“RAIN CAN BE CONTROLLED AND HYDRAULIC FORCE PROVIDED, SAYS NIKOLA TESLA, IF WE TURN TO SUN FOR POWER.”
Syracuse Herald, February 29, 1920.
… —As time goes on we may find the harnessing of the sun—s rays less objectionable, especially as great improvements are possible in the methods and devices so far employed… . —wind power is not to be distained— … —terrestrial heat, on an immense scale appears quite feasible and there is a strong probability that at a time not too distant projects will be seriously undertaken–…
Can the world get from its rainfall all the power it needs or ever will need, though the demand for power be multiplied a hundredfold?
Nikola Tesla tells me that this can be done.
No living human being is better qualified to speak.
He has been studying all our various sources of energy and rejects them all save this.
He sees no hope in the suggested possibility of harnessing atomic energy; he sees none in the suggested utilization of the vast force of the ocean’s tides; the power of ocean waves cannot be harnessed; heat from the earth’s interior for the creation of steam is not generally available or to be made available; sun-engines are not practical; windpower is not dependable; coal and oil are decreasing in availability and therefore increasing in cost.
So Tesla, realizing that the sun is the source of all the energy we know or ever can know, plans to harness it through the medium of water power.
And he makes the amazing statement that water-power can be controlled almost at will through the control of rainfall, which he regards now as a fully feasible thing.
LEAVES HIS CONTROL PLAN A MYSTERY.
Perhaps of all the fascinating things he says in the interview which follows, this statement that rainfall can be controlled is the most engaging. But he leaves his plan for it a mystery.
Our talk resulted from a casual statement made recently while we were discussing for publication in the Syracuse Herald the announcement from London that Marconi had heard upon his wireless instruments sounds which might have been, he thought, signals from inter-stellar space and possibly from Mars.
That afternoon Tesla had spoken of our need for new power sources and, when I asked him if they were available, had answered:
So yesterday I asked him to explain.
One must listen to him with profound respect as one of the world’s greatest scientists. To catalogue his discoveries and inventions would be an extraordinary task, which I shall not attempt.
His name is known throughout the progressive world.
“Are our present sources of power sufficient for our future needs?” I asked.
“Have we other sources to be utilized?”
“One, only, I believe,” he answered, “the fundamental source, the sun, manifested through water.”
“But water power, even though it be developed, is not generally enough distributed to fill all our needs.”
“That can be arranged,” said this extraordinary man, and then began a smooth, unhesitant statement of the whole vast problem which in the last analysis is the problem of human comfort and well being. Indeed, of human life itself. And this rapid fire of scientific fact gathered force and speed as it progressed, carrying me over technicalities and through scientific terms without a stop until its final vital statement about control of rainfall at man’s will left me gasping.
“Technical improvements, more or less essential,” said Mr. Tesla, “have made it possible for mankind to aggregate in civilized communities, thus economizing effort, insuring the comfort and safety of existence, and raising life in general to a higher plane of culture and refinement.
"In the beginnings, therefore, we were wholly subject to the forces of nature. Our ultimate goal seems to be their complete mastery. Millions of human beings, almost never or even never see the sun, and yet our dependence on it is absolute.
"Those few who are mindful of the future long ago ceased to look upon power as a mere means of securing individual safety and comfort, learning to attach to it a significance national, international and humanitarian.
"Not only this, but the idea is slowly gaining ground that the resources we command belong as much to coming generations as to our own and the thoughts of engineers and inventors are turning to the discovery of such an improvement in methods as will do away with the barbarous waste now going on, which, in the end, must exhaust our stores.
"This is the reason why all sorts of sensational announcements relative to new sources of power create such a hysterical interest and find such ready if sometimes unintelligent acceptance. Not more than one out of a thousand, even among professional men, is able to sift the wheat from the chaff.
"As an instance I may refer to the harnessing of atomic energy which now seems to be the plan uppermost in the speculative public mind. Much of the discussion on this subject is of the same order of merit as talk about communion with the spirts of the dead, or similar nonsense springing from a morbid craving for the perpetuation of self. It is contradictory to all natural laws, reason and experience.
"In most of the processes of transformation we are confronted with appalling waste and definite limits exist to improvements aiming at economy. No amount of ingenuity can ever circumvent the natural laws imposing these restrictions.
"Water power is a remarkable exception in this respect. In hydraulic development the wheel can have an efficiency of 85 and the dynamo can have an efficiency of 98 per cent. so that the combined efficiency is over 83 per cent. That is to say, we are enabled in this way usefully to apply almost the entire energy furnished by the sun.
"Not only this but the apparatus is simple, well-nigh indestructible, and requires virtually no attention.
"Unfortunately this source of power supply is not adequate to meet all our needs, although the theoretical energy of falling water is, so to speak, unlimited. Assuming for the rain clouds an average height of 15,000 feet and an annual precipitation of 33 inches, the power over the whole area of the United States amounts to more than twelve billion horsepower but a large portion of the potential energy is transformed into heat by friction of the rain drops against the air so that the actual mechanical energy is much smaller.
"Most of the water comes from a height of something like 2,000 feet, and all in all represents over one-half a billion horsepower, but in the form but in the form of available waterpower we cannot obtain more than a fall of 100 feet, so that by harnessing all the falls in the United States not more than eighty million horsepower can be developed.
"So far we have harnessed approximately 8,000,000 horsepower in this country, thus effecting a saving equivalent to nearly one-third of the entire coal mined. By extensive damming the power derived can be greatly increased, possibly to several hundred million horsepower, giving us more power by far than we have now with all our coal. But this is not the limit.
On the Eve of Great Feats.
"We are on the eve of accomplishments which will be of tremendous consequence to the future advancement of the human race. One of these is the control of the precipitation of moisture.
"The water is evaporated and thus raised against the force of gravity. It is then held in suspension in the vapor which we call clouds. Air currents carry this vapor, hither and yon, often to distant regions, where it may remain for long periods at a height, in a state of delicate suspension.
"When the equilibrium is disturbed the water falls to earth [in the] form of rain and through rills and rivers flows back to the ocean.
"Thus the sun, those heat causes the evaporation, even maintains this life sustaining stream. The energy necessary to cause the precipitation of the rain, compared to that rain’s potential energy when released, is like that of the spark setting off a charge of dynamite compared to the dynamite.
"If this part of the natural process were under the control of man he could transform the entire globe.
”Many schemes have been proposed to this end, none of which have knowledge offering the remotest chance of success.
“But I have ascertained that with proper apparatus this wonder can be performed.
"Any amount of power will then be at our disposal; we can make out of deserts fertile land and create lakes and rivers almost without effort on our part.
"However our triumph would not be complete if the power could not be conveyed to distances without limit. This achievement, to, is now within our reach. With my wireless system it is practicable to transmit electrical energy over a distance of 12,000 miles with a loss not exceeding 5 per cent. I can conceive of no advances which would be more desirable at this time and be more beneficial to the further progress of mankind.”
— (Copyright by Edward Marshall Syndicate, Inc.)
