contd.....
Important to this chronology is the state of Tesla's mental
health. One researcher, Marc J. Seifer, a psychologist, believes
Tesla suffered a nervous breakdown catalyzed by the death of one
the partners in the Tesla Electric Company and the shooting of
Stanford White, the noted architect, who had designed Wardenclyffe.
Seifer places this in 1906 and cites as evidence a letter from
George Scherff, Tesla's secretary:
Wardenclyffe, 4/10/1906
Dear Mr. Tesla:
I have received your letter and am very glad
to know you are vanquishing your illness. I
have scarcely ever seen you so out of sorts
as last Sunday; and I was frightened.
In the period from 1900 to 1910 Tesla's creative thrust was to
establish his plan for wireless transmission of energy. Undercut
by Marconi's accomplishment, beset by financial problems, and
spurned by the scientific establishment, Tesla was in a desperate
situation by mid-decade. The strain became too great by 1906 and
he suffered an emotional collapse. In order to make a final effort
to have his grand scheme recognized, he may have tried one high
power test of his transmitter to show off its destructive
potential. This would have been in 1908.
The Tunguska event took place on the morning of June 30th, 1908.
An explosion estimated to be equivalent to 10-15 megatons of TNT
flattened 500,000 acres of pine forest near the Stony Tunguska
River in central Siberia. Whole herds of reindeer were destroyed.
The explosion was heard over a radius of 620 miles. When an
expedition was made to the area in 1927 to find evidence of the
meteorite presumed to have caused the blast, no impact crater was
found. When the ground was drilled for pieces of nickel, iron, or
stone, the main constituents of meteorites, none were found down to
a depth of 118 feet.
Many explanations have been given for the Tunguska event. The
officially accepted version is that a 100,000 ton fragment of
Encke's Comet, composed mainly of dust and ice, entered the
atmosphere at 62,000 mph, heated up, and exploded over the earth's
surface creating a fireball and shock wave but no crater.
Alternative versions of the disaster see a renegade mini-black hole
or an alien space ship crashing into the earth with the resulting
release of energy.
Associating Tesla with the Tunguska event comes close to putting
the inventor's power transmission idea in the same speculative
category as ancient astronauts. However, by looking at the above
chronology, it can be seen that real historical facts point to the
possibility that this event was caused by a test firing of Tesla's
energy weapon.
In 1907 and 1908, Tesla wrote about the destructive effects of
his energy transmitter. His Wardenclyffe transmitter was much
larger than the Colorado Springs device that destroyed the power
station's generator. His new transmitter would be capable of
effects many orders of magnitude greater than the Colorado device.
In 1915, he said he had already built a transmitter that "when
unavoidable ... may be used to destroy property and life."
Finally, a 1934 letter from Tesla to J.P. Morgan, uncovered by
Tesla biographer Margaret Cheney, seems to conclusively point to an
energy weapon test. In an effort to raise money for his defensive
system he wrote:
The flying machine has completely demoralized
the world, so much so that in some cities, as
London and Paris, people are in mortal fear from
aerial bombing. The new means I have perfected
affords absolute protection against this and
other forms of attack... These new discoveries I
have carried out experimentally on a limited
scale, created a profound impression (emphasis added).
Again, the evidence is circumstantial but, to use the language of
criminal investigation, Tesla had motive and means to be the cause
of the Tunguska event. He also seems to confess to such a test
having taken place before 1915. His transmitter could generate
energy levels and frequencies that would release the destructive
force of 10 megatons, or more, of TNT. And the overlooked genius
was desperate.
The nature of the Tunguska event, also, is not inconsistent with
what would happen during the sudden release of wireless power. No
fiery object was reported in the skies at that time by professional
or amateur astronomers as would be expected when a 200,000,000
pound object enters the atmosphere. The sky glow in the region,
mentioned by some witnesses, just before the explosion may have
come from the ground, as geological researchers discovered in the
1970's. Just before an earthquake the stressed rock beneath the
ground creates an electrical effect causing the air to illuminate.
If the explosion was caused by wireless energy transmission, either
the geological stressing or the current itself would cause an air
glow. Finally, there is the absence of an impact crater. Because
there is no material object to impact, an explosion caused by
broadcast power would not leave a crater.
Given Tesla's general pacifistic nature it is hard to understand
why he would carry out a test harmful to both animals and the people
who herded the animals even when he was in the grip of financial
desperation. The answer is that he probably intended no harm, but
was aiming for a publicity coup and, literally, missed his target.
At the end of 1908, the whole world was following the daring
attempt of Peary to reach the North Pole. Peary claimed the Pole
in the Spring of 1909, but the winter before he had returned to the
base at Ellesmere Island, about 700 miles from the Pole. If Tesla
wanted the attention of the international press, few things would
have been more impressive than the Peary expedition sending out
word of a cataclysmic explosion on the ice in the direction of the
North Pole. Tesla, then, if he could not be hailed as the master
creator that he was, could be seen as the master of a mysterious
new force of destruction.
The test, it seems, was not a complete success. It must have been
difficult controlling the vast amount of power in transmitter and
guiding it to the exact spot Tesla wanted. Alert, Canada on
Ellesmere Island and the Tunguska region are all on the same great
circle line from Shoreham, Long Island. Both are on a compass
bearing of a little more than 2 degrees along a polar path. The
destructive electrical wave overshot its target.
Whoever was privy to Tesla's energy weapon demonstration must
have been dismayed either because it missed the intended target and
would be a threat to inhabited regions of the planet, or because it
worked too well in devastating such a large area at the mere
throwing of a switch thousands of miles away. Whichever was the
case, Tesla never received the notoriety he sought for his power
transmitter.
In 1915, the Wardenclyffe laboratory was deeded over to Waldorf-
Astoria, Inc. in lieu of payment for Tesla's hotel bills. In 1917,
Wardenclyffe was dynamited on orders of the new owners to recover
some money from the scrap.
The evidence is only circumstantial. Perhaps Tesla never did
achieve wireless power transmission through the earth. Maybe he
made a mistake in interpreting the results of his radio tests in
Colorado Springs and did not produce an effect engineers, then and
now, know is a scientific impossibility. Perhaps the mental stress
he suffered caused him to retreat completely to a fantasy world
from which he would send out preposterous claims to reporters who
gathered for his yearly, copy-making pronouncements on his birthday.
Maybe the atomic bomb size explosion in Siberia near the turn of the
century was the result of a meteorite no one saw fall.
Or, perhaps, Nikola Tesla did shake the world in a way that has
been kept secret for over 80 years.
