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Tesla's Colorado Springs Receivers
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Executive Summary
This article by James F. Corum and Kenneth L. Corum examines Nikola Tesla's 1899 VLF radio receiving apparatus developed at Colorado Springs. Through circuit analysis and physical reconstruction, the authors demonstrate that Tesla implemented a sophisticated regenerative, negative-resistance coherer detection scheme that predated Edwin Armstrong's work on regeneration by nearly two decades. The analysis explains how Tesla achieved remarkable receiver sensitivity and selectivity using tuned resonators and local RF injection.
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ST_CODE: EIVERS
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DOC-TESLAS-C
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Public archive record
Integrity Hash
SHA256-TESLASCOLORA...
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COMPLETE
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Page 1 of 14
Introduction
(A Short Introduction)
"While experimenting in Colorado...I had perfected a wireless receiver of extraordinary sensitiveness, far beyond anything known."
Nikola Tesla (Albany Telegram, February 25, 1923)
§1 Introduction*
A significant segment of Nikola Tesla's 1899 Colorado Springs research effort encompassed the detection and monitoring of VLF radio waves emitted from atmospheric electrical storms. (Twenty-nine years later, Karl Jansky was conducting much the same research, at short-wave, when he observed thunderstorms and discovered radio noise emanating from the galactic plane.) Indeed, this branch of radio science may be traced directly to Tesla. Tesla also reported detecting a peculiar extra-terrestrial signal, which he subsequently concluded was from the planet Mars. How did the 1899 receivers of Tesla's work?
Using Tesla's patent applications, correspondence, and Colorado Springs laboratory notes (abbreviated as CSN), about 15 years ago we conducted a study of his novel coherer techniques and reconstructed models of his receiving apparatus. The results were surprising to us, for they revealed an unanticipated level of sophistication not initially apparent in the simple circuit diagrams. His 1899 coherer operation was nothing like the coherer circuits of Branly, Lodge, or Bose. Not only did Tesla's detector circuits include high Q tuned resonators, but also oscillator injected negative resistance [similar to the peak (or "boost") operation of the shunt type Q-multipliers of the 1950s, which raised the effective Q and increased the resonant rise of voltage]. This has the same effect as making the detector stage regenerative. A detailed technical discussion of Tesla's 1899 receivers was published in 1994, and an analysis of the "radio telescope" system parameters associated with his Colorado Springs observatory was presented in 1996. As with Armstrong's super-regenerative receiver, which was patented in 1922, Tesla's sensitive detectors require only a few components and are deceptively simple.
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This article by James F. Corum and Kenneth L. Corum examines Nikola Tesla's 1899 VLF radio receiving apparatus developed at Colorado Springs. Through circuit analysis and physical reconstruction, the authors demonstrate that Tesla implemented a sophisticated regenerative, negative-resistance coherer...