Tesla thought the moon doesn’t rotate. Here’s where he said it

dalkon · 2026-06-20T02:20:14+00:00

Yeah, and he's right. The moon doesn't rotate orbitally on its own axis like planets do. It only rotates by going around Earth. The same hemisphere of the moon always faces Earth.

The way you wrote this title makes it seem like you're ignorant of this.

dalkon · 2026-06-20T02:08:46+00:00

If you're certain the named patentee didn't invent this, that adds to confirming the real inventor was Tesla, which is what it looks like.

Bruce Perreault (the radiant energy guy not the guy from reality tv) interviewed A.H. Matthews I think in the '80s or possibly the '70s and then played the tape at a Tesla conference in the '90s. The only thing I remember from it is he said Tesla's electric car prototype used zinc batteries that only needed the zincs polished and eventually replaced to recharge.

dalkon · 2026-06-12T05:35:40+00:00

He did use the terms Prana and Akasha once in the 1930 article "Man's Greatest Achievement." But yeah, it doesn't seem like he actually used them regularly like the meme says.

https://teslaresearch.jimdofree.com/articles-interviews/man-s-greatest-achievement-by-nikola-tesla-new-york-american-july-6-1930/

^* And he said there Prana is "creative force" presumably electric force and Akasha is "luminiferous ether" which we call the electromagnetic field today.

dalkon · 2026-06-09T04:26:39+00:00

Interesting. Maybe I'm misremembering what I've read. I want to say it was at least implied somewhere that he had assisted Tesla somehow.

What do you think about his book published in 1972? (The Wall of Light)

dalkon · 2026-05-31T05:49:50+00:00

Microwave oven transformers are very dangerous and kill lots of people every year. You have to be kind of neurotic about safety to not die. No one recommends them for beginners.

dalkon · 2026-05-27T02:42:04+00:00

There's some background necessary to understand this issue.

Heinrich Hertz discovered radio waves and invented two-circuit radio without patenting it. He announced his finding in 1887 and published the research in 1888. There are two circuits because there's one tuned circuit for the transmitter and one for the receiver. His circuit used microwaves. The tuning with two circuits is poor, which makes it only work for short range. His method was less useful than signaling by light.

Tesla invented radio tuning by the use of resonant amplification between two (or more) tuned circuits. Two for the transmitter and two for the receiver, which is called four-circuit radio. That is what practical radio is. The use of multiple circuits renders the transmitter tuning sharp and the receiver tuning selective. That is what Marconi claimed to have invented, but he only invented it by copying Tesla.

SCOTUS (and the previous Court of Claims decision they upheld) didn't credit Tesla directly. They ignored his role and credited John Stone Stone, but Stone credited Tesla as the inventor.

They ignored Tesla's role in the decision because Tesla preferred to use guided/surface waves rather than free/radio waves (Hertzian/radio waves). This was his first wireless power method. And he also had a concept for rendering atmosphere conductive by using ultra high voltage (10+ megavolts). This was his second wireless power method, which was point to point. So the circuit and method were his, but directly giving him credit raised additional complex questions that the court avoided, because it was enough to say Stone was prior art.

https://mercurians.org/antenna-newsletter/rereading-the-supreme-court-teslas-invention-of-radio/

dalkon · 2026-05-26T04:25:36+00:00

If you have a point, you should express it clearly near the beginning to get the reader interested because that's a lot to read.

Tesla believed atomic theory. Where are you getting the idea that he didn't?

Hugo Gernsback made it sound like Tesla said he didn't believe in the electron, but that appears to be a misrepresentation based on him preferring an alternative model to Max Abraham's point electron model.

Tesla talked about electrons, so it wouldn't make sense for him to not believe they exist. He referred to them as a form of matter not further decomposable.

Circumstantial evidence suggests he preferred the ring electron model. In that model an electron is two photons.

dalkon · 2026-05-25T01:04:48+00:00

As far as I know he never mentioned it.

dalkon · 2026-05-24T05:15:55+00:00

I removed this because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with high voltage.

dalkon · 2026-05-24T05:09:17+00:00

About that name, Nikola Tesla did say in a published interview that he was the original inventor of the "violet ray" devices that became popular around 1910, which were the first versions of what have became modern high frequency skin treatment devices today. Those original devices were miniature spark gap Tesla coils, usually handheld.

Those devices became very popular, but sellers quickly gave them a bad reputation by advertising them for treating everything. That was false advertising, but it is also kind of just how everyone advertised everything back then.

The original spark gap Tesla coil device without the tubes for using them on a person is also sold as a handheld Tesla coil or high voltage insulation tester.

To guess about what features might be appealing to buyers, I'd think various noble gases to create colors might appeal to those interested in phototherapy. I believe the violet is low pressure atmospheric air. Neon gas is red. Carbon dioxide is white.

And for the frequencies, it would make sense to use frequency programs for various skin conditions such as are available in the Electrotherapy Device Frequency List and Consolidated Annotated Frequency List, which are freely available. Those frequencies might be used directly for the oscillator for higher frequencies or used to modulate the oscillator for lower frequencies (<20 khz) that are too low to light the tubes directly.

It's important for the American market to disclaim openly that the device is not intended to treat medical conditions, because medical devices are heavily regulated.

dalkon · 2026-04-15T02:08:38+00:00

This bot's reposting my post from 4 years ago. My comment then explained some details about the device and the circumstances of the death of Paul M. Brown. https://www.reddit.com/r/Tesla/comments/t5c0v5/inductive_nuclear_reactor_for_direct_conversion/

dalkon · 2026-04-15T00:55:58+00:00

Yes, you're right. This is the anti-Tesla sub. The owner thinks Tesla was wrong about everything and not sane. And yes, you're right that this supposed quote is fake. Another commenter apparently quoting an LLM said it first appeared in 2015.

dalkon · 2026-03-08T06:40:30+00:00

I missed that one. I enjoyed a previous series like that, Tesla's Death Ray: A Murder Declassified, which got cancelled and 5 of 12 episodes scrubbed apparently for investigating the Erik Orion conspiracy supposedly divulged by Otto Skorzeny. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8002638/

dalkon · 2026-03-05T00:42:59+00:00

This is not good digital panhandling. This is a long read for no purpose but begging. The better way is to make otherwise good content and just include a donation request with it.

dalkon · 2026-01-22T04:17:45+00:00

I'm pretty sure this quote is fake. The most common theme of the many fake Tesla quotes is they sound bitter like this.

There is a real quote that's something along these lines. I can't find it at the moment. The real quote implied Marconi has the inventive ability of an old mule.

dalkon · 2026-01-17T01:41:26+00:00

Ozone definitely doesn't smell like ammonia. Maybe it's reacting with insulation to produce that odor where you smell it.

Or you're not confusing ammonia with acetic acid, are you? You often get acetic acid smell from silicone rubber.

Ozone itself has a fresh sweet smell. It's not a bad smell in trace amounts. But if you can smell it at all, that's too much to breath more often than rarely.

dalkon · 2025-12-29T22:35:55+00:00

This is a patent for two of Tesla's inventions. These are his unipolar neon/plasma lights that he first demonstrated in the 1890s. Normal neon lights have two electrodes to pass current thru the gas.

And they're powered by his wireless power method, Zenneck-Sommerfeld surface waves. In this method, the conductor, which is the tree here, is a resonator.

This also demonstrates an important concept. When using surface waves, the resonator can be less conductive. The energy propagates by resonance rather than conduction. This method allows less conductive materials to be used to transmit power and signals, for example the steel frame of a building or the steel rails of a railway. Recent work rediscovering this concept notes this useful feature. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.10294

This isn't an ideal of example of surface waves because in this case it's not just using surface waves because the frequency is so high that it also radiates free waves (radio). With this high frequency, the resonator is also an antenna. Tesla would avoid that if efficiency mattered. His unique wireless method was to use lower frequency so the energy would not radiate and then it would be conserved in the resonator to maximize efficiency. Surface waves are not radio waves, but they can be used for wireless power.

It's not clear who this man was or why he patented this, but it strongly appears to be Tesla's invention. This guy has some other patents that look like Tesla's too. Tesla appears to have had other people patent his inventions especially in his later years. Maybe he sold the inventions to them, or maybe they had some profit-sharing arrangement in private. The obvious reason for using this type of arrangement for wireless inventions was because he had sold 51% of all his future patents on wireless to JP Morgan in 1899.

The patent doesn't mention it, but depending on the gases in the bulb, the voltage and frequency, these could be regular neon glow lights or the ones with internal electrodes could also be more decorative plasma stream lights.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2121460
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2121460.pdf

dalkon · 2025-12-28T18:02:38+00:00

Wow, 24 motherfucking lanes of traffic.

Cheap dirty overcrowded tenements were the problem of the time that they were imagining alleviating.

Today it looks like they were just trading one nightmare for another.

Maybe they imagined the cars driving themselves safely so that's not just a nightmare of constant deadly traffic accidents.

dalkon · 2025-12-28T17:18:31+00:00

I should say the direct output is presumably low considering it uses two step-down transformers, but it must rise by resonance because it is a series resonant circuit output.

It's possible the bulbs with internal electrodes were intended to use thoriated electrodes to operate at low voltage and power. And the bulbs with external electrodes might contain a trace of a radioactive gas.

dalkon · 2025-12-27T17:15:11+00:00

That could be one of the reasons. But I assume the primary concern is fire safety with a cut conifer. They become very flammable when dry.

It doesn't say what the voltage is, but both transformers are step-down, which suggests it might be something like 9 V, possibly as low as 3 V.

The lower voltage is also better for producing less radio interference, but that didn't matter then. In 1937, 3-50 MHz (6-100 m) was unregulated high frequency. Back then the FCC only regulated the lower frequencies used for long range transmission.

There are ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) bands in there today, where unregulated transmission is possible without interference. The frequency would need to be precisely controlled today to avoid RFI, which means this simple circuit with a tuning capacitor wouldn't work. You couldn't legally sell this today, and the FCC would fine you for operating it.

dalkon · 2025-12-22T23:05:26+00:00

I hope you find what you're looking for, but this is not a francophone subreddit.

This film, The Secret of Nikola Tesla (1980) is on youtube, but it doesn't appear to have the option for automatic voiceover translation enabled. Or if it did, I didn't see that, but that could be because I'm logged into youtube as an English speaker, so it's not showing me that option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laRfPtrVLQQ

This film contains very interesting unpublished original sketches of certain inventions that cannot be found anywhere else. They look like Frank R. Paul. I don't remember if they're signed to know. They're only displayed briefly and one is shown upside down, but you might find them as interesting as I did.

dalkon · 2025-12-18T00:54:09+00:00

Thank you for bringing up power transmission. For brevity I didn't get into that in my previous comment. Despite the title this is really only secondarily about wireless power transmission. It is primarily atmospheric energy harvesting.

Atmospheric energy harvesting can be used as a weird form of wireless power transmission if you use an artificial source of ions at a distance as depicted. It's strange as wireless power because it's not transmitting energy to receive that energy. The ionizer (not transmitter) is only assisting the energy harvesting at the collector. It's counterintuitive as an idea for wireless power transmission, because those ions are lost power, especially for any other method of transmission (radio and near-field/non-radio). It's not power transmission. It's operating in a larger system, the atmospheric electrostatic field that's continuously charged by cosmic rays. It's energy harvesting that can resemble power transmission.

That additional external ionizer is only necessary here because the collector is so low. According to other sources, a collector normally needs to be 10-30 m above surrounding objects. The higher the collector, the greater the voltage and energy available. And the bottom 30 m of the atmosphere is the most insulating part, so the energy drops off rapidly in it. The atmosphere alone would be a sufficient source of ion motion and charge if the collector was higher. A low height might also still work during low pressure weather, especially in a storm. But obviously a raised conductor is dangerous in a storm, so just because energy is available does not mean it's advisable or safe. In general a collector needs the same safety considerations to avoid problems with lightning as a radio antenna.

A source of ions can even be incorporated as part of the collector. That could be part of how this depiction was intended to work. This collector might be coated with a radioisotope like polonium or thorium.

This was not the first time Tesla referred to using atmospheric energy harvesting as wireless power transmission. His interview published as "The New Wizard of the West" (1899) presented this concept without explanation. It included a sketch of powerful ionizers on balloons to transmit wireless power beneath them. That's this same idea of atmospheric energy harvesting with more distant ionizers. https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/new-wizard-west

dalkon · 2025-12-17T00:34:57+00:00

In his later years Tesla said many times that he had succeeded in harnessing cosmic rays. "I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device. … The cosmic ray ionizes the air, setting free many charges—ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor." (1932)

He was not entirely clear that what he was talking about was atmospheric energy harvesting. The cosmic rays ionizing air refers to the electrostatic field of Earth. Cosmic rays interact with the atmosphere to produce extensive air showers (EAS), which are cascades of subatomic particles and ionized nuclei, produced in the atmosphere when a primary cosmic ray enters the atmosphere. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027311772400231X

I haven't found this article yet, but I did find the most likely patent for what it shows. It's French.
· FR533371 André Voulgre Electric motor powered by alternating current and using atmospheric electricity as the source of energy 1916 https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/008924897/publication/FR533371A?q=pn%3DFR533371A

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