Wizard

by Marc Seifer

  Today airships create stable platforms for TV sports cameras, advertisers use them because of their unique ability to generate “brand-name recognition,” and the military likes them because they offer singular advantages over the helicopter. They can be used for low-flying rescue missions without creating hazardous turbulence; they can be used to detect the submarine launching of cruise missiles by positioning themselves in a single area for hours or days on end; and they are extremely difficult to locate by ground surveillance. “Why don’t they show on radar?” a recent Popular Mechanics article asks. “Because the Skyship’s gondola is made of Kevlar, the envelope is of polyurethane fiber and it’s filled with helium.

  They all have little or no radar register…The next-generation [air] ships would sip fuel. And they would stay operational for months at a time. As these are developed for military use, it is not too farfetched to predict that airships of the [21st century] may even be used for trans-Atlantic passenger service.”28

  Tesla reveals in his Waldorf-Astoria speech his prophecy of the inevitable development of the jet plane, which would be about as close as he would come to explaining his highly novel and still obscure invention of an airplane that operated much like today’s VTOL “vectored thrust” aircraft. Tesla had played with a number of airship designs since his college days. One of his models, drawn up in 1894, was a traditionally shaped hot air balloon. Inspired by those he had seen at the World Fairs in Paris and Chicago, this dirigible received its continuing supply of heat from a gigantic induction coil that was placed high above the gondola, in the center of the hot-air container.29

  The more recent model, which resembled a gigantic teardrop, took into consideration aerodynamic principles uncovered by such researchers as Leonardo da Vinci, Count von Zeppelin and Lawrence Hargrave, an Australian who, in 1890, fashioned rubber-band powered prop planes which traveled through the air over distances exceeding a hundred yards. This design was schematically prepared in the shape of a conventional airfoil by one of Tesla’s draftsmen in 1908.30

  My airship will have neither gas bag, wings nor propellers…You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and obvious “holes in the air” or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air even in a wind for a great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend on any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action…[Stability will be achieved] through gyroscopic action of my engine…It is the child of my dreams, the product of years of intense and painful toil and research.31

  Tesla’s vehicle had the “reactive jet” placed at its “leading edge,” or bulky end, and the fifty steering escape valves placed at the opposite, “trailing edge,” or tapered end. If fashioned as a lighter-than-air dirigible, the ship would have been modeled, in part, after the work of Henri Giffard, a Frenchman who invented the first dirigible in 1852, as well as Count von Zeppelin, the inventor who had been the first to construct a successful prototype with a rigid metal framework “within the bag.”32 Zeppelin was also one of the first to take into consideration wind resistance; his ships could travel at speeds of more than forty miles per hour.

  A well-designed airfoil can develop “a lift force many times its drag. This allows the wing of an airplane to serve as a thrust amplifier…[If] the thrust is directed horizontally, a vertical lift force large enough to overcome the vehicle’s weight can be developed.”33

  Thus, it appears that Tesla’s reactive-jet prototype could have also been fabricated in a heavier-than-air design. Oliver Chanute, M. Goupil, and O. Lilienthal were other Gay Nineties aeronauts whose patented works Tesla had studied. Naturally, he was also influenced by Samuel Langley and the Wright brothers, both of whom had produced heavier-than-air models that had actually flown.34

  THE HOVERCRAFT

  Another horseshoe crab-shaped VTOL designed by Tesla was called a hovercraft. This vehicle, which resembled a Corvette, placed the powerful turbine horizontally within its center. Operating much like a great fan, the engine created a heavy downdraft which caused the vehicle to rise up and ride along the ground on a layer of air.35 This invention, which apparently worked much like the hovercraft depicted in the original Star Wars film, was the early precursor of the army’s car-sized “aerial jeep,” which “derive[d] its thrust from ducted fans mounted rigidly in the airframe. To fly horizontally, the entire craft [was] tilted slightly [by the leaning motion of the driver].” In 1960, Scientific American could write that “this design is being explored because of its simplicity and…adaptability for flying at very low altitudes.”36

  It is doubtful that Tesla ever constructed any of the heavier-than-air hovercrafts, although he may have built a hydrofoil model to skim over the Hudson. There is no doubt that he also constructed “lighter-than-air” vessels which could be operated by means of remote control.

  Ideas inherent in Tesla’s hovercraft and paramecium-shaped reactive-jet dirigibles evolved into today’s Harrier fighter plane, a supersonic aircraft considered one of the military’s “most potent fighting machines,” and the new, yet-to-be-built Lockheed Martin X-33, which is a lightweight VTOL replacement of the space shuttle having a new experimental engine, the plane itself being shaped like a “flat-flying wing.”37

  The seeds of this technology can also be traced to the work of “A. F. Zahm, a prominent aeronautical engineer who patented [in 1921] an airplane with a wing that would deflect the propeller slipstream to provide lift for hovering.” Although Zahm did not actually construct his plane, his concept, which may have been influenced by Tesla’s work, evolved into the English Hawker, a British fighter developed in the 1960s. This airplane utilized nozzles to deflect a slipstream downward for vertical takeoff or for hovering and horizontally for normal flight. Utilizing “thrust vectoring,” this apparatus became more workable with the development of the Pegasus engine, an extremely powerful turbojet found in the Harrier, which was unyeiled in 1969.38 “From the pilot’s point of view, there is only one extra control in the cockpit: a single [lever] to select the nozzle angle.”39 “AV-8B Harrier: The U.S. Marines’ ground-support jet can take off vertically, hover close to a battlefield and let loose missiles, cluster bombs or smart bombs.”40

  FLYING ON A BEAM OF ENERGY

  Whether or not Tesla was able to perfect his design for aircraft that operated without any fuel—by deriving energy from wireless transmitters—is unknown. This concept, however, has been adopted by the military. In 1987, the New York Times and also Newsweek reported large glider planes “powered without fuel.” Their energy is derived from microwaves beamed up from ground transmitters to large, flat panels of “rectennae” on each wing’s underbelly. These “special antennas, laced with tiny rectifiers that turn alternating current into direct current, power an electric motor to run the craft’s propeller.”41 This concept is also utilized as solar panels onboard spacecraft as well as on solar-powered automobiles.

  The Flivver Plane

  Tesla Designs Weird Craft to Fly Up, Down, Sideways

  Craft Combines Qualities of Helicopter & Plane

  Detailed descriptions were available yesterday of the helicopter airplane, the latest creation of Nikola Tesla, inventor, electrical wizard, experimenter and dreamer.

  It is a tiny combination plane, which, its inventor asserts, will rise and descend vertically and fly horizontally at great speed, much faster than the speed of the planes of today. But despite the feats which he credits to his invention, Tesla says it will sell for something less than $1000.12

  Although this article was written in 1928, Tesla first applied for patents on his new “method of aerial transportation” in 1921.43 Nevertheless, designs for propeller-driven VTOL aircraft dated back even before the turn of the century. One of Tesla’s earliest and most p
rimitive helicopters looked much like a washbasin, with vertical shaft rising from its center. Flailing out, like the skeletons of two umbrellas stacked above one another, were its dual horizontal propellers. This vehicle evolved into the flivver plane, which took off vertically like a helicopter and then flew like a normal airplane, when the propeller and craft were rotated 90 degrees into the horizontal position. The concepts found in Tesla’s flivver plane can be found in another advanced military VTOL aircraft called the V-22 Osprey. In this design, the body of the vehicle resembles a normal military transport plane. It is the propellers, at the ends of each wing, which rotate ninety degrees from the helicopter position, for vertical takeoff, into the normal airplane position for forward flight. Used in the recent war with Iraq (February 1990), this vehicle, like the aerial jeep and VTOL Harrier fighter jet, evolved directly out of Tesla’s designs. As Tesla’s work in aeronautics has never received much publicity, it is quite possible that the military adopted it in secret.

  VTOLs can be grouped into four general categories. The aircraft could be tilted, the thrust could be deflected, the propeller or turbojet engine could be tilted, or a dual propulsion system could be utilized. Bell Labs began constructing propeller-driven VTOLs in the 1940s. Early models included the wing-tilted XC-142A, developed by Vought, Hiller & Ryan, and the X-19 propeller tilted craft, developed by Curtiss & Wright.

  The New Weapons

  Every service has its favorite new weapon, and the Marine Corp’s favorite is the V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that can take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane. Just the craft to ferry Marines quickly and far into the desert, argue its manufacturers, Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. and Boeing Vertol Co…[The vehicle can carry] 24 men and costs $40 million.44

  Tesla’s invention of the helicopter-airplane, which he called the flivver plane. (New York American, February 23, 1928)

  37

  BLADELESS TURBINES (1909-10)

  March 22, 1909

  My dear Col. Astor:

  I was very glad to know from the papers that you have returnedto the city and hasten to tell you that my steam and gas turbine, pump, water turbine, air compressor and propeller have all proved a great success. In the opinion of very competent men these inventions will create an enormous revolution. My gas turbine will be the finest thing in the world for a flying machine because it makes it possible to attain as much as 4 or 5 HP for each pound of weight. I have been hard at work on a design of the flying machine and it is going to be something very fine. It will have no screw propeller or inclined plane, rudder or wane—in fact nothing of the old, and it will enable us to lift much greater weights and propel them in the air with ever so much greater speed than has been possible so far. We are making up an automobile in which these new principles are embodied and I am also designing a locomotive for a railroad and am adapting my new propulsion scheme to one of the biggest Atlantic liners. All this information is confidential. I am merely writing knowing that you will be pleased with my success.

  With kind regards, I am,

  Sincerely yours,

  Nikola Tesla

  With the death of the fragile poet Robert Watson Gilder in November 1909 came the advance in position from associate editor to editor in chief by Robert Underwood Johnson. Numerous dignitaries attended the somber affair, including Mark Twain and the latest rising star in the world of poetry, the twenty-four-year-old “wonder child” George Sylvester Viereck. It was an undesirable way for Luka to gain the promotion, but clearly the trustees had never considered anyone else for the post. Gilder’s passing was yet another tangible sign of the end of an important era for the Century.

  Tesla came over for Christmas dinner, and the discussion drifted to the problems Robert would now have in boosting a steadily declining circulation. In competition with a new crop of plebeian journals, Luka was forced to lower his standards by allowing the introduction of such four letter words as “hell” to grace the Century’s pages.

  Katharine was interested in discussing Sir Oliver Lodge’s recent contention that he had located a medium that had spoken to “dead members of the Society of Psychical Research,” but Tesla thought such form of “wireless communication” poppycock. He was more interested in tearing apart Professor Pickering’s supposition that he could erect a set of mirrors in Texas with $10,000 to signal the Martians.

  “The idea that mirrors might be manufactured which will reflect sunlight in parallel beams, for the time being is beyond our range of ability. But there is one method of putting ourselves in touch with other planets,” Tesla said as the eyes of his hosts lit up once again with the idea of Wardenclyffe. Capital, of course, was the problem, so Tesla began to describe his newest moneymaking scheme; it was his latest invention.2

  Accused of being a visionary and dreamer, the consummate inventor “taxed his powers of concentration in the calm retirement of the night” to cultivate a way to bail himself out.3 Often he would leave his Waldorf suite to walk the streets after hours and cogitate. His favorite sanctum was the colossal hall at Grand Central Station.1 There, in the slumbering chapel, at four in the morning, he could follow the echo of his solitary thoughts down and into the tunnels to where the trains were berthed or up and around the majestic marble staircases which overlooked the vast commuters’ arena and skyward to the starry dome, where the constellations and corresponding mythical gods were painted on the ceiling. This was his grand station for bouncing ideas off Pegasus or Hercules, Virgo, Centaurus, Gemini, Hydra, or Orion. Perhaps Argus (the ship) could provide a clue.

  Wardenclyffe had become his obsession, and unless he was able to resurrect it in toto, he would never feel fulfilled. In-between measures were out of the question. Either he launched the entire edifice, or he would launch none of it. Scherff would visit the plant periodically with his wife, his father, and newborn baby and handle the money on the taxes and salary for Mr. Hawkins, who was retained as a guard.

  But Tesla’s competition had now caught up and in some ways was surpassing, if not replacing his vision. Airplanes and zeppelins were dotting the skies, the powers opposing illuminants without filaments were becoming more entrenched, and wireless transmitters were springing up like mushrooms at the banks of a woodland stream. In January 1908 the French placed a broadcast station atop the Eiffel Tower for the purpose of transmitting messages to Morocco. The director of operations predicted that such impulses “should theoretically go around the world [and] return to the tower.”5 Lee De Forest began to gain momentum in the States and soon began contracting with the government and the millionaires for the erection of “radio-telephones,” which he placed on the roofs of the tallest structures in Manhattan. In 1907 he had aired the voice of Enrico Caruso, who was singing at the Metropolitan Opera House. Most of the listeners were in nearby boats. Concurrently, De Forest had refined a way to boost the speed of Morse-code transmissions. He could now direct telegrams at the astonishing rate of six hundred words per minute.

  “I can confidently predict,” De Forest proclaimed, “that within the next five years, every ship…will be equipped with the wireless telephone…I look forward to the day when by this means, the opera may be brought into every home. Some day, the news and even advertising will be sent out to the public over the wireless telephone.” De Forest went on to criticize Marconi’s devices, which still had not solved the problem of static interference, and predicted that his new system for tuning would eventually become standard.6 The following year, he signed a contract for the “radio wireless” with Bell Telephone and installed operations between Philadelphia and New York.7 Tesla was becoming a footnote to the field, Mr. Boldt hurling his own insult by hiring United Wireless to place two forty-foot wireless transmitters on the roof of the Waldorf and paying them $3,000 for the work.8

  Marconi, however, was still the man of the hour, his name a household word, as the New York Times boasted in every Sunday supplement, a crest banner above their masthead boldly depicting Marconi wireless transmitters traversing con
tinents and seas.

  The Prime Mover

  The Tesla turbine is the apotheosis of simplicity. It is so violently opposed to all precedent that it seems unbelievable.9

  With his wireless “project…evidently far in advance of the times,” Tesla devoted himself “to other inventions which appealed more to practical men. After years of careful thinking, I found that what the world needed most…was an efficient prime mover.” Tesla was referring to his new invention of a powerful and lightweight turbine, one that could be used to replace the gasoline engine in the car, fitted on airplanes, torpedoes, or ocean liners, or converted into a pump for transporting air, solids, or fluids. This remarkable machine could be used to create liquid oxygen or even be placed above incinerators to convert wasted heat into electricity. Born of Dane and Niko’s childhood play with waterwheels in Smiljan, the multifaceted and revolutionary device first became manifest in 1906-07. It was called the bladeless turbine.10

  Latest Marvel From the Monarch of Mechanics

  Frank Parker Stockbridge

  “You have got what Professor Langley was trying to evolve for his flying machine, an engine that will give a horse power for a pound of weight,” I suggested.