right now we're wandering through what's
basically an
archaeological site and what's being dug
up
is a lost laboratory the last standing
lab of inventor
and futurist nikola tesla well i'll walk
you into what is the
front of his laboratory this lab was
supposed to be the proving ground for
tesla's most ambitious idea
a wireless power and telecommunications
system
he imagined the construction of a global
network of towers that would electrify
the world
without wires so this was the grandiose
front door okay so clearly that didn't
happen
but this just goes on and on it's
amazing
but the thing tesla was chasing
ubiquitous wireless electricity
physicists and engineers are still
chasing it today
and making tantalizing progress so
was tesla onto something here
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the list of nikola tesla's inventions
and contributions is staggering
he invented induction motors and the
first hydroelectric power plant
he's responsible for our use of
alternating current power and he's one
of the fathers of radio communication
his patents number in the hundreds and
then there's
this curiosity the tesla coil
it's a clever bit of machinery that
functioned as a sort of tech demo
it helped tesla show that wireless power
transfer was very possible
the inner workings of this thing get
complicated fast so we're not going to
go too deep
at its most basic a tesla coil takes in
electricity with high current
and transforms it into high voltage this
creates a changing magnetic field that
can induce an electric field in a nearby
object
say like a light bulb so when i bring
this fluorescent bulb within range
the current excites the gas and
voila an led works differently but the
result
is the same in this case a little
electric field is generated between the
prongs of the light
and it powers on as if it were plugged
in
as a source of wireless power a tesla
coil isn't really practical
one that's big enough to power say a
room full of lights might induce a nasty
current in you
it also demonstrates one of the
limitations of wireless power transfer
as you move away from the power source
the strength of the field drops off very
quickly
every time you double the distance the
field drops off by a power of six
and that's an issue of physics there's
really no getting around it
tesla didn't fully understand his
invention the way we do now
no one at the time did but when he saw
the result
it was enough to start him thinking much
much bigger
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this was the stage for tesla's ambitions
a lab on long island known as
wardencliff
it's not much to look at now but in 1901
tesla scraped enough money together to
build a massive tower
this octagon right here is where the
tower once stood almost
57 meters high the structure showcased
some of the same technology as the tesla
coil
and it was supposed to replicate the
tesla coil's party trick too
so he envisioned building a very large
structure
that could transmit power to an entire
city
and you wouldn't have wired power or
even
metered power you simply would have
power
brian field is a physicist and professor
at farmingdale state college
he gave us the full rundown of the
tower's proposed functions
he also envisioned being able to power
boats at sea
and be able to uh power things in flight
and on top of that he wanted the same
system to be able to broadcast
information all these plans hinged on
tesla's belief that both the ground and
the sky
were good conductors of electricity
basically that electricity could be
transported
through them so he imagined a network of
towers some
zapping power into the ground and some
pulling it back up for local use
the towers might also shoot electricity
through the air like lightning
lighting up cities from the sky and
powering airplanes
they'd even one-up radio transmissions
of the time by sending text and images
like early fax machines
he just needed more towers and money he
had
already drawn up plans to start to build
another one outside of glasgow
and another one in newfoundland as a way
of transmitting data across the atlantic
so what would have happened if tesla
threw the lever and brought his
invention online
so tesla was an unarguably a brilliant
person
but he was also very much a product of
his time
and there was a few things that was
missing from his scientific knowledge
we now know that the earth and the sky
are not good conductors
in fact they're good insulators of
electricity
that means the tower itself was
predicated on faulty science
and doomed for failure which gazing back
from the year 2020
seems obvious you have to understand
that
this structure was built before it was
commonly accepted that there were atoms
let alone to understand how conductors
worked
at a molecular level that was all a
complete mystery to scientists of the
time
brian looks back on the whole enterprise
a little more charitably
i think it's much more an example of of
somebody who was
who was building on good ideas of the
time and didn't know what he didn't know
and that was what was the shortcoming
here
it's been more than 100 years since
tesla's efforts at warden cliff
yet when it comes to electricity we
still live in a profoundly wired world
that universal blanket of power that
tesla envisioned still hasn't arrived
why well one reason is that our
technology has changed but the behavior
of electric and magnetic fields
in hasn't power and transfer distance i
think
that we are limited by physics now
we don't know this moment now
chris me researches wireless power at
san diego state
he says that while we're stuck with the
laws of physics upgrades and materials
and other technology has led to real
progress
one result is the wireless cell phone
charger the physics in play
aren't so different from our tesla coil
demo and the transfer distance is modest
but it's practical and reasonably
efficient things that were out of reach
for tesla
but we used the same series now why
didn't he make it well we couldn't make
it work today
the reason because he didn't have the
material we have whether it's these
wires ferrite that can use intensive
field
secondly he didn't have the device to
generate a high frequency
electrical power chris and others are
looking to scale the technology further
to charge
say an electric car it could drive onto
a charging pad in your garage or even
charge while you're at a rest stop in
the middle of a road trip
other techniques have allowed
researchers to do safely what a tesla
coil can't
power small devices at room scale
distances using magnetic fields though
there are still trade-offs
in this case the entire room needs to be
outfitted with a metal skeleton
for even greater distances you need a
medium other than electromagnetic fields
there's been a bunch of development
around beaming energy using
ultrasound microwaves or lasers chris
thinks these techniques have merit
but largely for low power applications
efficiency
is the boogeyman here because energy is
wasted in its translation from one
carrier
to another considering the efficiency of
this microwave
so air uh where's the laundry stairs and
you you
if you want to receive hundreds of
kilowatts you'll be needing megawatts of
power and to transfer
and it's transfer station and you will
be generating
a huge amount of loss which becomes some
sort of heat
this all adds up to something less than
tesla's wireless power vision
it's scattered niche progress a fine
tuning of techniques
a narrowing of applications not a
rebirth of the way we use
power that's more of a tesla thing i
think normal people like
myself you know my mystery and my
colleagues we're doing
uh the work where we are we're sitting
on the shoulders of these
giants i'm working just a little bit
incremental here and there
tesla is different he's the one
transferring
the world that's the big difference
so what ultimately happened at wharton
cliff and to tesla
the tower was sold for scrap in 1917 and
tesla was forced to move on
tesla had some very large achievements
early in life
and to make a metaphor he always made
big swings
right and he continued to make big
swings in his life he just never quite
connected the way he did when he was
younger
and eventually he was in his own
lifetime somewhat forgotten
and eventually passed away living in a
new york city hotel
but of course tesla's legacy looks
totally different today
his work on ac power has helped define
the past century
he has a unit of magnetic induction and
a very flashy car company named in his
honor
he's a hero among physicists and
engineers around the world he is a hero
i i i don't think you know other than
maybe einstein
and who else has surpassed him
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and even though we still have to wire
our light bulbs he got one prediction
right on the money
wireless communication it's hard not to
wonder what else he'd dream up
if he only knew what we know now i think
he'd be happy that we do have access to
text and photos instantaneously from all
over the world
but what i'd really like to think about
tesla is he'd be thinking about what
comes next
and that's what i'd really like to ask
him about not what he thinks about today
but what he thinks about our tomorrow
hey everyone thanks for watching we'd
like to give a special shout out to the
folks at the tesla science center who
allowed us to visit warden cliff
right now they are restoring the lab and
if you'd like updates on that project
the link can be found in the description
below