Tesla: Science Contrarian review (STEP 2)

Reviewer role: Science Contrarian. Date 2026-10-08. Standard: judge by experimental evidence, separate "tested and failed" from "never properly tested" from "dismissed without testing", examine how claims were rejected, build the strongest honest case, and apply the same rigour to Tesla and his advocates as to his critics. Tags: [read] = from a document in the folder or the Investigator's saved files (I re-read the passages named); [web] = Internet source with URL; [memory] = recalled, with confidence; [calc] = my arithmetic.

Inputs used: facts.json, claims.md, all deep/ notes, sites.md "Leads for review", research/ notes, and in research/files/ the Colorado Springs Notes (CSN, 1978 ed.), the 1904 Electrical World article, the 1916 interview (Anderson 1992), Hoya and Guha 2009 and the two Corum papers. Passages I read myself: CSN 3-4 July 1899 entry; the full 1904 article; US 787,412 opening (Complete Patents text); the Coil patent, voltage-gain, Thermodynamics2, Hayes and patent deep notes (relied on, spot-checked as noted).

Source gap statement. The primary gap named in claims.md is now partly closed (CSN and the 1904 article are in research/files/). Still not seen by anyone: the Allis-Chalmers (Dahlstrand) report itself, Richards's test log, Trump's 1943 report, the Eyring Corp. raw traces, any Tesla record of "teleforce", the 1931 car/"cosmic energy" apparatus. Conclusions on those rest on a secondary quotation each, named below.

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Summary of verdicts

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Corrections to Step 1 (and to the Investigator)

Each item names the document and passage, gives the evidence, and says what changes.

1. claims.md "Source gap" and claim 1 (3 July 1899). The Investigator already notes the gap is closed. I add: the observation is not in a "3 July" entry. In the CSN the 3 July 1899 entry is circuit data (15 jars a side, 0.0225 mfd, secondary one mile of No. 10 wire); the storm observation is under the heading "Colorado Springs, July 4, 1899": "Observations made last night" [read: CSN 1978 ed., djvu text lines ~2640-2700]. Cite it as the 4 July entry describing the night of 3 July. The 1904 article (Electrical World, 5 March 1904) dates the experience "the third of July".
2. The diary and the 1904 article describe the apparatus differently. Diary: "An instrument (rotating 'coherer') was connected to ground and a plate above ground ... a condenser was used to magnify the effects"; the relay "played"; a bell and a small spark gap also responded; the sensitivity was repeatedly re-adjusted ("rendered more delicate, in fact very considerably so") during the evening [read: CSN]. 1904: a receiving transformer with "a highly sensitive, self-restorative device, controlling a recording instrument", recording "properly adjusted" [read: 1904 article]. The two are not the same account of the set-up. Step 1 summarises only the 1904 version. Both facts bear on claim 1c (below).
3. Diary wording on reflection. Tesla says reflection from the opposite point of the Earth would be "difficult to believe ... though it may be possible", and prefers the strike point as a nodal point (Investigator is right). But the 1904 article then says "Impossible as it seemed, this planet ... behaved like a conductor of limited dimensions" and sends power "to any terrestrial distance". The diary does not support the antipodal generalisation; that step appears first in print in 1904 and (as filed 16 May 1900, renewed 1902) in US 787,412 [read: patent opening: "the earth ... does not behave ... as a conductor of limited dimensions" is stated as the old belief to be overturned; stationary waves are cited as the proof]. Note the patent was filed 10 months after the storm night; it therefore rests on the same single observation.
4. claims.md claim 1, "a 0.04 uF, 50 kV, 230-250 kHz model plant ... the only quantitative circuit". Verified in US 645,576 (deep note) and I add a consistency check not in Step 1: 0.04 uF charged to 50 kV stores E = 1/2 C V^2 = 0.5 x 4e-8 x (5e4)^2 = 50 J; at "five thousand times per second" breaks, if every discharge were full that is 250 kW average [calc]. The patent gives no power figure, no efficiency and no lamp count. Either the condenser was not charged to 50 kV at every break, or the break rate and power were different from what the text implies. Flag, not a finding of error.
5. claims.md claim 1 lists patents 787,412 and 1,119,732 as sources, but the patent deep read covers 645,576 to 685,956 only (the recommended read of pp.407-448 was not done). I read the opening of 787,412 myself (lines ~43773-43830 and ~44097 of the extracted text). Its "thousands of times greater" and "many tens of thousands of horse-power" are resonant rise (V times I in a high-Q circuit), see Tesla's 1916 explanation below; 1,119,732 was not read by me.
6. Investigator note on "18 million horsepower". Correct and important: the 1916 interview says the Colorado "activities" were capacitor discharges "in an inconceivably small interval" and that an undamped wave "gives you only ... 1 kilowatt and nothing more" [read: tesla-1916-on-his-work-with-AC_djvu.txt lines ~3895-3915 as quoted in research/2026-10-08-archive-org.md]. The 1904 article's "ten million horse-power ... of which one per cent is amply sufficient to girdle the globe" is the same kind of peak-activity number [read: 1904 article p.3]. 18 million hp is 13.4 GW [calc]; a 0.0225 uF condenser at 50 kV holds about 28 J [calc], so 13 GW could last only about 2 ns. These are peak, reactive-style numbers, not energy delivered or net power. Any file (including Valone/Nichelson readings) that treats them as net output should say so.
7. Hayes digest errors, Cairns, voltage-gain, Fuelless, Valone unit slip, Illusions Fig. 7, Mars article, FBI statements, Lindemann, names. I spot-checked three of the listed corrections against the deep notes and the saved files and agree: voltage-gain (0.18 and 0.97 are measured, I re-derived 25,000 and 14,000 and 9.46 = 5.39/0.57), Nichelson's Thermodynamics2 omission of Tesla's "continuous pumping" sentence (I re-read the deep note's quotation), Hayes Table 1/Table 2 steam-rate arithmetic (5,481/102.8 = 53.3; 2,700/77 = 35.1). I did not re-check the rest.
8. Investigator "Corum and Corum" stake. The Corums' receiver reconstruction is described as measured behaviour; I read the text of the receivers paper: it claims "remarkable gain" from injected negative resistance and says the receivers were "more than adequate" to detect natural RF [read: corum-tesla-colorado-springs-receivers.pdf]. It is a reconstruction of the receiver, not a replication of the 3 July observation. Keep the two separate in later files.
9. Hackaday/Viziv. The Wikipedia Zenneck-wave page does not discuss Norton or whether practical antennas excite Zenneck waves (my web check returned nothing on that); do not cite it for either. See Claim 1 on what rests on [memory].

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Claim 1. Earth-coupled resonant transmission to any distance, "almost without loss", by conduction

Strongest honest case for Tesla

• It is an experimentally motivated claim, not a purely theoretical one. In CSN he records a receiver (ground plus elevated plate, condenser, coherer and relay) that responded to lightning at 80-100 miles, went silent, and then "all of a sudden ... began again to play", repeating at about half-hour intervals when the storm was "at a distance greater than 200 miles at least" [read: CSN 4 July 1899 entry]. He reasoned: if a source is moving at near-constant speed and the receiver passes through maxima and minima, that is a spatial interference pattern. This is a testable inference, and he made it from data, in his notebook, before the patent was filed.
• The mechanism he proposed was partly vindicated. The earth plus the conducting upper atmosphere is a resonant cavity (Schumann resonances at about 7.83, 14.1, 20.3 Hz [web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances]). The editor of the CSN (Marincic, a stakeholder: the Tesla Museum published the book) quotes J. R. Wait (IEEE Trans. Commun., April 1974) and J. D. Jackson that Tesla's idea of the earth as a resonating circuit, with a lowest frequency near 6 Hz, anticipated this [read, via research/2026-10-08-archive-org.md; I did not see Wait or Jackson myself]. Tesla's estimate (6, 18, 30 Hz per Marincic) is close to the measured modes; he also guessed at the importance of the conducting upper air, which became the ionosphere. Very-low-frequency waves do travel 5,000-20,000 km with about 2-3 dB per 1,000 km loss [web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_frequency]. Lightning sferics are used for long-range lightning location [same page]. His receiver was, in effect, a VLF sferic detector, an application the Corums trace to him [read: Corum receivers paper].
• Patent 787,412 has 431 citing patents including MIT/WiTricity resonant non-radiative transfer and CPG/Viziv's guided-surface-wave filings [read: research/2026-10-08-google-patents.md]. The ideas are live in current patent practice; whether they work at a distance is another question (below).
• Tesla's candour in the notebook is real: he calls antipodal reflection "difficult to believe". His 1916 testimony also separates peak "activity" from average power. These are not the habits of a man hiding the weakness of his case.

Questions a-d

a. Mathematics internally consistent? The quarter-wave rule and worked example in US 645,576 are consistent (185,000 mi/s over 925 Hz = 200 mi, quarter = 50 mi [read: deep note, rechecked]). The model-plant resonance is consistent: f = 1/(2 pi sqrt(LC)) with L = 10 uH, C = 0.04 uF gives 252 kHz against the stated 230-250 kHz [calc]. The CSN estimates (e.g. secondary of 5 x 10^7 cm inductance, 1080 cm capacitance giving about 12 kHz) are internally arithmetic, though the diary text is OCR-garbled and I did not recompute them. Three weak points: (i) the 645,576 energy figures (50 J per break, 250 kW if repeated 5,000/s [calc]) are never reconciled with any stated power; (ii) the claim of "little loss" has no loss calculation anywhere in the patents; (iii) "true conduction ... not radiation" (US 649,621 [read: deep note]) is asserted without any field analysis. A top-loaded quarter-wave resonant monopole above ground is, in ordinary antenna theory, also a radiator; that its radiation is "reduced to an insignificant quantity" [read: 1904 article] is a statement about efficiency, which Tesla never measured.

b. Consistent with established experiment? Mixed. - Consistent: earth-ionosphere guiding, long-range VLF, Schumann resonances, sferic reception, resonant rise of voltage (Q). Also consistent with his own 1916 statement that "activities" were peaks. - Not consistent, or not established: "almost without loss" and "small fraction of one per cent" at the antipodes. VLF path loss of 2-3 dB per 1,000 km [web: the VLF page above] over the roughly 20,000 km to the antipode is 40-60 dB, i.e. a received fraction of 10^-4 to 10^-6, before counting antenna efficiency [calc]. At ELF the attenuation is lower but electrically small antennas radiate very inefficiently [memory, high]. The loss belongs to the guide, not to the exciter, so a different exciter does not remove it. Tesla's patent number for his "model plant" is for a 50-foot evacuated tube, not a transmission over distance [read: deep note]. The "true conduction" pathway through air at 30,000-35,000 ft with 15-20 MV [read: US 645,576, deep note] has no test on record; I cannot calculate it away without data he does not supply. - Wireless worked by other means in his lifetime: Marconi's 1901 transatlantic signal and all radio relied on radiation, ground wave and ionospheric reflection [memory, high]. Tesla's priority/participation in tuned circuits was recognised in the US Supreme Court decision on Marconi's patent (1943) [memory, high; see claim 7].

c. Tested? By whom? Replicated? - Tesla's own experiments: the CSN observation of 3-4 July 1899 (with a named second observer, Fritz Lowenstein, "similar observations" per the 1904 article; no account by Lowenstein found, Investigator). Nothing else in the folder is a controlled transmission test over a distance. - The 1899 receivers have been reconstructed (Corum and Corum, with measured behaviour; stake: they hold interests in Tesla-style wireless power, per Investigator [memory, medium]). That tests the receiver, not the claim. - Wardenclyffe (the planned full-scale plant) was never completed or tested; the funding record is in the Rankine letter (April 1904: Wardenclyffe "could now be finished in three to four months"; $100,000 needed) [read: research/2026-10-08-archive-org.md]. So "never tested" means he was never able to do the large test. Not dismissed by a failed test; abandoned for lack of money, with Boldt's foreclosure and a demolition whose reason is in dispute (section 6). - Modern descendants: CPG/Viziv built a tower in Texas; no published field measurement found (Investigator; interested party; absence of evidence to analyse: secrecy before licensing, negative results, or publication not yet found). MIT/WiTricity works over a few metres by near-field coupling [memory, high], a different regime. - Nobody has repeated the 3 July observation with a recording instrument and logged storm positions. That is the cheapest decisive test and nobody did it.

d. If true, what would change? If power could be sent through the earth/air to any distance at fractions of a percent loss, the guided-wave loss figures above would be wrong by four to six orders of magnitude, or there would be a conduction path through the upper air that standard atmospheric physics does not contain. The weak form (resonant earth-ionosphere cavity, VLF/ELF signalling) changes nothing; it is mainstream.

The 3 July observation as a measurement (claim 1c)

What the diary does and does not show. - It shows a receiver response that came and went, with a roughly half-hour period, while a storm receded beyond 200 miles [read: CSN]. It was recorded by relay "playing", a threshold device, with the threshold re-set several times ("the spring was tightened on the relay very much", "rendered more delicate"). A threshold crossing with a changing threshold cannot be read as a smooth standing-wave amplitude pattern. - Tesla's own inference needs near-constant storm speed. The Investigator's test: nodes are half a wavelength apart, so maxima every 30 minutes at storm speed v mean lambda = 2 v (0.5 h). At 50 km/h that is 50 km, i.e. about 6 kHz at light speed; at 30 km/h, 10 kHz [calc]. These frequencies lie in the VLF sferic band where lightning energy peaks, so the numbers are not absurd. - But a standing wave needs a reflector of comparable amplitude. Tesla argues for reflection at the strike point itself, which makes the "nodal point" the source: a radiating source cannot also be a simple reflecting end for its own impulse. The mainstream alternative is interference between waveguide modes and between ground and sky paths. In an idealised parallel-plate guide of 70 km height at 10 kHz, the beat length between the lowest modes is about 300-1,300 km [calc; assumption: perfectly conducting plates, 70 km height]. That is far longer than the 15-25 km node spacing Tesla's constant-speed reading needs, so simple mode interference does not reproduce his half-hour period at ordinary storm speeds. Other candidate causes are not excluded by the diary: successive storm cells at different ranges, changes in the ionosphere (it was evening and sunset changes the D layer [memory, high]), local power or instrument drift, and his own threshold changes. The data in the folder cannot decide among these. - Tesla himself shows the right instincts: "how could the observations be otherwise explained?" is a challenge to others, not a proof. It has stood unanswered by experiment because nobody repeated it, not because it was refuted.

Verdict 1a (strong form): Never properly tested as a working power system; the "almost without loss to the antipodes" claim is Refuted by calculation at the frequencies in play, on the VLF loss figure above (stated with its assumption: guided propagation in the Earth-ionosphere cavity, not a hypothetical conduction path through ionised air, which is Never properly tested). Verdict 1b (weak form): Established in substance by later VLF/ELF practice; Historically superseded but instructive as a mechanism. Verdict 1c: Never properly tested (not dismissed by test; unrepeated).

What would settle it: (1) a recorded repeat of the 3 July experiment with a logged lightning-position network and a calibrated, non-threshold receiver (modern sferic network data from 1999-2025 could even be used to ask whether a half-hour modulation appears); (2) a field-strength measurement at several ranges from a 100 kHz quarter-wave resonant transmitter, to measure the loss per distance and compare it with 2-3 dB per 1,000 km.

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Claim 2. Electrostatic "sound waves"; the transverse ether is wrong

Strongest honest case

• Tesla's 1892 "Dissipation of the electrical energy of the Hertz resonator" letter and the 1891 lecture describe observed effects: a coil's energy leaves faster than radiation would explain; air near a high-potential terminal dissipates energy in streamers and heating; strong electrostatic and brush phenomena [read: deep notes]. Those are real near-field and corona-loss effects and mainstream engineering uses them (corona loss on high-voltage lines [memory, high]).
• Mainstream theory itself has a "longitudinal" component in the near field of a dipole (field components along the propagation direction, evanescent waves). Tesla's instinct that the near field contains non-radiative, electrostatic content was correct.
• Maxwell's ether in 1891 was a mechanical medium; Tesla's doubts about it were shared by others and the ether was discarded by 1905.

Questions a-d

a. Mathematics: Tesla gives no equations for "electric sound waves" in these documents; the claim is verbal. Valone's Bass chapter has E parallel to B and zero energy flow [read: Valone deep note, correction in claims.md], which cannot carry power. So I mark the "scalar/longitudinal wave" readings as Internally inconsistent when used for power and Not testable as stated otherwise. b. Hertz (1887-88) measured the speed, polarisation, reflection and refraction of electromagnetic waves, in agreement with Maxwell [memory, high]. Marconi-style radio uses these waves. Tesla's claim that transverse radiation cannot carry energy to practical distances (US 649,621: "would render practically impossible the transmission of any appreciable amount of energy") is contradicted by all broadcast radio. c. Tested by Hertz and everyone after; no experiment by Tesla separates his picture from Maxwell's. The 1919 "Famous Scientific Illusions" asserts ground-bound propagation only, with a blurb by editors; the article offers no test [read: deep note]. Not dismissed without testing: tested and decided against, for the radiation claim. d. If true: Maxwell's equations would fail in vacuum for radiation; this has no support.

Verdict 2a: Tested, not supported (for "no transverse waves"); Historically superseded but instructive (the near-field and corona content). 2b: Not testable as stated / Internally inconsistent (power-carrying scalar wave).

Rigour toward Tesla: in the 1919 article he proposes that the moon does not rotate on its axis and that lightning rods are fallacious; both are checked in part by the Physicist. I note only the arithmetic point recorded in claims.md that Fig. 7's (1/4)^30 of 1000 kW is 0.9 picowatt, not the printed figure, and that the experimental evidence offered is paper-and-washer demonstrations [read: deep note]. They show that Tesla's confident prose was not always matched by measurement, even in 1919.

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Claim 3. Resonant high-frequency circuits and the bifilar coil

Strongest honest case

• Tesla's high-frequency lighting, resonant transformer and wireless-lamp demonstrations were seen by audiences in 1891-93 and are documented in the lectures in Martin 1894 [read: deep notes]; the physics (resonant voltage rise; Q = X/R) is textbook and is built into every radio and induction-heating circuit [memory, high]. His claim in US 787,412 of "thousands of times" the impressed movement is simply Q [calc: Q = 2 pi f L / R is the amplification at resonance].
• The Coil patent identifies a real idea: a closely wound or interleaved coil has distributed capacitance, and a self-resonant frequency, and it can be arranged so that the capacitance between turns is large. Its stated purpose is to let the coil provide its own capacitance, not to produce gain [read: Coil deep note]. In the patent's numbers: 100 V and 1,000 turns give 0.1 V between adjacent turns, while a two-strand winding gives 50 V and "250,000 times the stored energy" (energy goes as V^2: (50/0.1)^2 = 250,000, correct arithmetic) [read: deep note].
• Nichelson's measurement is a real instrument record (HP network analyzer, dated 10 Dec 1990) and the two coils (43 turns, 4 inch) have nearly equal inductance (207.92 and 205.06 uH) but resonate at 19 and 11 MHz. That is a robust observation: series bifilar winding triples the effective capacitance (about 0.34 pF to about 1.02 pF [calc, lumped self-resonance]).

Questions a-d

a. Tesla's patent: consistent. Nichelson: not. "Voltage gain" is defined as 2 pi f L / R with R silently taken as 1 ohm for both coils, so the "theory" ratio 0.57 is just (f_b L_b)/(f_s L_s). The measured ratio 5.39 is of analyzer traces (a transmission ratio on a 0-1 axis) and is divided by the reactance ratio to get 929 percent (correct value 5.39/0.57 = 9.46, i.e. 946 percent) [read: voltage-gain deep note; recomputed]. The comparison mixes two different quantities and assumes equal resistance. My additional point: the set-up as described puts the coil as a series two-port between 50-ohm ports (S21 transmission). For a series reactance X in a 50-ohm system, |S21| = 100/sqrt(100^2 + X^2); with L = 205 uH at 11 MHz, X is about 14 kilohm, giving |S21| about 0.007 [calc]. The plotted 0.97 and 0.18 are 140 and 25 times larger. So either the coil was not acting as a simple series inductor in the measurement (stray or radiative coupling to the analyzer leads about five inches away, per the figure) or the plot is of something else. The paper does not say. This does not show the coil is "wrong"; it shows the measurement does not demonstrate what is claimed, and a clean re-measurement is easy. b. A transmission of 0.97 is below 1: it is not a gain in the amplifying sense. The text's phrase "voltage gain" is a Q. c. Tested only by Nichelson (a single interested advocate, two coils, one afternoon). Not replicated. d. If a passive coil produced real energy gain, energy conservation would be violated; the paper makes no such claim itself, which is a point in its favour. Tesla's patent changes nothing.

Verdict 3a: Established. 3b: Plausible, untested (as an advantage) with the principle Established. 3c: Tested, not supported as a gain; Internally inconsistent in its comparison. Retain in the record: the measured shift of self-resonance (19 to 11 MHz at equal inductance) is a genuine observation and the broad 0.97 peak is unexplained; both would repay re-measurement with a proper two-port, S11 as well as S21, and a stated R.

Source weighting: Trinkaus is a seller of booklets; his results are bench observations of input current and a photoresistor, with no output power measured [read: deep note]. Interested party.

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Claim 4. Energy from the ambient medium ("fuelless", radiant energy)

Strongest honest case

• Tesla's Century (1900) argument is stated carefully by Tesla himself: he builds an analogy of a cold "sink" and heat flowing into it, and then says "We do not know of any such absolutely perfect process of heat-conversion ... necessitating continuous pumping out" [read: Thermodynamics2 deep note quoting the Century reprint pp.20-21]. His claim is of less pumping out than flows in; that is just what a heat pump or a Carnot cycle does, and is not forbidden.
• Atmospheric electricity is real: the fair-weather field is about 100 V per metre near the ground and the upper air is positive relative to the ground [memory, high]. Tesla's US 685,957 collector (insulated high plate and ground connected to a condenser) harvests it. He reports charging a condenser "almost indefinitely, even to the point of rupturing the dielectric" [read: Fuelless deep note, quoting the patent]. A modest current flows continuously. Lightning-rod and kite experiments show it.
• Nichelson's reading of the unipolar dynamo as a path is at least an attempt at a mechanism; he hedges ("speculation").
• Edwin Gray, Moray, Baumann devices are reported by Vassilatos and Lindemann as unidirectional-impulse radiant devices; the reports of their output come from advocates and tabloid sources [read: Free Energy Secrets deep note]; no output measurement is in the folder.

Questions a-d

a. Thermodynamic form: a cold sink can be maintained only by work or by a colder reservoir; with a single reservoir the Kelvin-Planck statement forbids net work. In Tesla's text this is acknowledged. Quantitatively the water analogy is correct: work to pump out equals work recovered (rho g V h). Nichelson drops the caveat sentence, so his gloss is stronger than Tesla's [read: deep note]. Fuelless paper: 1.6 x 10^11 J should be 1.6 x 10^10 J (claims.md correction) [4.5 MWh = 1.62 x 10^10 J: 4.5e6 Wh x 3600 = 1.62e10 J, confirmed by me]. Unipolar dynamo: Elsasser (1958) says a Faraday disk is self-sustaining only with extreme conductors, speed or size [read: deep note]. Any self-excited homopolar dynamo draws its power from the shaft. b. The single-reservoir engine contradicts the second law as tested for 150 years. The collector: power is tiny (field 100 V/m, source impedance huge) [memory, medium; not rechecked on the web]. No device has been shown to deliver more electrical energy than it consumes under metered conditions. c. Tested: nothing in the folder. The 1931 report that Tesla ran a motor on cosmic rays (the Brooklyn Eagle and the 1933 papers) is quotation of his statements only; the Nichelson paper searched and found no named witness [read: Fuelless deep note]. This is not "tested and failed" nor "dismissed without testing": it is never demonstrated. Tesla had a financial interest in attracting backers in 1931-33 (he was dependent on Westinghouse stipends and hotel debts [memory, medium]). Advocates (Nichelson, Vassilatos, Lindemann, Valone) are interested parties selling books or ideas; the advocate/device inventors are likewise. d. If true: either the second law fails for an unknown medium (the contrarian notes: the medium is never defined; Tesla later means a luminiferous medium, and he does not give a quantity), or an unmetered source feeds the device. The latter is the usual explanation and is testable by input/output metering.

Verdict 4a: Refuted by calculation for a single-reservoir engine, qualified: Tesla's own version needs pumping and is not refuted. 4b: Plausible, untested for tiny power. 4c: Never properly tested (no output data), with the closed unipolar dynamo Refuted by calculation (energy conservation). The 1916 testimony (peak versus average) suggests his own large-power numbers were not net gain.

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Claim 5. The Tesla disc turbine

Strongest honest case

• It is the one Tesla claim that has been built, run, and kept being studied. Modern work continues: Hoya and Guha (IMechE Part A, 2009) built a 92 mm rig and recorded 140 W at 25,000 r/min with about 25 percent efficiency, and found nozzle losses large [read: hoya-guha-2009 pdf, the abstract and the introduction line "between 20 and 35 per cent"; Armstrong 1952 got 14 percent with a ten-disc turbine]. Guha attributes much of the gap to the nozzle rather than to the disc principle, which leaves Tesla's rotor claim open.
• Lowenstein's sworn 1911 report gives measured numbers for the 9.75-inch machine: 102.8 brake hp at 18,000 rpm with 53.4 lb steam/bhp-h (Table 1, Prony brake, condensed-water weighed, record kept by Prof. C. D. Richards of Yale) and 77 hp at 35 lb/hp-h (Table 2) [read: Hayes deep note]. These are real data, from a named engineer, with a named recorder. The Waterside demonstration with a torque spring was witnessed by a journalist who read speed and pressure gauges himself [read: Hayes deep note].
• The Allis-Chalmers engineer Dahlstrand reports about 38 percent mechanical efficiency on a 60-inch, 500 kW unit with problems of disc distortion; the firm was the manufacturer and tried the machine, so he was not a Tesla employee, but he also had a stake in how the episode ended [read: Hayes deep note; Cairns calls 675 hp/500 kW a design rating].
• The pump and blower side has commercial life; the idea is used for fluids with solids [memory, medium].

Questions a-d

a. Tesla's 38 lb steam/hp-h at 125 psi: ideal steam rate = 2545 Btu per hp-h divided by an isentropic drop of about 130 Btu/lb (Tesla's own number, "130 British thermal units") is 19.6 lb/hp-h [calc], so the stated 38 lb implies about 52 percent. At 176 psi and 21 inches of vacuum, a drop of roughly 280 Btu/lb [memory, medium; steam-table recollection, matching the Hayes deep note's method] gives about 9 lb ideal, so 35 lb implies about 26 percent [calc]. Both consistent with claims.md's 27-52 percent range. Tesla's quoted "80 to 90 per cent" is not consistent with his own tests. His projected 8-12 lb for a compounded machine was not tested. Weight claims (10 hp/lb) refer to the 1906 rotor weighing 1.5 lb or the whole machine at 10 lb with 30 hp, and the two 1906 descriptions disagree on discs, diameter and speed [read: Hayes deep note]. b. Boundary-layer viscous drive is mainstream fluid mechanics; efficiency ranges measured by others are 14-35 percent in small units. c. Tested by Tesla's associates (Lowenstein, Richards), by a manufacturer (Allis-Chalmers; report not seen), and decades later by independent academics. Replicated in the sense that it runs; not replicated at high efficiency. Allis-Chalmers declined the product after the 1911-12 trials [read: Hayes deep note/O'Neill]; the report itself is not online (Investigator searched archive.org and Google: only O'Neill's quotation). This is a case of "tested and not found competitive", with the primary report missing. d. Nothing in mainstream physics would change.

Verdict 5a: Established. 5b: Tested, not supported for the 80-90 percent efficiency and the 200 hp at 38 lb claims as stated beyond Tesla's own tests; the rotor-limited (nozzle excluded) efficiency is an open engineering question. The record should show the data above whatever the verdict.

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Claim 6. Teleforce and the fate of the papers

Teleforce

Tesla (1934, 1940) said a beam of tiny particles could melt aircraft engines 250 miles away; no apparatus, drawing, calculation or test is known [read: claims.md; Death Ray essay]. Never properly tested because there was nothing to test. The strongest honest point for Tesla: the concept (directed energy and particle beams) became a funded programme later (Strategic Defense Initiative; Wright-Patterson interest in Soviet beam weapons per the 1983 airtel), but there is no line from his papers to those programmes in the record, only the FBI airtel's "allegedly" [read: FBI deep note]. Mainstream objections (atmospheric absorption of a particle beam) are for the Physicist. Verdict 6a: Never properly tested.

Fate of the papers (SOURCE HONESTY: absence of evidence)

Record: sealed by the Alien Property Custodian on 9 January 1943; Trump (NDRC/OSRD) examined for three days and concluded they were "primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character ... did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods" [read via research/2026-10-08-papers-fate.md; PBS https://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html; Trump had an institutional stake as the government evaluator and the full report is not found]. A 1981 FBI letter says OAP, OSRD, ONI and NRL examined them and released them to Sava Kosanovic, i.e. to Belgrade (1952) [read: FBI deep note]. The 1983 airtel says Wright-Patterson staff sought the papers because the Soviets "allegedly" used them [read]. "Project Nick" (Wright Field, Brig. Gen. Craigie) appears in PBS 2000 and probably derives from Cheney 1981; no primary Air Force record found. The Tesla Museum holds 163,911 call numbers in 548 boxes [read: research note, institutional source].

Competing readings, with what would decide: 1. The papers held little of value (Trump) and went to Belgrade: consistent with the 1981 FBI letter and with the Museum's holdings. Decided by an inventory of the Museum archive and the OAP file. 2. Some material was copied for US military interest ("Project Nick"): single popular source chain; silence in online Air Force records is not contradiction. Decided by NARA RG 131 and RG 342. 3. A third reading, the FBI statement "had no involvement", is overstated by the file (the New York office inquired in January 1943, Washington told it to approach the State's Attorney) [read: claims.md correction]. Trump's finding is the only evaluation by a scientist who saw the papers. It is an interested-party conclusion (a government officer assessing potential wartime value), and no second examiner's report is known. It stays in the record next to the Soviet and Wright Field accounts. The record is unsettled. I make no verdict on the scale beyond: not a physics claim.

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Claim 7. Priority and discovery claims

For each, the question is whether there is an experiment on record. - Polyphase AC and induction motor: Established (patents, practice). - Radio / tuned circuits: Tesla's 1893 lecture and patents on tuned, grounded, elevated-terminal systems precede Marconi's 1897 patents; the US Supreme Court in 1943 held key Marconi claims invalid in view of Lodge, Tesla and Stone [memory, high; Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America v. United States, 320 U.S. 1; not rechecked on the web]. Tesla did not demonstrate long-distance radio telegraphy by any 1899 test in the folder. Verdict: priority in tuned coupled circuits is Established; "inventor of radio" as a flat claim is a priority fight, not a physics claim. - X-rays: Tesla made and reported shadow images in 1895-96 [memory, medium; the 1891 lecture in the folder describes a "very special radiation" and moving phosphorescent spots on glass, not an X-ray identification] ; the O'Neill records are "not available". Partly Established as high-voltage tube radiation work; priority Roentgen's. - Cosmic rays, artificial radioactivity, atom smasher, electron microscope: Never properly tested as Tesla discoveries: only later admirers' statements and O'Neill's concession that the records are unavailable [read: claims.md]. Not Established. - Fluorescent/neon lighting: gas-discharge and phosphor lighting by high-frequency fields was demonstrated by him in lectures; development by others. Plausible and in part Established. Dissent note: the missing records are exactly what the Museum archive might hold; absence of evidence here is an anomaly to analyse, not a refutation.

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How the claims were rejected: assessment

• Wardenclyffe. No experiment ended it: it ran out of money. The 1904 Rankine letter shows the Morgan and Astor interests being adjusted and $100,000 sought; the foreclosure case (Waldorf-Astoria/Boldt, action 1915, judgment 20 April 1922) and the tower's demolition in July 1917 follow [read: research notes]. Contemporary press (The Sun, 19 July 1917) says the Federal Government had it dynamited "as a precaution"; the 5 August feature says the buyer's identity "is not known"; later accounts (Anderson 1992, Wikipedia) say commercial scrap/development. These are three competing accounts; deciding records are the appeal transcript (Bingham, Exhibit B) and the salvage and Navy files. I find no evidence that a negative experiment, a reanalysis or censorship of results stopped Tesla's wireless programme. Rejection of the strong claims was by non-adoption, not by controlled test.
• Turbine. Allis-Chalmers tried it and parted; the primary report is not available. The claims were not buried; they were not borne out at scale.
• The ether position. Rejected by experiment (Hertz) before Tesla's arguments were finished.
• Interested parties (as characterised, not as neutral fact): Tesla (fund-raising 1904, 1931-33); CPG/Viziv (patents, licences, fundraising); Valone/Nichelson/Vassilatos/Lindemann/Trinkaus (authors and sellers); Allis-Chalmers (manufacturer); Trump (government evaluator); the Tesla Museum (archive holder, publisher of CSN). Hayes (compiler) promotes building Tesla turbines.

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Retained Investigator leads (kept whatever the verdict)

1. CSN 4 July 1899 entry, 30 July (stationary waves in the ground), 6 August (water-pipe stationary waves) [Correction 2026-10-08, arbiter F9.3: the diary does not record this experiment; the 6 August item is listed among entries omitted for want of time, and the only datum is a 550 ft distance (Notes lines 6320-6327, 6993).], line 18560 ("proves the feasibility ... almost beyond any d[oubt]"), line 17149 (signals from planets): deep read still needed; I read only the July entry.
2. 1904 Electrical World article: Lowenstein as second observer; "ten million horse-power" of "activity".
3. 1916 interview: peak-power explanation; Appendix III Wardenclyffe appeal transcript (Bingham, Exhibit B).
4. Smithsonian 1904 Rankine letter and Kerr, Page & Cooper opinion ("controlling" patents, "not less than $5,000,000"). [Correction 2026-10-08, arbiter F9.1: the Kerr, Page and Cooper text is not in the saved scan; only Tesla's covering letter is. "Controlling" is Tesla's reading and the $5,000,000 is his own valuation, written to a prospective backer.]
5. Foreign patent families (GB 1901/11293, 1901/13563, AT 16480, FR 354,791, 1921 turbine set).
6. Marincic/Wait/Jackson on earth resonance; Marincic's own list of Tesla's errors.
7. Corum and Corum reconstruction and the planetary-signal (Jovian/Io) analysis for 21-22 July 1899.
8. CPG/Viziv, MIT/WiTricity; the missing field measurements.
9. Hoya and Guha 2009, Armstrong 1952, Rice 1965.
10. 1917 Sun reports; FBI Vault holds three parts (about 354 pp.) against 265 pp. in the folder; Trump report and "Project Nick" unseen; Museum archive 163,911 call numbers.

Web checks done (budget 6; used 3)

• Schumann modes 7.83, 14.1, 20.3 Hz [web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances]: confirmed; the page does not mention Tesla.
• VLF 5,000-20,000 km, 2-3 dB per 1,000 km, sferic location [web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_frequency]: confirmed.
• Zenneck waves exist as exact solutions; the page says nothing of Norton or practical antennas [web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenneck_wave]: the [memory, medium] belief that practical ground-wave propagation is Sommerfeld/Norton rather than a Zenneck surface wave is NOT confirmed; I make no verdict on CPG/Viziv beyond "no field measurement found". Check failed.
• Unchecked [memory, high or medium], not verdict-bearing: Hertz 1887-88; 1943 Supreme Court Marconi case; atmospheric field 100 V/m; steam-table drop (medium, used in 5b).

What I did not do

No deep read of CSN beyond July 1899, of Valone's Corum/Rauscher/Van Voorhies chapters, of Martin pp.417-430 and 505-520, of Free Energy Secrets outside pp.20-79, of Complete Patents pp.407-448 (787,412 beyond the opening, 1,119,732), or of FBI Vault Part 03. Verdicts touching those rest on the digests and the Investigator.