Wireless Vision Seen By Tesla

Imagine our great-great-grandparents carrying mobile phones and sending each other funny cat videos! More than a hundred years ago, Nikola Tesla announced his "World System" of wireless telephones which would transmit static-free communication along with pictures and video. He explains his system in the following newspaper article from 1915.

La Plata Home Press, La Plata, Missouri, Thursday, October 14, 1915, Page 6.

WIRELESS VISION 
SEEN BY TESLA

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Thinks "World System" Will
Allow Many to Talk at Once.

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ENDS STATIC DISTURBANCE

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Inventor Also Hopes to Transmit Pic-
tures by Same Medium Which Car-
ries the Voice--Declares It Will Be
Possible to Hold Secret Conversation
Too.

New York.--Nikola Tesla announced that he had received a patent on an invention which would not only eliminate static interference, the present bugaboo of wireless telephony, but would enable thousands of persons to talk at once between wireless stations and make it possible for those talking to see one another by wireless, regardless of the distance separating them. He said also that with his wireless station now in the process of construction on Long Island he hoped to make New York one of the central exchanges in a world system of wireless telephony.

The inventor, who has won fame by his electrical inventions, dictated this statement:

"The experts carrying out this brilliant experiment are naturally deserving of great credit

for the skill they have shown in perfecting the devices. These are of two kinds--first, those serving to control transmission, and second, those magnifying the received impulse. That the control of transmission is perfect is plain to experts from the fact that the Arlington, Mare island and Pearl Harbor plants are all ineffective and that the distance of telephonic communication is equal to that of telegraphic transmission. It is also perfectly apparent that the chief merit of the application lies in the magnification of the microphonic impulse. It must not be imagined that we deal here with new discoveries. The improvement simply concerns the control of the transmitted and the magnification of the received impulse, but the wireless system is the same. This can never be changed.

"It is claimed that static disturbance will fatally interfere with the transmission, while as a matter of fact there is not static disturbance possible in properly designed transmission and receiving circuits. Quite recently I have described in a patent circuits which are absolutely immune to static and other interferences, so much so that when a telephone is attached there is absolute silence, even lightning in the immediate vicinity not producing a click of the diaphragm, while in the ordinary telephonic conversation there are all kinds of noises.

NIKOLA TESLA.Source: La Plata Home Press, La Plata, Missouri, Thursday, October 14, 1915, Page 6.

"Another contention is that there can be no secrecy in wireless telephone conversation. I say it is absurd to raise this contention, when it is positively demonstrated by experiments that the earth is more suitable for transmission than any wire could ever be. A wireless telephone conversation can be made as secret as a thought.

"I have myself erected a plant for the purpose of connecting by wireless telephone the chief centers of the world, and from this plant as many as a hundred will be able to talk absolutely without interference and with absolute secrecy. The plant would simply be connected with the telephone central exchange in New York city, and any subscriber will be able to talk to any other telephone subscriber in the world, and all this without any change in his apparatus. This plan has been called my 'world system.' By the same means I propose also to transmit pictures and project images, so that the subscriber will not only hear the voice, but see the person to whom he is talking. Pictures transmitted over wires is a perfectly simple art practiced today. Many inventors have labored on it, but the chief credit is due to Professor Korn of Munich."