demonstration at Podosinsky Aerodome near Moscow
was so successful that the revolutionary Military Council and
the Political Bureau decided to fund enough electronic anti-aircraft
stations to protect sensitive areas of Russia. Similar, but more
powerful, stations were to be constructed to disable the electrical
mechanisms of warships. The Commander of the Soviet Air Services,
Rosenholtz, was so overwhelmed by the ray weapon demonstration
that he proposed "to curtail the activity of the air fleet,
because the invention rendered a large air fleet unnecessary for
the purpose of defense."
An English engineer, J.H. Hamil,
offered the American army plans for producing " an invisible
ray capable of stopping airplanes and automobiles in midflight,"
invented by a German scientist. The ray device was said to have
been used the previous summer to bring down French planes over
Bavaria. Hamil noted, however, that "the fundamental work
was done by Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs about 30 years ago.
He built a powerful electrical coil. It was found that the dynamos
and other electrical apparatus of a Colorado fuel company within
a 100 yards or so were all put out of business.(10)
Hamil believed the Tesla coil scattered rays which
short- circuited electrical machinery at close range. Laboratories
all over the world, he added, were testing methods of stepping
up the Tesla coil to produce its effects at greater distances.
"Working on an entirely different principle," Hamil
said, "the German scientist has succeeded in projecting and
directing electrical power."
Those Colorado Springs tests carried
out by Tesla were well remembered by local residents. With a 200
foot pole topped by a large copper sphere rising above his laboratory
he generated potentials that discharged lightning bolts up to
135 feet long. Thunder from the released energy could be heard
15 miles away in Cripple Creek. People walking along the streets
were amazed to see sparks jumping between their feet and the ground,
and flames of electricity would spring from a tap when anyone
turned them on for a drink of water. Light bulbs within 100 feet
of the experimental tower glowed when they were turned off. Horses
at the livery stable received shocks through their metal shoes
and bolted from the stalls. Even insects were affected: Butterflies
became electrified and "helplessly swirled in circles - their
wings spouting blue halos of 'St. Elmo's Fire.'"(11)
The effect
that captured the attention of foreign death ray inventors occurred
at the Colorado Springs Electric Company powerhouse. One day while
Tesla was conducting a high power test, the crackling from inside
the laboratory suddenly
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stopped. Bursting into the lab Tesla
demanded to know why his assistant had disconnected the coil.
The assistant protested that had not done anything. The power
from the city's generator, the assistant said, must have quit.
When the angry Tesla telephoned the power company he received
an equally angry reply that the power company had not cut the
power, but that Tesla's experiment had destroyed the generator!
The inventor explained to The Electrical Experimenter,
in August of 1917 what had happened.
As
an example of what has been done with several hundred kilowatts
of high frequency energy liberated, it was found that the dynamos
in a power house six miles away were repeatedly burned out, due
to the powerful high frequency currents set up in them, and which
caused heavy sparks to jump thru the windings and destroy the
insulation! The lightning arresters in the power house showed
a stream of blue-white sparks passing between the metal plates
to the earth connection.(12)
When questioned about the Ulivi
ray that created so much comment a few years earlier, Tesla asserted,
in the same interview, that "it was transplanted from this
country to Italy." He saw it as simply a modification of
his ultra-powerful high frequency coil tested in Colorado. With
thousands of horsepower(13) of energy "it would become readily
possible to detonate powder and munition magazines by means of
the high frequency currents induced in every bit of metal, even
when located five to six miles away or more."
With others attributing an energy
weapons technology to Tesla's wireless power transmission research,
his comments on the destructive capabilities of his system take
on a great deal of importance. Writing tersely for Liberty
magazine of February 1935 he stated:
My
invention requires a large plant, but once it is established it
will be possible to destroy anything, men or machines, approaching
within a radius of 200 miles. It will, so to speak, provide a
wall of power offering an insuperable obstacle against any effective
aggression.(14)
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