Wireless energy

Francisco Cruz

In my physics class I have learned about alternating currents. We learned about this sort of things thanks to great scientists like Nikola Tesla. Nikola Tesla was an inventor, a mechanical and electrical engineer. His theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems. He had many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla contributed a lot to the second industrial revolution and also he is frequently cited as one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity. Tesla is best known for his many Tesla's patents.

When Nikola Tesla discovered alternating current electricity, he had many troubles convincing men of his time to believe in it. George Westinghouse (industrial manager, who promoted the use of electricity for power and transportation) was convinced and bought his alternating current patent and this way Tesla acquired funds for his other inventions. One of his big inventions was wireless energy. His big efforts culminated in a major breakthrough in 1899 at Colorado Springs were he performed an example of wireless energy.

Tesla grasps my attention with his amazing project of wireless energy. I believe that his performance was very ahead of his times. In Colorado Springs he transmitted 100 million volts of high-frequency electric power wirelessly over a distance of 26 miles at which he lit up a bank of 200 light bulbs and also ran one electric motor. In order to make the light bulbs and motor received energy he used one of his other great inventions the Tesla coil. A Tesla coil is a special transformer that can take volt electricity and convert it rapidly to great amounts of high-voltage, high-frequency, and low-amperage power. For example the high-frequency output of even a small Tesla coil can light up fluorescent tubes held several feet away without any wire connections. With his Tesla coil, he claimed that only 5% of the transmitted energy was lost. To me that’s very efficient for that kind of technological advancement in those times. He also had another similar project but in a much bigger scale. This one consisted of broadcasting electric power in almost unlimited amounts to any point in the world. To make this project possible he would have to employ the earth's own Tesla coil, with its specific vibration frequency to conduct alternating current electricity with a large electric oscillator. This project couldn’t be performed because he stopped receiving the money for the construction of the tower.

These types of technology are the things that we see in some sci-fi movies, and some people don’t even know that it has been already tried since the 19th century. We can see how Tesla’s mind was so advanced and had ideas that people in those times thought that were crazy. I think that some people from this time will believe that wireless energy is crazy. But Nikola Tesla can prove them wrong with his demonstration. Thanks to scientist like Tesla we have lots of out breaking technological advances. Imagine if we had put more interest in things like this, in physics, who knows how far ahead we would already been.