Rotating Magnetic Field

Tesla's early and most far-reaching invention, which he conceived in 1882 at the age of 26, and from which sprang the technology for our entire generating and distribution system of alternating current.

"...a magnetic whirlwind in space which possessed fantastically new and intriguing properties. It was an utterly new conception... Tesla produced a field of force which rotated in space at high speed and was able to lock tightly into its embrace an armature which required no electrical connections. The rotating field possessed the property of transferring [energy] wirelessly through space, by means of its lines of force..."

Magnifying Transmitter

Tesla built this device in Colorado Springs in 1899, and with it proved that the earth was an electrically charged body, sent electrical impulses around the globe and created artificial lightning storms.

"...This was merely a very large Tesla coil. A circular fence-like wall seventy-five feet in diameter was... the giant primary coil of the magnifying transmitter. [In the center was] the secondary coil... ten feet in diameter [and in the center of this] was... the mast... nearly two hundred feet high, at the top of which was mounted a copper ball three feet in diameter."

Tesla Coil

"...an air-core transformer with primary and secondary coils tuned to resonate -- a step-up transformer which converts relatively low-voltage high current to high-voltage low-current at high frequencies. This device for producing high voltages... is today used in one form or another in every radio and television set."

Mechanical Oscillator

"One day in 1898 while testing a tiny electromechanical oscillator, he attached it with innocent intent to an iron pillar [in the Houston Street laboratory] that went down... to the sandy floor of the basement... Tesla was unaware... that vibrations... were being carried through the substructure of Manhattan in all directions. Buildings began to shake, windows shattered, and citizens poured onto the streets... He [later] boasted that he could split the Earth in the same way, '...as a boy would split an apple'."

Telautomatics

"A number of automatic mechanisms, actuated from a distance by wireless control, were constructed... In 1896, I designed a complete machine capable of a multitude of operations. In 1898, a basic patent... was granted to me... These automata... were the first... steps in the evolution of the Art of Telautomatics... The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond the limits of vision and at great distances from the center of control..."

Wireless Transmission

"Radio as it exists today is... the product of the genius of Nikola Tesla. He is the original inventor of the system as a whole and of all the principal electrical components... He completely anticipated Marconi by two years. In the summer of [1894], in a demonstration before the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford, he sent Morse signals... between two buildings separated by several hundred feet."

Bladeless Turbine

"...in 1902 ...he declared he would produce an engine so small, simple and powerful that it would be a 'powerhouse in a hat.' The first model, which he made about 1906, fulfilled this promise. It was small enough to fit in the dome of a derby hat... and developed thirty horsepower... It was... friction which Tesla now utilized in his turbine. A jet of steam rushing at high velocity between disks with a very small distance separating them... [spun the disks] with increasing velocity... The first model... attained a speed of 20,000 revolutions per minute."

World System & Wireless Power

"The World-System... makes possible... the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world... By its means... a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant.

"I also proposed to make demonstrations in the wireless transmission of power... A plant was built on Long Island with a tower 187 feet high, having a spherical terminal about 68 feet in diameter. These dimensions were adequate for the transmission of virtually any amount of energy. The transmitter was to emit a wave complex of special characteristics and I had devised a unique method of telephonic control of any amount of energy."

Death Ray

"'...it would be possible to ...destroy anything, men or machines, approaching within a radius of 200 miles... My apparatus,' [Tesla said], 'projects particles... enabling us to convey to a small area at a great distance trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind. Many thousands of horsepower can thus be transmitted by a stream thinner than a hair, so that nothing can resist.'"