Nikola
Tesla's Earthquake Machine
A few years ago, a friend
mentioned that he had noticed a peculiar pattern of the earthquake frequency in
Southern California. In all recent instances except the 1993 Northridge
blockbuster, the space shuttle had been aloft at the time. (Conspiracy
researcher and radio show host Dave "I Read It In A Book So It Must Be
True" Emory has commented on this as well.) Even though it was meant as a
joke, there are obvious implications for anyone who could control this final
frontier of the natural world. Perhaps this has already been accomplished. In
the last years of the 19th century, technological alchemist Nikola Tesla may
have harnessed this principle to similar effect.
Tesla has been called
everything from a genius to a quack. The fact remains that the alternating
current electrical system now used worldwide was his conception, and among
other inventions he perfected a remote controlled boat in 1897&emdash;only
a few years after the discovery of radio waves. This device was publicly
demonstrated at Madison Square Garden the next year to capacity crowds.
In 1896, Tesla had been in the
United States for 11 years after emigrating from his native Croatia. After a
disastrous fire in his former laboratory, he moved to more amenable quarters at
46 Houston St. in Manhattan. For the past few years, he had pondered the
sigificance of waves and resonance, thinking that along with the AC system,
there were other untapped sources of power waiting to be exploited. The
oscillators he designed and built were originally designed to provide a stable
source for the frequencies of alternating current&emdash;accurate enough to
"set your watch by."
He constructed a simple device
consisting of a piston suspended in a cylinder, which bypassed the necessity of
a camshaft driven by a rotating power source, such as a gasoline or steam
engine. In this way, he hoped to overcome loss of power through friction
produced by the old system. This small device also enabled Tesla to try out his
experiments in resonance. Every substance has a resonant frequency which is
demonstrated by the principle of sympathetic vibration&endash;the most
obvious example is the wine glass shattered by an opera singer (or a tape
recording for you couch potatoes.) If this frequency is matched and amplified,
any material may be literally shaken to pieces.
A vibrating assembly with an
adjustable frequency was finally perfected, and by 1897, Tesla was causing
trouble with it in and near the neighborhood around his loft laboratory. Reporter
A.L. Besnson wrote about this device in late 1911 or early 1912 for the Hearst
tabloid The World Today. After fastening the resonator ("no larger than an
alarm clock") to a steel bar (or "link") two feet long and two
inches thick:
He set the vibrator in
"tune" with the link. For a long time nothing
happened-&endash;vibrations of machine and link did not seem to coincide,
but at last they did and the great steel began to tremble, increased its
trembling until it dialated and contracted like a beating heart&endash;and
finally broke. Sledge hammers could not have done it; crowbars could not have
done it, but a fusillade of taps, no one of which would have harmed a baby, did
it. Tesla was pleased.
But not pleased enough it
seems:
Tesla claimed the device,
properly modified, could be used to map underground deposits of oil. A
vibration sent through the earth returns an "echo signature" using
the same principle as sonar. This idea was actually adapted for use by the
petroleum industry, and is used today in a modified form with devices used to
locate objects at archaelogical digs.
Even before he had mentioned
the invention to anyone he was already scaring the local populace around his
loft laboratory. Although this story may be apocryphal, it has been cited in
more than one biography: Tesla happened to attach the device to an exposed
steel girder in his brownstone, thinking the foundations were built on strudy
granite. As he disovered later, the subtrata in the area consisted of
sand&endash;an excellent conductor and propogator of ground vibrations.
After setting the little
machine up, he proceeded to putter about the lab on other projects that needed
attention. Meanwhile, for blocks around, chaos reigned as objects fell off
shelves, furniture moved across floors, windows shattered, and pipes broke. The
pandemonium didn't go unnoticed in the local precinct house where prisoners
panicked and police officers fought to keep coffee and donuts from flying off
desks. Used as they were to the frequent calls about diabolical noises and
flashes from Mr. Tesla's block, they hightailed it over. Racing up the stairs
and into the lab, they found the inventor smashing the vibrator to bits with a
sledgehammer. Turning to them with accustomed old-world aplomb, he apoligized
calmly: " Gentlemen, I am sorry. You are just a trifle too late to witness
my experiment. I found it necessary to stop it suddenly and unexpectedly in an
unusual way. However, If you will come around this evening, I will have another
oscillator attached to a platform and each of you can stand on it. You will I
am sure find it a most interesting and pleasurable experience. Now, you must
leave, for I have many things to do. Good day." (Actually, another story
is related of Tesla's good friend Mark Twain, a regular visitor to the laboratory,
standing on the vibrating platform to his great surprise and pleasure, extoling
its theraputic effects while repeatedly ignoring the inventor's warnings to get
down. Before long, he was made aware of its laxative effects and ran stiffly to
the water closet.)
One source has it that the
device "bonded to the metal on an atomic level" and Tesla was unable
to get at the controls, but it seems more likely that the wild movements of the
girder, combined with the panic that he might bring the neigborhood down, moved
Tesla to this unsubtle action. He later mused to reporters that the very earth
could be split in two given the right conditions. The detonation of a ton of
dynamite at intervals of one hour and forty-nine minutes would step up the
natural standing wave that would be produced until the earth's crust could no
longer contain the interior. He called his new science
"tele-geodynamics." Newspaper artists of the time went nuts with all
manner of fanciful illustrations of this theory. Tesla's fertile imagination
posited a series of oscillators attached to the earth at strategic points that
would be used to transmit vibrations to be picked up at any point on the globe
and turned back in to usable power. Since no practical application of this idea
could be found at the time that would make money for big investors or other
philanthropic souls, (one can't effectively meter and charge for power derived
in this way) the oscillators fell into disuse.
In the 1930s, Tesla revived the idea of tele-geodynamics to create small, realtively harmless temblors to relieve stress, rather than having to wait in fear for nature to take it's course. Perhaps this idea did not remain the idle speculation of a scientist whose star had never been on the ascendant since the turn of the century, and we occasionally experience the devious machinations of invisible "earthquake merchants" at the behest of the unseen hands who wish to experiment on and control the populace.