Tesla's "Magic" Car.....free energy?

[Dover]

Better known as Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang?





Nikola Tesla's 'Black Magic' Touring Car
By EV World

Did Nikola Tesla really run a touring sedan on free energy?


July 11, 2006

In the summer of 1931, Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current and the holder of some 1200 other U.S. patents, along with his nephew Peter Savo, installed a box on the front seat of a brand new Pierce-Arrow touring car at the company factory in Buffalo, New York. The box is said to have been 24 inches long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches high. Out of it protruded a 1.8 meter long antenna and two ¼ inch metal rods. Inside the box was reputed to be some dozen vacuum tubes -- 70-L-7 type -- and other electrical parts. Two wire leads ran from the box to a newly-installed 40 inch long, 30 inch diameter AC motor that replaced the gasoline engine.

As the story goes, Tesla inserted the two metal rods and announced confidently, "We now have power" and then proceeded to drive the car for a week, "often at speeds of up to 90 mph." One account says the motor developed 1,800 rpm and got fairly hot when operating, requiring a cooling fan. The "converter" box is said to have generated enough electrical energy to also power the lights in a home.

The car is said to have ended up on a farm 20 miles outside of Buffalo, "not far from Niagra Falls."

So what was the power source? Some charged "black magic", while others remained naturally skeptical. Tesla is reputed to have removed the box and returned to his New York City laboratory without revealing how he did it, though the suspicion lingers to this day, on the 150th anniversary of his birth in Smiljan, Croatia on July 9/10, 1856, that he had somehow tapped into the earth's magnetic field or perhaps even more exotically, zero point energy or gravitation waves.

We will, of course, probably never know how he powered the car, or even if the event actually took place -- though we know Tesla was an unparalleled genius when it came to understanding electromagnetism and how to apply it for benign and some allege, deadly purposes. Legend has it that he actually invented a death ray of some type and this is why the government, on his death in 1943, is said to have confiscated all his personal papers. Presumably, they didn't want his research falling into the wrong hands… or was it because they didn't want the world to figure out how to propel our vehicles on free energy?

Cont'd

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=1062

Related Links:

http://www.keelynet.com/energy/teslcar.htm

http://waterpoweredcar.com/teslascar.html

http://uncletaz.com/library/scimath/tesla/teslacar.html

[Selatius]

1. It's too fantastical at face value

Tapping into earth's magnetic energy to power machines. It's science fiction stuff.

If it was true though and he did tap into that energy, would there be negative consequences on the magnetosphere of earth if all the cars on the planet used that energy?

[DarkmoonIkonoklast]

4. You are the first person I've ever heard ask this question:

   "Would there be negative consequences on the magnetosphere of earth if all the cars on the planet used that energy?"
    Don't get me wrong: I'm all for as complete as possible a weaning away from fossil fuels. I have long been an advocate of renewable energy, of energy efficiency, and of non-energy-using methodologies whenever, and wherever possible. But I am cursed with a mathematical mind, and I've found myself wondering frequently about one (as far as I'm aware) undiscussed consequence of a complete switch to "Green" energy:
   What would be the effects on the net energy of the planetary ecosystem, if even 20% of all power used on the planet came from so-called "Green" sources?
   I mean, it is a closed ecosystem, after all; and in such a closed system, each erg of energy, whatever its source, used up to light a lamp, or heat a floor, or cook a meal, amounts to a net decrease of some fraction of an erg of energy from the total energy "bank" of the planet.
   To me, this is self-evident, yet I've yet to hear anyone, even the most erudite scholars, the most punctilious mathematicians and planetary Ecologists, ask this question.
   Thank you, Selatius!

[Ready4Change]

5. To me, depends on which green energy is used.

Solar, for example. People often talk about how we'd have to remove forests or blanket deserts with solar installations to power ourselves. But I look at all those rooftops and think "What a waste." We've already removed the green space for those existing roofs. We are already having to deal with the energy they absorb (with AC to cool our buildings, for example.) Why not, instead of using AC, put PV panels on those roofs and convert all that energy into electricity? We'd save on AC use, we'd gain power. And we wouldn't loose an inch of additional greenspace.

Next time you fly somewhere, look down at all those bare roofs. Each and every one is a small dynamo waiting to be put to use.

Now, regarding other sources, I agree. I wonder if wind farms might have a detrimental effect by slowing down surface winds in localized areas? I wonder if tidal turbines might, by slowing their water flows, wind up burying themselves as sediment drops out of those slowed waters, and if that sediment might cause other problems? I wonder if very large geothermal plants might create localized cooled earth zones, which might effect, I don't know, internal magma flows or something?

I do know that burning fossil fuels is having a detrimental effect right now. The others are question marks.

[Oak2004]

7. Not truly a closed system

Energy is being added to the earth every moment of the day, from the sun.

That said it is inevitable that everything we do alters our surroundings. We are a component part of the global environment -- we very nearly ARE our environment, and vice-versa. The idea that the environment is something alien from us, that we impact or can avoid impacting in a zero sum game, is, I think, an aspect of our thinking that has led us into such a mess.

I'm a selfish environmentalist. By this I mean that I want the activities of my species to shape the environment in which we participate in a manner which promotes our long-term survival and our global dominance (i.e., I do not want to find myself sliding down the food chain). My species of animal, like any other species, can't achieve this purely selfish aim by brute force. If we just grab whatever we can grab, gobble it up, and poop it out, we'll die young or weaken ourselves into a footnote in the story of life, just like every other species that exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment.

So I'm all for altering my environment. It just has to be an alteration that's smart over centuries and millenia and beyond (long enough so that there's plenty of lead time to solve whatever problems we might generate), not a stupid one in which we eat everything up and crap it all over ourselves.

[Quakerfriend]

2. Good morning, Dover

:hi:

Happy to see you dear! I hope that all is well with you.
This is a great post! I never knew that the government confiscated all of Tesla's work upon his death. I once wore a Tesla watch that was purported to protect me from all outside EMR. I think it worked pretty well because when I did not wear it I felt the energy around me quite clearly- even while talking on the phone!

I'm going to save it for my DH to read when he gets up. I just got a used Highlander Hybrid and I am just thrilled with it. But, Mr. Tesla's contraption sounds a whole lot better!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. He stepped on the gas and made it move

and played with static electricity whilst doing so

[Beelzebud]

6. Sounds like BS to me...

When I see the phrase "zero-point energy", I tune out. Sorry.

Sounds like some science fiction to me...

[AGiordino]

8. What Nikola Tesla was a proponent of was wireless

distribution of electrical energy. Not Zero Point energy or any other black magick BS.
This was alternating current electrical energytranmitted as radio waves to a receiver and converted back into useful energy.
Do a little research, read a little and discover a whole new world of possibilities outside ignorance.

[Random_Australian]

13. Well, I am going to have to disagree with the 'whole new world'

concept there.

Basically, problems with using radio waves:

1) Distribution of said waves. Diminishing with the square of the distance traveled, to be precise. You can reflect them, sure, but how are you going to concentrate them to the right place?

2) Here is the real problem - powering cars by faraway towers/generators... given we usually pick up what, about a joule per some seconds, how do you intend to get enough energy around for locomotion, for many people?

3) Finally, the weight and cost of the metal used to pick up the waves, clumsy in it of itself, but also expensive in economic and environmental terms with the mining and processing of it all.


I could be wrong, what say you?

[mccoyn]

14. You are right.

Tesla comes from a time when electricity was just being harnessed and understood. As smart as he was, he didn't have the understanding of the costs of electricity that is common today. He had a lot of ideas that didn't make any sense when you consider the cost of electricity.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Tesla actually had some misguided notions ... genius, but also crank.

Tesla had little formal scientific training and insisted until the end of his life that electromagnetic radiation -- including light and radio waves -- was some sort of longitudinal vibration, like the compression waves on a spring. There's absolutely no scientific support for that notion, and no phenomena not explained by electromagnetic theory that would require it.

He was an inventive mechanical genius, but many of his spectacular demonstrations involved the dissipation of large amounts of energy -- not free energy, either, but energy produced by dynamos and converted from more conventional DC or low-frequency AC to high-frequency AC where many interesting discharge phenomena could be observed. His laboratory in CO (near Colorado Springs? Crescent City? can't remember) had several extremely large coils (each built larger than the previous one), and when he connected them to the local power lines it would cause the lights in town to flicker and dim. It produced such intense AC fields in the immediate vicinity that a metal wire driven into the ground would produce a luminescent discharge at the tip. Tesla demonstrated that fluorescent lamps, connnected to nothing, would produce a bright light in this intense field, and even incandescent bulbs would produce discharges on their filaments. (Still a favorite demo of anyone with a Tesla coil.) This sort of intense AC field would be death to just about any modern solid state device -- computers, calculators, cell phones, TV's/radios, and ... pacemakers. Chances are, they wouldn't even need to be turned on to be completely burned out by induced currents. And it would be hell on RF broadcasts. I doubt that it was healthy to spend much time in such a field.

Tesla had the idea of distributing energy around the world without wires, using this type of setup -- with an absolutely enormous amount of power being injected into Earth's ionosphere. Even had it been possible to do so, this would have made the modern age of radio/TV and, later, other electronic devices, especially computers, just about impossible. Some of the more confused references to Tesla's work in connection with high-altitude research (google HARP, after donning tinfoil hat) are a result of this.

Tesla was quite a showman, and knew how to put together some really spectacular demonstrations, which were especially impressive to a less informed, less sophisticated audience. Most of his demonstrations today would be considered as interesting demos for a college physics class but quite without any practical application -- often because newer technology has rendered them unnecessary.

Tesla had enough strokes of brilliance -- including the prediction of remote-controlled drones (airborne and submarine) in warfare -- that his wilder ideas, even though much less grounded in sound scientific principles, gained the luster of respectability by association. This has led to Tesla becoming something of a darling to believers in 'paranormal' phenomena or 'alternate theories of physics' (supressed by "them", naturally) -- the most widely read bio of Tesla includes some hints that he may have used psychic powers, and one bio claimed he came from the planet Venus (for some reason, the book was printed in green ink -- some deep rationalization for that, I'm sure). Tesla did a great deal of valuable work, but mixed in (especially later) with some real nonsense, and enthusiastic speculation by his "fans" has only muddied things further.

/edit to add last para

[AGiordino]

10. Thank you for responding to the challenge

Yes, he was eccentric and yes, he was a fringe experimenter, but he did far more to advance knwoledge of electrical properties than other in the field at the time who were far more concerned with the commercializtion of electrical distribution. i.e. Edison and his Dc system and Westinghouse and his AC system.
Your response beat the hell out of all the others in this topic.

[Codeine]

11. Thanks for bringing facts

into a discussion on a subject that doesn't normally attract the reality-based community. Great stuff, and informative as all hell. :hi:

[benburch]

12. You are confusing HARP with HAARP. nt

[Trillo]

15. No scientific support for?

You wrote, emphasis added by me:

Tesla had little formal scientific training and insisted until the end of his life that electromagnetic radiation -- including light and radio waves -- was some sort of longitudinal vibration, like the compression waves on a spring. There's absolutely no scientific support for that notion, and no phenomena not explained by electromagnetic theory that would require it.

Sine waves are often used as representations for radio and light waves, there are pages all over the Internet using the same representation, here are two:
Light: http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/visible.html
Radio: http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/radio.html

Georgia State University, specifically, their "hyperphysics" page:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/funhar.html
Scrolling down to the section titled "Sinusoidal Waves", to the left of the two graphed sine waves, one above the other, is what appears to me to be a clear representation of a spring. Further, some of the text says: " (Or if a mass on a spring is carried at constant speed across a room, it will trace out a sine wave.)"

If there is no scientific support for the analogy of EMF waves to springs, then why is a similar analogy made by university physics departments relating sine waves to springs?

[eppur_se_muova]

16. Distinction between transverse and longitudinal waves (both sine waves)

They can certainly be described by similar mathematics, but they are different phenomena in some crucial respects. A plot of displacment vs distance or vs time can be a sine wave in either case, but the type of displacment is different. Personally, I think anyone teaching physics ought to be just a *little* more careful about distinguishing between the two, though I suspect this is just the kind of confusion that happens when people try to teach the concepts at the same time they are teaching the tools to deal with the concepts (or at least when they are having to use mathematical tools which their students have not yet internalized completely).

Much of the power of science lies in the recognition that the same conceptual & mathematical can be applied to many different phenomena rather than having to create a new set of tools for each case. Both wave phenomena illustrate, or can be analyzed as "simple harmonic oscillation", which also applies to MANY other types of physical phenomena, where the analogy to a vibrating spring (longitudinal) or taut string (transverse) may not be apparent, or even very meaningful.

A longitudinal wave, as in a spring, requires that there be some displacement along the axis of propagation. In the case of a spring (or a compression wave in an elastic medium), there is an oscillation about the "normal" or "relaxed" position of each point on the spring, but only along the direction of propagation.

A transverse wave has a displacement or other oscillation (such as of an electric field vector) in a direction orthogonal to the direction of propagation. The typical example is a vibrating (taut) string.

The notion of a longitudinal displacement is difficult to frame without there being some medium of conduction (the "ether", etc.). Also, a longitudinal motion associated with the propagation of light could invoke displacement at a speed greater than light, which Einstein has convinced us is a no-no, at least until some really radical alteration of our understanding of the universe occurs, if ever. I haven't seen Tesla's explanation of his thoughts, but at the risk of being cynical, I'm not sure he had a detailed theoretical model to work from at all. Like some older physicists, Tesla seemed to have a very 'mechanical' view of things, and never adapted his thinking to relativity or quantum mechanics -- i.e., what most consider 'modern' physics.

[Dover]

17. How much has Big Auto lied?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, August 2, 2006



Oh my God do they ever lie.

All of them: Big Auto, Big Oil, BushCo, Pennzoil and Havoline and Saudi Arabia and crusty Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and the oil lobbyists and lackey scientists working for the Department of Energy and all the rest, on down the line and right up to your garage door.

Lie lie lie lie lie like evil little ratdogs because they are, after all, corporate greedmonkeys and war profiteers and duplicitous oil-sucking cretins (is that too polite?) who would eat their own mother's heart for a notable uptick in share/barrel price. Nevertheless, it's always a bit of a jolt when you see it all up close and personal and they basically rub it in your face.

Just look. Look over here. It's a new sports car. It's a new sports car that looks deliciously like a Lotus Elise and reportedly drives like Michael Schumacher's wet dream and goes from zero to 60 in about four seconds with so much torque and freakishly instantaneous power it makes the gods swoon.

This car, it has a top speed of 130 mph. It has a range of 250 miles. It also has GPS navigation and air-conditioning and air bags and it surely will come with a very badass sound system. It has heated seats and (I presume) iPod integration and Bluetooth. You know, just like a real car.
Oh, and by the way, this car? It's completely silent. It is 100-percent emissions-free. Doesn't even have a tailpipe. Because it has no internal combustion engine of any kind.

It's not a hybrid. It's pure electric, powered by a "3-phase, 4-pole AC induction motor," which I'm sure is rather impressive if you know what the hell it means. But it means one thing for certain: The only oil in this car is in the buffing fluid for the leather seats.

It's called the Tesla Roadster, unveiled just recently to a gaggle of giddy auto peeps in Santa Monica and coming to an elite showroom in about a year for around the price of a Porsche 911...cont'd

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/08/02/notes080206.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford