For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1924 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:32 pm Post subject: Link
Very good. Just what I'm looking for. Thank You! _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
Joined: Apr 04, 2004 Posts: 578 Location: Western US
Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 1:43 am Post subject:
I don't think we have any physicists or electronics engineers up to the task on this board....
I don't want to encroach into the conspiracy theory stuff either. Yeah HAARP probably does use it but, there's nothing I can do about it even if the technology does have the effects mentioned by various people.
My larger point, although no one bit on it, to some degree paralleled JohnDenvers Beam it Down thread. On the other hand if the technique mentioned actually works and the utility companies decided to go with a hard wired system to facilitate billing then they may soon change their minds due to the rising cost to mine copper.
As mentioned before mining for metals is a very energy intensive process. We move about 11 million tons a month for 23,000 tons of copper, a ratio of about 478:1. Energy cost have driven the cost per pound up about $0.30 over the summer which fortuitously (for me anyway) matched the rising price due to demand. To prognosticate, that won't break the bank but as this recession (if we are at the start) deepens the demand for copper will go down and, in the end copper will almost certainly reach a point where it is too costly to use as a common conductor for electricity due to rising energy cost. Barring the thirteen other minerals, everything from sulfur to molly to gold, another twenty cent rise in cost would make my current place of employment unprofitable. Seventy dollars a barrel and a rise in electricity should do it.
Supposing on a medium to soft landing, sucking electrons out of the air, as per Tesla, may be the only feasible way to transmit power; that is if it can be done and done safely.
Could be that I place too much emphasis on raw materials since consumerism will probably take a dive anyway. To give a better idea of the meger amount of metal in the ore, here's an average assay. Ore grading 0.67% Cu, 0.027% Mo, 0.29g/t Au and 3.02g/t Ag, note the decimal points.
Anyway, here's a good account of what I was talking about. Is it myth or fact?
"I was observing stationary (standing) waves.... Impossible as it seemed, this planet, despite its vast extent, behaved like a conductor of limited dimensions. The tremendous significance of this fact in the transmission of energy by my system had already become quite clear to me. Not only was it practicable to send telegraphic messages to any distance without wires, as I recognized long ago, but also to impress upon the entire globe the faint modulations of the human voice, far more still, to transmit power, in unlimited amounts to any terrestrial distance and almost without loss."
Is that what you were looking for EE? _________________ You observed it from the start
Now you’re a million miles apart
As we bleed another nation
So you can watch you favorite station
Now you eyes pop out your sockets
Dirty hands and empty pockets
Who? You!
c.o.c.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 2:54 am Post subject:
I think there's also a website out there for "The Tesla Society" or some such.
Anyway, the guy was quite the genius. Gave us the polyphase AC system, and fractional horsepower electric motors. Those were the two big ones, there were many smaller ones.
For example a type of centrifugal pump that reles on two plain discs spaced a critical distance apart on the axle, with no "vanes" of the type normally found on the rotors in a pump. This is supremely efficient at handling viscuous liquids, and is commonly used in sewage treatment and chemical processing applications.
The guy would do all of his engineering design by visualization, and then instruct his technicians to build stuff based on the "blueprints" he kept in his head. And it worked. Today we routinely expect something similar (though perhaps to a lesser degree) from architects & engineers as a matter of routine, i.e. it's expected that people should be able to visualize in their design process. But when Tesla was doing it, it was considered a rare talent, because it was not something people were expected or taught to use.
Tesla's name is still around as a commercial brand. I have on my desk a telephone made in Czechoslovakia in 1969, and the nameplate on the bottom says Tesla in a circle with a waveform that peaks above the letter S.
As far as broadcast power is concerned, I don't find the idea particularly crazy; conceptually it's nothing more than scaling up what already occurs with radio transmission, the application of the principle of resonance, to in essence turn the earth/sky into a great big capacitor.
Problem is, it would be an ecological nightmare. It would at minimum transfer vast amounts of energy to the atmosphere, or at least to the clouds and other moisture present in the atmosphere (i.e. not all the energy going in, comes out: some of it is dissipated by the transmitting medium in the form of heat, much as with copper wires, but distributed throughout the particulates and moisture in the atmosphere). It would thereby have unforeseeable effects on weather and probably on long term climate. It would certainly interfere with the magnetic component of bird migrations (which in turn affect bird population distributions, which in turn affect insect pest populations, which in turn affect the human food supply and infectious disease propagation). It might have other effects on various plant and animal species, including humans. So while Tesla gets points for having thought of it, it's not something we'd want to do.
Broadcast power might be something we want to use on a very limited scale for localized applications, e.g. continuous slow recharge of the batteries on a search-and-rescue robot in an inaccessible space, or something like that. But the need would have to be sufficient to justify the potential ambient hazards. [/b]
Joined: Apr 04, 2004 Posts: 578 Location: Western US
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2004 7:42 am Post subject:
Thanx gg,
I knew someone had the knowledge. To bad about the atmospheric effects, a life without overheads could be beneficial in many ways. _________________ You observed it from the start
Now you’re a million miles apart
As we bleed another nation
So you can watch you favorite station
Now you eyes pop out your sockets
Dirty hands and empty pockets
Who? You!
c.o.c.
I read all those links.. seems lie TESLA invention was 20 times more efficient. Why dont we do any of the things he purposed... or at least re-create some of his inventions??
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:56 am Post subject:
Yamaha, which Tesla invention was 20x more efficient than what?
And yes, there are people who are resurrecting various of his inventions.
If I'm not mistaken there is another motor design that didn't go into commercial production at the time, but would be promising for various reasons (presumably efficiency) today. I recall folks in our R&D org talking about "the Tesla motor" at one point, and something else to do with an AC generator that could be adapted to wind turbines and produce a stable output more efficiently than the present mainstream technologies allow.
As far as the resurrecting of old inventions is concerned, consider that A.G. Bell also invented the hydrofoil, but the attention paid to the telephone kept him busy enough that the hydrofoil didn't get too far for well over 50 years. Presently it is becoming a standard in terms of increased efficiency of ferries and similar ships.
So I suspect that there is a lot of interesting technology out there in inventors' notebooks, that has not yet become commercialized, but could if the market conditions are right.
Joined: Oct 04, 2004 Posts: 244 Location: the Village
Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 7:57 am Post subject: re:
Okay, it's not online now....... The site is there, they don't seem to have updated their catalogue - you can still fill a form out on the page tho' and get the latest catalogue sent out, free.
loads of it is conspiracy stuff, and loads more (which some of you may be into anyway) but there are plenty of videos and books just about inventions and the science behind it.
Joined: May 23, 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Sydney, Australia
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 12:00 pm Post subject:
You have to admit, that Tesla guy was one smart cookie. Too bad he went to the financial powers that be for extra money! Even the best make mistakes sometimes.
"In Search of Long Distance Hydro-Electric Transmission
The Niagara Falls Power Company offered a $100,000 prize for anyone who could develop a method to transmit electricity long distance. No one responded to this offer. A world wide search began. A think tank of the worlds most brightest minds met in London, England.
Younger geniuses favoured alternating current while the elders favored direct current.
Against the advice of Thomas Edison and William Kelvin, alternating electrical current was selected as the standard to be used.
Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia in 1856.
Tesla created an effective alternating current (AC) transmission system that would be adapted worldwide. George Westinghouse, a American inventor and manufacturer began development of Tesla's system.
In 1883, Westinghouse created an illumination system for Niagara Falls using AC current.
On May 6th 1893, the Cataract Construction Company decided to use alternating current (AC) for power generation and transmission."
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