Sunday 16 March 2014

Tesla Free Electricity Patent

Nikola Tesla really was one of the guys that history should be kinder to, but unfortunately he is the genius that got stomped on by bigger guys and squeezed out of history until recently.
I'm not sure why but he has began to receive some recognition recently and it was during a conversation months ago about the shockingly exploitative utility companies that it was mentioned that Tesla had found a way to  generate free energy from thin air.
After tucking it away somewhere in my mind for future internet searching, i forgot all about it until i read about the 400 million people in India with no access to electricity.
That sparked the bit of my brain where i tuck things away until they are jolted later and after a quick search of Tesla free electricity, it appears Tesla did make such a machine and in 1901 patented it and called it the: 'Apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy' and 'Method of Utilizing Radiant Energy'.
I can't even pretend to begin to understand what Tesla's invention was or how it would be used but it involved: 'condensing the energy trapped between the earth and its upper atmosphere and to transform it into an electric current'.
The story goes that Tesla built and tested the free electricity machine but his financial backer, JP Morgan, pulled the plug so to speak when he found out that Tesla planned to use the invention to generate free electricity as 'free electricity cannot be metered' and without further  funding the Tesla plan withered and died.
I'm not sure how long a patent lasts but if Tesla DID make this discovery, why isn't someone else who understand these things building it and receiving instant hero worship, especially among 400 million Indians.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Because it was not viable. In the us patents last 20 years. Other nations have their own patent processes but china, russia and many others pretty much ignore it all and do what they want to do.

Q

Lucy said...

Not viable financially or not viable mechanically? I know Tesla did have some fanciful ideas amongst his moments of genius.

Anonymous said...

That is a redundant question. They are mutually dependent.

Q

Lucy said...

What i meant was did Tesla actually develop something that made electricity from thin air or was it just an untested theory.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

as far as I could discern it was a "theory" like his "death ray".

it is kinda funny how we think it so amazing that he had so many great inventions, but in this same era he had a lot of competition and at the same time people like Einstein and Planck were developing modern physics...

q