"When I made this discovery I was utterly astounded. I could not believe what I had seen was really true. It was too great a revelation of Nature to accept immediately and unhesitatingly."
What Tesla had discovered, and soon announced to the scientific world, was the existence of stationary terrestrial waves of electricity, and its meaning was that an impulse sent into the earth was carried on these waves to the other side of the earth and rebounded without any loss of power. He had, in fact, discovered and turned to man's use the very heartbeats of our earth.
"Whatever electricity may be," he continued, "it is a fact that it acts like a fluid, and in this connection, we may consider the earth as a great hollow ball filled with electricity." He goes on to explain that when an impulse is sent into this ball of electricity it proceeds to the opposite wall of the earth in waves and, finding no outlet it returns to the place it started, but in a series of waves exactly the opposite of the outgoing ones, so that the two cross and diverge at regular intervals as indicated in the diagram.
A—Oscillator B—Opposite side of earth C—Waves in nodal and ventral intervals.
As Tesla put it, "The outgoing and returning currents clash and form nodes and loops similar to those observable on a vibrating cord." Tesla figured from these experiments that the waves varied from 25 to 70 kilometres from node to node, that they could be sent to any part of the globe, and that they could be sent in varying lengths up to the extreme diameter of the earth.
In order to prove his discovery Tesla sent an impulse into the earth, and received it back, on his delicate instrument, in a few seconds. "It is like an echo," he explained. "When you shout and in a few seconds hear your voice coming back, you do not think it is another voice but know immediately that it is simply your own vocal vibrations reflected by the house, mountainside, or what not. It is just the same with an electrical vibration. The stationary terrestrial wave goes through the earth, reaches the other side and, finding no outlet, is reflected without any loss of power. Indeed, in some cases it is returned with greater power than at first."
"Then in your system the wireless electrical current passes through the earth, and not through the air," interrupted the scientist.
"No," he answered, "it passes through both. It is difficult to understand the big things about electricity, but just think of the earth as a great ball filled with electricity, as I said before. Think of the tower of the oscillator as a tube, and of the great mushroom-shaped top of the plant as another ball. Now from our great alternating current dynamo we first fill the ball at the top of the oscillator with electricity, and then we make a motion that corresponds to squeezing it. What happens? Just what happens when you have two rubber balls connected with a tube. You squeeze one of them, and push the air, or water, into the other ball. In that way we push the electricity into the earth, but it comes back to us on the stationary waves, from the opposite side, and when it does we are ready to give it another mighty push with another tremendous squeeze from our dynamo. When this is going on the top of the oscillator is gathering electricity from the air all the time and sending it out to be used wherever there is a receiver properly tuned to receive these rates of vibration."