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INVENTIONS OF NIKOLA TESLA.

leading ideas and experiments can here be touched upon; besides,it is preferable that the lectures should be carefully gone over fortheir own sake, it being more than likely that each student willdiscover a new beauty or stimulus in them. Taking up thecourse of reasoning followed by Mr. Tesla in his first lecture, itwill be noted that he started out with the recognition of the fact,which he has now- experimentally demonstrated, that for the pro-duction of light waves, primarily, electrostatic effects must bebrought into play, and continued study lias led him to the opinionthat all electrical and. magnetic effects may be referred to elec-trostatic molecular forces. This opinion finds a singular con-firmation in one of the most striking experiments which hedescribes, namely, the production of a veritable flame by theagitation of electrostatically charged molecules. It is of thehighest interest to observe that this result points out a way ofobtaining a flame which consumes no material and in which nochemical action whatever takes place. It also throws a light onthe nature of the ordinary flame, which Mr. Tesla believes to bedue to electrostatic molecular actions, which, if true, would leaddirectly to the idea that even chemical affinities might be electro-static in their nature and that, as has already been suggested,molecular forces in general may be referable to one and the samecause. This singular phenomenon accounts in a plausible man-ner for the unexplained fact that buildings are frequently set ontire during thunder storms without having been at all struck bylightning. It may also explain the total disappearance of shipsat sea.

One of the striking proofs of the correctness of the ideas ad-vanced by Mr. Tesla is the fact that, notwithstanding the employ-ment of the most powerful electromagnetic inductive effects, butfeeble luminosity is obtainable, and this only in close proximityto the source of disturbance; whereas, when the electrostaticeffects are intensified, the same initial energy suffices to exciteluminosity at considerable distances from the source. That thereare only electrostatic effects active seems to be clearly proved byMr. Tesla’s experiments with an induction coil operated withalternating currents of very high frequency. He shows howtubes may be made to glow brilliantly at considerable distancesfrom any object when placed in a powerful, rapidly alternating,electrostatic field, and he describes many interesting phenomenaobserved in such a field. His experiments open up the possibility