A man out of time
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Sounds like an interesting read. What's the name of it, "Life of Nikola Tesla"?
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! A post a day, keeps the white coats away!
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Uh... The photos were double exposures for the WOW factor. As for the static racket, data is passed on electrical wires all the time, wireless power through the AIR would not be a huge issue. However, until the end Tesla said that the wireless power that he transmitted was through GROUND waves.
WolfManDragon wrote:
data is passed on electrical wires all the time, wireless power through the AIR would not be a huge issue.
How do you figure? The electrical field around a single wire through air is relatively weak (which is why motors & generators require multiple coils around ferrous materials). The field strength required just to send a communication signal is larger by an order of magnitude (otherwise - ignoring cable TV for the moment -, the field generated by a power cord would obliterate your TV signal). Multiply that again by several orders of magnitude to get a field strong enough to resonate a receiver strongly enough to be of practical use in power transmission. The wireless power transmission systems currently under development are only practical due to using a model of low power consumption devices (like portable music players) and continuous charging in a very confined field (requiring surface contact or very close to).
WolfManDragon wrote:
Tesla said that the wireless power that he transmitted was through GROUND waves.
I may be betraying a level of ignorance here, but doesn't the inherent lack of directionality in ground transmission incur high loss? I can accept the theoretical possibility of ground transmission but can't imagine a practical application for such a lossy transmission system.
T-Mac-Oz "When I'm ruler of the universe ... I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I'm just as frustrated as you are. It turns out to be a non-trivial problem." - Linus Torvalds
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WolfManDragon wrote:
data is passed on electrical wires all the time, wireless power through the AIR would not be a huge issue.
How do you figure? The electrical field around a single wire through air is relatively weak (which is why motors & generators require multiple coils around ferrous materials). The field strength required just to send a communication signal is larger by an order of magnitude (otherwise - ignoring cable TV for the moment -, the field generated by a power cord would obliterate your TV signal). Multiply that again by several orders of magnitude to get a field strong enough to resonate a receiver strongly enough to be of practical use in power transmission. The wireless power transmission systems currently under development are only practical due to using a model of low power consumption devices (like portable music players) and continuous charging in a very confined field (requiring surface contact or very close to).
WolfManDragon wrote:
Tesla said that the wireless power that he transmitted was through GROUND waves.
I may be betraying a level of ignorance here, but doesn't the inherent lack of directionality in ground transmission incur high loss? I can accept the theoretical possibility of ground transmission but can't imagine a practical application for such a lossy transmission system.
T-Mac-Oz "When I'm ruler of the universe ... I'm working on it, I'm working on it. I'm just as frustrated as you are. It turns out to be a non-trivial problem." - Linus Torvalds
Because of the random magnetic induction created by the power cord, not a phased (not the Star Trek "phased") power transmission. IP's in Europe actually send data over the power lines as well a wireless transmission of data from many meter bases back to the power provider. Yes there would be issues like static discharges, high loss and probably many things I havn't thought of. I did not make my statement clear, what I was trying to make clear was that interference would not be a huge issue. Tesla actually used wireless transmission in his lab, so it is practical at least on the small scale.
