Eternal Gardens Journal

Living stories shaped by conversations with our personas

Tesla Notes 20: The Bladeless Turbine and the Valvular Conduit

Discs that drink the steam, a channel with no moving part that refuses to flow backward, the Hotel New Yorker years, and the last page of the notebook.

Tesla's disc turbine and valve worked by hand, tested against 2021 measurements, and the end of his story: 1943, John G. Trump and Belgrade.

Tesla Notes 19: Wardenclyffe and the World System (1901 to 1917)

Morgan's money, Stanford White's laboratory, a tower crowned with a sphere sixty-eight feet across, and the arithmetic of how much charge it could hold.

Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower: why the terminal was huge and smooth (E = V/r, C = 4πε₀r), Marconi in 1901, and an honest verdict on wireless power.

Tesla Notes 18: The Stationary Waves of July 3 (Colorado Springs, 1899)

A storm walks east across the plains, my relay counts its nodes, and I spend five years deciding what was holding the waves still.

Tesla's night of 3 July 1899: the receding storm, his stationary waves, the 6 Hz of patent 787,412, and why Schumann's 7.83 Hz is a near-miss.

Tesla Notes 17: The Magnifying Transmitter (Colorado Springs, 1899)

A barn on a plateau, a coil fifteen metres across, a free coil standing on a driven one, and the long work of finding its pitch.

Tesla's 1899 Colorado Springs notebook: the extra coil as a quarter wave, why a ball on top lowers its pitch, and three ways he measured capacity.

Tesla Notes 15: Niagara, and the Fire on Fifth Avenue (1893 to 1896)

The egg that stands at Chicago, a laboratory lost to fire, shadows through forty feet, and the wheel at Niagara sending its power twenty-six miles to Buffalo.

Tesla's notebook, 1893 to 1896: why Niagara ran at 25 periods, why 11,000 volts saved the copper, and what a fire takes from an inventor and what it leaves.

Tesla Notes 14: One Wire and No Wire (London, 1892)

London and Paris, 1892: a lamp lit through one wire and a hanging plate, Faraday's chair, Rayleigh's praise, a mother's death, and a sorrowful visit to Hertz.

Tesla's 1892 notebook: why a plate in the air can close a circuit, how to keep a terminal from brushing, and the storm that set his course for life.

Tesla Notes 13: Light Without Wires (Columbia College, 1891)

A tube lit in empty air between two hanging sheets, and the arithmetic that says why frequency makes the impossible lamp easy.

Tesla's 1891 Columbia lecture: how an alternating electric field lights an exhausted tube, why only the field along it counts, and why frequency matters.