The True Story of Tesla’s Greatest Discovery Radiant Matter (an excerpt from Gerry Vassilatos book: Nicola Tesla and Radiant Energy, audio book)

In 1889, Nikola Tesla attempted the reproduction of these Hertzian experiments. Tesla began experimenting with abrupt and powerful electric discharges, using oil filled mica capacitors charged to very high potentials. This capacitor “battery” was charged to very high voltages, and subsequently discharged through short copper bus-bars. He found it possible to explode thin wires with these abrupt discharges.

They propelled very sharp shockwaves, which struck him with great force across the whole front of his body. Of this surprising physical effect, Tesla was exceedingly intrigued. After this brief surge, currents flowed smoothly and evenly as designed. The sudden quick closure of the switch brought a penetrating shockwave throughout the laboratory, one which could be felt both as a sharp pressure and a penetrating electrical irritation. A “sting”. Face and hands were especially sensitive to the explosive shockwaves, which also produced a curious “stinging” effect at close range. Tesla believed that material particles approaching the vapor state were literally thrust out of the wires in all directions. In order to better study these effects, he poised himself behind a glass shield and resumed the study.

Tesla devised a new series of experiments to measure the shockwave pressure from a greater distance. Whatever had been released from the wires during the instant of switch closure, successfully penetrated the shields of glass and of copper. It made no difference, the effect permeated each substance as if the shield were not there at all. Projected electrostatic charges normally spread out over the surface of metallic shield, they do not penetrate metal. This effect had certain very non-electrical characteristics. Tesla was truly mystified by this strange new phenomenon, and searched the literature for references to its characteristics. No such reference was found, except in the surreptitious observations of two experimenters.

In one case, Joseph Henry observed the magnetization of steel needles by a heavy spark discharge. The extraordinary feature of this observation (1842) lay in the fact that the Leyden Jar, whose spark apparently produced the magnetizations, stood on the upper floor of an otherwise electrically tmpervious building. Brick walls, thick oak doors, heavy stone and iron flooring, tin ceilings. Moreover, the steel needles were housed in a vault in the cellar. How did the spark affect such a change through such a natural barrier? Dr. Henry believed that the spark had released special “light-like rays”, and these were the penetrating agencies responsible for the magnetizations.

A second such account (1872) occurred in a high school building in Philadelphia Elthu Thomson, a physics instructor, sought to make the sparks of a large Ruhmkorrf inductor more visible for his next lecture. Attaching one pole of the coil to a cold water pipe, and reactivating the coil, Thomson was thrilled to find that the nature of the spark had changed from blue to white. Wishing to amplify this effect, Thomson attached the other pole to a large metal tabletop. Again reactivating the coil produced a shrieking silver-white spark, entirely visible to any who sat in the last row.

Wishing to show this to a colleague, Edwin Houston, Thomson made for the door and was abruptly stopped. Touching the brass knob on the otherwise insulated oak door, Thomson received an unexpected sizzling shock. Turning off the Ruhmkorrf Coil, Thomson found it possible to stop the effect. Calling for Edwin, he summarized what had occurred. Then turning the unit back on again, the stinging charge effects returned. The two gentlemen ran throughout the huge stone, oak, and iron building with insulated metal objects now. Each touch of a penknife or screwdriver to anything metallic, however distant from the coil or insulated from the floor, produced long and continuous white sparks. The account was written up as a short article in Scientific American later in the same year.