Talk:Wireless power transfer/Archive 2

"The outer end of the secondary or high-tension coil A was connected to the ground, as illustrated, while the free end was led to a terminal placed in the rarefied air stratum through which the energy was to be transmitted, which was contained in an insulating tube of a length of fifty feet or more, within which a barometric pressure varying from about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty millimeters was maintained by means of a mechanical suction-pump." SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900.

"I took a tube 50 feet long, in which I established conditions such as would exist in the atmosphere at a height of about 4 1/2 miles. . . . And when I turned on the current, I showed that through a stratum of air at a pressure of 135 millimeters, when my four circuits were tuned, several incandescent lamps were lighted." Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power pp. 126, 127.

Am I misinterpreting something in these statements about a barometric pressure of 120 - 135 - 150 mm at an elevation of ~ 4 1/2 miles and the words, "rarefied air stratum through which the energy was to be transmitted" ? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 02:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Hooking up a Tesla coil to one end of a tube and lighting a bulb at the other is one thing ( this sounds a lot like a Moore lamp which was an important alternative to incandescent lamps for a while, though in that case the tube itself is the lamp), but how did Tesla get the current 5+ miles up in the air, and down again? Why would the discharge from his Wardenclyffe tower preferentially climb miles into the sky when fat juicy ground return is only a few score feet away? And how did he propose to get the current to come *down* from the sky at a suitable receiver site and not on every hilltop and church steeple on Long Island instead? --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

"It is, furthermore, a fact that such discharges of extreme tensions, approximating those of lightning, manifest a marked tendency to pass upward away from the ground, which may be due to electrostatic repulsion, or possibly to slight heating and consequent rising of the electrified or ionized air. These latter observations make it appear probable that a discharge of this character allowed to escape into the atmosphere from a terminal maintained at a great height will gradually leak through and establish a good conducting-path to more elevated and better conducting air strata, a process which possibly takes place in silent lightning discharges frequently witnessed on hot and sultry days. It will be apparent to what an extent the conductivity imparted to the air is enhanced by the increase of the electromotive force of the impulses when it is stated that in some instances the area covered by the flame discharge mentioned was enlarged more than sixfold by an augmentation of the electrical pressure, amounting scarcely to more than fifty per cent." SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

More importantly, what is the relevance to this article? This article is to talk about wireless energy transfer, not "schemes that were supposed to be wireless energy transfer but ran into unfavorable physics first". --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The scheme is notable to the article, because it was a serious attempt to do wireless energy transfer world wide. And we don't absolutely know how the attempt failed, you seem to be assuming that it was physics, whereas one of the major problems was that Morgan was rather upset about not being able to meter the energy; which is more of an accountancy thing.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

This is an excellent point. Current research into the Tesla World Wireless System suggests the underlying physics are sound. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

You also seem to have a weird thing going on about Tesla; he wasn't a mad scientist, he actually did make very important contributions to ignition coils, AC power distribution, he invented tuned circuits in radio, he used resonance to boost power reception and production, he was the first to see [observe] X rays, he created the theory behind induction motors. He's mentioned in this article, because he invented most of the things the article describes. He invented resonant inductive transfer, such as is used in Witricity; that's the working principle of his 1897 Tesla coil (it's just used over the range of a few inches inside each Tesla coil to give a large air gap which provides insulation [and proper coefficient of coupling -- GaryPeterson (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2010 (UTC)].) He also invented and demoed wireless remote control. The list goes on and on. These aren't inflated things either, he made genuine major, key contributions in all of them. A lot of the electrical things around you right now are traceable back to Tesla. Fluorescent lights, laptop backlight circuits [and digital computers in general, Tesla being the inventor of the electronic digital logic gate (see U.S. Patent No. 723,188, "Method of Signaling," Mar. 17, 1903 and U.S. Patent No. 725,605, "System of Signaling," Apr. 14, 1903).-- GaryPeterson (talk) 20:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)}, car ignition circuits, the AC power system itself.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

That's actually a classic example of OR. You've taken a statement that applied in one scenario and applied it to another. The patent that is referenced from the sentence says 15 miles, not 4.5 miles. Point of fact you can form a plasma at any altitude with enough voltage anyway; that doesn't mean that his world power system was going to be ionising air at that altitude. The patent indicated that putting contacts at 35,000 feet might be done- but he didn't say that he was going to ionise the air at that altitude either, so far as I can tell he was just trying to get closer to the ionosphere to improve efficiency.Rememberway

The referenced patent says "a barometric pressure varying from about one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty millimeters." The barometric pressure at 4.5 miles is 135 mm. "I took a tube 50 feet long, in which I established conditions such as would exist in the atmosphere at a height of about 4 1/2 miles." [Nikola Tesla On His Work With Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony and Transmission of Power] In the referenced patent Tesla cites evidence collected in a laboratory setting to justify his claim that energy could be transmitted by atmospheric conduction at an elevation of 120-150mm thereby eliminating the requirement for elevated terminals reaching all the way up to 15 miles. The U.S. Patent Office accepted this claim.

What I now claim is—

9. The method hereinbefore described of transmitting electrical energy through the natural media, which consists in generating current impulses of relatively-low electromotive force at a generating-station, utilizing such impulses to energize the primary of a transformer, generating by means of such primary circuit impulses in a secondary surrounded by the primary and connected to the earth and to an elevated terminal, of sufficiently-high electromotive force to render elevated air strata conducting, causing thereby impulses to be propagated through the air strata, collecting or receiving the energy of such impulses, at a point distant from the generating-station, by means of a receiving circuit connected to the earth and to an elevated terminal, and utilizing the energy so received to energize a secondary circuit of low potential surrounding the receiving-circuit. SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

(talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

And I'm pretty sure that ionization at low altitude would be serious inefficiency; it costs lots of energy to do that. Unless you have a clear reference that he was going to do that, it can't go in the article.Rememberway (talk) 06:28, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay,

It has been well known heretofore that by rarefying the air inclosed in a vessel its insulating properties are impaired to such an extent that it becomes what may be considered as a true conductor, although one of admittedly very high resistance. The practical information in this regard has been derived from observations necessarily limited in their scope by the character of the apparatus or means heretofore known and the quality of the electrical effects producible thereby. Thus it has been shown by William Crookes in his classical researches, which have so far served as the chief source of knowledge of this subject, that all gasses behave as excellent insulators until rarefied to a point corresponding to a barometric pressure of about seventy-five millimeters, and even at this very low pressure the discharge of a high-tension induction-coil passes through only a part of the attenuated gas in the form of a luminous thread or arc, a still further and considerable diminution of the pressure being required to render the entire mass of the gas inclosed in a vessel conducting.

While this is true in every particular so long as electromotive or current impulses such as are obtainable with ordinary forms of apparatus are employed, I have found that neither the general behavior of the gases nor the known relations between electrical conductivity and barometric pressure are in conformity with these observations when impulses are used such as are producible by methods and apparatus described by me and which have peculiar and hitherto unobserved properties and are of effective electromotive force, measuring many hundred thousands or millions of volts.

Through the continuous perfection of these methods and apparatus and the investigation of the actions of these current impulses I have been led to the discovery of certain highly-important useful facts which have hitherto been unknown. Among these and bearing directly upon the subject of my present application are the following: First, that atmospheric or other gases, even under normal pressure, when they are known to behave as perfect insulators, are in a large measure deprived of their dielectric properties by being subjected to the influence of electromotive impulses of the character and magnitude I have referred to and assume conducting and other qualities which have been so far observed only in gases greatly attenuated or heated to a high temperature, and, second, that the conductivity imparted to the air or gases increases very rapidly both with the augmentation of the applied electrical pressure and with the degree of rarefaction, the law in this latter respect being, however, quite different from that heretofore established. . . .

As to the influence of rarefaction upon the electric conductivity imparted to the gases it is noteworthy that, whereas the atmospheric or other gases begin ordinarily to manifest this quality at something like seventy-five millimeters barometric pressure with the impulses of excessive electromotive force to which I have referred, the conductivity, as already pointed out, begins even at normal pressure and continuously increases with the degree of tenuity of the gas, so that at, say, one hundred and thirty millimeters pressure, when the gases are known to be still nearly perfect insulators for ordinary electromotive forces, they behave toward electromotive impulses of several millions of volts like excellent conductors, as though they were rarefied to a much higher degree. . . .

By the discovery of these facts and the perfection of means for producing in a safe, economical, and thoroughly-practicable manner current impulses of the character described it becomes possible to transmit through easily-accessible and only moderately-rarefied strata of the atmosphere electrical energy not merely in insignificant quantities, such as are suitable for the operation of delicate instruments and like purposes, but also in quantities suitable for industrial uses on a large scale up to practically any amount and, according to all the experimental evidence I have obtained, to any terrestrial distance. SYSTEM OF TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY, Sept. 2, 1897, U.S. Patent No. 645,576, Mar. 20, 1900.

Do these meet with your requirements? -- GaryPeterson (talk) 14:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

They're not my requirements they're the Wikipedia's. And you're not meeting them. You should either drop it, find other references or rewrite the text.Rememberway (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Pursuant to your request I have rewritten the text and added references. -- GaryPeterson (talk) 20:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, no. I'm simply going to remove everything that is unreferenced to primary, reliable sources; and for the record, patents are not reliable sources except about what somebody actually claimed, or patented. Any use of the word 'is' or 'are' must be something that is done today, and I'm also going to remove any analogy that isn't backed up to a reliable source saying that that analogy is valid in that particular context. You're also not going to get away with any degree of OR; defined as taking information from two sources and combining them to make a new point, no matter how trivial.Rememberway (talk) 00:18, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Tesla may not have started out (entirely) mad, but sure ended up that way. Can anyone explain to me why the mumblety-million volts on the top terminal at Wardencliffe would preferentially climb miles into the air, go half-way around the world and power someone's factory, instead of discharging somewhere on Long Island in the mother of all man-made lightning bolts? Please? If someone can explain that one point to me, then I'll concede that the Tesla stuff can be relevant to this article. This would seem to be an elementary problem that even J.P. Morgan must have noticed, surely he would have seen the chaotic arcs and sparks coming out of Tesla coils and would have been curious how Tesla proposed to redirect those sparks. Tesla must have had a convincing answer, what was it? --Wtshymanski (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually I think that he pointed out that plasmas are pretty hot and do tend to rise, and his towers were pretty tall, and I expect that that had something to do with it. One of his patents talked about using balloons at 35,000 feet to increase the chance of a plasma connection going up, rather than down.Rememberway (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't even matter. What matters is that it's very clearly on-topic and notable. Our task as editors is to collect what's written about it and summarise it appropriately.Rememberway (talk) 06:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Now we're getting somewhere. It would be on-topic if we could explain how Wardenclyffe was to overcome the naive obstacles I keep asking about. Two questions: How many megawatts does it take to sustain a column of ionized air 50 feet in diameter and 4 1/2 miles high? And, how do I set up that column at my receiving site 4000 miles away, where I initially have no power supply to begin with? (I visualize this working like carnival bumper cars that have an electrified floor, the earth in the Wardenclyffe scheme, and an electrified tin roof, which is some layer in the ionosphere. Bumper cars don't have poles 4 1/2 miles long, though.). No doubt these are the same questions J. P. Morgan was asking. (Supplemental question:What stops the wind from blowing away the column?) Explain this, and we're on the way to explaining how Tesla's scheme wasn't just the product of an unhinged mind but was in fact a valid attempt to transmit power. Metering is no problem, you've got a patent, and it's not like someone can hide a 4 1/2 mile high column of flaming gases - you'd be able to count installations with a pair of binoculars and compare that to your list of licensees quite easily. (We don't talk about Tesla's conversations with Venusians in the SETI article, do we ?) --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

No. That's not how the Wikipedia works at all. It might be utterly and completely impossible, the power might be stupidly impossible etc. etc. and it might be obvious (to us) that it would never, ever work. That's completely irrelevant. What's relevant is what people have written down in reliable sources about this, and how it is regarded in those reliable sources.- Sheer Incompetence (talk) Now with added dubiosity! 02:31, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Outdent. How much space does Wikipedia devote to the flat-earth theory when discussing, oh, say, international trade? Tesla couldn't convince Morgan to keep funding him in an era when people bet a million dollars on which raindrop would run down the window first. It is inappropriate to dwell on the Tesla dead end here, except to mention "Tesla tried it, claimed much, produced nothing of consequence in this field." --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)