Tesla's Fuelless Generator

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Tesla's Fuelless Generator
In the 1880's, Nikola Tesla invented the alternating current system we use today. By the 1890's, he
was working on a new type of electrical generator that would not "consume any fuel."
This paper documents where in his writings the description of this new generator is found, a theory
of how a fuelless generator could work and a suggestion as to how Tesla's new device might have
operated.
NIKOLA TESLA'S LATER ENERGY GENERATION DESIGNS
Oliver Nichelson
333 North 760 East
American Fork, Utah 84003 USA
© 1991
ABSTRACT
Ten years after patenting a successful method for producing alternating current, Nikola Tesla
claimed the invention of an electrical generator that would not "consume any fuel." Such a
generator would be its own prime mover. Two of Tesla's devices representing different stages in the
development of such a generator are identified.
INTRODUCTION
While in college Nikola Tesla claimed it should be possible to operate an electrical motor without
sparking brushes. He was told by the professor that such a motor would require perpetual motion
and was therefore impossible. In the 1880's he patented the alternating current generator, motor, and
transformer.
During the 1890's he intensively investigated other methods of power generation including a
charged particle collector patented in 1901. When the
New York Times
in June of 1902 carried a
story about an inventor who claimed an electrical generator not requiring a prime mover in the form
of an external fuel supply, Tesla wrote a friend that he had already invented such a device.
Fuelless electrical generation raises the same objection of perpetual motion as did the generator in
use today when it was first proposed. Research Nikola Tesla carried out during his second creative
period and the resulting devices that were the basis for his assertion of fuelless electrical generation
will be examined. Whether Tesla's fuelless generator was a "perpetual motion scheme" of the sort
his teacher warned him against, or a creative application of recognized natural phenomena will be
discussed.
TESLA'S STATEMENTS
In
The Brooklyn Eagle
, Tesla announced, on July 10th, 1931, that "I have harnessed the cosmic rays
and caused them to operate a motive device." Later on in the same article he said that "More than 25
years ago I began my efforts to harness the cosmic rays and I can now state that I have
succeeded." In 1933, he made the same assertion in an article for the
New York American
,
November 1st, under the lead in "Device to Harness Cosmic Energy Claimed by Tesla." Here he
said:
This new power for the driving of the world's machinery will be derived from the energy which
operates the universe, the cosmic energy, whose central source for the earth is the sun and which is
everywhere present in unlimited quantities.
Dating back "more than 25 years ago" from 1933 would mean that the device Tesla was speaking
about must have been built before 1908. More precise information is available through his
correspondence in the Columbia University Library's collection. Writing on June 10th, 1902 to his
friend Robert U. Johnson, editor of
Century
Magazine, Tesla included a clipping from the previous
day's
New York Herald
about a Clemente Figueras, a "woods and forest engineer" in Las Palmas,
capital of the Canary Islands, who had invented a device for generating electricity without
burning fuel. What became of Figueras and his fuelless generator is not known, but this
announcement in the paper prompted Tesla, in his letter to Johnson, to claim he had already
developed such a device and had revealed the underlying physical laws.
IDENTIFYING THE INVENTION
The device that, at first, seems to best fit this description is found in Tesla's patent for an
"Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy," number 685,957, that was filed for on March 21,
1901 and granted on November 5, 1901. The concept behind the older technical language is a
simple one. An insulated metal plate is put as high as possible into the air. Another metal plate is
put into the ground. A wire is run from the metal plate to one side of a capacitor and a second wire
goes from the ground plate to the other side of the capacitor. Then:
The sun, as well as other sources of radiant energy, throw off minute particles of matter positively
electrified, which, impinging upon [the upper] plate, communicate continuously an electrical charge
to the same. The opposite terminal of the condenser being connected to ground, which may be
considered as a vast reservoir of negative electricity, a feeble current flows continuously into the
condenser and inasmuch as the particles are ... charged to a very high potential, this charging of the
condenser may continue, as I have actually observed, almost indefinitely, even to the point of
rupturing the dielectric
This seems like a very straightforward design and would seem to fulfill his claim for having
developed a fuelless generator powered by cosmic rays, but in 1900 Tesla wrote what he considered
his most important article in which he describes a self-activating machine that would draw power
from the ambient medium, a fuelless generator, that is different from his Radiant Energy Device.
Entitled "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy - Through the Use of the Sun," it was
published by his friend Robert Johnson in
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
for June 1900
soon after Tesla returned from Colorado Springs where he had carried out an intensive series of
experiments from June 1899 until January of 1900.
The exact title of the chapter where he discusses this device is worth giving in its entirety:
A DEPARTURE FROM KNOWN METHODS - POSSIBILITY OF A "SELF ACTING" ENGINE
OR MACHINE, INANIMATE, YET CAPABLE, LIKE AN LIVING BEING, OF DERIVING
ENERGY FROM THE MEDIUM - THE IDEAL WAY OF OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER
Tesla stated he first started thinking about the idea when he read a statement by
Lord Kelvin who said it was impossible to build a mechanism capable of
abstracting heat from the surrounding medium and to operate by that heat. As a
thought experiment Tesla envisioned a very long bundle of metal rods, extending
from the earth to outer space. The earth is warmer than outer space so heat would b
conducted up the bars along with an electric current. Then, all that would be need
is a very long power cord to connect the two ends of the metal bars to a motor. T
motor would continue running until the earth was cooled to the temperature
uld be an inanimate engine which, to all evidence, would be cooling a portion
medium below the temperature of the surrounding, and operating by the heat abstracted
(2)
Tesla goes on in the article to describe how he worked on the development of such an energy device,
and here it takes a bit of detective work to focus on which of his inventions he meant. He wrote that
he first started thinking about deriving energy directly from the environment when he was in Paris
during 1883, but that he was unable to do much with the idea for several years due to the
commercial introduction of his alternating current generators and motors. It was not "until
when I again took up the idea of the self-acting machine
(3)
."
1889
THE TURBINE
He quickly came to realize that an ordinary electrical machine, like his generator, would not be able
to directly extract energy from the cosmos and turned his efforts to what he called a "turbine"
design.
The best known turbine, that is, water pump, associated with Tesla is his patent for such a device,
#1,061,206, which was filed for in 1909 and granted in 1913. The unique point about this water
pump is that instead of using some form of paddle wheels inside a box to move the water, he
discovered that more water could be moved faster by using a set of flat metal disks. The turbin
in itself, fascinating and may yet prove to be another important overlooked invention, but what is of
concern regarding the electrical design is the general shape of the turbine - metal disks turning
inside a supporting box.
e is,
This same shape turns up in another patent, this one for a "Dynamo-Electric Machine." This patent
was filed and granted in the same year that Tesla said he returned to work on the "self-activating"
machine, in 1889. The dynamo consists of metal disks that are rotated between magnets to produce
an electric current.
Compared to his alternating current generator, this "dynamo" represents something of a curious
throwback to the days of Faraday's early experiments with a copper disk and a magnet. Tesla ma
some improvement over the Faraday setup by using magnets that completely cover the spinning
metal disks and he also adds a flange to the outside of the disks so current can be taken off more
easily - all of which makes for a better generator than Faraday's. On the surface, though, it is hard
see why Tesla patented such an anachronistic machine at this point in his work.
kes
to
The next piece of the puzzle is found in an article Tesla wrote for
The Electrical Engineer
in 1891
entitled "Notes on a Unipolar Dynamo." Here Tesla presents an in-depth analysis of the Faraday
disk generator, explains why it was an inefficient generator, describes his improved variations on
the Faraday machine, and, at the bottom of the third page of the article, states that he has devised a
generator in which "the current, once started, may then be sufficient to maintain itself and even
increase in strength
(4)
." Then, at the close of the article, he states that "several machines ... were
e
ed
he
of outer
space. "This wo of the
," that is,
it would produce energy directly from the environment without "the consumption of any material."
c
a
t
oints to the turbine-shaped Unipolar D
machine that can continue to produce e
onstructed by the w
er two years
go ..."
(5)
Two years before the writin
hat article was 1889. All the evidence
ynamo as being Tesla's
rst design fo
lectricity after being disconnected from
g of
p
r a
an outside source of power.
S
ELF-SUSTAINING CURRENT
vention it would be worthwhile to have an idea of how any
generator, even in theory, could be capable of producing a self-sustaining current. This has been
clearly explained by Walter M. Elsasser in a
Scientific American
article (May 1958) titled "The
Earth as a Dynamo."
rth-dynamo, conveniently for this explanation, on the Faraday generator of a
metal disk spinning over a bar magnet placed at the edge of the disk. He notes, also, that the bar
magnet could be replaced by an electromagnet which could get its power from the spinning disk by
attaching one end of the electromagnet's wire to the outside of the disk and the other end of the w
to the metal rod running through the center of the disk.
ire
could not maintain a current for very long
because the current induced in the disk is so weak that it would soon be dissipated by the resistance
of the conductor [the disk]." This conventional arrangement would not be an answer to "how
currents could be built up and perpetuated to maintain the earth's magnetic field." He does, though,
propose three options in the dynamo model that would explain the earth's persistent magnetism
.
would indeed yield a self-sustaining current. We could also make it work by spinning the disk very
fast... a third way we could make such a dynamo self-sustaining ... is to increase the size of the
system: theory says that the bigger we make such a dynamo, the better it will function. If we could
build a coil-and-disk apparatus of this kind of scale of many miles, we would have no difficulty
making the currents self-sustaining
(6)
.
in
Tesla did not have a material a thou
and times more conductive than copper, neither was he able to
spin a disk at the ultra-high speeds needed to produce such a current, nor did he plan on using a
piece of rotating metal several miles in diameter. What he did was to use energy that is usually
wasted in a generator and turn it into a source of power.
UNIPOLAR DYNAMO
hat of Faraday in two major ways. First, he used a magnet that was
bigger in diameter than the disk so that the magnet completely covered the disk. Second, he divided
the disk into sections with spiral curves radiating out from the center to the outside edge.
holly
pass through the external circuit ... and ... by far the greater portion of the current generated will not
appear externally..."
(7)
By having the magnet completely cover the disk, Tesla made use of the
whole disk surface in current generation instead of only a small section directly adjacent to the bar
magnet, as happened in the Faraday device. This not only increases the amount of current generated,
Before going into the details of this in
Elsasser models the ea
Elsasser then points out that an ordinary disk generator "
If we had a material that could conduct electricity a thousand times better than copper, the system
Tesla's design varied from t
In the Faraday unipolar generator "the current," as Tesla noted, "set up will therefore not w
but, by making the current travel from the center to the outside edge, makes all of that current
accessible to the external circuit.
cancel out whatever effort goes into causing the original action. In an electrical system if the
two turns of wire wound next to each other and a current is sent through the wire, the current
passing through the first loop will set up a magnetic field that will work against the current passing
through the second loop.
disk cause the current to travel the full radius of the disk or, as in his
alternative version of the generator, to make a full trip around the outside edge of the disk. Because
the current is flowing in a large circle at the rim of the disk, the magnetic field created by the
current not only does not work against the field magnet above the circular plate, as in conventional
generators, but it actually reinforces the magnet. So as the disk cuts the magnetic lines to prod
current, the current coming off of the disk strengthens the magnet, allowing it to produce even more
current.
uce a
entional direct current generators, the unipolar dynamo also functions as a motor if
current is put into the disk while under the magnet, and this seems to be the last element that could
d
make the device self-sustaining, that is, capable of generating a current after being disconnecte
from an outside source of movement like falling water or steam.
a generator and a motor disk are
mounted in the magnetic enclosure. As the disks gain speed, current is produced which, in turn,
reinforces the magnets, which cause more current to be generated. That current is, likely, first
directed to the motor disk which increases the speed of the system. At a certain point the speed o
the two disks is great enough that the magnetic field created by the current has the strength to k
the dynamo/motor going by itself.
f
eep
nipolar dynamo operating after the powered start-up is
speculation at this point, however two features of the generator are significant. First, when a
resistive load, like a light bulb is added to the circuit, it lowers the voltage at the center of th
This lower voltage at the center means that there is a greater difference in voltage between th
center and the outside edge of the disk than there was before the light bulb was added. As the
difference between the center and the outside increases, the dynamo works harder and makes m
current. Second, yet more important, the dynamo takes either very little, or no energy to keep g
because the current coming off the generator is doing double duty. The current makes the bulb glow
but on its way from the generator to the filament in the bulb, it travels a path that adds to the
momentum of the dynamo and, therefore, consumes energy at a very low rate. The process
continues , it would seem, until heat losses in the filament equal the rotational energy of the
generator's flywheel.
e disk.
e
ore
oing
,
riteria for a self-sustaining generator, the Tesla unipolar dynamo comes
closest to satisfying the condition of a better electrical conductor. It is not that a new material is
used, but a new geometry is applied so that the current does not create its own opposing forces.
is similar, but not equivalent, to having a better conductor.
This
t appears to be an ingenious feat of
engineering that takes one of the basic principles of nature, an equal and opposite action for every
action, and turns it, by the use of a novel circuit geometry, into a reaction that is additive to the
More importantly, these modifications on the Faraday design eliminated one of the biggest
problems in any physical system - the reaction to every action. It is this reaction that works to
re are
The spiral divisions in the
Like conv
Rotation is started by, say, a motor powered by line current. Both
What process might have kept the u
In terms of Elsasser's c
Whether or not the dynamo is in fact a "fuelless" generator i
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]