Tesla’s Dream Coming
True !!!
No not that Tesla automobile for the dalliance of the
extravagant uber rich, consumed by guilt for not earning their riches, but the Tesla from the turn of the century. The Tesla looking to give energy for the masses. This Tesla was an eccentric genius who seemed
to have tapped into the future and desperately tried to “invent” what he saw.
Such is the fate of most seers, that they may not have the
practical ability to create what they envision, nor the genius to put a reason
behind it and be able to connect the dots.
Not so with Nicola Tesla who actually invented the radio and not Marconi. The Supreme Court finally said so. Tesla also invented Alternating Current that
the world uses every day. Before then
Direct Current was the model that Edison used and wanted the world to use. The problem was that DC current lost power
over short distances. For Edison’s power
to work, there would have to be a power plant and all that entails every mile
along a power lines route.
Tesla’s genius lay in his seeing a way to create alternating
current which could be used, stored and amplified at will without additional
power plant along the way. Tesla’s
humanity lay in his tearing up the agreement he had with Mr. Westinghouse in
which Westinghouse would pay Tesla a sum per amount of electricity used in his
system. This would have made Tesla the
richest man alive. Westinghouse however
was having financial problems getting the infrastructure up and running. Tesla tore up the agreement because
Westinghouse had believed in him when no one else did and Westinghouse had
risked all for Tesla’s ideas; and they both went to work. The result was that they built generators at
Niagra Falls which operate still today, and electrified New York City for the
first time. The rest is history. What is sometimes over looked is the in
humanity in the way Tesla was treated by society. He died a poor and broke person.
Now to the reason of this blog. Tesla had a vision that seemed to permeate
all his inventions which included the concepts of Laser beams, x-rays, friction
less motors and a myriad of other inventions.
That vision was simply that the world, the universe is made up and
filled up with (for a lack of a better term) energy. That is what everything is made up of. His idea was that there should be an easy way
to simply hook into the largest piece of matter available, the earth and tap
into the excess power of the forces that make up the matter of the earth as it
radiates outward. Simply put he hoped to
invent a way to harvest that power and he also thought this power could be
wirelessly transmitted anywhere it was needed
.
.
Think of your local radio station which puts out x amount of
signal, and our radios are tuned to that frequency. We pick up some of that signal and our radios
work. Think of the amount of signal that
is continually surrounding us and which you could say goes to waste. In this case falls on deaf ears.
Well Tesla saw this and invented the concept of the radio –
before there was a radio. He also
thought that electricity should be able to be transmitted in the same
manner. He understood the idea of waves
and that all things are made up of them and all he should have to do is tune
into the “force”.
This guy was ridiculed as crazy at the time, when all that
was needed for his dream to come true was in my opinion a way to deal not in
millions of watts ect. But to find a way to make it happen with small amounts
that could be boosted later as he did with alternating current vs Direct
current.
Allen Hawkes and Alexander Katko a couple of students have
come up with a way to harvest out of thin air the myriad of excess electromagnetic
that surrounds us. Although the energy
these students are capturing is from manmade sources such as the microwave
energy already harvested by satellite receivers for TV, Radio and cell phones,
which pervades us all, all the time.
Much like what the solar cell does when it collects the suns
radiant energy this new invention collects excess microwave energy in the air
around us. It could be used to collect
the excess energy from a WiFi set in your house, convert it to DC power and
continually charge your phone. This is
done in their break through model by simply tuning a receiver cell to the
frequency of the source and then through the use of Meta material and an active
in this case copper conductor turning that energy into electricity of the DC
variety.
This breakthrough is possible with the use of Meta material. To my unscientific mind this is how the electromagnetic
waves that are emitted are captured.
This Meta material is simply microscopically engineered material which
is smaller than the waves it is trying to harvest. I look at it in a mind game as trying to control
waves in water. Before our abilities to
create things in the Meta or microscopically small world we could only block a
wave entirely or let it pass. With the
new Meta technology we can take out as much water from each wave as it passes
to fit our needs and let the waves continue.
This of course is pretty much pure conjecture on my part. Here is the Wiki on it.
This is the breakthrough I think that allows us to modulate
energy and make it usable to us. Much as
Tesla did with Alternating current.
When you think of it all matter; the earth, the dirt, cement, you and me, everything of substance is made up of “energy” in one form or another and emits energy. We consume food and turn it into energy at varying levels of efficiency why should it be thought strange to capture excess energy that permeates everything in our world and use it? The inventors of this process say of it.
““Our
work demonstrates a simple and inexpensive approach to electromagnetic power
harvesting,” said Professor Steven Cummer. “The beauty of the design is that
the basic building blocks are self-contained and additive. One can simply
assemble more blocks to increase the scavenged power.”
Professor
Steven Cummer is the teacher in charge of and guiding these two inventors.
This is a picture of their Contraption in series gathering
enough energy just sitting there to keep your phone charged, at an efficiency
rating of a solar cell. From their article the fiberglass pieces are in effect antennas
built at a frequency needed to collect energy from a source and build it
through five such antennas to the voltage needed to power your cell phone.
Before you start thinking these are just kids,
anyone remember two kids working out of their garage thinking that there would
be a market for personal computers. Well
there was and it along with all the variations that it generated were beyond
the Steve’s conception.
This Picture below and the quote in it shows to me that great things can be had when the individual is left alone to "create" their own future. As Tesla, as Jobs/Wozniak and Hawkes/Katko have or are doing.
Live Dangerously be a liberal Conservative
