NIKOLA TESLA

WAR BY ELECTRICAL MEANS

Vaclav Netolicky
He was a prophet of the wireless-
controlled engines of war.
- Edwin H. Armstrong
War begins
World War I was sparked by the
assasination of an Austrian Archduke
on Teslas homeland in Sarajevo
December 20th 1914
Tesla published an article in the New
York Sun titled Nikola Tesla looks to
Science Fiction to end war
He felt that war was a physical process
whose duration could be determined by
a mathematical equation.


war is essentially a manifestation of energy
involving the acceleration and retardation of a
mass by force

Tesla calculated that the war would last 5 years
He also felt that the duration of the war could be
brought to zero with a weapon of sufficient
magnitude



December 8, 1915
The New York Time published the
following:
Nikola Teslahas filed patent
applications on the essential parts of a
machine, the possibilities of which test a
laymans imagination and promise a
parallel of Thors shooting thunderbolts
from the sky to punish those who had
angered the gods
he is not yet ready to give the details of
the engine which he says will render
fruitless any military expedition against
a country who possesses it.

All of this meant little to soldiers dying on
the battlefields

Contrary to popular thinking, new
technology was only adding to the
savagery
Flame throwers, machine guns, poison
guns, airplanes, and the tank were
introduced
Tesla was well aware of the war
He was receiving letters from his family
about the war
Electricity

Radio was one of the most important
innovations
Troops could now communicate over
large distances

Radio and the Navy
Early onboard sets were based on
Marconis design
These had a range of about 60 miles
Tesla developed a radio for the US
Navy
A five-kilowatt set was capable of
sending messages 1,500 miles
U.S. Naval Radio Service
A firm used Teslas patents to build a
radio station for the Navy in New Jersey
It could operate on several adjacent-
frequency channels and could transmit
in multiplex code
Signals were received 9,000 miles away
For 2 years Tesla received
$1000/month for these patents
April 2, 1917

President Wilson persuades Congress
to declare war on Germany
August 1917
In an interview with the Electrical
Experimenter Tesla provided the first
technical description of what would later
be known as radar

the method of locating such hidden metal masses
as submarines by an electrical rayThat is the
things that seems to hold great promise. If we can
shoot out a concentrated ray comprising a stream
of minute electric charges vibrating electrically at
tremendous frequency, say millions of cycles per
second, then intercept this ray, after it has been
reflected by a submarine hull for example, and
cause this intercepted ray to illuminate a
fluorescent screen on the same or another ship,
then our problem of locating the hidden submarine
will have been solved.

It took twenty more years for Teslas
concept of radar to be perfected
The prototype was officially credited to
Robert A. Watson-Watt of England in
1935
He was the first to effectively visualize
radio signals with a cathode ray tube



July 4, 1917
Teslas dream - Wardenclyffe Tower -
was blasted down with dynamite
Rumors were spread that spies were
hiding there to radio information to
German U-boats
Tesla maintains the following
On this occasion I would contradict the widely
circulated report that the structure was
demolished by the government, which owing
to war conditions, might have created
prejudices in the minds of those who may not
know that the papers, which thirty years ago
conferred upon me the honor of American
citizenship, are always kept in a safeOn the
contrary, it was in the interest of the
Government to preserve it, particularly, as it
would have made possible - to mention just
valuable result - the locations of a submarine
in any part of the world
Scientific Outsider
Tesla now depended on the popular
press to continue to advance his
concepts
In The Electrical Experimenter Tesla
introduced the guided ballistic missile
I am now planning aerial machines
devoid of sustaining planes, ailerons,
propellers and other external
attachments, which will be capable of
immense speeds and are very likely to
furnish powerful arguments for peace in
the near futureBy installing proper
plants it will be practicable to project a
missile of this kind into the air and drop
it almost on the very spot designated,
which may thousands of miles away
While at Wardenclyffe
He demonstrated his robot boat to a
delegation of Japanese
From a high cliff he directed a tiny vessel into
Long Island Sound, closed a switch, and
caused the boat to explode before the eyes of
his amazed spectators - when the Japanese
offered to buy the device, Tesla refused to
sell it to them
Some people who worked with Tesla
were worried about the instruments of
war he was inventing
Tesla had just launched several model
wireless torpedoes in the Sound and
caused them to circle a ship and return
to shore
Tesla said sometimes I feel that I have
not the right to do these things.
Science Fiction
But with so many of his ideas that were
directed by radio waves, people thought
they were more the stuff of science
fiction than of reality.










THE END