The Tesla-coil hobbyist community believes they know what constitutes a Magnifying Transmitter. They agree that it's simply a 3-coil tesla coil: a close-coupled transformer driving the ground wire of a free-floating "extra coil." Unfortunately Tesla remained somewhat evasive when revealing details of the Magnifying Transmitter. If the Magnifying Transmitter is not simply a 3-coil Tesla Coil, then what could it be? Well, the Wardenclyffe tower was Tesla's purported Magnifying Transmitter. It differed from all other Tesla coils in two major respects: it contained an extremely extensive grounding system, and the upper main terminal was designed to include some sort of large glass globes, ultraviolet sources. Now notice that the extensive grounding isn't a major break from Tesla's other systems; it's merely a low-resistance, high-power version of earlier examples. Not a revolutionary breakthrough, only a difference in size but not in kind. OK then, what were those large glass globes inside the main terminal? Those don't appear in other Tesla transmitters.
A huge Tesla coil with a glass sphere at the top is a difference in kind. We can speculate: those glass globes were placed there to intentionally ionize the surrounding air. Tesla noted in the CSN that, as his system ran for long periods, operation became more and more enhanced, presumably caused by a very extensive cloud of air-ions developing in the environment surrounding his transmitter. Ionized air is a resistor, therefore an ionized atmosphere would both behave as a huge added capacitance to the main terminal, as well as acting like a large-area VLF radio antenna. Perhaps a sufficiently large ionization region behaves the same as extremely tall balloon-lofted antenna wires? Intentional ionizers could instantly create the ion-cloud he described earlier, or at least keep it controllable and stable. And couldn't the added ionizers be aimed upwards, thus reducing any unwanted resistive ion-paths to ground? If so, then some sort of independently powered ionizers placed inside the main terminal would constitute a novel and unpatented invention: a Magnifying Transmitter rather than just a much larger but otherwise familiar 3-coil tesla coil. Tesla himself stated that the Magnifying Transmitter functioned via conduction and not by "Hertzian" radiation.
For him, radio was an unwanted loss mechanism. His goal was to break down the atmosphere above the tower and so inject kilo-amperes into the Earth and the Ionosphere. Experts seem to assume that this would be done by Maxwell Displacement Current, where the strong e-field from the metal dome might produce a glow-discharge in the near-vacuum many miles above. But instead, could Tesla have been producing direct breakdown; a guided vertical glow discharge many KM tall? More Speculation: perhaps the Magnifying Transmitter optimizes a strange mode of operation Tesla reported in CSN. Tesla did what the contemporary builders of large Tesla coils never do: he carefully designed his devices to prevent any "lightning." He wasn't after impressive streamers, instead he was trying to suppress these. When successful, he observed something unique: some slowly-repeating sudden vertical discharges which produced sounds resembling gunshots. 2 or voltage squared. Double the voltage and you get 4X the net field energy in the surrounding space. If a coil is in full operation without streamers, then when the air does finally break down, there should be a brief discharge of "inconceivable violence" and of unusual length. A conductive streamer of unusual length will spoil the coil's resonance, essentially "discharging" the stored oscillation and requiring a relatively long time to again build up high AC voltage. Electrostatic Machine, depositing DC charge into the air.
When a reporter suggested that such a boat might be made to carry an explosive charge and used as a weapon of war, Tesla grew angry. Tesla sits in his laboratory while his lightning strikes around him in this trick photograph. Tesla's experiments with radio convinced him it was possible to send not only electrical signals through the air, but power. Conditions for this would be best at high altitudes where the air was thin. Knowing this, Tesla's patent lawyer and friend Leonard E. Curtis, suggested that Tesla might set up a new laboratory near mile-high Colorado Springs, Colorado. Curtis owned part of the El Paso Power Company located there and could get him free electricity for his experiments. Tesla spent a year at the site in Colorado testing and experimenting with his "resonate transformer." The results convinced him it was possible to send power through the air. In the spring of 1900 he packed up his Colorado laboratory and returned to the East coast, determined to bring the world a new way to get electrical power. Copyright Lee Krystek 2002. All Rights Reserved.