Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1894 — Tesla’s Marvelous Invention. [ARTICLE]

Tesla’s Marvelous Invention.

Tesla’s latest invention, the “oscillator,” is one of the most remarkable appliances of the age. It is described as being the core of a steam engine, and the core of a dynamo combined/ making a harmonious mechanical adjustment. This combination, says an enthusiastic admirer, constitutes a machine which has in it the potentiality of reducing to the rank of old bell metal half the machinery at present moving on the face of the globe. 11 may come to do the entire work of the engines of an ocean steamship within a small part of the space they occupy, and at a fraction cf their cost, both of construction and operation. It will do this work without jar or pounding and will reduce to a minimum the risk of derangement or breakage. There is nothing in the whole range of mechanical construction, from railway loco motives to stamp mills, which such an invention may not revolutionize. The essential characteristic of the machine is the application of the pressure of steam to produce an extremel rapid vibration of a bar of steel or piston, which, in turn, is so adapted to a set of magnets that the mechanical energy of the vibration is converted into electricity. The extraordinary result isdhatpractiual-~ an absolutely constant vibration is established ami a power is obtained greatly beyond that obtainable in the most costly expansion engines using a similar amount of steam.

Besides saving in mechanical friction the 35 per cent of loss»jn in the working of the engine, the 15 per cent of loss by belt friction and the 10 per cent wasteful in the dynamo, making altogether an addition of 60 per cent. to the available energy obtained from steam for the purpose of producing electricity, it is simpler, smaller and lighter than the mechanism it is intended to replace, absolutely constant in its action, automatically regulated and subject to thejleast possible amount of wear and tear. The utilization of this machine in any branch of industry would result in an appreciable lowering of the cost of production, and it is quite possible that its first general employment may be in electric lighting. In the face of this marvelous invention a recent statement of Tesla seems hardly no longer visionary. The young Montenegrin said: “I expec| to live to be able to set a machine in the middle of this room and move it by no other agency than the energy of the medium in motion around us."