2005dauphin.org

Wardenclyffe, in case anyone is wondering, is the tower/facility that Nikolai Tesla had constructed as his laboratory and to explore his theories about radio, electromagnetic waves, and wireless power transmission.  Construction was halted when his main financier, J.P. Morgan, famously asked (paraphrased) how giving away power was going to make him any money.  The facility was never completed, and was foreclosed upon in 1915.  It was used to make photographic paper from the 40’s through 1992, and now is available to anyone with about $1.6 in spare change.

What I find fascinating is the verbage Tesla used when describing the amazing benefits that his technology would make available.  Check it: “As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction.” (Wikipedia)

Wow.  That all sounds familiar.  Of course, in 1908 that was pure science fiction.  Now it sounds boringly common.

So where did Tesla get all of this?  Dude invented AC power, the synchronous motor, radio, the ‘AND’ gate, and SO much more.  He was an early experimenter with X rays. He accurately predicted the uses to which his technologies would be put, VERY accurately.  Prescient? Or…

Well, if I’ve ever heard of ANYONE who might reasonably be expected to be a time traveler, who else would it be?  Perhaps Leo da Vinci, or Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss… but my money is on Tesla.  Folks, he knew how to do things that no one else did - technologically, he was decades ahead of everyone else, in multiple fields. He made outlandish predictions of how things would work, and was often correct.  What if, when he faced Morgan and was denied the opportunity to build his global power distribution system, he was carrying the certain knowledge that this would be done in the future and WOULD work - wouldn’t he just realize that he was facing ignorance born of the times he lived in, and just walk away?  That’s exactly what I hear happened.

Yeah, OK, I’m starting to sound a bit Spider Robinson here, but the theory does have a certain internal consistency. I think I’d go crazy if I were trapped in 1900, too.

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