The Coil

No, not a contraceptive. Rather, a contraption. The Tesla Coil, to be precise.

For those that don't know, the Tesla Coil is a way of making more power out of a current. Nikola Tesla was a genius. For me, one of the greatest to have ever lived. Certainly better than that Edison chancer, who actually had Tesla working for him, promised him a bonus of 30,000 dollars if Tesla came up with a certain number of patents (this was back when 30,000 would have set you up for hundreds of years), which Tesla did, only to then say "I was only joking, chump".

So Tesla left, but took his genius with him. Edison and Tesla engaged in a kind of inventing war for a while, and Tesla often won. An example of which was AC. Alternating Current. Edison invented and championed Direct Current, but DC meant sending electrons out and then bringing them back. It was a very bad way of sending electric to people. In New York at the time, the multitude of wires needed to carry electricity sometimes blacked out the sky. It must have been something.

DC meant having to erect power stations every couple of miles, just to keep the electron flow going. So Tesla invented AC. Alternating current. It meant the power cables were much thinner, and could just keep on going with no need for a boost every few miles. Needless to say, Edison was incredulous, and slagged AC off at every opportunity.

But Tesla wanted to go further than AC. Further than fewer, thinner wires. He wanted no wires at all. In fact, he wanted free power. To all. And, with the Tesla Coil, he deemed it possible. If you plug a Tesla Coil in to an American socket, you're giving it 120 Volts. But the coil spews electricity from the top of the coil at 500,000 volts. How? Well, if you imagine the electricity flowing like water, the voltage is likened to water pressure. If you attach a nozzle to the end of a hose, the water pressure is increased, while the flow of water is decreased. Try putting your thumb over the end of a hose and you'll see. So the coil steps up the voltage and reduces the current. Its a transformer.

If you hold a light bulb in a room with a Tesla Coil in it, the light bulb will illuminate. No wires. No sockets. Just electrical energy in the air. Tesla wanted to build giant Tesla Coils and provide the earth with electrical energy, using the earth itself as a conductor.

This would mean impoverished countries that still live off the land would all of a sudden have access to power. And not just any power, clean power. The global warming merchants needn't worry about coal fuel stations, we'd only be powering a few energy stations. Tesla built a huge coil, Wardenclyffe, and managed to illuminate light bulbs over a mile away. Sadly, and is so oft the case, the money man pulled out of investing in Tesla's invention, when someone beat him broadcasting radio waves over the Atlantic. Later, the accolade was reversed and granted to Tesla, after it materialised that the chap who beat him to it used at least 5 or 6 of Tesla's patents.

Regardless, I see Tesla's ideas for free world power as...obviously a threat to establishment....but more than that, even back then he was thinking big. Really big. If we are one world and we all look out for each other, I  don't think the regular 5 pound a month pledge to Oxfam can really cut it. Oh it helps, sure, but we, as a species, need to think bigger. Tesla style bigger.

He also invented the induction motor, which is the standard electric motor used everywhere these days. A larger type is used in a car, also called a Tesla, which is an electric car that can do over 200 miles on a single charge. Now, Steve, you might say. What was that? Why, if we can build electric cars that can do 0 - 60 in under 4 seconds and travel over 200 miles on a single charge, are the governments of the world not making this standard issue? Why are we still bothering with the internal combustion engine?

Short answer: fuck knows. The technology is there. It exists. It can be used and utilised. But everyone seems to be looking the other way, to the point where shares in the Tesla motor company dropped last year and continue to decline.

If the men in power cared about the environment like your green taxes claim they do, then we would all be driving these cars. By law. But that would punch a huge hole in their revenue, and we can't have that. The Saudis have so much invested in the American economy that if the Saudis were ruined because we didn't need their oil any more, the American economy would collapse.

Free power, clean transport. Isn't this what we should be pursuing?

Nikola Tesla invented many other things; remote control, energy saving light bulbs (seriously), X-rays (again, seriously but he was never recognised for it), proposed the idea of bouncing radio waves off objects to determine position and speed 17 years before the invention of radar, and the laser.

He also built something called The Earthquake Machine. Going on the principle that every object, once struck, has a resonant frequency, he concluded that if you match that frequency and increase it, any material can be shaken to pieces. Dangerous, but true nevertheless. You could bring down a building with a very small device.

Tesla then. Had his fair share of good ideas and dangerous ones. Died alone in a hotel room in New York, undiscovered for two days. The FBI seized his files, and the world largely forgot about him. These days, we need his genius more than ever before. Sadly, the Tesla Coil is not taken seriously. Think of all the money the power suppliers would lose. The electric car is not being taken seriously. Think of all the money the oil companies would lose. Of course, if the world built giant Tesla Coils, the electric cars would pick up the power as they drove. They wouldn't need a charge. You could just keep on driving as long as your tyres went round and the motor was okay. Wouldn't that be something?