If Tesla's induction motor and the technologies that sprang from it were the height of his serious engineering work, then his dream of perfecting broadcast power was the holy grail of his crackpot period.  It's also the episode that elicits the most animated, or fevered, talk about Tesla's "lost" technology that rivals anything gassed about the sunken continent of Atlantis. 

In the 1890s, Tesla was playing about with sending high-voltage currents through evacuated glass tubes and he discovered that a tube containing rarefied gas could conduct current rather well.  Other scientists who'd noticed the same thing used this as the basis for experiments that eventually brought forth things like fluorescent lighting, plasma physics, and neon "Eat at Joe's" signs.  But for Tesla this wasn't good enough.  In typical fashion he leapt from a simple laboratory observation to declaring that he'd discovered the secret of transmitting electricity to all the world without wires.  He reasoned that since he could send electricity through a tube of rarefied gas, and that the Earth's ionosphere was also composed of rarefied gas, then it would be a simple matter to send electricity up into the outer reaches of the atmosphere and charge the entire planet like a gigantic Leyden jar that could be tapped on demand.  With such a system, dynamos, batteries, and the like would all be a thing of the past.  Anything from a pocket torch to an aeroplane to a battleship would have literally unlimited power at its disposal regardless of large it was, how long it ran, or where it was located. 

Tesla's first idea was to trail wires from balloons hanging high in the air, but he soon abandoned this idea in favour of constructing a gigantic Tesla coil which would transmit electricity to the ionosphere the same way as the coil could light a tube from across the room; by generating a tremendous electrical field. 

So, with backing from the El Paso Power Company and Colonel John Jacob Astor, Tesla set out for Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1899.  There he constructed a laboratory with a 142-foot metal mast and the world's largest Tesla coil some 51 feet in diameter to send electricity into the heavens; or not, as the case may be.

Colorado Springs

When Tesla arrived in Colorado, he was impressed by the frequent lightning storms in the area and he noticed that during these storms the ground became electrically charged.  Tesla became convinced that the secret to broadcasting power was not the upper atmosphere, but the Earth itself.  He believed that the planet was filled with electrical "vibrations" and that it wasn't even necessary to build up a charge in the Earth like a battery, but rather to simply send vibrations out from a single source.  These would send electrical waves throughout the world that could be tapped with equal intensity anywhere simply by sticking a wire in the ground.  It was also supposed to be able to power aeroplanes, but as to how it was going to do that Tesla was a teeny bit vague.

Tesla's experiments at Colorado Springs were nothing if not spectacular.  When he cranked up his apparatus for the first time there were electrical discharges, a hundred feet long, claps of thunder that could be heard fifteen miles away, and one dead generator at the local power plant, which Tesla managed to burn out and had to repair for free.  For nine months he continued to try to create broadcast power, but with very little to show for it.  He was reported to have lit a string of lights at a distance and nearly electrocuted a few horse through their iron horseshoes, though this was most likely due to good old-fashioned ground conductivity.  In the end, he achieved a new scale in high voltage experiments, he may have created ball lightning, he may have observed ELF waves, he may even have recorded radio waves from space, but he certainly took his investors for a soaking.

Wardenclyffe

In 1900, Tesla convinced J.P. Morgan to sink $150,000 in what Morgan thought was an improvement on wireless telegraphy.  Tesla had pitched to Morgan the idea of a "World System" that would link together the four corners of the globe in an information system that would make the Internet look like two cans and a bit of string.  It would allow audio transmissions as well as Morse.  It would perfect television.  It would synchronise all the world's stock tickers.  It would regulate all the world's clocks and watches.  It would carry telephony over any distance.  It would provide governments with perfectly secure communications.  Handwritten documents, drawings, and photographs could be transmitted instantly.  It would provide pinpoint navigation.  It would control machines across oceans.

What it did on its days off was left to the imagination.

What Tesla had not revealed to Morgan was that his World System wasn't really a communication network, but an improvement on his broadcast power scheme.  Communication was just the gravy for the electrical pot roast.  With his new system Tesla expected to broadcast power to any point of on the globe; this time by turning the Earth into a giant condenser with the ionosphere as one plate and the ground as the other connected by electric channels formed by gigantic ultraviolet lamps beaming upwards.  Or not.  Tesla's notes aren't very clear and he seems to have been vacillating between three different theories as he went along.  Since he was by now dreaming of using his broadcast power to control the weather and abolish war, perhaps it's just as well that he kept practical-minded Morgan in the dark.

By 1901, Tesla was building his power broadcaster at Wardenclyffe out on Long Island in New York State, which Tesla envisioned as the centre of a great industrial community tending his device.  Next to his new laboratory rose a huge tower topped by a fifty-ton steel sphere that was the heart of his transmitter.

Unfortunately for Tesla, he grossly overestimated his ability to build his installation on what little money he could raise.  When he went back to Morgan for more, he had the bad judgment to reveal to Morgan the true purpose of his World System and added to his lack of foresight by explaining to the great financier that his system would turn the world into one gigantic brain of godlike intelligence.  Needless to say, Morgan did not fork over any more gelt and in 1905 Wardenclyffe was sold off to pay Tesla's $20,000 in hotel bills at the Waldorf Astoria.  Tesla never abandoned his dreams of revolutionising the world with his system, but investors were becoming much more wary of him and nothing came of it.

One question is, how did Tesla think that his system would fit in with the development of atomic power?  Not much.  Tesla regarded atomic power as purest nonsense.  Don't be ridiculous; won't ever happen.

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