"Is it necessary," asked the boy, "to have your power plant erected near the waterfall, or other means of producing the electricity?"
"No, it is not. This plant, for instance, can be made a great receiving station for electric power from all the great hydro-electric sites, and from it we hope to be able to send out electrical waves that will run our ships, airships, trains and street cars, carry our voices, light our houses, and turn the wheels of our factories. It is better, however, to have the plants located close to the seats of power, and to have a greater number of plants."
"How much horsepower did you say this plant would send out?"
"Only a mere trifle of three million horsepower, but of course this is only an experiment. To be done properly the thing must be done on a large scale, and the time will come—not necessarily remote—when we will be carrying on the whole programe embraced by the wireless transmission of power. The cost of wireless power I estimate would be about one sixteenth of that of the present system."
"When you are sending such tremendous voltages won't it be very dangerous to be anywhere in the vicinity of a plant, much less anywhere that the electricity might be brought from the earth?"
"No, for the power is so well harnessed that we can send it just where we want it and nowhere else. Of course, on the other hand, if we wanted to make trouble with this well-harnessed lightning we could make a terrible disturbance in the earth and on the surface of the earth."
"What about lightning?"
"That is one of the things we had to guard against right from the very first, and I can tell you that lightning will not bother us a bit, although I cannot give you the details of our method of avoiding it.
"When we are using the plant at night, however, there will be a display far more beautiful than lightning, all about the cupola in the form of a great halo of electric light visible for miles around."
Before we leave this fascinating subject of the wireless transmission of power let us ask Doctor Tesla about the effect of his invention on war.