideas on the wireless transmission of power were briefly entertained by the Bureau of Standards, but were abruptly rejected out of hand... due to the ignorance of how Tesla's system worked.
As an elderly man, Tesla discussed controversial topics such as free energy, particle beam weapons, cosmic rays that travel faster than light speed, a new magnifying transmitter which could harness these cosmic rays, interplanetary communication and also the claim that he could transmit energy at twice the speed of light. The identification of each separate invention became a somewhat confusing task for journalists and researchers because each of these ideas involve the transmission of energy to distant places: and the so called “death ray” apparently, in its final form, comprised features from some, if not all of the other inventions above.
It is these exotic inventions that interest and fuels the free energy researchers imagination. It was Tesla's claim that he could transmit energy at twice the speed of light that brought Tesla in direct conflict with Einstein's suggestion that space was curved--the conventional mode of thought at the time. Tesla's unique views on the nature of radioactivity also placed him out of the mainstream scientific world. Was Tesla simply delusional ... or did he indeed have a keen insight into the wheel work of Nature? Time will tell. See "Tesla's Flying Machine" for more information on this incredible artist rendition - left.
Tesla's World of Tomorrow :
We are an the threshold of a gigantic revolution, based on the commercialization of the wireless transmission of power.
Motion pictures will be flashed across limitless spaces.
The same energy (wireless transmission of power) will drive airplanes and dirigibles from one central base.
In rocket-propelled machines... it will be practicable to attain speeds of nearly a mile a second (3600 m.p.h.) through the rarefied medium above the stratosphere.
I have fame and untold wealth, more than this, and yet, how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccessful man, and how many poor, struggling writers have called me a visionary. Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world! Nikola Tesla
We will be enabled to illuminate the whole sky at night...Eventually we will flash power in virtually unlimited amounts to planets... Nikola Tesla.
CREDIT: The Electrical Experimenter, Dec. 1917.
Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter: The Factual History -
In 1901, Tesla purchased 200 acres on Long Island's north shore from James Warden. These 200 acres were part of an 1,800 acre potato farm along what is today Route 25A in Shoreham, NY. The site became known as Wardenclyffe, after the former owner. Here, Tesla established what would become his only remaining laboratory building. Previously, after emigrating to the United States in 1884, Tesla had worked on all of his major projects at various laboratory sites. These included Pittsburgh, PA; New York City, NY; Orange, NJ; Colorado Springs, CO; and finally Wardenclyffe, NY. In April, 1901, the Wardenclyffe Post Office was established in the town; in l906 the town became the Village of Shoreham.
The purpose of the Wardenclyffe laboratory was the establishment of a wireless telegraphy plant. The prestigious architectural firm of McKin, Mead, and White was contracted to design the laboratory and transmitter tower (187 feet high above ground and 120 feet deep below ground level). Stanford White became the architect for the building. Tesla's plan had the initial backing of the financier J.P. Morgan. The red brick laboratory building can still be seen on the north side of Route 25A between the intersection of Randall Road and the Shoreham Fire Department. I have just visited the site, as of May 15th, 2008, and it is still stunning to visualize what happened on this very ground. I stand in awe at Tesla's achievements over one hundred years ago. More on directions for visiting the site on a later page...
During the last week of July 1903, residents around the Shoreham site experienced what was to be the only testing of Tesla's equipment at this facility. Several days after these tests, his dream was destroyed when creditors from Westinghouse confiscated his heavier equipment for nonpayment for services rendered. In addition, James Warden sued Tesla for nonpayment of back taxes. In 1917, the 187-foot tower was destroyed by dynamite explosion as ordered by the U.S. government. It was demolished the same year by the Smiley Steel Company.
In 1939, the Peerless Photo Company purchased the property to manufacture emulsions for photographic film and paper. Additional buildings were constructed. In 1969, it became Agfa-Gevaert, Inc., at that time a division of the Bayer Corporation. In 1987, manufacturing ended, and the facility was closed down. Since then, the entire facility has remained dormant. It is noteworthy that, in 1967, the laboratory building was the first to be listed on the Town of Brookhaven registry of historic sites.
