Eskimo North

This is one of the better documentaries on Tesla that I've run across. At one time I was in possession of one of his hand written (cursive Slavic pen) books. Given that I don't speak the language (whatever they spoke in Yugoslavia), I could not understand the text, but the diagrams of devices were very much like those in Henry Transtrom's book entitled "Electricity at High Frequencies and Pressures". Much magic has been ascribed to Tesla, and I am disinclined to believe that he created the explosion at Tunguska for example, but I do believe that he had some knowledge of near-field electromagnetic effects and of plasma physics that today is lost, at least to the mainstream, and hasn't yet been reproduced.

His largest coil, what he called a magnifying transmitter, was known to create ball lightning on occasion, short-lived and small examples to be sure. If the physics behind ball lightning could be understood, if a plasma can be self-containing, then that might tremendously simplify creating controlled hydrogen fusion for power generation. Ball lightning is a very mysterious phenomena that is not at all well understood at this time. There are numerous theories but I've yet to read one that is fully consistent with ball lightnings observed characteristics.

The near-field EM effects allow efficient transmission of electrical power through space and is only just now beginning to be understood and commercially exploited to make rechargeable electronics that can be recharged by a charger somewhere in the same room, no longer necessary to be in very close proximity to the charging device for efficient coupling. All that is necessary to make this work is for both the transmitter and receiver of energy to have very high quality tuned circuits tuned to a mutual resonance. For some reason this makes both act like much larger antennas electrically.