Questions about Wardenclyffe Tower and it's plausibility

[TeslaFan51]

Questions about Wardenclyffe Tower and it's plausibility...

Hello! I have always been fascinated by Nikola Tesla (who hasn't? and other rare birds that share such innovation.

I know the history of wireless electricity and that it is possible, and I know about Wardenclyffe Tower.

I am however, NOT electrically inclined or educated. I understand that electricity is just energy and that the tower was just a form of amplifying such energy across great distances... yes?
From what I understand, the tower was tested and expected to provide electricity in a 30 mile radius, is this correct?

My question is: Do you think it is possible, as Tesla believed, to have a world wide network of free wireless electricity? Do you think with today's technology such towers could be produced... perhaps on smaller scales but with greater output?

Thanks!

 

[berkeman]

Hello! I have always been fascinated by Nikola Tesla (who hasn't? and other rare birds that share such innovation.

I know the history of wireless electricity and that it is possible, and I know about Wardenclyffe Tower.

I am however, NOT electrically inclined or educated. I understand that electricity is just energy and that the tower was just a form of amplifying such energy across great distances... yes?
From what I understand, the tower was tested and expected to provide electricity in a 30 mile radius, is this correct?

My question is: Do you think it is possible, as Tesla believed, to have a world wide network of free wireless electricity? Do you think with today's technology such towers could be produced... perhaps on smaller scales but with greater output?

Thanks!

Welcome to the PF.

Tesla had a lot of crackpot ideas, and this looks to be one of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

And even if it were possible to transmit useful levels of energy safely over some distance wirelessly, why do you think it would be "free"?

 

[TeslaFan51]

Well. Electricity is just energy yes? No matter if it takes the form of heat, motion, whatever.

Wardenclyffe tower, unless I'm mistaken was intended to have 'roots' that went about 300ft into the Earth- that is certainly deep enough to experience geothermal energy... and the deeper you go the hotter things get.

I guess I don't see what, beyond the construction of the tower, would require monetary support? But then, I don't know how such a thing would work :)... I'm basing this mostly on my understanding of using wind and water energy in combination with an alternator/magnets to form electrical current.

Can't say I consider it a crackpot idea, Tesla seemed to have a pretty decent reputation of producing what he claimed was possible.

On the very subject of this tower he wrote:
"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle." – Nikola Tesla

Just looking for opinions and information,
Thanks! :)