Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a Tesla coil?

A Tesla coil is a resonant air core transformer.  It is essentially
a pulse driven oscillator driving a resonant output circuit. In this
manner a Tesla coil is very much like a radio transmitter.
Indeed all early radio transmitters were adaptations of Tesla's design.

2. What can it be used for?

Today there are not many practical uses. You cannot use one for a radio
transmitter as spark transmitters were outlawed in 1934.
They were used in early diathermy machines.
Neon sign makers use a modified form of Tesla coil to check their
newly constructed neon tubes for leaks and other flaws. There just arent that many practical uses.

3. Then why build one?

This is one of the most common questions. Why do you build something
just to make big sparks?  Thats a difficult question to answer.
Go ask a golfer why he plays golf. I build them because I  like to 
construct the needed apparatus and experiment with high voltage.

4. Who was Tesla?

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian born inventor that emigrated to the United States
in 1884. He worked briefly for the Edison Company and later for Westinghouse.
It was with Westinghouse that Tesla fulfilled his life long ambition of harnessing
the power of Niagra Falls. Westinghouse acquired the patent rights for Tesla's
polyphase AC power distribution system that would eventually become industry
standard. Tesla's other achievements include nearly every type of AC motor in
existance as well as flourescent lighting. He pioneered work in radio and robotics 
and remote control. In 1943 the US Supreme Court overturned the radio patents
of Guglielmo Marconi citing Tesla's priority in the field. Tesla invented radio
not Marconi.

5. So why havn't I ever heard of him?

Well some will say it was the government confiscating  Tesla's secret inventions
and conspiring to remove his name from history to cover up the fact. There isn't
a shred of evidence to support such nonsense.

There are many more resonable and provable explanations.

During the 1890s Tesla was nearly a household name. He was often called
"The World's greatest living Electrician". Tesla and the Westinghouse Company
provided a spectacular display at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. His lectures
on electricty were always sold out and attended by some of the worlds best 
known scientists. So what happened?

Tesla preferred to work alone. He mistrusted others that had already taken advantage
of and profitted from his inventions. He began to work in seclusion and moved his
experiments to Colorado Springs in 1899. While he was in Colorado others began
to undermine Tesla's position and stature. A conspiracy of sorts including such individuals
as Michael Puppin, Charles Steinmetz, Thomas Edison and others arose to essentially
rewrite history. The motives were ego, greed and money. Puppin for years claimed that
Tesla's ideas were his own and badgered the patent office who constantly turned him down.
Puppin became a professor at Columbia University and his teachings conveniently never mentioned
Tesla. Charles Steinmetz wrote several electrical engineering texts that never mentioned Tesla
or his work. A whole generation of engineers came on the scene in the early 1900s having never
heard of Tesla. Thomas Edison and the General Electric Company filed suit many times
claiming the polyphase AC system in use was developed by their engineers not Tesla.

Tesla largely ignored these threats and never defended himself against them. His thought
was that once his experiments in Colorado were completed he would astound everyone.

But such was not the case. His attempts to utilize the technology he developed in Colorado
failed. Attempts to get further funding also failed. Tesla spent the better part of the first
decade of the 1900s trying to win investors in his projects. By this time he became
known as a man that promised much and delivered little. It was largely his own fault.

He constantly made grandiose claims to the press about inventions he was working on
and when these inventions never materialized people began to believe the stories about him.
Tesla kept up this game with the press throughout his life. He would often call for a press
conference to announce some startling new discovery. He did this always to attract investors.
As these discoveries never came to fruition people quit listening. He passed out of the public
favor and out of the public eye.

Some will say it was the government that conspired to remove Tesla from history. Not so.
People are always eager to believe in conspiracies. Look at UFOs, Roswell, and so called
alien autopsies.

But it was Tesla himself and some of his contemporaries that did it.

6.Did Tesla cause an explosion in Siberia with his big coil?

I can't believe how many times I've heard this one. The explosion in the Tunguska region
of Siberia on June 30, 1908 was the result of a low density meteorite or comet
impact. The low density of the object allowed it to break up and vaporize before impact.
All that hit the ground was the shock wave. Any one that doubts that such a shock wave could
be resposible for the devastation need only look at the impacts of FRAGMENTS of comet
Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter a couple years ago. In 1991 Italian scientist  Menotti Galli
found meteoric debris imbedded in spruce trees that had survived the 1908 event.

In 1908 Tesla's lab at Wardenclyffe was in disarray. He had no money and Westinghouse
was confiscating equipment for unpaid bills. He could not even afford enough coal to
run the boilers. He could not even pay his hotel bills.  His funding from J. P. Morgan had run
out several years prior and he had used all of his own resources trying to finish the project. 
Unfortunately the plant was never put into operation. So Tesla never had the capability or
the equipment to create the Tunguska event.

7. Where can I find out more about Nikola Tesla?

Be careful about what you read. There is lots of garbage out there concerning
Tesla and his work. Rely on sound works by reliable authors.

A good reference for Tesla's early work with AC and high frequency lighting is:
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla by T.C. Martin.
This contains the text of some of Tesla's famous lectures.

For information about Tesla's lab in Colorado Springs read:
Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900 by Nikola Tesla.
This is Tesla's lab book from Colorado Springs. This is rather technical
and hard to understand sometimes as this was never meant to be published.
In this you can read a day by day account of exactly what was done in the Colorado
Springs lab.

For an excellent biography get Marc Seifer's "Wizard, Biography of a Genius"
This is a great book and an accurate account of Tesla and his work.

The Margaret Chaney biography "Tesla, Man out of Time" is fair but is somewhat
clouded by Chaney's hero worship attitude toward Tesla.

Forget John Oneil's " Prodigal Genuis". It should be classified as fiction.