RankingsPrimerArbiterPhysicistMathematicianContrarianQESites logClaimsSourcesResearch notes

Internet Archive (archive.org): Tesla primary texts, 2026-10-08

Investigator (STEP I), first run. Searched with the archive.org advanced-search and metadata APIs (scripted), files saved to research/files/.

Queries

  • title:(colorado springs notes) AND tesla
  • title:("work with alternating currents")
  • tesla AND (wardenclyffe) AND mediatype:texts
  • title:(tesla) AND (dahlstrand OR "allis-chalmers") (no hits)
  • title:("lecture before the new york academy" OR "Tesla Science Center")
  • identifier:sim_electrical-world_1904-03* (found through Google, see sites.md)

1. Colorado Springs Notes 1899-1900 (closes the main source gap in claims.md)

  • Item: https://archive.org/details/nikola-tesla-colorado-springs-notes-with-bookmarks (a 1978 Nolit, Beograd edition, with scientific commentaries by Aleksandar Marinčić). Two other copies: nikolateslacolor0000niko (1978, lending library) and nikolateslanikolateslacoloradospringsnotes18991900.
  • Saved: research/files/colorado-springs-notes-1899-1900_djvu.txt (OCR text, 824 KB; the 48 MB PDF was not downloaded).
  • 3 July 1899 entry, Tesla's own words [web: djvu text, about line 2563-2752]: the entry opens with circuit data (15 jars a side, total capacity "7.5 x 0.003 = 0.0225 mfd", inductance about 367 x 10^4 cm). The storm passage says the instrument kept "playing" after the storm was "at a distance greater than 200 miles at least", and at intervals of about half an hour into the evening. Tesla writes: "It showed clearly the existence of stationary waves, for how could the observations be otherwise explained?" He then asks where the waves are reflected from, thinks reflection from the antipode "difficult to believe ... though it may be possible", and prefers reflection "from the point of the cloud where the conducting path began", the lightning strike point being "a nodal point". He adds "(This is of immense importance)".
  • Bears on claim 1. Note for reviewers: the diary does not claim antipodal reflection on that day; the 1904 article (below) and the patents generalise to the whole globe. The diary's ">200 miles" and the 1904 article's "about three hundred kilometers" are consistent (200 mi = 322 km).
  • Other entries to deep-read (line numbers in the djvu text): 2367 (station plan "with reference to stationary waves in the ground"), 2669, 5088, 5798 (30 July: apparatus hoped to produce stationary waves), 6325-6329 and 6993 (6 Aug: "Experiments with stationary waves on water pipe") [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).], 8018-8128 (is the earth a nodal region; shifting of nodal point), 9030, 18560 ("of stationary waves proves the feasibility of the project almost beyond any d[oubt]"), 17149 (signals "wrought by intelligent beings on a neighbouring planet", which is the editors' or Tesla's quotation; check).
  • Editor's commentary (Marinčić, 1978) [web: djvu text lines 520-575, 21672-21690]. A party with an institutional stake (the Nikola Tesla Museum published the book). Points:
  • Says Tesla predicted earth resonances at 6, 18 and 30 Hz; observed Schumann resonances are about 8, 14 and 20 Hz.
  • Quotes J. R. Wait (IEEE Trans. Communications COM-22 no. 4, April 1974, ELF special issue): Tesla's early experiments have "an intriguing similarity with later developments in ELF communications", and Tesla proposed the earth could be set into resonance near 10 Hz with standing waves from antipodal reflection.
  • Quotes J. D. Jackson (Classical Electrodynamics) that Tesla outlined the earth as a resonating circuit and estimated the lowest frequency as 6 Hz (close to 6.6 Hz for a perfectly conducting sphere).
  • Also states Tesla's errors: what Tesla expected near 10 kHz in fact occurs at much lower frequencies at which he did not work in Colorado Springs; the waves he thought went through the earth are waves in the earth-ionosphere spherical capacitor; he was wrong that he needed very high voltages to "create" a second conductor.
  • Bears on claims 1 and 2: this is a published, technically specific reading by the Notes' own editors that keeps the stationary-wave idea but moves it to ELF and the earth-ionosphere cavity. Reviewers should check the Wait 1974 and Jackson passages directly.

2. Electrical World and Engineer, 5 March 1904 (primary scan of the 1904 article)

  • Item: https://archive.org/details/sim_electrical-world_1904-03-05_43_10 (vol. 43 no. 10). Contents line: "The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires. By Nikola Tesla.. 429". Figure caption: "FIG. I.—TESLA EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORY, COLORADO ... (Discovery by Mr. Tesla of the Stationary Waves in the Earth".
  • Saved: research/files/electrical-world-1904-03-05_djvu.txt (whole issue OCR). A clean transcription (tfcbooks copy, 3 pp.) is research/files/tesla-1904-transmission-without-wires.pdf, from swissenschaft.ch (see sites.md).
  • Tesla's account [web: transcription p.2; scan text line 2347-2386]: the third of July; the recording apparatus indications faded with the storm's distance, then returned, rose to a maximum and decreased, "in regularly recurring intervals", until the storm, "moving with nearly constant speed, had retreated to a distance of about three hundred kilometers"; "similar observations were also made by my assistant, Mr. Fritz Lowenstein"; "I was observing stationary waves. As the source of disturbances moved away the receiving circuit came successively upon their nodes and loops." He concludes the planet "behaved like a conductor of limited dimensions" and that power could be sent "in unlimited amounts, to any terrestrial distance and almost without loss".
  • Bears on claim 1 (his stated evidence) and on priority 2: Tesla names a second observer (Lowenstein). No account by Lowenstein himself was found this run.
  • The repeated maxima with a storm moving at constant speed is the observable he used; reviewers can test it: nodes of a standing wave are half a wavelength apart, so maxima at ~30-minute intervals with a storm speed v imply a wavelength of 2 x v x 30 min (e.g. v = 50 km/h gives about 50 km, i.e. ~6 kHz if the wave travels at light speed). This is a calculation for Step 2, not a finding.
  • Item: https://archive.org/details/nikola-tesla-on-his-work-with-alternating-currents (uploader notes it removed a third-party watermark). Saved: research/files/tesla-1916-on-his-work-with-AC_djvu.txt.
  • This is Tesla's own extended testimony to his patent counsel (1916), so priority 1. It has chapters on Colorado experiments (ch. VI) and Wardenclyffe.
  • Tesla on what his large "activities" were [web: djvu text lines ~3895-3915]: "In Colorado, I reached 18 million horsepower activities, but that was always by this device: Energy stored in the condenser and discharged in an inconceivably small interval of time. ... with a generator of 1 kilowatt, an activity of 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 kilowatts; whereas, if you have a continuous or undamped wave, 1 kilowatt gives you only wave energy at the rate of 1 kilowatt and nothing more."
  • Bears on claims 1 and 4: in Tesla's own words the "thousands of horsepower" figures (also in US 787,412: "many tens of thousands of horse-power") are peak rates of a capacitor discharge, not a net energy gain. This clarifies, in the inventor's own terms, figures that later advocates read as over-unity.
  • Appendix III, Wardenclyffe Foreclosure Appeal Proceedings [web: lines 9856-9905]: Anderson reproduces transcript pages of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department (Suffolk County): Tesla for defendant, direct (transcript pp.163-181, 269-275); Ezra C. Bingham, chief engineer of the Waldorf-Astoria, for plaintiff (pp.235-247, condition and vandalisation of the premises); Defendants' Exhibit B, inventory of the plant (pp.309-312). Anderson's summary: mortgages to George C. Boldt 1904 and 1908; foreclosure action 1915; bill of sale offered to Lester S. Holmes; "The tower was destroyed in order that the property could be commercially developed"; judgment 20 April 1922.
  • Bears on priority 4 (historical record) and claim 1 (what Wardenclyffe was). See the Chronicling America note: two 1917 newspaper reports instead say the Government had the tower demolished. The court transcript pages are the record to read next (deep read of this appendix).

4. Smithsonian Libraries: "Nikola Tesla papers" (1904)

  • Item: https://archive.org/details/nikolateslapape00tesl (collection: Smithsonian Libraries and Archives). Saved: research/files/tesla-papers-1904-rankine-letters_djvu.txt.
  • Contents per catalogue: mimeograph letter Tesla to William Birch Rankine on financing the company and the Wardenclyffe plant; facsimile letter Tesla to Kerr, Page & Cooper asking their opinion on the validity and scope of his patents, and their reply; offprint of the 5 March 1904 article with photographs; circular dated 1 January 1904 with a list of his US patents.
  • Tesla to Rankine, 19 April 1904 [web: lines 268-345]: the Nikola Tesla Company "has no liabilities, and its assets are my patents"; Morgan's share of some patents (telegraphy and lighting) was extended to all his inventions; Colonel Astor's interest similarly adjusted; a "Tesla Electric & Manufacturing Company" with $5,000,000 capital was postponed; Wardenclyffe "could now be finished in three to four months", would telegraph and telephone to any part of the world, earning "ten thousand dollars a day"; $100,000 needed; Kerr, Page & Cooper's statement shows his patents "are controlling", valued at "not less than $5,000,000"; "In 1899 I have produced sparks over one hundred feet long."
  • Tesla is an interested party here (raising money). Bears on priority 4: the financial state of Wardenclyffe in April 1904, the Morgan and Astor interests, and a patent-counsel opinion (Kerr, Page & Cooper) whose text is in the same scan (not yet read; deep-read target). [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. Not used

  • NIKOLATESLALECTUREBEFORETHENEWYORKACADEMYOFSCIENCESApril61897 is an audiobook; the Anderson-edited text item exists (nikola-tesla-lecture-before-the-new-york-academy-of-sciences-april-6-1897-leland-i.-anderson-edit.) and was not opened (time).