In reply to William Beaty's message of Fri, 11 May 2007 20:43:59 -0700 (PDT): Hi, [snip] >and if Tesla ever achieved miles-long >power transmission as the stories say, I speculate that the device in the >patent drawing accidentally harnessed "Runaway Breakdown" physics. [snip] Everything I've read on Tesla suggests that he achieved long distance energy transmission by resonating the Earth. Think of it as a one wire transmission line, terminated by resonant cavities where the Earth itself is the transmission line. In short he used the ground as a conductor, so his energy transmission was not wireless, it was a "wired" transmission, which explains why it was reasonably efficient.
The towers were simply large "doorknob" capacitors which provided the capacitance in the tank circuit on the transmitting end. They had to be on towers because the voltage was so high, and he wanted to avoid a short to ground (around the generator that stood on the transmitting end between the resonant cavity and the ground connection into which the power was fed). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
