Tesla took wireless telegraphy far beyond its original potential and turned it into a cornerstone of technological innovation in many different fields. Tesla is renowned for being one of the fathers of electric power. He turned his attention to telecommunications while working for Western Union in late 19th-early 20th century. He turned an idea that had been kicking around for some time about using wireless telegraphy to power telephone wires into a utility, capable of powering the light bulb.
But we still don't know very much about Tesla's contribution to the first generation of wireless telegraphy, let alone his later activities.
The telegraphy system was developed at the start of the 19th century and established a radio link that could send and receive text messages from the other side of the world. It became a mainstay of communication and revolutionised the way messages were sent and received, and allowed people to send signals from one place to another.
Tesla was one of several inventors that took up the challenge to improve the system and enhance its capabilities. Eerily ahead of its time.
The first wireless telegraphy networks had relatively short transmission ranges – around several kilometres. At that time Tesla was still working on the idea, and he put his beliefs in free energy and teleportation to the test.
At the beginning of the 20th century, he managed to establish a link that stretched from Buffalo, New York with a receiver station in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This was a vast improvement on the range of the earlier systems, but not nearly as impressive as Tesla's later transmissions.
Like all inventors, Tesla had an ear to the ground, and understood that there was a limit to the range of the early wireless networks. He didn't expect any of his early experiments to have any real practical use, but he wanted to develop them to the point where he had tested and proven his theories.
Possibly his most audacious invention, intended as a proof of concept, involved using his experiments to send messages to and from the moon. This would have meant him building a rocket with the power to take him there and setting it off from the roof of his home. The signal to send the messages would have been received by a receiver near New York.
From an early point, Tesla wanted to make the system available to everybody. Like many inventors of his era, he was interested in the wireless transmission of information, not just data. In later years, he developed technology that he intended to use to transmit the energy needed to run wireless telegraphy.
Tesla had high hopes for wireless telegraphy, believing that it would be the key to a better society. He wrote: "I see a world in which a telephone and electric light are inseparable, a world where you are not afraid to go to sleep at night because you know that the telegraphic news will keep you informed of the new events of the day, a world of news fed to your head by electrical telephones, a world of room-temperature wireless telegraphy that will enable people to talk to one another from Maine to California without any wires."
However, unlike other inventors, he believed in sharing his inventions.
